Collaborative Orisha Poem

Orisha altar. A little cluttered! (there are three different areas, one for each orisha)

Spirit of change
destiny sweeping
good vibrations
respect
and thunder.

Float freely
release
and encourage.

Momentum building
crescendo

Water wisdom.

At our last session of Rise Up, we were talking about the Yoruban Orishas, specifically Yemaya, Oshun, and Oya. After dancing together to honor the orishas, we looked into a bowl of water and each spoke aloud what had come to us following the dance. I wrote down what we said and the result was just what was supposed to happen: we’d created a collaborative poem about the orishas. I thought it was a neat experience 🙂 We did a double session of Rise Up this last time and I think it was too much to try to do at once since we kind of lost our steam. Next week, I had planned to do our next Rise Up class followed by our summer retreat, but now I think we should do only the retreat and keep Rise Up on a different day. It took a lot out of me to try to do two classes back to back and I could tell the rest of the group wasn’t really “feeling it” either. I have a tendency to always want to multitask and to double-up to be efficient, but sometimes there is a price to be paid for efficiency and in this case it was a lack of “steam” or connection during our time together. The dancing was fun and invigorating, but I felt like during other portions of the class people started to get bored or otherwise unfocused. I also left out some details about what to bring for our collaborative project and so that was confusing for people too and I kept losing my place in terms of what to do next, because the two classes blended together in my head and I couldn’t remember what went with what. I’d also had a bad morning with my kids (described on my other blog) and that dramatically impacted my ability to be present with our circle. In general, I felt like I basically failed with this particular session, though I try to remember that success or failure of a group endeavor does not rest with only one person, there is a collective responsibility to the usness of a group and a group is a living system with a personality and life of its own. At least our group poem worked pretty well! 🙂