April letter 2026
Once I had a conversation with the volcano Hekla at Island. The two of us compared strengths. In the beginning she found this utterly strange and said: I change the surface of the globe, by me the mountains disappear and hills arise where prior no hills were, but what do grains like you?!
I responded: I change my surface too and do it far more frequently than you.
That caught her interest and she listened, until I said to her that I have more strength than she has.
Then she roared and laughed at me and asked: How come?
My answer was: From walk, my dear, I have capacity to move, and thus you see the global surface in totality is really under me. You change the surface only here, although you do it well. I move along and thus can change all earthly surfaces that be, including, yes, the surface that the world can see of me.
Hekla trembled, let out some smoking sparks and admitted our kinship.
There was a moral too that arose from this mighty encounter:
And humans moving everywhere with powers to destroy,
who treat the soil, the earth as such, as were it but a toy.
A choir rise from Icelands souls and from Icelandic elves.
They sing of kinship men and earth and skill to curb oneselves.
This poem came back to me when my wife and I were exploring the three major catastrophies we, the human species, face.
- Nuclear annihilation through non curbed strives for strength.
- Climate crack down through non curbed exploitation of our habitat in the universe.
- Auto dehumanization through unprecedented inequalities, greed, egoism, violence, fundamentalism, nationalism and uncurbed technological developments.
Hekla may miss our access to walk, but she will endure.
Now, you may ask: What has this got to do with sexuality? My answer is: Everything!
Like all potentially harmful and dehumanizing powers that act within and among us, sexuality is one of the potent ones.
When we look at the procreational side of it, sexuality has contributed heavily to our multitude and increasing levels of consumption.
When we look at other sides of sexuality, we see dehumanization through harassment, rape, murder, abuse, out of control urges, downgradings of women, children and all who feel-, look-, act differently.
What country has thus far in modern times named and developed sexual culture? Harnessing rules and regulations do exist. They vary widely, while human wishes and needs are strikingly similar.
The main regulation, the ground for all effective curbing, can be taught from the outside, but must be felt and obeyed from the inside of each and every one of us. To curb is not to be harnessed, but to give time and space to develop sexual cultivation and freedom. We must act like individuals, at all times aware that we are in relations with ourselves, with those around, with the nature that serves us, with the water we drink, the air we breathe and with powers we can cultivate or be overrun by.
Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad
President EFS
