BRAVO!

September 4, 2025
Drew
Thought

This Hafiz poem has really been speaking to me this week:

This union you want
With the earth and sky,
This union we all need with Love…
A golden wing from God’s heart just
Touched the ground.
Now,
Step upon it
With your brave sun-vows
And help our eyes
to dance!

Beautiful, yes? I’ve been unpacking the pieces of it, wondering why it feels so resonant and relevant right now. There’s something especially about the idea of brave sun-vows that’s grabbing me. Bravery.

I looked up the etymology of the word brave, and found that in some ways it’s exactly what you’d expect, and in other ways definitely not. Since the late 15th century, it has connoted heroism, splendor, and valor. It’s related, pretty obviously I guess, to the exclamation “Bravo!” which one might cheer when someone achieves anything well-done and impressive.

Surprising to me, however, was that the word has deeper origins in the Latin bravus, meaning “cutthroat or villain,” from the Latin pravus, meaning “crooked or depraved.” It is also connected to the words barbarous and barbarian, suggesting savagery and wildness. These undertones remain today in the swagger and recklessness of bravado. Interesting, right?

I doubt that Hafiz (or Daniel Ladinsky, who translated the poem above) was advocating any villainy, violence, and depravity when he called us to step onto God’s golden heart-wing. But maybe calling it a “brave sun-vow” does retain some element of that wildness and audacity…

Then, there’s also the “vow” part of this phrase; what’s that about? To me, this speaks to all of our commitments and declarations, the promises that we make to ourselves and the world. It includes everything about which we care, for which we hope, and to which we dare give our hearts. We might simply call it our prayers.

One of the key distinctions offered by the Science of Mind philosophy is that we pray not just TO something but AS something. We pray AS an essential part of Everything. Prayer not as a plea or supplication, but rather an act of conscious participation and empowered creativity.

That takes guts. Bravado, for sure.

So, then, that got me wondering about the adage, “Fear and Love cannot co-exist.” You’ve heard that, yeah? I realized that I didn’t know who first said it, even though it’s quoted everywhere. Was it Dr. King, or Gandhi, or something from the Bhagavad-Gita? I got myself a little worked up as I considered the idea. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like nonsense.

It turns out that lots of people have said it, but nobody seems sure who said it first. You can find the phrase in books and sermons and essays and inspirational internet memes. People state it like it’s a given, an obvious truth: “As everybody knows, fear and Love cannot co-exist.” I’ve heard it so many times in New Thought talks and classes, I wondered if Ernest Holmes was responsible. Holmes did, indeed, say something like it — “Love casteth out fear” — but he was quoting the Book of John in the Christian New Testament. That is the closest I can find to the start of the whole “cannot co-exist” thing.

Okay. So… I get it, and I’m not saying it’s a completely useless idea. Dichotomies and oppositions like this one — Love versus Fear — can help us sort things out and clarify our reactions and responses. Sure, overwhelming fears oftentimes get in our way, tripping us up, making it challenging to fully embody our loving capacities. And sometimes a big, intentional love can, indeed, ameliorate these fears or at least contextualize them enough that we can effectively reckon with them.

Still, I take issue with the over-simplification and polarization of this duality into the impossibility of love and fear’s coexistence.

Because in my experience, the co-existence of Love and Fear is perpetual, essential, and ultimately very creative.

Love is the sail, fear is the rudder. Love propels me forth, fear helps me steer. Not to belabor my little boat metaphor, but — See those rocks? The ones with all the ship wreckage around them? I’m afraid of running into those, so I’m going to head another way. That doesn’t mean I hate the rocks or that I’m failing to love the rocks. Just that loving those rocks won’t disappear them. And loving myself and the others on this craft with me means I’m responsible for doing my best not to dash us all to bits, and that most definitely includes respecting, understanding, and honoring my fears.

A wise interplay of love and fear — an honest co-existence of love and fear — seems to me to be the very thing that often inspires ingenuity, innovation, progress, fresh starts, new ideas, and creative solutions.

Which is where bravery comes in. Bravery is when we acknowledge our fear and show up, open-hearted, anyway.

Not in a stupid way — there’s a difference between courage and carelessness, between bravery and negligence. I mean stepping forth, bringing ourselves forth, in a mindful and responsible way.

A way in which we are gentle with ourselves and each other at least in part because we recognize that we’re all frightened. Because it’s important to be able to acknowledge honestly what’s not working, what hurts, what’s scary. I want to feel free to admit admit all that I don’t know, the trillion things I’m anxious about.

And with and through and in all that fear, we Love. We muster whatever fortitude and wherewithal it takes to proceed — consciously choosing love for ourselves and each other, and tapping into the abiding love of the entire blooming Universe.

To me, that doesn’t feel like Love versus Fear, or even love casting out fear. It’s more about Love loving Fear.

Love loving the parts of us that have been hurt before. Love loving Its way through the shadowy places, amidst the intimidating obstacles, and — scariest of all — into the unknown future.

Because here’s the thing: prayer as a declaration, prayer as an act of creation, prayer as a brave sun-vow, always means gazing into the infinite abyss, the awesome unknown, the terrifying yet-to-be, and saying, “Here I am!”

In fact, it’s only in such a context of fear and trembling trepidation that bravery makes sense as a quality of valor, splendor, and whole-heartedness. Don’t you think? I mean, if we were truly fear-less then we wouldn’t need to be brave. Without fear, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of noble purpose or even meaning in courageous word or deed. It would be more like Dark Ages bravus, cutthroat and barbaric, a wild disregard for consequence. It would be sociopathic.

Bravery happens when love and fear have a conversation, when love and fear work things out together: “This union you want with the earth and sky, this union we all need with love…”

There is so much we don’t know. There’s stuff we do know that scares the pants off of me. AND — my vow, my promise, my prayer is that we can leap faithfully forward anyway, with loving hearts — not instead of fear but through it — to create something beautiful and new together. Bravo!

I can’t wait to see you this Sunday, September 7, 10:00am at q-Staff Theatre. With the divine Patty Stephens. XO, Drew