{"id":2603,"date":"2023-10-03T14:48:37","date_gmt":"2023-10-03T21:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/?p=2603"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:19:37","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T14:19:37","slug":"bear-hug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/2023\/10\/03\/bear-hug\/","title":{"rendered":"Bear Hug"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n

Bear Hug<\/strong><\/p>\n

Did you imagine
\nthat Good and Evil
\nare Enemies?<\/p>\n

That in Your
\nflagrant peccadillos
\nand frequent follies,
\nyour glaring perfidies
\nand feckless failures,<\/p>\n

You have taken
\nup the flag
\nof Love\u2019s Nemesis,<\/p>\n

and, wittingly or not,
\nsigned on with
\nThe Devil\u2019s Legions?<\/p>\n

Does this haunt You
\ninto the long, dark
\nhell halls of Fear?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m learning to
\nlet Love\u2019s Laughter
\nchase the Legions
\nfrom My Imagination,
\nlike shadows
\nfrom scarecrows.<\/p>\n

There is nothing but Love!<\/p>\n

And the Names
\nWe Deify It with.<\/p>\n

And Love loves
\nto play
\nHide and Seek
\nwith Us
\nwhen We fear
\nWe have lost It.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an Adventure
\nthat draws
\nThe Map of Love
\ninto every
\nCorner of the Cosmos,<\/p>\n

where Fear
\nhas been hiding,<\/p>\n

imagining It was
\nThe Enemy,
\nwhen all along
\nall You needed to do
\nwas embrace It
\nout of Its corner,<\/p>\n

until Love
\nsneaks up behind It
\nand wraps It
\nin a Bear Hug.<\/p>\n

(Photo by Liz Fitch; UnSplash)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Bear Hug Did you imagine that Good and Evil are Enemies? That in Your flagrant peccadillos and frequent follies, your glaring perfidies and feckless failures, You have taken up the flag of Love\u2019s Nemesis, and, wittingly or not, signed on with The Devil\u2019s Legions? Does this haunt You into the long, dark hell halls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2603"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3972,"href":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603\/revisions\/3972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegillard.com\/erleichda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}