Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Pagan
3 Pagans & A Cat: Ode’s Story of Love and Gods (and teeth)

3 Pagans & A Cat: Ode’s Story of Love and Gods (and teeth)

Last updated on: March 28, 2019 at 10:44 pm by Ode

3 Pagans & A Cat: Ode’s Story of Love and Gods (and teeth) 2019-03-28T22:44:59+00:00 Ode

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Let us speak of love.

Here is a story I have told a hundred times and in a hundred ways, which I shall tell a hundred more:

There was a (girl)(boy)(creature)(dream). One night, (it) looked up, and saw something mysterious — a light in the sky, far away, pale, hungry with loneliness, fading and filling. (It) bloomed with empathy and compassion, and wished (it) could touch that distant sorrowful thing, and know the mysteries, and make a place in (its) ribcage where that light could live.

One night, the moon looked down from the sky. Photo by Bess-Hamiti via Pixabay.

One night, the moon looked down from the sky, and saw a tiny something. So small, so distant, that the moon could only imagine a shape.

(Sometimes, the moon came down from the sky, and revealed his teeth. Sometimes, the moon returned to the same place each night, to watch over that speck of something so far away. Sometimes, the moon loved (it). Sometimes, the moon did not know what love was.)

One night, the moon looked down from the sky, and there was nothing there. (Entropy comes for all things.)

This is a story that I tell myself, in a hundred variations, because there is something in it that I cannot describe. There is light, and teeth, and smallness, and distance, and impermanence — and there is, in one or both or in the dream between them, a thing I understand as love.

I was raised for a time in evangelical Christianity, and there I was occasionally informed of a particular idea: that each person contains within themselves a “god-shaped hole”, a craving for divinity, which could only be fulfilled (so I was told) by the acceptance of the Christian god. But growing up, I never had that experience — if there was a void in me, god-shaped or otherwise, I could not find it, was not aware of it, and so certainly did not experience it as a flaw which needed repair.

Several times over the course of my childhood, swept up in the strange emotional group-think that seems unique to mobs and congregations, I declared myself renewed in my relationship to Christianity’s god — sometimes I even felt the whisper of a response, that numinous light-water flood that drowns a heart — and then hours later, when I was alone again, found that nothing had changed. I felt no differently than I had before, did not love or feel connected to or seem to need what I had just claimed devotion to. Eventually this contributed to my decision to leave that religion, and indeed religion in general; not really because I didn’t believe that there might be gods — although doubt, bred into me by centuries of society, will likely be ever-present — but because I didn’t feel any particular connection to the one I knew and it struck me as somehow rude to come into a god’s sacred place, mouth the appropriate words, and feel nothing.

Breakup, photo by Tumisu via Pixabay.

When I was a teenager, I broke up with a girl I was dating because she loved me. Not because I didn’t want her to, necessarily, but because I didn’t feel the same degree of commitment and devotion for her, and that felt intrinsically unfair to me. It felt wrong to let her give love and receive only mild-to-moderate fondness in return. I couldn’t give her what she wanted, what she gave me, and I was reasonably certain that I never would. To take that gift and return to her only its pale facsimile would have been cruel, and though I am many things, I do strive not to be cruel. (I do not always succeed. But I strive.)

I do not always understand what people mean when they say they love someone. The words they use are too mild, the colors too pale. The love they describe to me has no teeth. To me, love is almost entirely teeth: it is a vicious, protective, dangerous thing. When the people I love are threatened the thing in me that wants to be cruel, the thing that wants to destroy whatever looks at it, that thing rises up in my ribcage, snarling, and threatens to eat the world. (And somewhere behind the teeth, carried safely in its throat, there is warmth and light and fond affection, pooling up like a sacred spring, like holy honey — but the teeth are first.) I suspect this does not look like love — it is not packaged cleanly, it is dangerous and violent, it does not always feel good — but it is what I understand as love: it is me, and my teeth, stalking my territory to keep out other monsters, so that the good things hidden inside it won’t be touched. Sometimes that piece of me, that feral thing which stalks between my lungs, wakes and tells me that it loves.

It does not happen often. There are people who have an extraordinary capacity for love, who can love easily and generously, but I am not one of them. Love, for me, is difficult and costly; it is rare, and sacred.

It is a world-eating thing. Photo by simonegmoreira via Pixabay.

It is a world-eating thing. It is a monster, leashed. (We have spoken already of monsters.)

It has rattled around my ribs, gnawing on the bones and hissing its disapproval, as I debated with myself whether it was right, or useful, or fair to divide the gods of my tradition into A Group You Should Worship and A Group You Should Not.

(No, hisses the voice of teeth, they are all mine.)

In some views, Loki and his kin (some of his kin, I am interested to observe; not all) are the enemies, and should be at best ignored, if not denigrated.

(No, it howls, leave them alone, I love them, I’ll eat your heart and steal your breath.)

And the Jotun, those forces of uncontrollable nature, with all their bloody teeth — should they be the enemy?

(I am teeth, it snarls, and there is no enemy.)

The binding of Fenrir was accomplished with a betrayal — does this make Tyr less worthy of my devotion? Tyr was maimed by the Wolf — should I withhold my love from Fenrir, then?

(No, it snaps, I will lie, and I will bite, and both are mine.)

Odin took Loki’s children hostage, and recruits the dead for a fight he knows he will lose; Baldr’s fear drove Frigga to extraordinary lengths, and her hubris cost his life; Frey’s servant threatens and curses Gerda to force her to meet with and marry his master.

(I don’t care, I love them all. I love them, I love them, I love them.)

When I practice devotion — formal or informal, ritual or passing thought — I feel the clear and steady ringing of a bell inside my ribcage, the pull of something sacred. Resonance. Re-alignment. Right-making. Around it paces the teeth-and-light thing, the monster instinct, swallowing echoes and laughing like wild coyotes. Love is the attendant of sacredness.

My gods are flawed. They are divine and mortal, archetypal and complicated, and in many cases I disagree with the choices they have made, question the ideals they stand for. But I love them, marrow-deep, with all of my teeth, the way monsters do. I’m not sure when that happened, or how, or why. I still don’t feel the god-shaped hole, so my gods do not repair a flaw. They don’t need to, they shouldn’t — my gods are not building material for the house of my self.

They’re people. (They’re impossible shapes.) And I love them.

Marrow-deep.

With teeth.

(One night, I looked up, and saw the moon.)

About Ode

Ode is a Syncretic Heathen, and is probably The Enemy to a variety of people for different reasons. This is fine. Ode has a lot of teeth. Ode is partial to interesting rocks, bones, animals that people don't trust, the overlapping realities of meat and mind, and anything that is very, very small. You can read more about the author here.

Previous Post

March 28, 2019

Grace Notes: Replacing Cultural Appropriation

Next Post

March 29, 2019 Pan-Celtic Hoofbeats: Don’t Expect Me Not to Care

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Lakeside Hearth Adventures in Wortcunning Alone In Her Presence Arts, Crafts & Cooking Birthing Hereditary Witchcraft Book of Blackbirds Book Reviews Born-Again Witch Cauldron, Sword, Spear, & Stone Cermony and Liturgy Columns Community Dandelion Seeds Dear Jasmine Druid Thoughts Editor's Picks Everyday Pagan Family & Household Practice Family Traditions Full Frontal Magic Gateway Goddess Guest Articles Happily Heathen Health and Wellness Hearth of Hellenism Heathen Woman Hills of the Horizon History Holidays Horse Goddesses Interfaith Interviews Irish-American Witchcraft Jewish Witch Lamp & Labyrinth Letters from Midgard Literature, Media, Film, Music Loop of Brighid Love, Sex & Relationships Magic or Magick Making Light Naturalistic Traditions Nature News Outside The Circle Pantheisticon Politics Prayers, Poems, Blessings & Stories Queer Femme Mystic Queer of Swords Recipes Ritual and Practice Science and Research Seekers and Guides Seeking the Grail Socially Responsible Magic Spear of Athena Star Made Witch Syncretic Electric Technology The Blooming Staff The Busy Witch The Cartomancer The Crow's Nest The Dance of Pagan Recovery The Hearth of Hellenism The Lady's Quill The Other Side of the Hedge The Path of She The Rantin' Raven The Witches Next Door The Zen Pagan Theology, Ethics, Philosophy Tree City Witch Urban Earthwitch Wayfaring Woman Witch on Fire Wyrd Words

Select a Month January 2026 March 2025 December 2024 June 2024 April 2024 March 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 August 2023 July 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Nain" mean in Hebrew?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Pleasant Holy place City of refuge Land of God