The Evangelical Universalist Forum

The Threat of True Love (Val Day 2009)

Note: this is a repost of an article I wrote for my book tour this February, but due to its tacit theological topic I thought I should post it more directly here for discussion. (Seeing as how it’s Valentine’s Day and all. :wink: )

[size=150]THE THREAT OF VALENTINE’S DAY[/size]

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:

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