Shamanism 

Shamans channel the emotional and spiritual energies of the communities they serve. 

Order of Service - Script 

for Sunday: 

March 5, 2023 

NIUU, Jeanie Donaldson, Pastor Fred 

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Fred: 

Prelude - Jeanie Donaldson 

Leslie: 

Welcome:  

A warm and heartfelt welcome to all who join with us today in our time of open, free, and life affirming worship. 

We share human aspirations of the heart with all kinds of faiths and cultures from history and from a wide variety of religious communities. 

We promise not to tell you how or what to believe, but we will help you find the tools to construct your own faith. 

Again, all are welcome, and all means all. 

Leslie: 

Announcements: 

Are there any announcements for the good of our community? 

Fred: 

Cleansing ritual with brooms:  

May our brooms sweep clean as they move through the air and over the floor. May all negative energy and negative thoughts be swept out and away. May we ourselves be made newly hopeful and joyful in our time of worship, appreciating the approach of Spring and more light. 

So Mote It Be! 

Fred: 

Lighting the Chalice: 

As a Shaman is adept at healing with light, so we kindle the flame of our chalice this morning. May its light serve us as a focal point for a time of sharing worship and deepening understanding of ourselves and each other. 

Leslie: 

Opening Words: ­­­

We gather today under the guidance of religious leadership, bringing unique gifts from each person as each person offers religious leadership to the whole. We share those gifts with each other. As we consciously participate in the spiritual process called breathing, we drink in the ancient, sacred experience of spiritual presence. 

A Shaman is a spiritual leader who is adept at guiding the experience of faith and helping us all understand each other’s spiritual presence. 

Fred: 

Hymn Page 8: Let Me Find a Purpose by Jeanie Donaldson 

  From NIUU Songbook 

1. Oh let me find a purpose, Direction to my path, 

When sometimes all I see about are trouble, strife and wrath!  

The rain falls and the earth turns green, 

The stars shine and we find our way, 

But do I make a tiny dent in what goes on today? 

In what goes on today. 

2. The certain purpose that I seek is everywhere I go, 

It’s with me like the sky above and falling with the snow, 

As water satisfies our thirst, 

As clouds sail high above the earth, 

I may enhance life’s holy realm as I proceed in love, 

Just step by step in love. 

Fred: 

Covenant: 

Love is the spirit of this church, and service its law

This is our great covenant:

To dwell together in peace,

To seek truth in love,

And to help one another. 

Fred: 

Joys and Concerns (with lighting of candles of caring) 

Fred: 

Story: 

In the beginning was the mirror… 

(a personal story of an encounter with Shamanism) 

By Zori Tomova 

Growing up in post-communist Bulgaria, I walked into a church only a few times and felt weird, given that no one in my family was religious. I tried praying to God for a few weeks when I was 16, but I thought it didn’t work and abandoned the idea shortly after. I had zero spiritual and religious education, aside from participating in family traditions around major holidays. Then one evening, when I was around 18 years old, I sat on my bed spacing out and looking at myself in the mirror. I hadn’t drunk any alcohol or taken any substance. Suddenly my eyes became deep and black, my face became larger and more square and my hair became blonde and short. I found myself looking at the face of a man I’d never seen before in my own mirror! I had no frame of reference about what was going on! I got scared, shook my head, he disappeared. But I got curious, rested my eyes again like that and saw him again. He was clearly there in that moment. I couldn’t tell if he was an angel or devil, what was his business here, but clearly he was there looking at me from my own reflection. I never forgot that night. In the following years, every now and then I’d have some strange experiences of weird things at the corner of my eye, of wind swirling in the trees in abnormal ways, of visions of werewolves and flying through the earth in sacred spots I visited. 

I didn’t speak about any of this with almost anyone. Until one night I told a friend of mine and her partner, an Egyptologist, about this. He immediately said – “You should go read Carlos Castaneda, he might give you some ideas on the way you can look at these experiences”. He told me that Castaneda was an anthropologist, a student at UCLA, who as part of his PhD research found himself studying and apprenticing with a shaman from Mexican Yaki origin known as Don Juan. He took notes of the experience and published a series of books about it, becoming a shaman himself in the later stages of his life. The book he recommended me to begin with was ‘Journey to Ixtlan’ (the lessons of Don Juan). I got the book, started reading, feeling excited and curious, but not having any clue about the level to which it would affect my life trajectory. It was the book that opened up the questions of spirituality for me, giving me the frame of reference I was missing when looking at that man in the mirror years before that. No, I wasn’t crazy. I was just getting glimpses of what lies beyond consensus reality, into the shamanic world of the non-ordinary way of seeing. It was that book that showed me a way to understand that reality. A little missile of incredible wisdom that made its way to me in a faraway post-communist land that kept its traditions but had forgotten its indigenous beginnings. 

Leslie: 

Meditation: 

I’m going to ask that we all sit comfortably and empty our minds of ordinary thoughts and thinking. 

I ask that we picture a beautiful place and a beautiful moment, either from experience or imagination. 

It is especially powerful to picture a moment or a scene from nature. 

The natural world is always present, for we are a part of it. 

There is energy and there are feelings. 

If we allow ourselves to relax and become more aware of it, the energy that surrounds us and sustains us can be part of our awareness. 

As we spend a moment in silence, I ask that we all expand our awareness to include realities that are not often obvious to us. 

Following the moment of silence, I ask us to return to the world of ordinary thinking so that we may go on with our everyday lives. 

Smile. :-) 

As we return to ordinary thinking we are able to see ourselves, each other, and our world in a new light. 

This has been a shamanic moment. 

Sermon: 

From ancient times every community has needed leaders who can channel feelings and the power of breath and breathing. 

Such leaders have often been called Shamans, a word that comes from an ancient form of one of the languages of Russia and China (i.e. Eastern Siberia and Manchuria), a Tungusic language. 

Interestingly, the word Tungusic comes from the same root as the Tunguska Event, the infamous explosion in Siberia on June 30, 1908. 

In any case, whatever the source of the word, Shaman, it represents an ancient kind of religious expression that has long found its leaders among all kinds of people, men, women, and transgendered individuals. 

Oxford Languages defines a Shaman as “a person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of good and evil spirits, especially among some peoples of northern Asia and North America. Typically such people enter a trance state during a ritual, and practice divination and healing.” 

The power of the life giving force of breath and breathing is the heart of all spirituality, including, and maybe especially Shamanism. 

The Hindus call the breath, “Prana”. 

Prana refers to the power of breath to sustain religious expression as well as life itself. 

So Prana is a good word to help us maintain the perspective that breath is the heart of spirituality. 

As such, again, breath is the life giving principle for us all, on every level. 

In yoga, Indian medicine and Indian martial arts, prana (प्राण, prāṇa; the Sanskrit word for breath, "life force", or "vital principle") permeates reality on all levels including inanimate objects. In Hindu literature, prāṇa is 

sometimes described as originating from the Sun and connecting the elements. 

For community leaders to provide help and guidance with the first of all life giving principles, breath, the leaders will need some powerful, personal qualities. 

First and foremost, the leaders will need the confidence of the people they serve. 

After all, no one is going to allow another person to guide their breathing unless they trust that person deeply. 

Second, the shaman, like any spiritual leader, will need the experience and knowledge of the community’s heritage and traditions.

Respect for the past and the beliefs of a community would be necessary to sustain the needed level of trust. 

Third, the shaman will need a certain level of skill in communicating about life, breath, and spirituality. 

Without effective communication, the vital channeling of emotions and beliefs would not be possible. 

A shaman is a spiritual leader in all three of those vital areas: trust, tradition, and communication. 

Hence a true Shaman is often spoken of as a holy woman or a holy man. 

To me the term holy means special more than anything else. 

A holy person is a teacher of life itself, and so that is the task of the shaman. 

A special quality of a shaman is the spiritual power, the power of breath (or prana) to combine heritage and current traditions in meaningful and helpful ways. 

To speak in terms of the broader culture of the U.S., the Shaman is a pastor for his or her community. 

Of course, the term pastor is not often used to refer to shamans, nor are pastors often referred to as shamans. 

That’s too bad, on both counts.

Pastors can learn a lot from Shamans. 

Because of the disparagement of native cultures in many broader cultures, the Shaman is often disparaged by calling her or him a “witch doctor.” 

If that name brings to mind wild eyed, wildly costumed, crazy dancing  people, the image is deliberate. 

The crazy dancers are a stereotype of Shamans to discourage us from taking them seriously

One of the best positive portrayals of a Shaman that I have seen is the character played by Graham Greene in the movie, Dances with Wolves. 

The Shaman’s name in the movie was Kicking Bird. (Show jpeg in AA Sharing rtf.) 

The Shaman, Kicking Bird, was a well qualified leader of his tribe, and he became an important mentor to the character played by Kevin Costner, whose Native American name (among the Lakota Sioux) was the same as the name of the movie: Dances with Wolves. 

We are all victims of cultural stereotypes that portray northern European white folks as superior in every way. 

Even as white folks, we lose a great deal that we need to learn from people of other ethnic backgrounds if we are influenced by such cultural stereotypes. 

Shamans and the healing tradition they represent remain important sources of insight and knowledge all humans need, as they have always been. 

In reality, dancing in Shamanism is the opposite of crazy. 

It’s the art of sharing energy. 

We share the spirit of our being, our breath, as we worship together, enabling us to learn from each other on many levels: consciously,  subconsciously, and sometimes even unconsciously. 

Native dancing, whether in North America or in Asia, if often a way of affirming and teaching ancient traditions. 

Some of those traditions include tribal histories. 

Sometimes the traditions are powerful spiritual teachings concerning personal relationships, breathing, and ways of understanding life. 

We all lose a great deal of meaning in our lives if we fail to learn from each other. 

At times our forebears have turned us away from people who are quite different from ourselves. 

In fact, one of the gifts of Shamanism to our own time is that Shamans are different from most of us. 

They remind us that there is much value and much to learn from our differences. 

We all need that kind of reminder in our lives every day: 

From ancient times to our own, those who practice Shamanism have lessons to teach us all. 

Our culture in the U.S. is enriched by many different faith traditions in a way quite similar to its enrichment by many different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities. 

Our ability to learn from each other is one of our most basic skills as a nation. 

We are not truly a melting pot in the United States, but we all benefit from the diversity of many different kinds of people, including the 500 native nations that occupied this land before the first Europeans arrived. 

The ability to learn from each other is in jeopardy from unscrupulous politicians who are willing to exploit prejudice in order to make gains for themselves. 

Many of us understand the need for people of all kinds to maintain open hearts and minds in order to learn from others who are different from ourselves. 

If we are willing to learn and teach as well as help others learn and teach, we will be helping move our great culture forward in meaningful new ways. 

As we do so, we will be practicing a healing form of Shamanism ourselves. 

When we believe in the power of a Shaman to heal, we enable the Shaman (or Shamanka to use a feminine form) to channel the energy of prana, breath, to heal our land and its people. 

For our time, the most important skill of a Shaman may well be the power to teach us all to channel and direct powerful forms of healing energy for us all. 

Amen. 

So Mote It Be 

Blessed Be 

Congregational Response 

Leslie: 

Offering Information 

Charity of the Month:

 

Heritage Health

 

Heritage Health is North Idaho’s premier provider of integrated medical, dental, and behavioral health services. Our amazing care teams deliver world-class healthcare utilizing a patient-centered, community-focused approach. Providing high-quality, affordable, Healthcare from the Heart is our passion.

NIUU

P.O. Box 221

CDA ID 83816

Leslie: 

Extinguishing the Chalice: 

We have shared in the light of shamanic healing and learning, and so we take that light into ourselves as we extinguish our chalice. So we are learning. So we are being healed within and without. 

Fred: 

Closing words:  

We go out from this place with a renewed sense of who we are and what our lives mean. 

We have shared an experience of seeing all things in a new light: the light of a shamanic experience. It is now part of our own stories.

Fred: 

Closing Circle