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Why Not Be Utterly Changed Into Fire?

A blog post | 5/30/2025

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Rock band mewithoutYou is no stranger to religious themes in their songs, taking influence from stories and scripture across religions. King Beetle On A Coconut Estate is front-man Aaron Weiss’s retelling of an excerpt from The Divine Luminous Wisdom that Dispels the Darkness by Sufi poet Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. 

In this story, a Beetle King seeks to understand a phenomenon that is consuming his kingdom, which turns out to be a great fire. He sends forth the smartest and bravest to investigate this great mystery and report back to him—but each investigator comes back “singed and admitting defeat,” and fails to accurately describe it. One says, “it was bright as the sun but with 10x the heat. It carelessly cast an ash cloud to the sky, my Lord, like a flock of dark vanishing birds.”

“The Beetle King slammed down his fist. ‘Your flowery description is no better than his. I asked for the great light and you bring us this, we didn’t ask what it seems like, we asked what it is.”

So, what is the purpose of this song, and why am I writing about it? Upon my first few listens, I loved simply the storytelling, instrumentation, and Weiss’s haunting delivery of the final, intense refrain. (Seriously, listen through the song. The build up to the end is absolutely amazing.) I usually don’t feel the need to search for deeper meanings in pieces of art if they touch me right out of the gate, so it wasn’t for several years that I took the time to investigate the meaning and history of the story. 

Those lyrics kept haunting me—“we didn’t ask what it seems like, we asked what it is.”

And then, “why not be utterly changed into fire?”

Though the story of the Beetle King came from Sufism, the final refrain finds Weiss shout-singing “why not be utterly changed into fire?” four times. It’s powerful, it’s evocative. And it is a direct line from the teachings of a Desert Fathers, who were among the first Christian monastics to abandon their possessions and live in poverty to seek God in the solitude of nature. 

Echoing the rich young ruler who asked Christ what he needed to do to inherit the Kingdom of God, Abbot Lot sought similar wisdom from Abbot Joseph:

“Father, to the limit of my ability, I keep my little rule, my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and to the limit of my ability, I work to cleanse my heart of thoughts; what more should I do?” [Abbot Joseph] rose up in reply, and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: ‘Why not be utterly changed into fire?’”

Abbot Joseph teaches a harrowing truth—to understand a great mystery, to become one with God, to truly shape yourself into a new being, you must be all in. As in, burning yourself all in. Quite a dramatic conclusion, no?

Now we jump back to King Beetle. 

“Distribute my scepter, my crown and my throne

and all we've called ‘wealth' to the poor and alone...

and, without further hesitation,

without looking back home

the King flew headlong into the blazing unknown!

and as the Smoke King curled higher and higher,

the troops, flying loops around the telephone wire, said:

our Beloved's not dead,

but His Highness instead

has been utterly changed into Fire!”

King Beetle sought so deeply to understand the great mystery, the phenomenon of fire, that he could not rely upon the descriptions of his servants. He “didn’t ask what it seems like, [he] asked what it is.” 

So, in the pursuit of understanding, something he desired with his whole soul, he cast aside his worldly possessions and “flew headlong into the blazing unknown.”

He was utterly changed into fire. 

I think that it is easy to reject the divinity of God in the modern world. Faith is a difficult concept to understand. Many understand what it “seems like” but how many of us understand “what it is?”

The most difficult part to those of us who live relatively easy and comfortable lives is that to find great Truth, we must be utterly changed into fire—we must go all in. Why would we do something uncomfortable when we can instead do something fun and stimulating?

Are we to be the Beetle King? To lose ourselves in the pursuit of understanding the great mystery of God?

Is there a greater reason to be alive?

-DBS

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Current Writing Projects

The Fell Hymn of an Emissary - COMPLETE

The Weeping Mask (Wellforge #1) - Storyboarding