North of the equator, it is the season when day dies sooner and night insists upon itself earlier. Summer retreats. Cool air signals winter’s approach. Brilliant autumn leaves paint the landscape with deep mature colors, and on bright sun-splashed days they defy description. The leaves fall and we turn them into piles to play in. The air tastes like a tart crisp apple. We breathe pumpkin orange and cranberry red. Halloween is near.

The Eve of the Feast of All Saints, All Hallows Eve, is an enchanted witching and bewitching time when the veil between life and death, dark and light, clarity and obscurity, good and evil ascends. Children dress up in innocent fantasies, go out with their parents after dark and come home with candy. This is a true holy day. For adults Halloween opens the door to a more serious moment. The mystery of our own being, the conundrum of us, the paradox, the aporia of our own self knowledge beckons us to behold the side of ourselves we would rather not see. It insists that we drop the fiction of our own ontological goodness and face the facts of the evil that resides in our personal humanity. Demons and monsters live inside us born from our fears, growing strong in our denial of their existence. The vampire, the untamed canine howling at the moon, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the wicked vixen, Satan’s lover, lives inside us and makes each of us capable of perpetrating unspeakable horror.

Our demons and monsters do not feed upon our hatred. They feed upon our ennui. The stronger they become, the more indifferent we become. They deceive us into believing that all the evil lives in the Other. The ugly, violent, criminal, terrorist, pervert addicted to this or that is someone else and we are safe as long as they live somewhere else. We are safe as long as someone has the weapons and the power and the courage to go shoot them, to douse them with holy water, drive a stake through their hearts and decapitate them if necessary. This is error. It is smoke and mirrors. It is misdirection.

We are not safe until we face our demons and monsters, until we stare down our fears. When we acknowledge our own demons and monsters, we can have compassion on the demons and monsters living inside someone else. The pain we cause each other conceives the evil inside us. The pain that others have suffered is the seed of their evil. Sometimes the cause is accidental. Sometime it is intentional. Sometimes the pain comes because of unacknowledged and unrepaired historical fact and memory. Sometimes we cause pain because of our twisted attempts to shield our fragile hearts from shattering against a cold cruel world. In any case, we cannot disguise ourselves with mask and costume, trick the truth, and escape. We are not safe until we love our way past our own suspicion, pain and indifference. We are not safe until we give ourselves away. Our love is the only protection from our fears.

We save ourselves by becoming living libations, pouring our passion to establish justice upon the earth. Faith gives us the strength to face the evil in the world, starting with the evil living inside ourselves. Faith allows Love to love all the demons and monsters away.