The Power of Love

Nor does She demand sacrifice, for behold, She is the mother of all living, and Her love is poured out upon the earth.

The Goddess of Wicca is an enigma. Her Law is Love, and that is a fierce and difficult thing. If there is one form of energy both most difficult to master, and most worth mastering, it is Love.

I don’t know about you, but for me that’s a hard lesson to learn. It’s easier to find the worst in people. It’s easier to defend myself in sarcasm, to adopt a mocking tone and to write people off as lost. It’s easy to be aloof. It’s easy to be an island. It’s easy to be all brickbats and barbed wire. It’s easier but it leaves you weak. It leaves you open to despair, open to regret and eases the path of heartache to your door.

My teachers tell me Love is the greatest strength and greatest defense. A little over a year later I’m finally starting to see it. It sounds like an Oprah-ism, but it isn’t. Love, as an energy, as a practice and a way of mindfulness, isn’t blind. It’s seeing things for what they really are, acknowledging that and then moving forward engaged rather than detached.

Love means celebrating, honoring and recognizing our humanity, in it’s flaws as well as it’s glories. Love is often characterized as fiery but it’s earthy as well. In the depths of the earth hot magma pulses, slow and steady, a constant, unruffled heat. A heat that makes even stone pliable. Love is also low like water. It does not stride across the surface of things, but sinks deep to find all the nooks and crannies and crevices. If you need to get to the bottom of something water will show you the way with cool caresses reaching the depths. Love is also like air. When you choose it’s path, it can be as ever-present and natural as breathing.

Love means expanding your comfort zones. It means standing up for the efforts to get Asatru symbols on military graves even though Wiccans have already won the Pentacle Quest. It means hugging a porcupine and entering into tribal ties with other humans, knowing they will sometimes disappoint you.

My priestess has become my model for how Love needs to be a guiding force in your life. She doesn’t give up on people. She is there when you need her and she weaves so many people and energies into her life in a positive way that it continually astounds me. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t grumble or fret or vent. She’s human, but at the end of the day she chooses Love. It makes her strong, it makes the coven strong and it makes me strong for knowing her.

The Goddess of Wicca doesn’t demand sacrifice, she demands Love. That’s harder, I think. Much harder.