Another earlier-written piece, again back in 2014, I think. Communitas was an idea talked about by anthropologists Turner and Gennep, which refers to a natural sense of togetherness and sociality that acts as psychic glue for healthy communities.

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Like sunlight breaking out from behind the clouds, this feeling falls on you. Community; family—a sudden and wild recognition of something shared that was not asked for, but happened anyway. I imagined that there was something of what those old Church Revivalists might have felt when they were swept up in rapturous dancing, laughing, or singing in tongues as the Spirit moved through them.

But unlike what I imagine those ceremonies to be, this dancing in the center of the mine, and on the motorways, and the singing before police lines didn’t feel like a blessing being bestowed from on high. It was like a gift rising up, from the stamping of our feet, from the earth beneath us, awakened by our willingness to put our bodies where they felt needed. It feels instead as if people are batteries [or solar chargers perhaps] and if you get enough of them in the right place, at the right time, all intent on the same cause, then…