Tuesday night was another incredible journey with Patrick facilitating. Each round of drumming is different and unique in flavor. One of my excursions was much more visual and emotional than others. I began remembering the emotional pain I shared with someone who had lost her 15 year old son on a Boy Scout camp 35 years ago. Her grief was as intense and overwhelming as it was when the phone call first came. Then I thought of a show of "White Fang" which I had seen that afternoon with my daughter. I had cried when I saw the depiction of a group of men betting on which dog would kill the other. The cruelty and insensitivity of our species was utterly repugnant.

As the drumming led me to a softer kinder place I saw a red heart with a golden, orange and yellow fire burning in it. I understood that a fire in the heart is so important for heart connection and transforming the intensity of pain in the heart. The fire in the heart takes the hardness that builds to protect itself from more pain and burns it away so the heart can remain soft and open.

Then I saw a woman offering her pain to an alter. It was placed in a wooden bowl and it left and disolved as smoke rose. Then I saw the heart with the fire in it surrounded by seven pairs of feathers in a circle. Each pair of feathers represented one member of the group. The colors were intense and varied. Between the feathers were space thirteen grandfathers.

The final scene was of a dead Indian placed on a funeral pyre on top of a mountainside. In the background was a valley and mountains in the distance. Above the Indian rose a soaring eagle. The clouds in the crystal blue sky were puffy and in them were the faces of the grandfathers.