You don’t need me to tell you that it’s been a painful week. I’ve stayed locked in my head this week, trying to stay focused on life but when it’s quiet I hear a woman wailing and a little girl saying, “It’s okay, Mommy. I’m here.” When I close my eyes I see a white shirt soaked with red and a 15 year old boy weeping into a man’s arms. Yet, I can’t break down. Not yet. I’m putting away my grief for a rainy day and trying to keep my heart strong for the people in my life who need it right now: My Black friends and friends with Black children. But like many white persons, I want to help and don’t always know how. I take it one chance at a time. I marched through NYC on Thursday, blocking traffic and sitting-in at Times Square. I built the desire for justice into my talks today at Witchsfest NYC. I’ve tried to call out white friends on their blinders and unconscious racism. I don’t always succeed on that last one–I get mad and am not so eloquent. I’m not giving up, but I’m not there, yet.
Anyway. Saturday was Witchsfest, NYC. It was a time to support friends who are hurting right now. It was a time to inspire right action. It was a time for love, Magick and community.
And then these guys showed up:
Oy.
I won’t call them Christians. I know too many wonderful Christians to lump them in with this crowd. These weren’t the quiet people passing out Bibles on the corner, or offering you hot chocolate with an invitation to their Church. These folks had big signs and were loud. We delayed the beginning of our workshops as their “REPENT, YOU GUYS! YOU’RE ALL GOING TO HELL!” rallies were too loud. The police let them stay. Some people tried to engage them in discussion. A group of young people played the banjo and led an oppositional singalong at their feet. For most of the day, I–like many others–took and encouraged the “Ignore ’em” approach.
Tweeting a game plan.
It seemed the best option. Every time I, or others, ever engage with these sorts of people, it always gets worse. A woman with them who screamed and shouted about how each of us faced certain damnation on the other side. I led my Tarot class with a chorus of shouts about Jesus and redemption off to my left. They kept going and they stayed all day. We stayed, too. We kept going.
Participants decorated the ground at the protestors’ feet. “Here’s what we think of your message!!!! KEY OF SOLOMON, WITCHES!!!!”
Growing up, I was taught to ignore bullies. The theory was that the bully feeds on reaction. No reaction means the bully gets bored. The bully goes away, presumably with the wind knocked out of them. In my experience, that rarely worked. The bully wasn’t looking for my reaction–but the reactions of their friends or the sound of their own voice against my firmly expressionless face. Ignoring them was offering myself as a blank canvas to throw some taunts. Ignoring the protestors didn’t work, either.
After the festival, my plan was to shop for a hat and sunglasses and go home to my husband, having never engaged the protestors, having successfully ignored adulthood bullies.
I don’t know why, but I changed my mind.
I would love them.
Why do people choose such hateful paths? Are they projecting? Do they hate themselves? Have they so long believed that they themselves are so putrid, so awful, that they have to summon a God to “save” them from being who they were meant to be? How many of these people were closeted LGBTQ? How many women among them had been so shamed for being beautiful and powerful and in control of themselves that they had to cling to an anti-reproductive choice rhetoric? How many of them were there, condemning us, for loving ourselves as the Divine made us? How many of them had never been truly loved.
I WOULD LOVE THE SHIT OUT OF THEM.
I approached a young woman, ranting about the “millions of babies aborted each year,” and how “our Goddess was a figment of our imaginations” and something about the Bible hating pretty much everyone I love. I shook her hand. I asked her if I could hug her. She let me. In her ear I whispered, “You are loved. You are perfect. I want you to be happy. I love you. I love you.” At first, she said thank you and that she loved me too, that she wanted me to repent because she loved me. Then, she pulled away. I kept going. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.” She said, “Okay, I love you too.” I kept going. She said, “Are you casting a spell on me?” I said, “No. I just love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
In that moment, I did. I loved the little girl she’d been, the woman she was, the old woman she would be. I loved her because she existed. I loved her because she was of the Star Grandmother, just as I am, just as you are, just as the people behind me were. Through her, I loved all the people I couldn’t stand. I loved the “All lives matter” people. I loved the bullies from middle school. I loved my landlord. I probably loved Trump (I don’t remember).
I loved her. I loved her as deeply and truly as I could in that very moment.
She’d been there all day. Maybe she was finally tired. Maybe I did her in. But she took her sign and her dog and she started rallying her protesting friends. “Time to go home,” she said.
I went to the ringleader, and I loved him, too.
“I love you too,” he said. “In the name of Jesus, I love you. Yes. I love you too. I love you too. Thank you. I love you too. In the name of Jesus. With Christ’s love. I love you.”
But I kept going. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
He held his hand up and started shouting an incantation, as though to strike the Devil out of me.
I got louder. “I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!”
He took his sign, and his chair, and he left. Soon after, the other protestors left, too.
I was shaking when it was all done.
A couple of Witches helped me ground and asked why I’d bothered. Didn’t they have the right to their opinion? They were only trying to help in their weird way. They really believed they were doing right. Why can’t we just leave them be? We’re no better than they are if we engage them at all.
But we can’t just leave them be. Yes, our country honors freedom of speech. Yes, we have freedom of religion. But that kind of rhetoric is causing young LGBTQ people to kill themselves….or encourage other people to attack or kill them. That kind of rhetoric caused teenage girls in my high school to induce their own miscarriages rather than face an abortion picket line. We can’t just ignore them. Their words go somewhere and do hurtful things.
I don’t know that my choice this time was the answer, but it was the right answer for me at that moment. In another situation, it might be dangerous. I certainly don’t think people should outright love all over those who are actively abusing them. But it was something I needed to do. I needed to love someone for them who didn’t love me for me. Had these people ever been loved unconditionally in their lives? Maybe not. Maybe they couldn’t handle it. Maybe I just creeped them out (which is fine, they creeped everyone else out all day long).
And here I am, a bit of a hypocrite.
My Goddess reminded me this morning how easy it is to love an asshole I don’t know. It’s much harder to find that kind of love for someone whom I carry a grudge. Or for someone who doesn’t dislike me because of what I do–they know me well enough to know they dislike me for who I am. Do I have love for those people? I can find love for the stranger who waves a sign at a festival where I teach. Can I find that same love for the relative who criticizes my wedding ceremony?
I don’t know what this means for me. I’ll never know what it meant for them. All I know is that I dug deep to find love for someone who didn’t love me. I wasn’t loving them to make them leave. I was loving them because it was the right thing to do. I pray I can find that in other areas of my life, but it’s going to take time. So accessible in some ways, so stodgy in others. I’ll keep trying. We all have to.
Final ritual at Witchsfest–photo courtesy of WitchsfestUSA.
With thanks to the beautiful Starr who led the festival and kept cool, calm, and wonderful during the entire process.
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From a witch in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where our protests have been such a volatile mix of hate and love – thank you for sharing this.
Hi Mary! Thank you for dropping by and for sharing. St. Paul has been in my thoughts. Raising energy for healing and justice…
You’re wonderful! Surely, it is one of the best articles I’ve read this year so far! Thank you! I love you!
What a kind thing to say! Thank you! So happy you liked it!
LOL, So a witch freaked out a Christian heckler/protester, even dissolved the anti-protest, by following Jesus words, love thine enemy. “””I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!”””” I’m an atheist, only looking at the humor of how hypocritical Christians are, and the irony of using a Jesus technique to defeat the Christian anti-protesters.
Hail the Goddess Irony. 🙂 Thank you for dropping by!
What an inspiration!! Thank you, so very much!
Thank you! xoxoxoxo
Well said. Well done. Thank you for showing one path through the thorns.
Be well, Be loved and Blessed Be
Thank you! <3
Old saying… If you really want to piss off your enemies – be nice to them! (But it’s important to mean it!) It’s time to do this with cops too! To encourage the Black Lives Matter community to do the same thing. It’s a hard thing to do, takes integrity and courage to get past the hurt, but it changes perspective. It’s what witches do!
Hi Gavin! Thanks for stopping by and for your love. However, I disagree that this is a blanket-pill for the relations between Black Lives Matter and the police force. The protestors in my situation were rude and hurt a lot of feelings, but systemic racism has murdered Black people in this country for hundreds of years–the militarized police force being only the most recent incarnation, and not much of a recent incarnation at that. Two very, very different situations. Suggesting Black citizens brutalized by our police force simply love the police harder doesn’t sit well with me. My solution to the situation I experienced worked for me, but the thought that Black persons and Black Lives Matter community members simply need to “love the police harder” undermines and diminishes a very painful reality of our current state. Love to you and Jan! Have a beautiful day!
Oh, Dear Pan … as I read your account of what you did, I can see what was at play. Before I go any further, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dawn, also known as Sylveey Selu. I am a recovered rabid fundamentalist Christian who is now the publisher of Green Egg Magazine, the oldest one still standing, and the magazine founded by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart.
I was once one of them.
My story is a long one, too long to get into here, but I want to tell you about the dynamic power behind what you stepped up to do. I’m sure you felt the growing surge within yourself. I have over 25 years of experience teaching biblical scripture. It was the teaching of biblical themes that brought me back to my Pagan roots … the Bible brought me back home. I am Pagan born. I am counted among the other people, and little known to many Christians, their God knows who are his, and who are not. They don’t realize that he is no trespasser.
There is a central Spirit among all Christians known as The Holy Spirit, or The Holy Ghost. This Spirit is commonly referred to as a male energy, but in the original Greek and Hebrew writing the Holy Spirit is a feminine noun, making HER, a Goddess. She is THE Spirit that comes with an irrevocable stipulation, and that being, “there is no forgiveness for blaspheme of the Holy Spirit.” Over into the Hebrew studies I found that Her name is Wisdom, aka, Sophia. She moves and works through `Agape, which is “unconditional love.” She is perfect love and perfect trust. When she moves, it is felt deeply and unmistakably, and she exists among all spiritual paths. She is long on patience, but not everlasting, she has a point where patience will end. Many Christians, according to their own tenets will experience a very rude awakening at some point.
I’m telling you this because according to what you’ve written, Sophia was with you in the face of hatred. You planted seeds when you spoke, “I love you.” When you hugged those people, you were a bridge for Sophia to cross over and touch those individuals. Those folks will never forget you, and they will, for the rest of their lives, feel the love of that day. That love is their starting point to change their perspective, and the starting point to begin to understand what it truly means to “come out from among them.” I am speaking in terms of their own biblical tenets.
I don’t know if you are familiar with a song performed by the Judds titled, Love Can Build a Bridge, and if not, find it on Youtube and give it a listen. That is what you did that day, and I want to encourage you to keep it up in as much as you are able to do so. You are no hypocrite Dear Heart, you listened to Spirit at the right time and the right place. You are genuinely open to what love is, and it manifested through you on that day. Every life you touch will be blessed when you utter the words, “I love you.”
It was this kind of act toward me … a blathering, know it all, obtuse rabid fundamentalist Christian that started me on my path of recovery. Step by step and day by day I began to “know myself.” I was terribly ugly, mean spirited, and a spiritual bully. I was a spiritual asshole to tell the truth. One little Witch, with her ability to reach out and hug me, and to tell me she loves me as I am … well, she broke every stronghold that strange spirit that exists in many Christian churches had put on me. She was gifted with love … true, genuine love. That Witch possessed ~Agape. If some wish to assume she enchanted me, then so be it. I am infinitely thankful that her courage was present that day in my life.
I love YOU Panpan!
Dawn (SylveeySelu)
Senior publisher
Green Egg Magazine
Dawn, thank you so much for your thoughtful, heartfelt response. It was genuinely appreciated. I have indeed heard that song by The Judds and I think there was some truth to what you’re saying. Thank you for your kind insight. I hope we cross paths in the future one of these days.