fait Accompli

noun: A thing that has already happened or been decided before those affected hear about it, leaving them with no option but to accept it.

Woke up early this morning (12:38AM) to a bright light streaming through the tent walls. I unzipped the tent to see what it was and noticed it was the fire that was flaring up even though it had faded considerably since I’d crawled into my bag 3-4 hours earlier. I said, “Oh, it’s only the fire”. I was halted by the words, “it’s only the fire”. At that moment, a phrase came to me that had never been uttered by my lips and I did not know its meaning. “fait accompli” I said aloud. I kept repeating it until I was compelled to look it up and then was stunned by the definition above. Was I given no option but to accept that fire was only fire? Had I become so desensitized to the great animation and force of fire that now it was only fire? In the micro moment from the dream state to the fire awakening, there was this hardly detectable and yet discernible moment when I was awestruck. There had been this nano-second of knowing that I had in fact been born of fire. Then a swifter and more familiar process of cultural indoctrination swept over me - “Oh, it’s only the fire” - which quickly and effectively stamped out the possibility of leaning into this fleeting experience of interconnection with fire. Had I been duped by my culture, my modern contemporaries, and our modern industrial civilization? Had I been tricked into thinking that the world around me was dead? Or was “The world a communion of subjects not a collection of objects” as Thomas Berry earnestly advised?

I went back to that fleeting moment before the thought, “only the fire” emerged. And from there, I gazed back into the fire and started to cry. There was a feeling of connection and kindredness, and love. The fire felt like a friend of mine - like a living being that I could and did feel comfort from and love towards. I began to wonder about the extent of this fait accompli in my life. How had this conditioning affected my imagination? An imagination that can see and feel and boldly state that the stars are alive. How might I see, and learn to feel the earth and its various and myriad articulations as Beings endured and ensouled with consciousness?

As fait accompli implies, the scientists and philosophers, theologians and intellectuals already “decided” that the earth was a collection of objects to be used at our human will and disposal. I was left with no option but to accept it. And I have for 51 years.

Not anymore!