I emerge from this night with my soul intact:
    it is whole but fractured;
        it is complete but damaged.

This is all I have to offer myself.
This is all I have to offer the universe.
This is all I have to offer anyone who will accept it
    as it is,
        for what it is worth,
            and with the love that it deserves.

It is me.
It is who I am for right now.
It is the beginning of a catharsis that will twist and turn until it is complete.
It is the ending of a torturous past that was all fraud and all lie, all tooth and all nail.

There is a new dawn.
There is a new light.
There is a new time.

Still cold.
Still dark.
Still quiet.

But full of promise and potential under the bitter ice of experience.

This starts a new road into the spring of my life.
New life awaits under these sheets of deceptively beautiful snow,
    real life just waiting for the warmth of the sun’s love.

        This is me continuing on with the journey.
    This is me continuing on with the task.
This is me continuing on with being me.

People in this commercial world don’t know the meaning of love. We treat our relationships like Happy Meals and listen to broken heart songs (or let’s get fucked up and fuck songs) and think that’s the way it is supposed to be. Our commercialization of our holidays is directly proportional to our commercialization of our intimacy. We give cards and candy at Valentine’s rather than give of our hearts and souls. We find a way to trample over the innocent—whether opening the door at a Wal-mart or sitting in a sweatshop in China—in our quest for the thirty second high of a child under a tree we cut down from a forest that provides life to this planet.

Our holidays have become about as dead as our people skills.

One can have the knowledge, i.e., the “resurrection,” but without the ongoing conversation. This last piece is not related to dialogue per se—though there is certainly some correlation—but actually comes from the Latin word conversātiō (which, ironically, is a feminine word in the Latin) which means a “way of live, conduct, or behavior.” It is more directly related to conversion and a monastic life than any kind of verbal discourse. The Conversation portion of the HGA experience is directly related to what Christians call “born again.” The problem is that they see it as a single point-event—much as Thelemites see the Knowledge portion of the HGA experience—and then it’s over. The conversion is a one-time deal.

But to know something, i.e., to have that “resurrection,” is not enough. One must go on to the conversation, to the conversion, that is a change in the way of life itself. And such an experience is not something that will go unnoticed. Nor, might I add, is it something that will only happen once in a lifetime. This is an ongoing evolution in one’s life. And it is through that evolution that we manifest these changes to the world. The real promulgation of the Law is through our lives living out both the scripture and the sacrament, the tradition and the table, and the community and the justice out in the real world to real people with real meaning.

Anything less is just lip service.

But I still believe, like Prometheus, that there is a fire worth giving away that will liberate Men from the bondage of their own darkness.

I hope to share that fire someday.