The Threat of Valentine's Day

Note: this article is something I posted up yesterday on another blog as part of my virtual book tour this month; but considering the tacit theological emphases, I thought I'd post it here, too.

THE THREAT OF VALENTINE'S DAY

I can't help but feel horribly depressed this time of year, for my own reasons. But true love would fix all that right? And everything would then have a happy ending, right?

Right?!

Well, maybe. It depends--not on true love, but on me. The selfish side of my mind and soul, you see, is not really all that interested in true love. In fact, that part of me is scared spitless by true love. That part of me would much rather have someone who is addicted to me, and who lives as an extension of my life. True love is far more threatening.

The main heroine of my novel, Cry of Justice, endemically embodies this problem with my ego and pride and self-centeredness. Not that this is all she is and does; but whenever I preach I tend to preach against myself. {wry g} And bless her heart, Portunista often ends up saddled with being the exemplar of the worst parts of myself. This kind of preaching is going on, against that hellish attitude in the back of my mind, at the end of CoJ.

Writing from her hindsight, summing up her thoughts and feelings about how she was in the past (the main timeline of the story), Portunista assesses her greatest failure--in principle, and in practice:

Our choices affect the momentum of our minds--and I had chosen wrongly; and so my pride was once again at stake: my pride in my present, and in my future, and in myself.

I had convinced myself, once more, that [someone who truly loves her] was a threat.

And, indeed, he was. He was a threat to my self--the most dangerous threat one's self can face.

What I didn't understand--what I refused to understand--but what I understand now, is this:

There is a threat that enslaves the self, to another self. And this, I still believe, should be resisted, to the very blood.

But there is another threat.

It takes away the food of the self, gnawing upon the self, and gives to the self...

everything else.

The first, the hideous threat, resembles the other; making the hideous threat more hideous. But--the second threat should be accepted, when it is given, if it is given, if ever it is perceived; for much the same reason a mouth and tongue should eat, ideally of anything—except themselves.

How is that a threat?! Is it not glorious?!

Yes; it is glorious.

But, it means one's self must be dependent, after all, on something other than one's self.

And I, myself, refused to accept that truth--that threat.

If you know that someone truly loves you, please accept that love if you can, as much as you can this Valentine's Day.

Jason Pratt