A Burning Question Is a Bonfire

A community will gather around it.

We might say that we join the communitas when the questions being asked there become our questions.
(Carse, The Religious Case Against Belief)

Communities are living conversations surrounding a deep provocation. We wrestle with the central burning questions, respond, and our responses provoke more responses, in an ongoing chain of conversation. We’re constructing meaning together.

– Gordon Brander of Subconscious

With much of the world contemplating the latest outbreak of war, I light this bonfire:

What happens if we no longer believe the lie that surrender has to hurt?

Birth is surrender.

Death is surrender.

Watching a child leave home is surrender.

Letting a loved one make their own mistakes is surrender.

Offering your gift of art to the world and watching what they do with it is surrender.

Really excellent orgasms are surrender, too.

Fortunately, for most of us, our lives are not on an active battlefield, yet we live them largely under the laws and customs of war. We are mostly ruled by men who have largely been trained in the problematic “ethics” of war.

It is ours to choose if we believe the lies that confirm and consent to war. The following is my revolutionary act:

I trust that surrender is bliss.

The French euphemism for orgasm is “petit mort” or the little death. The baby cannot pass through the birth canal until Mama allows her womb to open. Your art cannot be seen until you hit “publish.”

They all bring their own terror of excitement: will you choose love or fear?

You can live through this next chapter of uncertainty borne up by new principles. You can choose to trust that the medicine of this time is indeed gentle.

It is not easy work, but it is simple, beautiful, powerful, and real. You can create that reality.

You can surrender to that reality.

a still from Our Home Is in the Wild

My behind-the-scenes update for backers to follow –