Grand Gestures
Let's go big and become a democracy!
Friends, bison, countryfolk,
As we explored in Bison Medicine, now is the time for wild eyes, big ideas, and grand gestures. This is not a time for incremental progress, thoughts and prayers, or keeping your shoulder on the wheel. We need your whimsy, talent, and creativity. We need your wild, obtuse, nonsensical dream. We don’t just live in a time of monsters and mad men, but also magic and medicine.
Rome has fallen. Our republic no longer stands. In 2014, it became clear, scientifically, that we were no longer a representative democracy, but an oligarchy. If we were the type of people democracy requires, we would have yelled ¡Ya basta!, protested, and revolted. But we did not, because we cannot. We are not yet those people. We are not yet a purpose and values awakened people. We are not yet healed, whole, sourced in Nature’s God, and devoted in mind, body, and spirit to democracy.
The result is that over the last 50 years, every sector of society has slowly, steadily worked at cross-purposes to our nation’s purpose (equality) in order to transfer $80T from the bottom 90% to the top 1% and bring about a white Christian nationalist apartheid. Over the last six months, our oligarchy decided it no longer needed to pay lip service to democracy, and has taken a header into patriarchal autocracy. If we don’t become fully American now, make the declaration and begin the pilgrimage to become the type of people who cannot be oppressed, who become whole, healed, and on purpose, today is the best day of the rest of our lives. If we keep doing the same thing, it will forever be true that each day is the best day of the rest of our lives.
Our best days will include our kids suffering and dying from a preventable cause (and likely before us). Our best days will feature the guilt of knowing we had a “Go big or go home” moment in 2025 to try and save them, but we went home and said “Sorry, kids. It’s more important to me that you conform to a fictitious and unattainable standard of success developed by C-student advertisers, than for you to flourish today or have a tomorrow.” Our best days will include cowering as inflation eats our portfolios, wetiko devours our planet, our kids hate us, and shame and regret eat our souls.
If we keep rowing our boat, toeing the line, and running the same soulless, wounded, trauma-perpetuating software, assuming we’ll get a chance to vote the bastards out, assuming there will be another peaceful transfer of power in 2026 or 2028, assuming if we just get our kids into college and married off, everything will be fine…
We. Are. Lying. To. Ourselves. That time has past. That genie isn’t going back in the bottle. So, why not go big now? Remember the flashbacks in Handmaid’s Tale to the before times? That’s now. Liquidate your holdings and do the thing. We literally have nothing left to lose. As the woman said, that’s freedom.
It’s time we accept the hand we’ve been dealt, and become free now.
Go Big
What grand gesture have you been sitting on? I know you have one. Your big, beautiful, broken heart has at least one. I’ve got like 10. I’ll bet you do too. Please share them here in the comments!
If you think you will have another opportunity to put pen to paper, build a team, pool resources, and make it happen, you won’t. There’s no longer a “one day, some day” right time for your soul’s truth. The forces of darkness are acting as if there is no future. It is time we learned this one lesson from them. There is no future unless you create it. Don’t die with your song still inside. As the man said:
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” - Jesus Christ, Gospel of Thomas
In hopes of inspiring you to start creating a future that inspires you, I’ll share the burn-the-boats idea in my heart.
Ride for Democracy 2026
This past Spring my stomach started to turn as I thought about our nation’s 250th birthday next year. I shuddered at how it would likely be held, regarded, tended. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw Trump’s birthday parade, and then learned of his plans for a UFC fight on the South Lawn on July 4th.
I reached out to my friend, Anita, a fellow at Citizen University to commiserate and envision something else, something more meaningful, something true, something that could honor our pain and call forth our dreams, something that could potentially meet this moment, connect, heal, and enliven us. After many discussions and ideas, a question emerged. What would the bison, our National Mammal, do? As they slowly migrated, following the grasses that the First Nations cleared the path for, they made their way east. Their range eventually stretched from Alaska to Mexico, from Oregon to New York. Life under the stewardship of bison flourished. Springs were dug up, fields were aerated, millions of ponds were created, plant, insect, bird, reptile, and mammalian life exploded. Wolves, grizzlies, floods, and the First Nations culled the herds. Bellies were full, spirits were high, and democracy took root in the form of the Great Law of Peace, the Kaianekerowa.
Next Spring, we’ll follow their lead and make a pilgrimage by e-bike from the Pacific to the Atlantic. We’ll take a well-trodden route, such as the Great American Rail Trail, with other people who believe in the liberating, spiritual power of democracy, who only want to live in an honest to goodness spiritual democracy or go down singing, who want to see and love the nation perhaps for the last time, who want to feel her pain and beauty, who want a deeper, more soulful way to mark our nation’s 250th birthday, who ache to know her deeper truths while it’s still reasonably safe to do so. As should now be clear, nothing we do is totally safe, so why not go big and loud with our song? And if death be our lot, let us die as we live, heads high, hearts full, on purpose, in pilgrimage together.
This slow pilgrimage is an opportunity to live our nation’s purpose and values in community, to become our nation in practice, to tread lightly, to have fun, expand into and be sourced by Nature’s God, and take four months savoring this sacred land. I’m envisioning a leisurely 4-hour, 60 mile e-bike ride each weekday morning. While folks could ride regular bikes, I encourage dual battery e-bikes or e-trikes that have 100+ mile ranges and top speeds of 35 miles an hour, because they don’t require much fitness, making it possible for people of all ages and abilities to join, and for folks who are lagging or unwell to just use the throttle, or if folks want to take a side quest they can easily catch up.
I’m envisioning blasting fun and moving playlists, setting up camp, and then exploring whatever calls to us in the afternoons, evenings, and weekends. I’m envisioning deep connection. I’m envisioning circles of us checking in each morning and evening, practicing yoga, learning from awe and hardship, exploring and honoring our differences, healing, awakening, becoming our best selves a little more each day. Becoming a little more American, in the indigenous sense of the word, each day.
I see us watching little league games, cooking and feeding each other, participating in plant medicine ceremonies, going on hikes, dancing at street fairs and bluegrass festivals, swimming in rivers, volunteering, praying at churches, meeting elders, savoring local cuisine, honoring sacred sites, gifting communities a whimsical flash mob, visiting museums, reading and teaching each other, playing music in the shade, sitting around fires, making love, and falling asleep to shooting stars and lightning bugs.
I see us honoring our indigenous origins and best practices for an animist life. I see us developing our own rituals and customs, like a Monday night teach-in, Tuesday night men’s / women’s / all-gendered circles, Wednesday night skill shares, Thursday night improv, Friday night karaoke, Saturday morning community service, and a Sunday morning civic faith gathering. I see our weekends off the trail, just playing, resting, exploring, serving, connecting, and enjoying.
I see us developing a set of principles, ala Burning Man’s 10 Principles, to agree to and hold ourselves accountable to so that we can optimize our experience for joy, depth, growth, transcendence, and connection. I see leaders, luminaries, and artists visiting and joining the pilgrimage. I see folks with EVs volunteering to ride along for safety and support (for bike repair, medical care, folks not feeling well). I see us being interviewed by local journalists, speaking at schools and civic organizations, and co-leading revivals with local spiritual communities. I see us making friends at every campsite and leaving each place better than we found it. I see us filming and posting our journey on social media and inspiring others to join us. I see us feeding ourselves and our soul-starved nation with the finer stuff, with hope, with dreams, and inspiration. I see us leaving a trail of spiritual democracy in our wake. I see us midwifing communities of soulful activism.
In the spirit of a 24-hour film festival, I see some of us creating new culture, new art, stories, and performances that face our hard truths, heal our wounds, and elevate our highest ideals. I see us workshopping ideas as we unhurriedly ramble across the Continental Divide, and attaching talent as we swim the Ol’ Muddy. I see us making it to the Atlantic by mid-June for a gathering, ala Woodstock or Rainbow, and during the Civic Season, from Juneteenth through July 4th, sharing our creations with each other and the nation. I see the soul of our nation healed, awakened, and inspired. I see folks wanting to see and attend this gathering instead of fireworks or a UFC fight. I see the nation sewn back together. I see the cultural software updating. I see us becoming the type of people a democracy requires. I see us sharing our stories, depth, presence, and new questions as we make our way home.
I can (and will) do some version of this by myself if I need to. But I don’t want to and I know I won’t need to. I know the spiritual, liberating promise of democracy and the heart of the bison is alive not just in me. I know others ache and love as I do. I know more will join. I know there are millions of us who are waking up to the fact that we have nothing left to lose. We are free. I know the bison herd will form. Do you want to be a part of this in some fashion? Do you want to make this pilgrimage with us and join us on the trail for all or a part of it? Do you want to be part of the core team to help make this a reality?
It’s gonna take time and money, as all good things do.
It’s gonna take folks accepting that while, it’s critical for some of us to resist, protest, march, file motions and injunctions, and soft secede, it is also critical to sing, lament, create, explore, and become. It is also critical to love and play. It is also critical to grow down, to rest, and connect. Some may say this pilgrimage is a silly and indulgent thing to do. But I know that many of the best things are. Leaves of Grass was regarded as heretical and silly. The Quakers, Beats, and the Freedom Riders were dismissed as nuts too. This may just be the thing that our troubled soul needs.
It’s gonna take many souls to remake a nation, to heal, to sew her back together. The intention of the pilgrimage is to create the conditions and circumstances needed to discover who we really are beneath our pain, resignation, ego, political party, and ethnicity, and what we’re meant to be doing. We already know that the conditions and circumstances for this discovery aren’t living hand to mouth for 40 years. The conditions and circumstances certainly aren’t whatever is happening in D.C.
Maybe what we discover will be more beautiful than anything we’ve ever known? Let’s find out together.
We need co-conspirators, folks who are inspired by this, who know that democracy is applied faith, who understand that the nature of our nation’s problems is primarily moral, spiritual, and psychological, folks who know you have to show up for the muse in order for her to move through us, folks who have either read Bison Medicine or related works, folks who are good with camping, biking, sitting in circle, folks who love to ask, learn, grow, play, and teach, folks who can handle conflict well (there will be conflict among us) and give and receive feedback.
Obviously, it would be awesome to conspire with folks who are good with operations, strategy, and planning, folks good with media production and PR, folks good with food and wellness, folks good with setting up festivals, etc. But what’s important among the core team of conspirators is mission alignment, experience with personal growth, healing, circles, conscious communication, and a love of biking and nature, and the desire to give yourself fully to the promise of democracy.
If this moves you, if you’re down for this kind of good trouble, say “I’m in!” in the comments, share this post with others, and then fill out this short form.
LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Big bison luv:)
Brandon
Some updates:
Last weekend, I marked my 49th birthday by staffing a New Warrior Training Adventure with the ManKind Project. It was also the 20th anniversary of my NWTA. For this NWTA, I was asked to co-lead a body that tends to the realm of the below - of soul, shadow, the earth, the moon, and the Divine Feminine. We facilitated four powerful rituals, and helped 26 brothers step across the threshold into the mature masculine. They touched their shadows, felt the emotional fullness of life available to men, activated their mission, and took accountability for the impacts of their actions. We were blessed by a full moon. I fell asleep underneath it and to the sound of the rushing river. Next weekend, I’m hosting a gathering for more senior men who value ritual and want to live in a world where we heal, grieve, and grow through ritual. We’ll be blessed with a partial lunar eclipse next Saturday and the autumnal equinox on Sunday.
As I mark 49, I feel feral animate forces in my veins. I feel a fullness, an imminent graduation of sorts. It’s been a pretty sad and lonely 2025, which in retrospect I needed. I grieved my relationship with my ex-girlfriend, her family, and the future we were planning. I also touched a deeper layer of grief over the loss of my marriage. And there’s some measure of professional grief, some shedding. As I reflect back, highschool feels like a good metaphor. I look back fondly on my freshmen book reports on philosophy and spirituality classics (2004-2015), Planet on Purpose (2018), a sophomoric flex to show off just how much I’d grown, read and understood, Purpose Work Nation (2022), a junior effort and equally foolish bid to activate the private sector to save our democracy, and Bison Medicine (2025), my senior project, a love letter to the American people to own our family history, our nation’s purpose, the teachings of the bison, and become the type of people a democracy requires. I feel the move into my sixth decade as a threshold into mystery, towards a gap year of sorts. Perhaps this Ride for Democracy 2026 will hold the portal open long enough to let me know where home is, and what I need to learn and create next.
I spent Labor Day in Mariposa with my mom, her husband. They had a full weekend of volunteering, so I got lots of 1:1 time with each of them. We saw brilliant sunsets, made delicious food, swam in the Merced River, went to Cowboy Church, and saw team roping at the county fair. We also took my mom’s friend, Evelyn, out for a going away dinner. She’s in her 80’s and is experiencing dementia. Her filter is almost non-existent. As we said goodbye, she told me I shouldn’t walk alone at night, because I’ll get raped. I’m 6’2”, 230. My mom and I had a big chuckle. I’m also excited to report that my mom’s husband, Peter, signed up for an MKP weekend!
I took the e-bike on two long rides, a 30-mile, 1000 ft. incline ride through the Oakland Hills, and a 36-mile, 4000 ft. incline ride to the top of Tuyshtuk (Mt. Diablo). The bike handled it well, with the exception of the descent down Tuyshtuk. It was in the mid 90’s and the brakes heated up so much trying to slow 400 lbs of man and machine, they expanded the hydraulic cabling and the brakes got spongy (stopped working well). I had to stop every 5 minutes to pour water on them as they steamed.