I think it's high time for me to officially announce that I now have a Patreon Page. I still feel a little shy about it all...so if you'd be kind enough to have a look, I'd be grateful. And if you can help in any way to spread the word, I'd be more grateful still. Here's the link: www.patreon.com/terriwindling.

It took some arm-twisting by friends to get me to do this, but now that I understand how how Patreon works, this gentle form of crowd-funding art & artists appeals to me, resting as it does on something I deeply believe in: the power of community.  

I have spent three decades in the commercial publishing world -- which has genuine value (as well as certain limitations), so I am certainly not proposing that we all stop publishing in traditional ways. But I very much like the thought that each creative community (especially the strong and passionate community we have here in the Mythic Arts field) can have a direct hand in making sure that the art that we love gets made.

"The words community, communion, and communicate all derive from common," writes Scott Russell Sanders, "and the two syllables of common grow from separate roots, the first meaning 'together' or 'next to,' the second having to do with barter or exchange. Embodied in that word is a sense of our shared life as one of giving and receiving -- music, touch, ideas, recipes, stories, medicine, tools, the whole range of artifacts and talents."

"Many people shy away from community out of a fear that it may become suffocating, confining, even vicious," Sanders adds; "and of course it may, if it grows rigid or exclusive. A healthy community is dynamic, stirred up the energies of those who already belong, open to new members and fresh influences, kept in motion by the constant bartering of gifts. It is fashionable just now to speak of this open quality as 'tolerance,' but that word sounds too grudging to me -- as though, to avoid strife, we must grit our teeth and ignore whatever is strange to us. The community I desire is not grudging; it is exuberant, joyful, grounded in affection, pleasure, and mutual aid...Taking part in the common life means dwelling in a web of relationships , the many threads tugging at you while also holding you upright."

By setting up a Patreon page, I see myself as joining a long, historic line of public storytellers, setting up my busking pitch at the edge of the Commons, and putting my hat out for any coins you care to throw. Yes, it makes me feel shy, and vulnerable -- but it also places me in that "web of relationship" that Sanders speaks of.

I am trusting it will hold me upright. And I am trusting I won't disappoint you.

"I have inherited a belief in community," writes Terry Tempest Williams, "the promise that a gathering of the spirit can both create and change culture."

I believe in that promise too.

"I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community," said George Bernard Shaw, "and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can."

And so will I.

I want to note that funds I am raising through Patreon are to support the writing of novels & essays, and painting projects, not to monetize this blog. Myth & Moor is a strictly nonprofit endeavor, offered in the spirit of Gift Exchange for all who create, study, and love Mythic Arts.

The passage above by Scott Russell Sanders is from "The Common Life," an essay in  Writing from the Center (Indiana University Press, 1997); all rights reserved by the author. For those who would like to know more about the history and practice of Gift Exchange, I recommend Lewis Hyde's brilliant book The Gift: Creativity & the Artist in the Modern World (Vintage, 1983).