The first days of the holiday season often remind me that I don’t have the type of family that appears in commercials and television specials. No parents, siblings, or children. Strange how our culture is so committed to a narrow definition of family that leaves most people feeling awful.
Jesus instructed his followers to leave their wives and children, to forsake their families and follow him—which brings to mind André Breton‘s exhortations in 1924 to leave everything in favor of Surrealism’s dreamlife: “Leave your wife. Leave your mistress. Leave your hopes and fears. Leave your children in the woods. Leave the substance for the shadow. Leave your easy life, leave what you are given for the future. Set off on the roads.”
