CONTENTS:

· Background

· The Sacred Pipe ( Israel)

· Peace Concerts (worldwide)

· South Africa (meeting with Credo Mutwa, Pipe Ceremony in Rustler’s Valley)

· Scotland (includes meeting Eileen Caddy at Findhorn)

· Desert Wedding in Israel

· Media Coverage

· CD

Dance Announcements

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Background

Mantra is sound, and sound is reverberating in everything in this universe. ... Sound has enormous power; in fact it has the power to create an entire universe. – Muktananda

The second year of the new millennium was a year of miracles, blessings and accelerated learning. It brought new friends, powerful experiences and important teachings. We met elders of various cultures who shared their wisdom with us – both spoken and unspoken. We participated in some amazing ceremonies. We visited sacred places and gathered some great stories. Altogether, it is more than we can hope to share in a newsletter. Much of it will have to wait for a book. But, we’ll do our best to share the highlights.

It was a busy year. Our work with sacred sound and dance took us twice to Israel and Germany, and to Canada, England, Scotland, Wales and South Africa. We spent half the year abroad, and half the year crisscrossing the United States.

We did peace concerts, dances, ceremonies, workshops, and lots of private sessions. Wherever we went we carried two messages. 1) It’s time to remember who you really are. You are the peacemakers because you are peace. 2) Peace will never come from out there. It will only come from within.

If you want peace, love what is in front of you in this moment. Everything else will take care of itself. Then, move to the next moment and love what is in front of you in that moment. Again, everything else will take care of itself. Then, move to the next moment and love again. Instant by instant, moment by moment is how peace is created. It’s really quite simple – but not often easy.

We learned some important things, not the least of which is that sometimes the importance or impact of a particular action only comes into focus after the fact. The most important teaching we received this year happened in this way. It came through a Pipe ceremony in Israel. The teaching was this: the time of separation is over.

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The Sacred Pipe

Here’s how it happened. We were in Israel in March, on the six-month anniversary of the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York. Responding to an urgent request from a friend in Jerusalem, Jeanne agreed to do a sacred Peace Pipe ceremony that night.

We were in Northern Israel at the time. At the close of the ceremony, when the stem and bowl of the Pipe were being separated, the end of the stem broke off inside the bowl. At that instant, a lightning bolt of energy shot through Jeanne.

At first, she thought she had done something wrong. And then she and John suddenly realized that something very significant had just happened. The first instinct was to separate the Pipe, as is traditionally done at the end of a Ceremony, regardless of what had just occurred. But somehow, both of us knew it was to be left as is, wrapped in sacred cloth and taken to someone who had more wisdom.

In the ceremony with the sacred Pipe, the bowl represents the feminine, and the stem represents the masculine. When they are joined, the Pipe is “activated” and it is said that the Pipe carrier carries the world in his or her hands. This is one of the reasons the ceremony is held to be so sacred. For when a Pipe carrier prays with the Pipe, he or she is praying for the entire world.

So, when the stem broke off inside the bowl of the Pipe, the masculine and feminine remained joined, refusing to be separated. And the Pipe remained activated. We knew it was not by accident that this had happened.

Upon returning to the U.S., we sat down with our dear friend and mentor, Beautiful Painted Arrow (Joseph Rael), who is always a source of wisdom. After he listened to the story of what had occurred, he said to us, “The time of separation is over. What we get with both head and heart is that the pipe was telling us that for peace to happen we can no longer separate the masculine and the feminine. Save that pipe. One day, after you both have gone, it will be placed in a museum.”

He went on to say to Jeanne that she would receive a new Pipe which, when smoked, was to never be taken apart. Just four days later, a woman walked up to Jeanne and presented her with a Pipe. We were at the Texas Sun-Moon Dance at the time. The woman, Zoe Bryant, an adopted Lakota, knew only vaguely of the story of the “broken” Pipe, and of Joseph’s prediction that Jeanne would receive a new one.

Zoe had just “gotten it,” independently, that the Pipe she had brought to the dance was to go to Jeanne. So, she handed Jeanne the long leather bag, saying, “When I came, I didn’t know why I brought this but now I do. This is yours.” It was a Pipe that had been blessed by a revered Lakota Ceremonial Chief.

You could have knocked Jeanne over with a feather. It was an amazing and humbling synchronicity. But, we’ve learned that this is the way things work on the spiritual path.

The other amazing thing that happened within the same hour, was that Jeanne was presented the sacred male and female belts of the Picuris tribe. Sally Perry, who had been given the belts seven years before by Beautiful Painted Arrow, had a vision that the belts were to come to Jeanne so that she and John could carry them for seven years. And so, with the permission of Beautiful Painted Arrow, the belts were transferred into our keeping.

In June, with the belts and the new Peace Pipe, we were back in Israel once more. Jeanne woke the morning of the 10th from a dream in which she saw the moon moving over the sun, symbolizing the coming together of the feminine and masculine, as well as the coming together once again of all that has been separated.

As it turned out, there was a solar eclipse getting ready to happen on the 11th. Jeanne realized that this was the time when the new “People’s Pipe” was to be joined. So, we checked the time of the eclipse, and in a private ceremony, Jeanne joined the stem and bowl of the new People’s Pipe at the same moment that the moon joined with the sun. From this moment onward, the Pipe has remained joined as a constant metaphor of wholeness and balance – and potential possibility.

Two days later, Jeanne received an invitation from a young man in Jerusalem, named Isaac. Knowing she was a Pipe Carrier, he asked her to do a Peace Pipe Ceremony in his home. Jeanne had been told in the dreamtime to pay very close attention to who would ask for this special event. So, Isaac’s request wasn’t a complete surprise. But, neither she nor John had any idea that this ceremony would be so significant.

And so, some days later, the first People’s Ceremony with the joined Pipe was held. Thirty-two people attended, a mixture of Palestinian and Jew. When the ceremony concluded, Jeanne encouraged the people to watch the news because of what they had just done in this powerful ceremony was important for the world at this time...

Within twenty-four hours, several excited calls came in to say that one of the ancient prophecies had just been fulfilled. It was being reported on CNN and in other news organizations around the world. Water had appeared coming through the Wailing Wall – the West Wall that surrounds the Temple Mount (Dome of the Rock), where many Jews traditionally have done their prayers.

Significantly, the water appeared roughly in the middle between where the men and women pray. The appearance of the water was interpreted by many as a prophesied sign, telling of the coming of the “time of redemption” and the coming (or return) of the Messiah.

Whatever one’s beliefs, what had occurred was significant enough to confirm power of the event with the Pipe that had taken place the day before. (One note of humor. One woman told us that it was probably just a broken water pipe, to which Jeanne grinned and answered “ They didn’t say HOW it would happen, only THAT is would happen”).

There is more to this story, particularly around the significance of the Ceremony taking place in the home of Isaac, the name of one of the sons of the ancient patriarch, Abraham, who lived several thousand years ago.

Isaac is said to have carried the seed of Judaism. His older brother, Ishmael, was the father of the Arab nations out of which Islam comes. The metaphor from the joined Pipe is that “the time of separation is over...” Oddly enough, we were told that old Abraham also had a daughter. Her name was Kitorah. When the Hebrew letters of her name are rearranged, it becomes the word that means pipe!

Some weeks later, during an informal talk at the Center for Peace back in the U.S., we related this story about the Pipe.

A full-blood Cherokee man was present who said to us, “In the past six months, three other tribal elders, all from different tribes, have said the same thing as Beautiful Painted Arrow. The time of separation is over.

Think of it. That means healing all of the ways that we separate ourselves one from the other, and from God – through gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, and more. It is very significant!” And so it is.

There is more to tell. Some very powerful Pipe Ceremonies have taken place since the joining of the pipe – particularly the one that happened in South Africa. But, we’ll save the telling of that story for later in this letter.

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Peace Concerts

Sound is how the physical world drinks other energies in its immediate vicinity in order to quench its thirst for existence.

– Joseph Rael from his most recent book, "In the House of the Shattering Light".

We sang everywhere we went this year, entertaining but also teaching people to slip “between the slices of light” into a no-mind space and sing spontaneous songs from the heart using the vowel sounds – ah, eh, ee, oh, and uu.

Everywhere we went we were given powerful confirmations of the power of this kind of singing. Still, what we were told in Israel took our breath away.

While in Israel in June, we spent time with a true holy man. He is one of those rare people in this world whose entire being radiates love. In fact, to sit in his presence is to take deep drink of love. He is a Rabbi and teacher of the mystical Kabbalah who lives in Tsfat, just North of the Sea of Galilee.

Though it is traditionally forbidden for an orthodox rabbi to hear a woman sing, this noted Rabbi invited Jeanne to sing a spontaneous song for him using the sacred vowel sounds in the way she had been given in vision.

Upon hearing Jeanne sing, he told us with a smile, “Two thousand years ago there was a school for prophets. They used to teach this kind of singing because it was such a direct connection with the Divine.”

Amazing! After an informal concert at a friend’s home in En Kerem, near Jerusalem, a gray-haired man gave himself a gentle smack on the head as he said, “Now I get it! Now I understand what the Psalm means when it says, "Sing unto the Lord a new song"! It means singing this kind of spontaneous song!”

At another time, a woman excitedly told us that we were fulfilling an ancient prophecy! She said that the people used to know how to sing in this manner but had forgotten. Yet, it was written that teachers would one day come and teach the people to sing in this sacred way again. She believes that we are those teachers!

As we began to ponder these confirmations of the power of this kind of spontaneous singing, it dawned on us that there is a connection between Israel and Joseph Rael. “Rael” is the name of an ancestor from Spain who came to the Americas with the explorer Vargas. This Rael was a converso, a Jew who had been forced to convert to Christianity during the time of the Inquisition.

In fact, Rael is short for Is-rael. It is Joseph Rael who first taught us the power of chanting the vowel sounds as pronounced in Spanish – the same vowel sounds as in the Hebrew language.

Jeanne, when she received her vision in 1996, added the spontaneous melodies that help people slip into “no-mind” and connect with Spirit. Now with what we have been told, we realized that this way of working with sound might have originated in Israel. In fact, we may be carrying the teachings full circle back to their source!

Indeed, there are ancient practices described in texts on the Kabbalah in which Hebrew vowels were chanted in conjunction with the letters of the name of G_d (Yod-He-Vav-He) to achieve ecstatic states of consciousness.

The focus on Israel is not to take anything away from the Peace Concerts in other areas of the world. Many that we did were both powerful and memorable. The Church of the Holy Cross in Berlin, the Rudolph Steiner Hall in Johannesburg, the sound ceremony in the Earth Lodge at Findhorn, Marimba House in Rustlers Valley in South Africa, the concerts we’ve given in Peace-Sound Chambers around the world, all of these come to mind.

Perhaps the reason that the experiences in Israel are so poignant is that there is a sense of going back to the roots. Our time in Israel this year taught us something about the ancientness and sacredness of the spontaneous singing using the vowel sounds that we didn’t know.

We pass it along because it is important that everyone who is working with sound in this way know it too. It will give you something to stand on.

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South Africa

We are capable of changing our future, but the people with positive aspects in their minds are too few and far between. The eyes that are blind are many, and the eyes that see are so few. If all the gifted people, if all spiritual people, could forget their selfishness and come to one great place at one time to pray, we could avoid many things [catastrophic events]. – Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa from his book, "Song of the Stars "

The flight from Atlanta to Capetown is an 8150-mile flight over open water that takes 14.5 hours, even at speeds reaching over 600 mph. But it is worth it. Capetown is at the southern tip of Africa, where the warm blue of the Indian Ocean meets the cold South Atlantic. It is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

We arrived just after dawn with the light of the rising sun piercing the clouds, spreading golden rays out like a magical fan, brilliant and beautiful. As we banked around to the north on our final approach, the brilliance of the sun reflected off the water like a mirror, the light so bright that it hurt our eyes. As we descended, the mirror of light seemed to race northward alongside the big 747-400, perhaps in welcome.

As she looked at the magnificent landscape below us, Jeanne felt the awesome spirit of the Great Mother cradling her like an infant between the large breasts of an ancient Grandmother. The Spirit of Africa was greeting her. Then, out of our window a rainbow appeared. It was a wonderful sign, almost as if Joseph, whose Tiwa name means “Double Rainbow,” was sending his light before us to open the way. We wondered what miracles awaited us.

Stepping off the plane onto this ancient land, we had the immediate sense of being guided deeper into the dark, moist roots of the tree of life. The feeling of the Mother is palpable, and accompanies you everywhere you go. It is as if you are in the womb of creation and the land is pregnant with possibility.

For all of its current problems, South Africa is one of the places on earth we’ve experienced that is alive with the potential to transform itself, and seed the world with new possibilities. What seeds we had come to gather, or to plant, during our month-long journey we did not know.

Except for a concert in Johannesburg, we had no agenda to speak of. All we knew is that we had been guided to South Africa. Our job was simply to show up, and allow events to unfold. As it frequently happens when we let go and surrender to life, we were guided to some amazing people, and remarkable experiences.

These included meeting Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, a High Sanusi of the Zulu people, and Gogo (Grandmother) Monica, a traditional healer and clairvoyant from the Valley of the Sangomas.

We hiked into the Sangoma Valley to participate in an initiation ceremony with Gogo Monica that introduced us to the ancestors. With the permission of the elders and the ancestors, we did an amazing Pipe ceremony in Marimba House at Rustlers Valley Ranch that re-balanced the energy of the mountain.

We visited Nau’ma, the beautiful site for a possible South African Sun-Moon Dance (potentially, Dec. 2003!). In Johannesburg, we spoke and sang at a Rev. Stephanie Clarke’s church gathering, and gave a concert at the impressive Rudolph Steiner Hall.

These were the just the highlights of a magical trip. Not even all of these can be described for the newsletter. If space allowed, we would mention many wonderful people, the angels who were our hosts and new friends that became part of our extended family. What is left unsaid will have to wait for a book. What follows is merely a taste.

Baba Credo Mutwa

Early in our trip, we met Dr. Credo Mutwa, whose quote begins this section. At 81, he is called, by some, The Father of Africa. He is also called Vusamazulu – literally, “Awakener of the Zulu.” His title is High Sanusi, meaning uplifter, or one who causes things to ascend. In reality, it means that he is the one who carries the totality of the sacred, esoteric wisdom of his people. He is an artist, teacher, storyteller, healer, priest, prophet and keeper of the oral traditions of his people. He is an amazing, selfless man.

Baba Credo is a large man – 300 pounds or more, a gentle giant. He is one of the most erudite yet humble people we’ve ever met, often addressing his guests with a bowed head and in a soft voice as, “Honorable Ones.” He is fluent in several languages, and is a compulsive comparative linguist (like Joseph Rael). He has found many words similar or almost identical to Zulu in languages around the world – pointing to a common human heritage.

As one of the last people who carries all of the esoteric wisdom of the Zulu, he made a courageous choice to share it with all people, through stories, rather than allow this knowledge to die. He has suffered for doing so more than any man should. The world is his beneficiary.

Pipe Ceremony at Rustlers Valley

Even before meeting Baba Credo, we found ourselves in the Maluti Mountains near Lesotho at a place called Rustlers Valley Ranch. It is a place that Credo Mutwa calls the Valley of the Eagle. It is quite near the land on which J.R.R. Tolkien grew up (author of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy). Not surprisingly, the cottages at the ranch are round structures that look much like Hobbit Huts.

The mountain that runs along the south side of this valley is said to carry the energy of a large dragon. Up against this mountain is a round structure called Marimba House built by a tall, slender man named Niyan (which means, “Son of Man”). Niyan built this place to take people on sound journeys, very appropriate since Marimba is the goddess of music and joy.

Marimba House is, in reality, a Peace-Sound Chamber with a thatched roof! To the north, on the other side of the ridge is a place known as the Sangoma Valley. Sangomas are the traditional, clairvoyant healers. They carry the ancient knowledge of African herbology/naturopathy, and are trained to communicate and interact with the ancestors and the unseen spirit world. Many of the Sangomas are trained in this valley – by Gogo Monica (herself trained by Baba Credo Mutwa).

Nearby are caves that are held by the Zulu to be the place where human life emerged onto the planet. It is a sacred place. Just days before our arrival at Rustlers Valley, the head Sangoma in Durban contacted Niyan. She said, “The energy of the mountain is disturbed. The dragon is confusing its head for its tail. Something needs to be done.”

When we arrived, Niyan asked if we could help. Since the Pipe that Jeanne carries is about bringing balance, we offered to do a Peace Pipe ceremony – but only with the blessings of the Sangomas and the ancestors. Receiving those blessings occasioned a trek into the Sangoma Valley – and one must walk in, not drive.

There we met Gogo (or Grandmother) Monica, the head Sangoma of the village that is nestled high in the caves overlooking the valley below. At sunset, we participated in an amazing initiation ceremony.

It combined a traditional African fire ceremony to give offerings to the ancestors, with readings in Lesotho from a Christian Bible (a teaching about the faith of Abraham), and singing and dancing to African drums. (An interesting aside is that these Sangomas claim to be the children of the tribes of Abraham).

As a result of this event, we were introduced to the ancestors, and received permission to do the Pipe ceremony at Rustlers Valley. Jeanne even received a healing from Monica!

The next day, 23 people attended the Pipe ceremony at Marimba House. This included Gogo Monica – significant since it was the first time in four years that she’d left the Sangoma Valley to do ceremony here.

The ceremony was done with the permanently joined Pipe that signifies the time of separation being over and, together with the male and female belts of the Picuris Tribe, the restored balance between feminine and masculine energies.

Since our objective was to rebalance the energy of the mountain, this metaphor was important. As the ceremony proceeded, the Thunder Beings came in. It hadn’t rained there in six weeks. But as we smoked the Pipe, huge bolts of lightning streaked through the sky causing loud cracks of thunder.

A gale-force wind came in, and by the time the ceremony was over the rains came. We got caught in it walking back to our little Hobbit Hut after the ceremony. The wind was so strong that you could lean into it without falling. The raindrops felt like rubber bullets. It was frightening in all of its fury.

It took John a few minutes to realize that the wind was blowing in the direction that the energy needed to flow for balance. As the Sangoma from Durban had said, the dragon had been confusing its head for its tail (the energy flowing from east to west). The gale-force wind was blowing in the opposite direction, west to east.

The energy was returning to normal so that the dragon could be at rest once again. This was another example of just showing up, doing what we were given to do, and leaving the outcome to Spirit – with remarkable results!

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Scotland

A person of peace does not resist war, but practices peace. If we take sides, we practice attack. Defensive retaliation is responsible for war, for we are at war in our own minds. We cannot fight for peace. We cannot know the nature of peace until we have arrived at peace in our hearts. – Eileen Caddy in "Flight to Freedom".

We spent almost all of May, this past year, in the UK. We renewed important friendships in England, at Primrose Farm in Wales, and on the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

We visited cathedrals and abbeys in England, sang at the standing stones in Callanish, blessed a new site for a Peace Sound Chamber in Herefordshire, and made a magical connection there with the Rev. Stephanie Clarke that brought us to South Africa.

One thing leads organically to another in this work. It’s always amazing how it happens. Perhaps the most poignant time to share in the newsletter is our visit to Findhorn, the Spiritual Community started in the early 60s near Inverness, in the northeast of Scotland.

There, through an amazing series of synchronicities, we met and spent some time with Eileen Caddy, now 83. Eileen, together with her husband, Peter, founded Findhorn. While Peter supplied the muscle and drive that built the place, it was Eileen’s guidance in the form of recorded meditation insights that provided both the initial impetus and the spiritual direction for the community.

For hours each night, she would go into meditation and write down the guidance that she received from Spirit. Findhorn is now world famous for its gardens and stories of Pan and other nature spirits. It is a place where, with Eileen’s “guidance” and the help of these spirits, gardens grew in sandy soil where nothing was supposed to grow.

Walking the paths from place to place in the community, one can still sense the huge presence of Pan and other nature spirits in the Nature Sanctuary, Earth Lodge, or among the plants and trees along the walkways. They are very close to human awareness here, perhaps because they have been long acknowledged and respected.

Now, 40 years after it was first started, the spiritual community at Findhorn numbers roughly 500, with around 150 living on site. Eileen Caddy is now a grand dame, at 83.

Although she still meditates each morning and participates in the community meetings, she rarely goes out at night. In spite of this, she did come to a small, intimate evening gathering that we hosted in the upper room of the Community Center.

She came in an evening dress and gloves, and spoke to us with sparkling eyes that contained youthfulness undimmed by age. During that evening, she gave us a gift that we could not have anticipated.

In living and moving around the world by guidance in the way that we do, she said that we are carrying the principles upon which Findhorn was founded out into the larger world. She feared that this way of living had been confined to Findhorn and elsewhere, in the rest of the world, it was like a dying ember.

Our stories gave her hope that this was not so. As she closed her eyes and smiled serenely, clasping her hands and thanking us, our hearts swelled with love and the knowledge that we had been blessed by one of the world’s special elders.

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Desert Wedding in Israel

We’ve already said a lot about Israel, but there is one more story worth sharing. We arrived in Israel in June during a hamsin wind – hot, dry desert winds out of the east. As we stepped off the plane in Tel Aviv, the outside temperature was 42 °C (almost 108 °F). It was hot!

We had come with little or no agenda. One of the few events we had lined up in advance was an evening presentation at a bookstore called Olam Qatan in Jerusalem on our second night in Israel.

About 25 people attended to hear us tell stories, sing, drum and play our instruments. They also came to learn how to create spontaneous songs using the vowel sounds – always a very powerful experience in Israel, perhaps because here the veil between worlds is very thin. So, the connection one makes with the Divine is very strong.

Out of that evening, our calendar for the entire month filled up with workshops, concerts, private sessions, and events. One of these was nothing we could have anticipated. As it happened, two of the people who came to that evening at the bookstore, Vered and Shai, were planning to get married. They invited us to their wedding. We said, “Yes, of course we’ll come!”

Little did we know that the wedding would be a five-hour drive south into the Negev desert to a small community called Shacharut. This place is just 90 kilometers north of Elat, the southernmost city in Israel.

When we arrived, we found we had to walk about 20 minutes from the community into the desert where protective coverings of burlap had been erected to screen both sun and wind. Carpets had been laid on the desert ground with low tables set with bottles of wine, and bowls of grapes and other succulent fruits.

Musicians were beginning to play. Great quantities of catered food dishes were brought in. Family and friends gathered. The groom, dressed in white, mingled with the guests, thanking everyone for coming.

Finally, as night fell, under the beauty of the stars, the bride came riding in on a camel, dressed in silken fabrics complete with a golden veil. She was surrounded by half a dozen ladies in waiting – Jeanne among them!

The musicians struck up a tune and the groom, the families, and friends went out in masse to meet the bride. It was something indescribable straight out of the ancient time of Abraham!

The simple pageantry coupled with the sheer joy of the celebration will live with us for many years. With all the violence and destruction that is happening in Israel and Palestine, this creative act of coming together in love in a very traditional way that honored the ancient roots was touching and unforgettable.

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Media Coverage

2002 was a year during which we began to receive some media attention. This was somewhat surprising since we didn’t seek it out. We wonder where it will lead. Most places we went there was media coverage of some sort.

This included interviews, articles in various newspapers and magazines from around the world (including Internet website interviews). Most of these have been fun, colorful and, hopefully, have made a positive contribution.

One example we were excited about was an interview that Jeanne did for a German magazine for women, “Die Weibliche Stimme.” At some point, it may be a good idea to reprint this and other such articles onto our web site.

In April, a freelance journalist for “O” Magazine, Oprah Winfrey’s magazine, interviewed us. This came as a result of our having made the comment at one point, in reference to the Middle East, that the media was not telling the whole story. It would be a good and powerful thing, we said, if some high profile, well-known person had the courage to tell the whole truth of what is occurring in places like Israel and Palestine.

The truth is that there are thousands of people committed to a loving peace but whose efforts RARELY get reported in the media – which prefers to focus only on the violence.

In this interview, some of our comments were originally planned to be part of a round-up article of peace workers and high-profile people, like Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, and so on, a year after the 9-11 tragedy. There was the possibility for a longer article later.

Our comments didn’t appear in the September issue. And a longer article hasn’t happened yet. But, what did happened is that Oprah is aware of us and, we've been told has some interest in our work. We'll see what the future brings.

EAGLE NOTES

The Sacred Pipe

Peace Concerts

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