An Epistle of Truth

The Hearth Still Burns 
An Epistle of Truth, Reconciliation, and Eternal Covenant,

I don’t know if you’ll read this. I don’t know if you’ll get a few lines in and put the phone down, or scroll past it, or delete it without opening it at all. I’ve pictured that so many times. But if there’s any part of you still willing to read something from me, I’m asking for it now—not because you owe me anything, not because I think words fix what happened, but because there are things I need you to hear in my own words before I let this go quiet for good.

So please. Just read it. All of it, if you can.

---

Before anything else, I need you to know this: there is always a place for you at the flame. 
There is always a place for you at the hearth.

The flame still burns. The Gods have not abandoned you, and they will not cease to love you. Whatever has happened, whatever distance now stands between us, whatever you carry or have carried, you remain worthy of their warmth, mercy, guidance, protection, and care. You do not have to earn a place beside the fire. You do not have to explain everything, repair everything, or become someone else before you are worthy of welcome. The hearth exists for the weary, the lost, the frightened, the grieving, the ashamed, the addicted, the confused, and those who do not know where else to turn. It exists for every child of the Gods. It exists for you.

The flame is not conditional. You don’t have to be perfect to approach it. You don’t have to have everything figured out. You don’t have to prove that you deserve warmth. The hearth exists for the lost as much as for the found, for the wounded as much as for the whole, for those who know exactly where they are going and for those who have absolutely no idea.

I hope you never confuse my failures with theirs. I hope you never mistake my anger for theirs. I hope you never mistake my fear for theirs. I hope you never think that because I sometimes failed to show you love properly, love itself disappeared. The Gods are not me. The hearth is not my possession. I am only its keeper.

---

I haven’t understood your silence since the beginning, and maybe I never fully will unless you choose to tell me yourself one day. I respect that the choice is yours. I don’t expect an answer. But it has left me trying to make sense of so much alone.

I am sorry for the times my words were cold. I am sorry for the things I said out of anger, fear, pain, confusion, or desperation. I am sorry for the ways my words may have made you feel that I saw you only through the things that hurt me. I am sorry for the times when my fear became anger and my love became something that hurt instead of something that comforted. I am sorry for the many things I still don’t understand—about you, about myself, about what happened between us, and about how to love without letting fear take hold of me.

I regret calling the police. I know that decision had consequences, and I know it made you afraid—afraid of more trouble, afraid of talking to me, afraid that anything between us could put you at risk again. I don’t want you in any more trouble, and I never wanted to be the reason you were. I wish I had known another way to handle what I was experiencing in that moment of absolute panic. I am sorry for that.

My emotions have been everywhere because I have been put through hell, and I know you have been too. I’ve felt love, grief, anger, guilt, fear, tenderness, betrayal, longing, and total exhaustion. I hate you. I love you. I’m hurt by you. I’m angry with you. I’m angry at myself. I’m tired of not being heard by you. I’m tired of feeling like I am someone you don’t care about, someone you never cared about—even while knowing that fear might not be telling me the whole truth. I am trying to make sense of an enormous amount of contradiction, confusion, grief, love, anger, guilt, fear, and loss.

Throughout the years I always did my best to put you first—not saying that I always succeeded, or that I wasn’t selfish or entitled at times. I have tried so hard to let go, to not feel what I feel for you. I have tried to move forward. I’ve gone out with some really amazing, kind, and remarkable men. I’ve tried so many things.

But nobody is you.

I don’t mean that as a romantic declaration that nobody else could ever make me happy. I mean that nobody else carries the history, the covenant, the memories, the wounds, the transformation, the life, the faith, the family, the losses, the victories, the failures, the ordinary days, and the extraordinary days that you and I carried together. We promised each other eternity.

The amount of contradictions, the games and the bullshit that seemed to be played—especially even after you were gone—became so over the top and so ridiculous that I don’t know how to reconcile it all. I have spent so much time in prayer and contemplation. I’ve written constantly—personal things, philosophy, religion, theology, reflections about human beings, relationships, love, identity, and what it means to live. I’ve tried to understand myself and I’ve tried to understand us.

And the only comfort I have consistently found has been in our faith and in my faith in the Gods and the reality of their truth. There are times when that has been the only place I could find any peace at all.

---

I have never believed, and I still do not believe, that you were the cause or the origin of what went wrong between us. I recognize that we both had a hand in the crazy times, the dark times, and the times we were out of balance. We both made mistakes. We both hurt one another. We both responded to fear in ways that sometimes made things worse. But more intrinsic and ultimately more valuable than simply assigning blame are the people and the things that we allowed to get close to us—both individually and collectively as a couple—and the environment we were trying to survive inside.

Pocatello was the wrong place for us. I have said that for years. It was not necessarily the root cause of everything that happened between us, but there simply wasn’t enough space there for the kind of people we were. There wasn’t enough space economically. There wasn’t enough financial opportunity. There wasn’t enough social space. There wasn’t enough space for friendships. There wasn’t enough room for family boundaries. There wasn’t enough space for personal development. There wasn’t enough room for couple development. There wasn’t enough queer community. There wasn’t enough Pagan community. There wasn’t enough opportunity to explore, expand, reinvent ourselves, breathe, and become healthier people. There wasn’t enough room for the relationship to be a relationship without becoming our entire identity.

Pocatello was too small for what we needed. I don’t mean that as an insult to the people there or as a claim that everyone who lives there has the same experience. I mean that for two people like you and me—with our personalities, histories, needs, wounds, ambitions, identities, and desire for connection—there was simply not enough room. We needed a much more diverse and holistic approach to both relationship and self. We needed to be able to do you. I needed to be able to do me. And then we needed to be able to do us.

Instead, so much of our life became a singular identity. Couples in Pocatello can easily become a single social identity because there aren’t enough spaces for two people to exist distinctly within the same relationship. Everything overlaps. Family overlaps. Friends overlap. Work overlaps. Community overlaps. Reputation overlaps. Social life overlaps. There was no place to go and simply develop ourselves—healthier or otherwise. And I think that did something profound to both of us.

When we came back to Pocatello, I felt like I lost myself. I felt like I became only what Pocatello would ever allow me to be. I didn’t feel like my own person with or without you. I felt like a cardboard cutout with no room to breathe. And I think you had no room to breathe either—partly because of how small the community was, partly because of my family, partly because of your family, partly because of ourselves, and partly because I leaned on you so heavily to keep me safe from the darkness of losing myself in the sameness and identity that I felt Pocatello forced me into through family, friends, culture, expectations, and community. I became dependent on you for things that I should have had other places to receive. I don’t say that to blame you. I say it because I understand now how unhealthy that became. You needed room to be you. I needed room to be me. And we needed enough room that we could actually choose to be us rather than simply being forced into an identity where there was no meaningful distinction between the two.

The financial situation made everything worse. Pocatello’s local job market made it difficult to build the kind of life we needed. Even with the company, it was difficult to get the financial footing necessary to flourish and to have the kinds of things that other people could have in Boise or other larger communities—work that allowed you to have a life, excursions, experiences, hobbies, friendships, and time to breathe. In Pocatello, financially, that often seemed unavailable unless someone had a very high-end job or worked constantly. And the company itself became another extreme. It consumed enormous amounts of time and energy. It was supposed to create freedom, but in many ways it became another obligation.

The queer community there also seemed deeply out of balance. There were so few places to breathe. So few places to simply be. So much of the social outlet became mixed with substances and extremes because there wasn’t enough room for people to have other ways of escaping, connecting, exploring, or simply enjoying themselves. And even the things that were available—going out to eat, activities, hiking—could become so repetitive and routine that eventually they lost their ability to make you feel unburdened. Everything became the same. And when life becomes that constricted, people look for ways to escape the heaviness.

That is where substances and extremes came in. Not because either of us was inherently evil. Not because either of us was fundamentally broken. But because human beings develop coping mechanisms. Sometimes those coping mechanisms become destructive. Sometimes they become trained responses to anxiety, heaviness, obligation, loneliness, fear, and exhaustion. There was so much work. So much family. So much community obligation. So many responsibilities. So much financial pressure. So little room to simply breathe. And substances could temporarily provide the illusion of putting all of that down—to enjoy oneself, to stop thinking, to stop carrying the responsibility, to feel free for a little while. But the relief came with consequences, and those consequences created more fear, more instability, and more dependence.

I believe life is better without those extremes. I know that for myself now. Life is better without heavy drinking. Maybe life is better without drinking at all. I am not drinking anymore. Life is better without substances that take control away from us. Life is better when things are smoother, happier, kinder, and more grounded. All I ever wanted for us was to return to that place we had found many times before—the middle way between extremes. Because there were beautiful times there. There were times when we were balanced. There were times when we were happy. There were times when we were genuinely ourselves. There were times when we were deeply connected without consuming one another. I wanted us to find our way back there.

There were also the health imbalances. From the moment my lymph nodes were swollen, through GBS, through everything that happened with my health, you had to carry an enormous amount of weight. And in Tri-Cities, you carried so much of that weight. That created an imbalance in your self-care. It created dependence on you from me. Then in Spokane, some of that weight was lifted from you. But that created another extreme for me because I became afraid of losing you. We were constantly responding to one crisis or another. And so many of those extremes were beyond our control. Some things happened to us. Some things were circumstances. Some things were illness. Some things were financial. Some things were family. Some things were community. Some things were people we trusted. Some things were choices we made. And some were choices other people made around us.

I also carry deep regret about timing. After Pop got sick, I was so concerned about you. I was processing that loss differently than you were, but it hit me—and still hits me—very hard. And I felt like I failed you. I felt like I failed us. Because I should have listened to you. I should have listened to myself. And I should have listened to that deeper part of myself that was telling me we should return to Boise—especially during the final stages of Pop’s life. I’ve always loved your family. And believe it or not, I always wanted to be physically closer to them so that we could participate in life with them. So that you could be with them. So that we could be with them. I enjoyed them so much more than I enjoyed my own family. But we were trying to get back on our feet financially. And it seemed like it was never going to happen. I kept thinking that if I could just get us enough money under us, if I could just get the company stable enough, if I could just get everything secure enough, then we could move. Then we could establish ourselves somewhere healthier. Then we could build a life. That was what I was trying to do. I wanted security. I wanted enough money under us that we could move without being desperate. I wanted us to have a foundation. I didn’t manage to give it to us in time, and I am so sorry for that.

When we talked about moving, you leaned toward Boise and I leaned toward Salt Lake. I never came clean to you about my true fear. I wanted Boise—I very much did. What held me back was the connections you had made there during the times you had been there in our relationship. I was scared those connections would entice you and trap you, because the allure of substances can be both exhilarating and terrifying, especially when it has become a trained coping mechanism for putting down anxiety, heaviness, and obligation. I thought Salt Lake could be a place where we kept those situations out until we both got to a point where we could say, honestly, that life is better without it. I should have told you that plainly at the time instead of steering us toward Salt Lake and leaving you to guess. I’m sorry I didn’t.

---

When I sit with the entire relationship and look back through all of it—the contradictions, the games, the darkness, the good years and the terrible ones—I keep arriving at one thing.

Fear.

My greatest fear throughout all the years we were together was twofold, but I think both parts came from the same root. I was terrified of losing you. And I was terrified of losing myself. And I think you were afraid of the same things. I think so much of our relationship was built around the fear that we weren’t enough for each other. That we would lose one another. That we would lose ourselves. That the other person would leave. That we would be abandoned. That we would abandon ourselves.

I believe that we both wanted many of the same things. Maybe we still do. When it came to relationship. When it came to life. When it came to connection. When it came to independence. But I think we both struggled with the fear that we were not good enough. And I think we sometimes took the absence of other people as confirmation of that fear. We were both scared of abandonment. And we were both scared of abandoning ourselves. That fear became the root of so many other things.

I know that at times you called what I did control. I understand why it looked that way from the outside. But I need you to hear this plainly: it was never about owning you, caging you, or limiting your freedom. What it actually was, every single time, was pure terror.

It was never the times you disappeared or ran off that bothered me in themselves. It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to have freedom. What terrified me was not knowing. What terrified me was something happening to you and me not being able to get to each other. My greatest fear was that you would be hurt and I would lose you again to a coma or death. That fear has been with me since Jason’s Street. I was always terrified that something would happen to you and I wouldn’t be able to find you. That you would disappear because of some fucked-up person who left you somewhere dead. That you could be trafficked. That you could overdose. That you could be unconscious somewhere and I wouldn’t know. That I would have to plan your funeral. That I would have to sit beside you in a hospital bed, not knowing whether you would wake up. That I would spend the rest of my life wondering what happened to you.

That was the honest-to-God truth of what went through my mind when you were gone and substances were involved. I was terrified. And I made a lot of poor decisions because of that fear. That is where I failed you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I didn’t know how to keep you safe without making you feel imprisoned. I’m sorry that my fear became something you experienced as control. I’m sorry for the ways my fear became emotional instability within our relationship. I’m sorry that I didn’t know how to say “I am terrified of losing you” without it coming out like confinement. I’m sorry that I didn’t know how to ask for reassurance without making you feel trapped. I’m sorry for the times my fear became something you had to carry, or something that made you feel small, watched, or unsafe with me. That was never the intention, even on the nights it might have felt exactly like that.

I also know that you are an attractive man. I know that people look at you and see a sexy, hot body, a cool dude, someone they want. But I have always hated seeing people look at you only as an object of lust, physical pleasure, or gratification. What made me angry was not simply that someone flirted with you or liked you. It was when I felt that they were looking at what they could get from you. When I felt that they were using you for their own pleasure. Because I know that they don’t necessarily see what I see. They don’t see the beauty of you. They don’t see your soul. They don’t see your life. They don’t see your gravitas. They don’t see everything that makes you human. They see what they want. And maybe, because of everything that happened over the years, I became hypervigilant about recognizing those people. Maybe I became hypervigilant about the situations you were in when I wasn’t around. Maybe I became angry at people for what they had done to you and for the ways people had treated you when they saw you not as a human being but as a means to an end for their own gratification. I know that may have sometimes made me seem jealous or controlling. But underneath it was fear—fear that someone would hurt you, fear that someone would use you, fear that someone would take advantage of you, fear that I would find out too late. And that fear became even greater because I had already seen what could happen.

Toward the end, in April and May, I was terrified. I was scared of losing you. But bigger than that, I was scared that we were losing ourselves. I was scared that we were going to lose our lives. I was scared that one of us would overdose. A few people that we both knew and spent time with have died from overdose in the past two years. That reality terrified me. I had promised your dad that I would do whatever was necessary, no matter the cost, to keep you safe. I asked Crystal for help. I asked my family for help. I asked Lauren for help—with you and with myself. And it felt like nobody understood. People seemed to think that a thirty-day treatment program was going to solve everything. But what we needed was bigger than thirty days. What we needed was a way out. We needed a different life. We needed space. We needed safety. We needed a new environment. We needed a way to become ourselves again.

And so I made the call that I made because I could not lose you to death. I would not watch you die. I couldn’t live with myself if you got lost and I hadn’t done everything I could. I made that decision because I was terrified. And I am sorry for the ways that decision hurt you. I am sorry for the consequences. I am sorry that it may have made you afraid of me. But I need you to know what was inside me when I did it. It was not hatred. It was not a desire to punish you. It was not a desire to control your life. It was terror. And underneath that terror was love. I wanted us to be happy. I wanted us to be healthy. I wanted us to be ourselves. I wanted us not to be subjugated, controlled, or enslaved by things that we couldn’t say no to. And that goes both ways. It isn’t just you. It isn’t just me. It’s human.

I do not look back at you and see evil. I do not see a person who intentionally set out to victimize people. I see human mistakes. I see terrible decisions. I see mistakes made under pressure, fear, addiction, confusion, pain, illness, and circumstances that neither of us knew how to navigate. But I do not look back and see you as evil. And I do not look back and see myself as evil. I don’t see a place where either of us intentionally set out to victimize another person. I see people who made mistakes. I see people who were vulnerable. And I see how substances and certain environments brought some very dark people into our lives. That is one of my biggest regrets. It seems to me that some substances can create environments in which true predators, perpetrators, and manipulators can find people who are vulnerable and entice them, manipulate them, use them, and get their claws into them. I don’t believe those things exist in you. I don’t believe they exist in me. But I believe we both have a problem with leaning toward people who would intentionally, deliberately, and willfully cause us harm or use us for themselves. I believe that developed for you at a younger age. I know that developed for me at a younger age. And I know that it led to a lot of fucked-up situations for both of us individually and together.

There are things I could tell you about the last two years that I never imagined I would experience. There have been terrifying people. Terrifying situations. Things that changed my understanding of how much evil can exist in the world. I never imagined that evil was so rampant. And that is part of why I have worried about you so much. There are things I haven’t told you. Maybe one day I can. Maybe one day you will want to hear them. But I don’t want this to become a story about gangs, stalking, or all of the absolute craziness that happened around everything else. That isn’t what this is about.

This is about you. This is about me. This is about us. And underneath all of it, this is about what I believe happened to two human beings who loved each other and became overwhelmed by fear, circumstance, environment, responsibility, trauma, illness, finances, substances, people, family, community, and their own inability to find the middle way.

I think we wanted the same things. I think we wanted love. We wanted connection. We wanted independence. We wanted a home. We wanted security. We wanted community. We wanted freedom. We wanted to be ourselves. We wanted to be together. And I think we were both terrified that having one of those things meant losing another. That is the contradiction I see now. We were afraid of losing each other. We were afraid of losing ourselves. And because of that, sometimes we held too tightly. Sometimes we ran too far. Sometimes we disappeared. Sometimes we depended too much. Sometimes we isolated. Sometimes we sought escape. Sometimes we tried to fix things that could not be fixed through force. And sometimes we forgot that love requires space as much as it requires closeness.

That is what I understand now. Or at least what I think I understand.

---

And that brings me back to something even deeper than the relationship itself.

Our vows.

My heart and soul cannot simply treat the commitment, devotion, and beliefs contained within the vows I made to you on our wedding day as though they were merely words. They were more than words. They were more than promises. To me, they were a spell. An incantation. A total transformation of self, entered freely and willingly. I asked to be changed when I accepted your proposal. I asked to be changed when I stood before you and everyone else. I entered that covenant knowing that it was supposed to alter me. And I believe it did.

Some things are more than magic in the ordinary sense of the word. Some things are done in such a place of our truest being that they connect directly to the Divine—to the Gods themselves—and we are changed forever. And I don’t believe that what the Divine has done through our desire, our surrender, our commitment, and our covenant can simply be undone because circumstances changed.

That does not mean I own you. It does not mean I am entitled to your presence, affection, communication, forgiveness, or return. You are free. Your life is yours. Your choices are yours. I cannot ask you to remain bound to an understanding of our vows that you do not share. But I cannot pretend the covenant did not change me.

Covenant, to me, means love. It means devotion. It means perseverance. It means acceptance. It means commitment. It means unwavering faith. It means letting what was holy make me better rather than letting its loss destroy me. It means I can carry love without demanding possession. It means I can honor the vows without demanding that you live according to them. It means I can remember what we were without pretending that nothing changed. It means I can let devotion become service rather than control.

When you asked me sometime back to start celebrating our holy days again—to plan them, and I told you that I would help you and that we would do so again—I did you a great disservice by not being more present with what I think you were truly asking me. I think you were asking me to return to our traditions. To return to the things that rooted us in the beginning. To return to the spiritual life that had been part of who we were before the company, the obligations, the chaos, the financial strain, the people around us, and everything else began consuming so much of our lives. I think, in many ways, I had forgotten my path as a priest. And I think, in many ways, with the company, I couldn’t do both. I couldn’t be everything the company required of me and simultaneously be the priest, husband, individual, friend, and human being that I needed to be.

Because of that request, and because of my love for you, and because of my love for what you changed in me, and because of my love and devotion to the covenant we made, I found myself being called back. I came back to the Gods of our tradition. I came back to the Divine. I surrendered again to the Gods of our line.

I found my only true comfort, peace, and reality in the Divine Host:

In Holy Mother Vestaria, she who is Hestia and Vesta in one, keeper of the sacred center. 
In Lord Zeus and Mother Hera, of order, dignity, and sovereignty. 
In Lord Poseidon and Queen Amphitrite, of the deep oceans. 
In my beloved Lord Hades and Queen Persephone, of death, transformation, and rebirth. 
In the madness of Lord Dionysus and the comfort of the wild with Pan. 
With Mother Hecate and Lord Hermes. 
With Harmonia, the Graces, and the Muses. 
With all of the Divine Host.

Out of that surrender, Unitas Panthea has come into being.

As far as I can tell, it is something unique in the world. It is not reconstructionism. It is not simply revivalism or revitalization. Reconstructionism has tremendous value, but it attempts to reconstruct historical religious traditions from what remains of the past. It asks how we might recover what ancient people actually practiced, believed, sacrificed, celebrated, and understood. Revitalization and revivalism also have tremendous value, but they often focus on restoring or renewing traditions that have been diminished, suppressed, or lost. Both have their failures for our modern time.

What I am describing is different. Unitas Panthea is a reemergence. An evolution. An honest connection to the Gods themselves and to the traditions of the past, while making those traditions relevant and alive for today. It does not throw away what was. But it also does not pretend that we live then. It is rooted in the realities of our ancestral traditions while allowing those traditions to evolve in response to philosophy, theology, science, human evolution, cultural evolution, social development, and social justice.

The ancient roots remain. The Gods remain. The relationship remains. But the human expression of that relationship is allowed to live. It allows two lives to remain distinct, free, and whole while creating a sacred, greater whole.

And perhaps that is part of what I was trying to do with us all along. I wanted us to have roots without being imprisoned by them. I wanted us to have tradition without allowing tradition to become a cage. I wanted us to have freedom without losing our connection to something sacred. I did not always know how to live that vision. But I know now that it still matters.

Perhaps this is also part of what I was trying to understand about us: two whole people must be able to remain themselves while choosing to create something together.

Not I + I = one person. 
Not I + I = possession. 
Not I + I = dependence. 
Not I + I = disappearance.

But two lives, two centers of being, two souls—free enough to become a greater “we” without destroying the people who create it.

I wish we had understood that sooner. I wish I had understood it sooner. I wish I had known how to love you without being so afraid of losing you. I wish I had known how to let you have freedom without imagining catastrophe. I wish I had known how to ask for reassurance without making you feel trapped. I wish you had known how much fear was underneath so much of what you experienced from me. And I wish I had known how much space you needed to remain yourself.

Maybe things would have been different. Maybe they wouldn’t have been. I don’t know. I can’t rewrite it. I can’t go back to Tri-Cities. I can’t go back to Pocatello. I can’t go back to the beginning. I can’t undo the choices either of us made. I can’t resurrect the people we were.

But I can honor them. I can honor what was beautiful. I can mourn what was terrible. I can accept what I cannot change. I can become accountable for the harm I caused. I can continue learning the difference between protection and control, devotion and possession, independence and abandonment, and love and fear. I can give what remains back to the Gods.

---

Because of my love for you, I have returned to the priesthood. I dedicate myself solely unto the Gods and unto the Eternal Flame of the Hearth, the hearth from which our Pagan traditions are centered.

I am not keeping the fire lit to wait for you, to demand your return, or to force a reunion. I am keeping it because the love and the covenant taught me how to tend sacred space. I have no right and every obligation in love to keep the hearth, to attend the fire, and to provide a place of refuge for the children of the Gods. I will turn no one away, under any circumstances, who needs the love of the Gods, who needs safety, who needs warmth, who needs a place where they are not judged, a place where they can breathe, a place where they can rest. Because in that, I believe the Eternal Covenant is upheld.

The hearth does not belong to me. It belongs to the Gods. I am only its keeper. If I have been called back to priesthood, then I do not get to decide who deserves warmth. My task is to tend the flame, preserve refuge, and welcome those who come seeking it. No one should be denied a place at the hearth because they are struggling. No one should be denied the warmth of the Gods because they have become lost. Not even you.

You do not have to come back to me. You do not have to become my husband again. You do not have to answer my messages. You do not have to forgive me. You do not have to explain yourself. You do not have to promise me anything. You do not even have to believe what I believe.

But if you ever need the warmth of the hearth, it will be there. If you ever need a place to rest, it will be there. If you ever need the Gods, they will be there. And if you ever need to know whether the flame went out because everything between us ended, the answer is no. It didn’t.

Because I have come to understand that the flame was never merely the relationship. The flame was what the relationship awakened. The flame was the covenant. The flame was the transformation. The flame was the faith. The flame was the Gods. The flame was the part of us that remembered that love could be more than possession.

And I will tend it. I will keep the hearth. I will keep the fire lit. And I will do it freely—not because I am waiting for you, not because I expect you to return, not because I believe I can control what happens next—but because somewhere in the deepest part of myself, I still believe the vows mattered. I believe the love mattered. I believe you mattered. And I believe that when two people stand before the Divine and freely surrender themselves to a covenant of love, something happens that cannot simply be reduced to paperwork, circumstance, separation, or the passage of time.

Something remains. Something can end and still remain sacred. A covenant can transform us without giving either person ownership over the other. Love can remain without requiring reunion. Devotion can become service instead of possession. The person I became because I loved you is not something I have to lose just because I lost you.

I loved you. 
I love you. 
I may always love you.

You changed me. Our vows changed me. Our life changed me. Our failures changed me. Our pain changed me. Our faith changed me. And the Gods called me back through all of it.

So I will answer. I will return to my path. I will return to my priesthood. I will return to the holy days. I will return to the traditions. I will build what I believe the Gods are asking me to build. I will tend the hearth. I will keep the flame.

---

May Holy Mother Vestaria keep the flame before you: steady in darkness, warm in sorrow, and bright when the road ahead cannot yet be seen.

May Zeus grant you strength, clarity, and the protection of just order. May Hera guard your dignity, your rightful bonds, and the wholeness of your heart.

May Hermes guide your steps, open the roads before you, and carry you safely through every crossing. May Hecate bear a torch beside you when you stand at places of uncertainty.

May Dionysus free you from every chain that diminishes your spirit, and may Pan return you to breath, joy, and the living wildness of your soul.

May Hades and Persephone receive every grief that must be released, and grant new life to all that is ready to rise within you.

May the Gods surround you in mercy. May the hearth receive you without judgment. May you remember, even in the moments you cannot feel it, that you are loved, worthy, and never beyond the reach of the Divine.

May the flame guide you home.

If you ever need it, may you find it. 
If you ever become lost, may the Gods guide you home. 
If you ever need warmth, may the flame be waiting. 
If you ever need refuge, may the hearth receive you. 
And if you ever wonder whether I kept my promise, I hope someday you will know:

The flame still burns. 
The hearth is still tended. 
And no one who comes seeking the warmth of the Gods will be turned away. 
You included.

---

In service to the Gods, 
in devotion to the Eternal Flame, 
and in keeping of the Sacred Hearth,

Always in love, 
Dustin ( Hieros Windsoul, SHP )