August 30 was our most recent gathering. We worked hard, and overtime because it was the long weekend! Yeah!
Our opening reading was adapted from John Diamond's book The Way of the Pulse. An opening prayer and our chant followed, Sacred Is The Call. We then welcomed a new drummer to our midst, Anne, a friend of Judith.
We warmed up working with Layne on CD #1 Track 3 and this proved more doable than our last gathering's attempt to follow her in a more complex pattern. We all admit she moves pretty quickly through her material even at the beginner stages. our warm up continued with Perididdle and Balladi.
We then worked on the Sufi pattern, Rattlesnake one and two. A change of page was indicated amid the raging storm outside and so we worked with our chopsticks, experiencing a pattern of one, two and four over a pulse of four. This is now solid for us.
We reviewed and sang Earth My Body for a significant time, relaxing into drumming as we chanted.
By then, it was our normal closing time but we all agreed to a go around of Drummer's Toss. And, indeed, we enjoyed hearing the Taks toss!
Our official closing involved re-reading the Diamond passage, a closing prayer and our Commissioning and Benediction.
Instead of heading home, however, we all took time to evaluate a new pamphlet on Biblical Drumming and many worthwhile suggestions were made and are now incorporated into the revised edition. We also spent good time evaluating a prototype frame drum with jingles from Cooperman. It is exhilarating to be part of such a creative endeavor and we had a good number of comments to pass on for Prototype #2.
Our sense of community as well as skills are definitely growing. For this and for all our many blessings, we give thanks to God!
Our next gathering is September 13th, 7-9pm at Stittsville UC. There we will probably decide to shift to the first and third Fridays of each month from our present 2nd and 4th Fridays to better accommodate drummers schedules.