How do I keep my faith during wartime? I’m not sure how I’d keep my faith if my country were invaded, my family slaughtered, my home bombed or my loved ones rounded up and sent to concentration camps—I can only imagine.

But I do know how I struggle to keep my faith—and my sanity—during a war that my country is waging, one that I have done everything I could think of to prevent and to end, one which has lost support of the vast majority of the American people, and one which is still, every day, taking the lives of Iraquis and our own soldiers, squandering the resources we need for health and justice in this country, and leaving a swathe of destruction in the Middle East.

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On this tragic anniversary, I’d like to remind us all that whether we say God or Goddess, him or her, however we depict the divine, the ultimate essence is love.

Pagans believe that we are each an embodiment of the Goddess. Other religions speak of the divine spark in each human being, or the incarnation of God on earth. They are all telling us to treat each person as if she or he might be God walking around, perhaps begging for a meal or a kind word, perhaps hitching a ride as Pele the volcano Goddess is said to do in Hawaii.

If we treat each human being as if she or he might be Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, or Gaia herself, if we cherish that spark of creativity and compassion in all, then we might create a world in which we see our differences as facets of the jewel of truth—something to delight in and cherish, not a reason to divide ourselves and destroy. If we strive for a world based on justice for all—not just those we agree with, but all—we will diminish the causes for hate and despair that lead to acts of violence.

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