Love Life!

LOVE LIFE!by Robert Blumetti
LOVE LIFE! If there are only two words to describe the essence of the Folk Faith, it is these two words - Love Life.

Life is a gift from the Gods. When the Holy Trinity first bred life into the ash and elm and thus created the first man and woman, the most precious gift that the Gods had bestowed upon us: life itself. This being the first and most important of all gifts, it is worthy of our most passionate love. It is the appreciation of life that separates us from all other living things. I am not talking about the instinct to survive, but the appreciation of life and all that it means.



If we love life then we are laying the foundation of a new Asgard on earth, and that's really what the New Age of Gimli is all about - the rebirth of the Gods through the resurrection of Balder. It is our love of life and our holding that life to be precious that is the force that will ensure that Balder rises from the Netherworld and ensure the return of the Gods. By loving life we are recognizing that the Gods reside within us. By holding the gift of life high, we are saying that know the worth that was passed down to us through the ages by our ancestors, and thus, who value that biological worth and will pass it down to our children and descendants. It is the act of living according to this understanding - appreciating the worth of our existence and thus loving life - that we are honoring the Gods, and thus ensuring Balder's resurrection. In this way the Gods and Goddesses will walk among us once more, here on Midgard. By living lives in which we celebrate our love of life, we are building a new Asgard in Midgard. By living a life in which we honor the gift of life, we are giving nourishment to the Gods.

The love of life is embodied in the Idun's Golden Apples. The secret of her apples is celebrating living with joy and happiness, honoring the Gods, and helping our kind and kindred. In this way we are truly building a new Asgard which is the meaning of the New Age of Gimli. The act of living a life where we love ourselves, our heritage, our history and culture, our family and friends, our children and future, our Folk and the Gods are the power that resides in the Golden Apples, that gives everlasting life to our people. It will ensure our immortality in the next life. The way we live in this world will determine the way we live in the next. You make your own afterlife by the way you live in this life - so live a life of joy and happiness. In short - LOVE LIFE.

Now I am not preaching that we should become hippies and love everyone and everything, including our enemies who seek our destruction. I am not telling you to abandon our other emotions, including hate. It is good to hate your enemies, because if you love your enemies, you are then living a life of blind ignorance - which is the essence of Hodur - the blind God who killed Balder, his brother, through the trickery of Loki.

It was through Hodur (blind ignorance) that Loki (destruction and chaos) was able to kill Balder (the Life-Force of our Folk). So we must be on our guard (Heimdall) at all times and seek the protection of Thor, while we work and strive to build a new world - the New Age of Gimli - here in Midgard. This can be accomplished through the love of life (Balder) and by the love between a man and a woman (Frey and Freyja) the love of one's kind and family (Frigga) and the love of justice and order (Tyr) and the love of wisdom and truth (Odin).