Share your light.

SHARE YOUR LIGHT

Read the words

Terra et Lumen. Earth, and light.

We have been drifting apart. More walls, more distance. Connected to everything, close to no one.

Nature gives without asking. A tree offers the air we breathe and wants nothing back.

So, share something you made, grew, or worked out. A sourdough starter. Seeds. A way to catch rain.

Every gift becomes a light. In a town, the lights pop up next to each other: bread, seeds, water, power, a skill. Together they make a community you can see.

Adding yours takes a minute. What it is, your first name, your town. Press Add my light, and it appears on the map.

The page gives you a pass: a code the next person scans. It opens with your name already on it, and their light appears under yours.

One rule: never sell it, pass it on. You are the light of the world. Share your light.

For a long time we have been moving toward the individual and away from the whole. More walls, more distance between us.

Perhaps it began in the garden with Adam and Eve, at one with God, with the whole; then came the thirst to know, and suddenly we were two, dressed in bodies, exposed to the eyes of separation.

Thousands of years on, we are more connected than we have ever been, yet more separated. The tools that let us reach each other in a second have laid one more invisible layer between us, and between each of us and ourselves.

This is an attempt to turn the model around. What if, instead of waking up and asking what we can do to make ourselves better, we woke up and asked what we can do for the whole to be better? Instead of a world that takes as much as it can, a world that gives as much as it can.

The purest example is all around us, in nature. Everything is an exchange. Trees release the oxygen we breathe so that we can exist, and nothing is asked in return. What would happen if trees began to release oxygen for themselves alone? To live in harmony is to resonate with the whole. We live in disharmony, and the sound our society makes is a dissonance that is becoming hard to bear. It is time to dance again to the sound of one hand clapping: the sound of silence, the sound of love.

Terra et Lumen is Latin for earth and light: the contradiction that lives in each of us. We are born as flesh, and we reach for the light.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others.

So go ahead. Share your light and let it shine before others, so they can see the good you are doing, give thanks for it, and pass it on.

A starter, seeds, a healthy recipe that feeds your family and saves you time, a thing you worked out that others could repeat. Given freely, never sold, with the directions to make it again. Every place it reaches becomes a light, and every light remembers who it came from.

Add your light.

Something you made, grew, built or worked out, that someone else could receive and repeat for free. A jar of starter or a proven way of doing something; both travel the same way. Pick one; it takes a minute. No account.

I have something to share Someone passed it to me I’d like a starter

First name

Town

Topic

How it travelsA thing you hand over, post, or leave at a public spot.

What is it?

How to make it again

One photo of the thing itself

Email, so I can reply

Anything else

First names and towns only. No addresses; your email is deleted after the handoff. The photo is of the thing itself, not of you: the jar, the seedlings, the dish, the panel. It appears beside your light.

Here is your message. Copy it and send it to . I read every one.

Open in your mail app

How it works

Give. Light. Pass it on.

Give

Hand someone a piece of what you have, or the directions to make it: a bag of starter, a few seeds, how your rain barrels are plumbed. Send them your pass, a link or a code, so they know what it is and where it came from.

Light

Add your light here: first name, town, one photo, and how to make it again. The place brightens on the sky, and the thread from giver to receiver is drawn.

Pass it on

When theirs works, they pass it to someone else, by hand or by directions. Their light appears under yours. That is the whole model: it grows by hands, not by ads.

The one ruleNever sell it. Pass it on.

Anything can join if it passes the test: was it given freely? can it be copied and passed on? does it remember where it came from? One more: it has to be something you actually did, not an idea for someone else to do.

The first light · Fallbrook

Bread

a sourdough starter, begun with an apple

I tried to get a sourdough starter going more times than I would like to admit. Flour, water, a warm corner, patience. Every time it went flat, or went grey, and I threw it out.

Then I read that you can start one with a piece of fruit. I chopped an apple, put it in a jar of water with a spoonful of honey, and left it alone. Three days later there were bubbles. That water became the starter I still bake with.

I started bringing loaves to work. People asked for the recipe, and I told them the recipe was not the point, the starter was. So I brought little bags of starter. A few coworkers began baking. Then they passed bags to other people. One day someone I had never given a starter to told me about the bread they were making with “my” starter. They had it from someone who had it from me.

That is the whole idea. Nobody sold anything. A living thing went from one kitchen to the next, and every kitchen it reached got a little slower, in a good way, and a little better fed.

I want to see how far it can go. If you want a starter, ask. If you already have one from this line, tell us where it lives. And when someone asks you for a piece of yours, give it away.

Christian, Fallbrook

If you would like a starter

Ask, and pick it up on a Friday.

In Fallbrook, a small bag of starter is picked up on a Friday afternoon at a public spot, free; the place is confirmed by email. Farther away, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope and dried flakes come back in it. Choose “I’d like a starter” above.

Homemade and unpasteurized. Use your own judgment, as you would with anything from a neighbour’s kitchen.

If you want to start your own

How I finally got one going.

Chop an apple and put it in a jar. Fill the jar with water and add a teaspoon of honey. Leave it, apple and all, for three days, or until you see bubbles in the water.

Drain the water into a clean jar and throw the apple out. Mix in an equal part of flour. After about three days it starts to rise on its own.

From then on, feed it once a day, flour and water, for seven days in a row. After that it is ready to bake with. Mine now lives in the fridge and gets fed once a week.

Where I failed before was the first week. It looked dead, so I threw it out. This time I waited.

Or skip the week and take a piece of mine.

If your starter came by mail

Waking the flakes.

Put the dried flakes in a jar with the same amount of lukewarm water and leave them for an hour or two, until they soften. Stir in the same amount of flour. Cover loosely and keep it somewhere warm.

Feed it once a day, pouring off half first. It usually bubbles by the second day and is ready to bake with by the third or fourth. Slower than a fresh bag, faster than an apple.