Spirituality

My Pagan Lent: Forty Days and Forty Rules Complete

DAY 40

Rule 40

A life without love is of no account. Don’t ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western. Divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is, pure and simple. Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! The universe turns differently when fire loves water.

-Shams of Tabriz

Someone told me the other day that I was a hopeless romantic. I couldn’t argue the romantic part, but I did take issue with the hopelessness. I am actually a hopeful romantic. I intentionally choose to maintain a space of beauty, expansiveness, sensitivity, curiosity, receptivity and abiding connection that a life centered around love provides. And yes, this is why you’ll hear me talk about about a flower or a piece of pie like it’s my best friend. When you live a life devoted to love, everything has a unique beauty — even the shit parts.

I choose this perspective knowing that there will be times that I stand in this place alone. I know I will hurt. This is, in fact, part of loving too. I choose the ongoing action of love knowing that it will become more and more intolerable for me to live in a world that is neglecting or rejecting love. In this way I suppose I have become a warrior with every action of love I take, risking more as required. Within these actions the choice to love IS the definitive demonstration of hope.

Life always pulls me back into this quintessential purpose; just as Shams of Tabriz does in his final rule, as does the story of Jesus’ epic death and resurrection. Just as every human being does through listening, helping, fucking, talking, creating and on, and on, and on. There are literally trillions of actions of love happening throughout our world (both human and non-human) every single day. The only explanation for this level of saturation is love’s inherency to our existence.

As I witness my own life, I can see so many resurrections of love within my story. Each time, the only reason I chose to rise from the ashes of failure, my own or someone else’s, was for love. The only reason I chose to propel myself back into the inevitable fear and discomfort of vulnerability is love. As time ticks by, the singular human purpose to love becomes more clear. It is our only purpose. To love is why we evolved. To love is why we struggle. To love is why we endure and thrive.

My Pagan Lent turned out to be a concentrated study of love. How to make it. How to grieve it. How to resurrect it. How to make room for its expansion. How to explore it, and how to let every atom of my being surrender to it. In this light, I think Shams and Jesus would have approved of my use of these last 40 days.

©Kathryn A. Dickel 2023