Inspired by drumming in one of the full moon rituals I offered Mountain River Circle, held at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Glens Falls, the worship committee asked me to work drumming into a summer Sunday service. I brought drums to the congregation on August 17, 2025 and included the following in the service.
Opening Chant
Come, loved ones come. Come to the beat of the heartbeat drum.
Come, loved ones come. Come to the beat of the heartbeat drum.
Welcome
“Drum sound rises on the air, its throb, my heart. A voice inside the beat says, “I know you’re tired, but come. This is the way.”
With those words from Rumi, I say good morning and welcome!
Opening Words
Layne Redmond, the drummer, writer, teacher, historian, mythologist, wrote in When The Drummers Were Women:
“It is often said that the first sound we hear in the womb is our mother’s heartbeat. Actually, the first sound to vibrate our newly developed hearing apparatus is the pulse of our mother’s blood through her veins and arteries. We vibrate to that primordial rhythm even before we have ears to hear. Before we were conceived, we existed in part as an egg in our mother’s ovary. All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent five months in our grandmother’s womb and she in turn formed within the womb of her grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born. And this pulse is the thread of blood that runs all the way back through the grandmothers to the first mother. We all share the blood of the first mother. We are truly children of one blood.”
Opening Hymn
I invite you to stay seated for all our hymns and chants today. Now drum along with hymn number 389, “Gathered Here.” Let’s get the rhythm going.
Presentation
I’m going to let you in on a secret. Teenaged Debbie had a thing for drummers. All my friends were crushing on lead singers and guitar players, but I liked the drummers. They always seemed more real somehow, the quiet one sitting back there holding every song together, but hiding an inner bad boy who could explode into a wild drum solo and then come back to holding the beat. I don’t know, maybe it was just the drums, and the way my body responds to the vibrations. Looking back, I think that’s it.
I still remember my first weekend festival. The highlight was a giant bonfire, which was cool. But then the drumming started. I don’t think anyone said, okay start. Someone just did, and everyone joined in. An hour later, I was lost, dancing next to the fire and probably on some other plane at the same time. When I collapsed into my sleeping bag the drumming was still going on. I could feel the Earth reverberating under me. It’s an experience I’ve had many times since then. Every one is magical.
Layne Redmond, who I quoted earlier, wrote:
“One of the most powerful aspects of drumming and the reason people have done it since the beginning of being human is that it changes people’s consciousness. Through rhythmic repetition of ritual sounds, the body, the brain and the nervous system are energized and transformed. When a group of people play a rhythm for an extended period of time, their brain waves become entrained to the rhythm and they have a shared brain wave state. The longer the drumming goes on, the more powerful the entrainment becomes. It’s really the oldest holy communion.”
The oldest holy communion. Whenever we gather with our drums or rattles or whatever, and the rhythms start to sync up, we shift out of our individual existences and into a sense of oneness. There’s this resonance.
But there’s a trick. You have to get out of your head with it. I have known, and still know, some really amazing drummers. They know all the rhythmic patterns from different cultures and are trying to make the drum sound a certain way. The teen rock band drummers probably had them written down. They did, after all, want those songs to sound the same every time they played them. But you? You don’t have to.
Drumming is natural. Your heart is keeping a beat in your chest right now. That’s where you start. With a heartbeat. And then when everyone joins in the rhythm takes over.
Alright, let’s try another one. This one is in the teal hymnal, number 1073, “The Earth is Our Mother.” Let’s get a beat going.
[drumming and chanting]“I am drumming, I am drumming, I am drumming for my Love’s ever nearing union. They say get a life. What is all this drumming? I swear to that Love, the day that I stop drumming, is the day that I will stop living.”
Those are more words from Rumi, a Sufi mystic. You might wonder why a Sufi, focused inward for the most part, is so into drumming. But the whirling dervishes are Sufis. They do their dance, which, by the way, is meant to mimic the movement of the planets around the sun, they do their dance to have an ecstatic experience of God.
Even the Buddhists, all quiet in their zen, have a drumming practice. A Buddha Temple Drum symbolizes the beating of the Buddha’s heart and it’s believed the drumming creates a deep resonance that connects with the Buddha’s wisdom and compassion. It’s also a powerful tool for meditation and mindfulness.
The drum’s deep, resonant sound marks the beginning and end of ceremonies, as well as accompanying chanting and meditation. The rhythmic sound helps focus your mind and connects you with your inner self. It can create a sense of calm and tranquility, and facilitates a deeper understanding of Buddhist teachings.
More of my experience of drumming came from Bhakti Yoga, and kirtan, which is call and response chanting of Sanskrit mantras. I once did a weekend kirtan retreat and one of the workshops offered was on Indian drumming. Remember how all those “real” drummers knew the different patterns and stuff? Well, I don’t. And I didn’t get it. But that didn’t stop me from feeling it when we went back to chanting.
My message to you, before we do more drumming, is to feel it. Drumming is a powerful ritual. It can take you inward, or to another plane, or whatever. There’s no right. There’s nothing to remember except the oneness of all.
This next one is also in the teal hymnal, number 1070, “Mother I Feel You.” Someone start a beat. Just play your heartbeat on the drum.
[drumming and chanting]Closing Chant
Now let’s connect to the heartbeat, the sacred rhythm, one more time together, and send words of peace into the universe.
Salam, Shalom, Shanti Om
Closing Words
My final words are that of Babatunde Olatunj.
“The Creator wants us to drum. He wants us to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants. After all, we have already corrupted the world with power and greed….which hasn’t gotten us anywhere – now’s the time to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants.”