Drum Circle

It was one of those towns - those "artsy fartsy" ones. You know, where there are outrageously expensive handcrafted items mixed in with kitschy dollar store trinkets, where handmade ice cream stores sell antiques and where locals tie their dogs up outside of the deli where they wait for their regular meal that isn't even on the menu. We loved it.


At the center of town, in something that resembled a roundabout or a 'traffic circle', a group of people had gathered for a drumming circle. Drums of all shapes and sizes, some that required sticks and some that they just pounded on with their hands. There were tambourines and one man with a shell of some kind that he occasionally blew into that made a lovely haunting sound.


The drumming was fun, lively, intense. It pounded through the soles of our feet, it pounded in our hearts, and it felt the way that dancing feels. But it wasn't the drumming that captured me, it was the people doing the drumming.


Go ahead, close your eyes for a minute and picture a drummer.


Did you?


What do you picture? What does your 'drummer' look like?


Was it a lovely blond girl in a pretty suit-dress and high heels with a lovely made up face?

Was it a young woman in shorts and a tee with a toddler girl in pigtails and a summer dress sitting next to her?

Was it an older man with a trim beard and neat tidy mustache wearing tasseled loafers?


That's what I saw. I also long haired hippie men and women, an older (OLDER) woman all wrinkled and gnarled and grayed and a lesbian couple, a rastafarian, and so many younger children. All with drums. All drumming. All... happy and peaceful and musical and enthralled.


It made me think of how life should be - all those different sorts of people all involved in the very same activity, sharing their rhythms and paces. It was leading and following and sharing. It was accepting, changing, flowing. It was warmth and compassion and heart-felt. It was young and old and in-between and upside and downside and inside. I could have stayed there forever.