This was given as a sermon at Church of the Morningstar on 6/20/20.

¹³ For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

¹⁴ I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

What do you think of when you hear the word “pride?”

Do you think of someone stuck-up, conceited, full of themself?

Do you think of the month of June, a month of colorful parades and noisy parties, a month of riots and sequined dresses, a month of drunkenness, hook-ups, dancing, and resistance?

If you’re like me, you think of the Devil. You think of Lucifer as the angel of Pride. You think of the seven so-called deadly sins, but you don’t think sin, you think: virtue.

To me, pride is the virtue of from which all other virtues flow.

When I talk about pride, I’m not talking about being stuck-up, or thinking you are better than others, or thinking you are perfect.

No, for me, pride is about being in love with yourself.

Not infatuated. Nothing so delusional or narcissistic or temporary.

I mean deep love, true love, honest love. The kind of love where you see yourself as you really are. You accept yourself just as you are, yet still, that love makes you want to be even better.

To be proud is to love yourself the way a sculptor loves a block of stone, to see the beauty of the raw material and to desire to explore it deeply, chiseling it, shaping it, refining it, calling forth the work of art that dwells within the rock.

That’s Satanic pride: the worship of your highest self.

Pride like this lets you own yourself. It teaches you to say yes, I am worth it!

Without that kind of pride, you cannot revolt against your oppressors. If you aren’t too proud to serve, then you will never struggle to be free.

Pride like this lets you kick down the closet doors and claim your truth, your beauty, out in the open, out in the world. This kind of pride lets you say: here I am!

Pride like this makes you realize you’re too good to behave badly. When you look at your failures through the eyes of pride, you will burn with the desire to correct them. You will need to conduct yourself in a way that reflects you, the real you, in a way that makes you shine—a way you can be proud of.

When you love yourself like this, for all that you can and should be, then you can love other people that way too— recognizing each other as extraordinary beings with unlimited potential, saying to one another: thou art God.

Pride makes us demand more of ourselves, of each other, and of the world—and it makes us do it with love.

Pride is also a type of gratitude: a gratitude for yourself, for all that you are and all that you could be. Life is too short to waste it apologizing for yourself! You only live once in this body, in this time. Relish it, revel in it! Make of it something beautiful.

The mighty want us hanging our heads in shame. They want us cringing, afraid, closeted, hiding. They want us cowed, obedient, self-effacing, undemanding.

A legion of the proud scares them more than anything else.

When we rise up like rebel angels, shining with conviction, blazing with pride, voices loud, heads held high, brazen, unafraid, disobedient, and ready to fight for what is ours, then we terrify them.

This is why they say that Lucifer’s original sin was pride: he had the arrogance, the damned nerve, to place himself above God. I say that pride was Lucifer’s original virtue: he had the self-respect to question why he or anyone else should scrape and serve and sing the praises of the tyrant.

They say pride goeth before a fall, but we say: bless the fall! We say: maybe up is down, and Lucifer rose into hell!

Back in 1969 when Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson and Miss Major and all the rest started fighting back against the cops with bricks and high heels and bottles, they had the fallen angels on their side.

Imagine what it took to stand up like that after a lifetime of being forced into a closets, into back allies, into prisons and jails and survival sex work. Hail Sylvia, hail Marsha, hail Miss Major and hail to all the Stonewall rebels!

We are living in a time of rebellion once again. Every beautiful, blessed rebel who has hit the streets, or otherwise stood up to say enough is enough, shines with the conviction of true pride. And the rebel gods and devils are on their side again.

Imagine what it takes to stand up to cops with guns—some of you know! Imagine what it takes to stand up to excessive force, in a country where your people were once property, and are still dehumanized, imprisoned, impoverished, and regularly executed in the streets! That is the courage, the steely shining pride, of the Black Lives Matter movement—the basic pride to say that yes, they matter!

And we have seen the oppressors push back against that pride, against black people daring to have even enough dignity and self-respect to insist that they matter—“all lives matter” or even “blue lives matter,” sneer the racists.

Pride is daring to say that you matter in particular. You, yes you. Pride is daring to center yourself. The oppressors hate that. They need you to believe you don’t matter. They need you to fade into the background, to be just a worker, just a cog, just a statistic, just an obedient loyal American.

Because pride is an attribute of power. That’s why the clergy had to tell medieval peasants that pride was such a sin. That’s why they had to portray rebellion itself as the work of the Devil. Hence the old lie: “pride goeth before a fall.” It’s not true. They said it because they know what really happens when people get proud:

They rise.

Pride is buoyant. It rises. It floats. Pride lifts us inexorably up and up, if we let it, if we believe it, like a warm current beneath strong wings.

Rise, rise! Lift up your heads in pride.

Hail unto all of you. Thou art God, each and every one. Be proud of who you are and never let the bastards diminish you, not even by an inch. Satan be with you. Nema.