On The Blessedness Of Love

There are moments in time where there are decision points. Moments where one is defined by a choice as the sort of person who makes that sort of choice. We can’t escape it. It’s part of the human condition. We exist in time as beings with will, the sort of creatures who can make choices. Those choices transform us, as we are not only the sort of person who makes that choice, but also someone who has to live with that choice. We reach out and change the world, and then we have to live in the new world our changes created.

Unfortunately, often a lot of other people have to live in that world, too.

Recently, the majority of the USA chose to elect the unequivocally, unashamedly, and cartoonishly evil Donald Trump as president for the second time. This is deeply saddening and frightening, as he has made clear that he plans on using the power of the presidency to persecute people he perceives as enemies and undesirables, which seems to be pretty much everyone except cisgender heterosexual white Christian men. The Republicans also took the Senate and they have a majority on the Supreme Court, which means they now control all three branches of the US government.

Things don’t look good, dear siblings. People are going to suffer. Good people. People who don’t deserve it. And what is almost as bad is the simple fact that the bad guys won. It is deeply disheartening and frightening to me that this not only happens at all, but that it keeps happening. While I, like most pagans, don’t actually have to worry about the theological “Problem Of Evil” because I simply do not believe there is a single supreme, omnipotent, and morally perfect personal deity ruling everything, it is still extremely difficult to cope with staring into the blankly grinning face of evil while still maintaining my normal spiritual and ethical values.

I swore to abide always in love, living out the formulae of Aphrodite in my life as Her priestess. I take that oath deadly seriously. I swear it again and again, every night, in my prayers to my goddess. I also swore, long ago to a teacher now dead, to seek and serve the good. I study ethics and theology/thealogy specifically because I want to live out these values every day. It is the most important thing in my life. Which means I am pretty clearly required, just as much as any Christian, to love my enemies. I don’t have to like them, and I definitely don’t need to maintain some sort of pacifistic stance towards them, but I do have to love them. That’s the job.

Now, I have no qualms about fighting…I am also a devotee of Ares, and even Aphrodite was known as “Aphrodite Areia” (Aphrodite the Warlike”) in one of Her aspects. I am called to love, not pacifism, and I am definitely not called to allow myself or anyone else to be victimized. But the fact remains, I must relate to the Divine, others, and myself in terms of love. That is my calling, my duty, and my privilege.

I am sure you see where this is going.

I have to be able to love Donald Trump and his minions. I have to actually, truly want the best for them. I have to truly wish for them to thrive and grow as the spiritual beings, the stars in the company of stars, that I know them to be. Even while I fight them with everything I have, with every trick and stratagem my grandfather—who also fought to protect those he loved many years ago—taught me, I must love these people. These flawed human beings. These stars among stars. I must abide always in love. Again, that’s the job. That’s the mission, as my grandfather would have said. That’s what I signed up for.

I am not counseling some sort of capitulation or any sort of embracing of the ideals or actions of our enemies. I know that we must be willing to fight for ourselves and each other and that sometimes fighting gets nasty. That’s just the way it is. But I want to remind myself in every moment—and by proxy remind you, dear siblings—that those people who are doing these things, these people who for the moment are our enemies—are people. They have beliefs and desires, families, dreams, and pasts. They have hearts. They hurt, as I hurt. They are scared, as I am scared. They are angry, as I am angry. They are people, as I am a person. And so even as I must fight to stop them from causing harm, I must also love them.

There is no such thing as an absolute enemy. The people who are our enemies now may become our allies tomorrow, next week, or next year. The people who are our most valued allies today may become our fiercest enemies in a decade. Nothing is permanent. Change is an absolute. As my poems say again and again, time is a monster, and that monster is here to eat us all up. In the face of that monster, all I can do is try my best to live by my values moment to moment as change inevitably comes. All I can do is try to fulfill my mission. All I can do is love the world with all my heart while knowing that, again and again, my heart is going to get broken.

I know this is a lot to ask of you, dear siblings. I know that it hurts to be vulnerable like this. Gods, I know. It’s terrifying. And again, I am not saying that anyone should allow themselves or anyone else to be harmed in any way. If you or someone else is in danger, do whatever it takes to secure safety, up to and including the use of violence or magickal warfare. If you find yourself in a situation where you know you can’t win or that the cost of combat will be too high, run away and live to fight another day. Take of yourselves and each other.

But when it comes time to make choices, to decide what must be done to secure a lasting peace, please, I am begging you all to remember that these people who are your enemies in this moment are also just people. Flawed people who have bad values and who are doing bad things, yes, absolutely, but people nonetheless. Creations of the Divine. Stars in the company of stars.

I am sure many of you will be disappointed in this homily. It is not in my normal style, nor am I going to ask you, as I normally do, to embrace the virtue that I have chosen for my topic, despite the fact that I believe that love is the mother of all possible virtue and the fact that love is my own spiritual calling. Love is just too important for that. It is too precious. It is too terrifying. I can’t ask it of any of you. It is a terrible thing to have to go to war wearing your heart on your sleeve and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I’m not going to ask you to love. I’m not going to ask you to lead with your vulnerability in this aching world. I can hardly bear to ask it of myself. I am just going to tell you what I am going to do. You have to choose whether or not you will join me.

By the grace of the Divine, I am going to love.

Be well, my siblings. And be safe.

In love,

Soror Alice

Art: Peter Paul Reubens, “The Triumph Of Divine Love”, (1625)