I spent the first year of a three-year healing
hegira in New York State, in an altered state. It was a homecoming at a
higher level along life's spiral: although I'd grown up just over the border in
northern New Jersey, being in New York in 1994 was time out of mind, sacred
space in the deepest sense, even as I was remembering what that was, even as my
severely ill body brought me to places where my soul rejoiced at finally being
unleashed to embrace my purpose this lifetime. Stripped raw, connected only to
Spirit, I followed a divine thread to my healing destiny.
During an extended
stay at one country home, I heard about a performance that was to take place soon at The Widow Jane Mine, an underground chamber where the audience would
sit on hay bales. It sounded intriguing, inviting,
essential. I had to go.
I did not yet know who Layne Redmond was. When the
Drummers Were Women, her definitive
book about the ancient art of frame drumming, was three years in the future.
At the event, I purchased her first CD, Since the Beginning,
entranced by her rapturous visage on the cover. Then I entered the mine, and
opened to the unimagined.
I can still hear the invocation as their voices
reverberated, reaching us before the candlelit raft bearing the drummers
floated into view. "Ah, ah-ah-ah, Ah, ah-ah-ah, Ah, ah, ah ah, ah ah ah,
ah ah AH!" This was primordial sound; the drum is the sound of our Mother's
blood, the first sound we hear in the womb, and the sound of Gaia's heartbeat
as well. It entered me.
I found myself at night for weeks, months afterward,
singing this incantation as I remembered the stars, felt the Moon inside my
being, began to heal/whole into the truth of Oneness. I was never so joy-filled
as during this awakening time.
I was stunned last week to learn that Layne made her
transition just before Hallowe'en/Samhain, on October 28th, a time
when the veils between worlds are thin. I was more shocked to realize she was
just five years older than me. In 3D she clearly had much left to do; she was
in the midst of continuing to expand her global work. But her soul knew a
different timetable. Her soul felt her work here was complete.
I am blessed to have witnessed this master of the frame
drum and her Mob of Angels in New York in 1994, and again in California in the
late 1990s. Layne Redmond played a pivotal role in my awakening journey, though
she did not know it. In this moment when all the timelines are merging, as
solar cycles and planets dance us awake en masse, I say a humble thank you. Thank you for drumming me to consciousness,
for your generous heart, for sharing your manifold gifts as manna for us all.
Blessings, Layne Redmond, now adding
her joy to the Music of the Spheres…
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