My law is love: Becoming one water

For My law is love is unto all beings.

Ah, love. 

I don’t know how to begin this, but the temptation is to begin with bitterness. In my first draft, I interspersed passages about love from Corinthians – a beautiful piece of literature, and the source of many a marriage sermon – with examples of extremely unloving behavior. I don’t think anyone can accuse the current crop of Christian nationalists of having a whole lot of love.

But I’m tired of the Christian view of things, the assumption that they have cornered the market on virtue – and on love. I am bored of exploring the dismal failures of Christian theology in doing the work of love on this green Earth. We are living through the rise of fascism, and examples of this rain out of the sky like bullets. Enough.

For My law is love unto all beings. 

There is such a temptation to roll the eyes at the Goddess’ words here, the tired, cheap sentiment of agape. Every religion speaks of love, which flakes off the base metal like a cheap veneer of gold. Love in the dominator paradigm runs one way: The servant shows her love through submission and obedience. The master shows the servant his love by refusing to inflict the suffering that he is permitted to inflict, or simply by letting her live.

But … what is love? And what does it mean that love is the law?

Love encompasses so many aspects of human relationality: bonds of family or friendship. The fire of erotic desire, of skin against skin. The awe-filled experience of union with the Divine, or with nature, or the tender regard for a stranger. Giggling with besties at the coffeehouse.

Famously, the ancient Greeks had seven different words for love that still provide a handy classification system. This Psychology Today article gives a quick rundown. 

1. Eros is romantic love – that is to say, sexual in nature. It derives from the basic mammalian drive for mating and offspring.
2. Philia is the companionship and goodwill evidenced by friends, a kind of mutual flourishing that involves connections of thought, values and philosophy.
3. Storge is familial love, with ties forged of tending, dependency and care.
4. Ludus is play. Somewhere between eros and philia, it’s flirty and fun and not at all serious. It’s your summertime fling, your momentary distraction, your friend with benefits.
5. Pragma, on the other hand, is serious: It is – as the name implies – pragmatic, based on sensibility and duty. It’s love that chooses, of its own volition, to work rather than rely on the vicissitudes of lust or affection.
6. Philautia is self-love. While complete self-interest is certainly destructive and disordered, we require healthy philautia for flourishing. Philautia is our pride and esteem, our willingness to uphold our own boundaries and principles. A lot of therapy involves the fostering of philautia.

And, finally:

• Agape, which is what religions mostly turn to in discussions of love. Agape is universal love, which goes beyond the boundaries of self, desire, friends or family: It is the deep love we have for the Gods and spirits, for the Green World, for the stranger. 

So, which form of love is the Goddess talking about here?

All of them.

Because the divisions are something that we make up: the bricks in the walls that we construct collectively. But love is wild: It cannot be contained within walls and fences, within rules and definitions, and remain love.

Love and Pain (1895) by Edvard Munch

Love and danger

The Proto-Indo-Euopean root of love is *leubh, with meanings encompassing desire, affection and care. It’s not only the root of anything that contains the syllable “love,” but words such as believe,libido, furlough and leave. The last two are in the sense of permission: Love is that which permits.Interesting garden path: The Germanic root of “believe” – giloubo – can essentially be translated as “really love/care/desire.” Our belief in someone or something is based on deep and overwhelming love and care. Belief is utter trust, naked and vulnerable.

Love is that which permits. That’s why, in dominator society, love is associated with the dominated/submissive Other and not the upper half of the dyad, whose expression centers on the power manifest in anger and force. 

Love – every single kind, in every single form – emerges from vulnerability, which is why those we love can hurt us so deeply, be they lovers, parents, children or close friends, or a neighborhood skunk that we regarded (unwisely) as a furry companion before getting bit. Vulnerability means to open ourselves up to the possibility of wounding, to walk in this world without armor or weapon: a profoundly dangerous act, and one based on trust.

The watchwords for entering Wiccan ritual space are these: In perfect love and perfect trust.Which both flow from the same water: vulnerability, and that which permits. 

The Goddess’ law is love unto all beings: Your spouse and your mom, but also that asshole neighbor with the “rolling coal” tailpipes, the junkie begging for change, the bird on the branch and even the rabid skunk. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you should let others abuse you – you must also love yourself, and boundaries are critical for that – but you must truly see the Other as a vulnerable animal so much like yourself, even if you can only love safely from afar.

The Sufi poet Rumi once said, “Love is the bridge between you and everything.” We are called to be that bridge, as the Goddess is that bridge. Love is that which dissolves the individual vessels and has us run together as one water.

We are called to lay down our shields and swords, and open ourselves to intimate possibility. To unbuild the walls between us, and relate to one another with gentleness, sympathy, softness: the core of the word “tenderness.”

How utterly dangerous that is in dominator society, and how utterly radical. Love is the only way in which we can build a world based on flourishing: on partnership, on justice, healing and wholeness. 

Love is the Goddess’ only law, the only thing you are really asked to do here; all else is suggestion. 

And it’s also law in the sense that it comprises the very substance of existence: Matter is Mother, whose body encircles the universe, the dust of whose feet are the hosts of heaven. In some strange way, love is what everything is made up of – not hate or power or duty, but the care we give to all-that-is, the desire with which we regard delight, the waters in which we form and dissolve.