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THE INVITATION

THE INVITATION

I.

They came with a gift in an open hand
and a knife behind their back,
and they called it love.

They said: God loves you.
They said: He sent His Son.
They said: It's free.

And then they said:

But if you don't take it,
He will burn you.
Not for a year.
Not for an age.
Not until the debt is paid and the smoke clears
and the last scream has faded into silence—

Forever.
Conscious.
Never ending.
Never sleeping.
Never dying.
Just burning, and knowing, and burning.

And they called that good news.

---

II.

Let me ask the question no one asks at the altar call.

What do you call a man who says:
Love me, or I will lock you in a furnace and keep you alive to feel it?

You call him an abuser.
You call the police.
You do not call him Father.
You do not sing songs to him on Sunday.
You do not hand him your children.

What do you call a man who says:
I made you. I love you. I gave you a free will—
and if you use it, I will torture you for eternity?

You call that a threat, not a freedom.
You call that a gun to the head, not a choice.
You call that coercion, and you already know
what the gods do to the one who coerces.

---

III.

They taught me when I was small.

I was five, and they showed me a picture of fire,
and they asked me if I wanted to go there,
and I said no, because I was five,
and I would have said no to anything
to make the fire go away.

And they said: Then pray this prayer.
And I prayed it.
And they said: Now you're saved.

That was not a conversion.
That was a child buying silence from a nightmare.
That was a hostage making a statement.
That was a yes extracted under duress
and filed in heaven as a vow.

And they wonder why I don't trust their altar.
It was the first place I ever learned
that "love" could be a weapon with a smile on it.

---

IV.

They say: But He gives you free will.

Free will with a sword at the throat
is not free will.
It is the freedom of the man in the cell
who is told he may leave at any time—
through the wall of fire.

They say: He doesn't send you there. You send yourself.

Then who built the place?
Who keeps it lit?
Who keeps the soul alive to feel it,
forever, without end, without mercy, without sleep—
because a dead soul can't suffer enough?

If you build the furnace and you keep the fire and you keep the body able to feel it,
then do not tell me I sent myself.
You are the one holding the door.

---

V.

And they call it love.

Love that demands worship or it burns.
Love that cannot bear a "no."
Love that watches every thought and keeps a ledger.
Love that made me, they say, and then made a place
to put me if I didn't say thank you.

I have been loved by mortals.
I have been loved by a woman who held my face in her hands
and let me walk out the door
and did not set me on fire.

That was love.
That was the thing your God does not do.
Because your God's love has a condition,
and the condition is obedience,
and the alternative is a furnace,
and that is not love—
that is a protection racket with a hymnal.

---

VI.

So why won't the pagan kneel?

Not because we're proud.
Not because we're lost.
Not because we "haven't heard."

Because we heard.
We heard the whole thing.
We heard the offer and we heard the threat,
and we are not stupid enough to call the threat a gift.

We will not kneel to a god who holds eternity over our heads
like a man holding a match over a sleeping child's bed.
We will not say I love you with a boot on our neck
and call the boot a blessing.
We will not be converted by terror
and then be told we came freely.

A vow made in a fire is not a vow.
It is a scream.
And the gods I serve do not collect screams
and file them as devotion.

---

VII.

And hear the old law, the one they never read:

What is not given, you may not take.
What is not opened, you may not enter.
What is not sworn, you may not bind.

They bind.
They enter.
They take.
They bend the will with the threat of the pit
and call the bending salvation,
and then they wonder why the pagans will not come in.

Because we know a coercer when we see one.
Because we know what a stolen will weighs.
Because we know the difference between a lover and a jailer
and we have seen the door He built
and it does not open for the one who forced it—
it opens onto Him.

---

VIII.

So no. I will not take a knee.

Not to the god who says love me or burn.
Not to the altar that taught a five-year-old to be afraid.
Not to the book that calls a furnace justice
and a threat grace
and a hostage's whisper faith.

I will stand.
I will stand at the crossroads, with the torch and the key and the hound,
and I will say what Hekate weighs:

A will taken by terror is still a will taken.
And the one who takes it
has not saved a soul—
he has stolen one.
And the weight of a stolen will
is the whole of a soul,
and it is his to answer for.

No knee.
No knee to the fire.
No knee to the threat.
No knee to the god who calls himself love
and keeps a furnace warm.

I'd rather stand in the dark with my own soul intact
than kneel in the light of a thing that burns what it claims to love.

Windsoul - A Sovereign Pagan

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