Faith in the Furnace: How to Love What May Not Be Saved

A Secular Sermon for the Fractured Heart--Light Against Empire

Dino Alonso

Jun 29, 2025

1×

0:00

-8:24

I. The Furnace

There are moments in history—soul-searing, breath-stealing moments—when it feels like everything you’ve ever loved is being set on fire.

Your country.
Your people.
Your principles.
Even your memories, when truth itself is dragged behind the chariots of spectacle and cruelty.

And in those moments, we are tempted—no, invited—to let love burn out with the rest of it. To retreat. To grow cold. To harden. To say, If the thing I gave my heart to cannot be saved, then I shall no longer give my heart.

I know that temptation.

I’ve worn the uniform of service and wondered what it still stood for.
I’ve labored under the seal of government and felt the rot spreading from within.
I’ve seen justice dressed in costume, the law used not to protect, but to punish.
I’ve seen good people break—not from weakness, but from the unbearable weight of their ideals being mocked by those in power.
I’ve felt the quiet thud of moral resignation—when your hands are still moving, but your soul has gone still.

So let me tell you what I’ve learned, standing in that furnace:

Love does not die when the thing you love fails.
It is born there.

II. The End of the Bargain

We have been raised on a dangerous myth: that love is something you give in exchange for goodness.
If your country is just—then love it.
If your neighbor is kind—then trust them.
If your people win—then celebrate.

But this isn’t love. That’s a contract.

Love that only survives in safety is not love. It’s investment.

To love what is easy to love is to confuse comfort for conviction.

But to love what is flawed—
To love what is failing—
To love what may never become what you hoped—

That is a holy rebellion.

That is unreasonable love. And that is the only kind that changes anything.

Let me ask plainly:

Can you love America if she never becomes what you hoped she’d be?

Can you love her—not because of her myths—but because you refuse to give her over to the worst version of herself?

Can you love her in the way prophets loved their broken cities—not with denial, but with defiance?

This is faith—not in the flag, but in the flame that refuses to go out.

III. Ashes of the American Spell

We were promised so many certainties.

Work hard and you’ll succeed.
Tell the truth and you’ll be heard.
Vote, and the system will bend toward justice.
Obey the law and you’ll be protected by it.

But the furnace devours certainty.

Truth is buried.
Decency is mocked.
The law is wielded like a weapon.
And somehow, the cruelest voices always seem to be handed the mic.

So we look around at the smoldering ash where a story once stood.
And we wonder: Was any of it real?

Here’s the truth:
Some of it was.
Most of it wasn’t.
And all of it needs to be reimagined.

But ash is not the end. It’s the soil.

Love, like seeds, often grows best when buried—
Not in ease, but in grief.
Not in nostalgia, but in clarity.
Not in the parade, but in the hospice ward.
Not in the anthem, but in the kitchen table conversation between two people who still believe in each other, even when everything else is falling apart.

This is where the future begins.

Not with restoration.

With refusal.

IV. The Sharp Edge of Betrayal

There is no betrayal like the betrayal of something you believed in.

Not the betrayal of a stranger.
Not the betrayal of a party.
But the betrayal of your own idea of home.

I don’t love America because she is good.
I love her because I refuse to let the worst people define what she is.
I love her like I love a wounded friend who lashes out in pain—not with excuse, but with endurance.

I don’t love my fellow citizens because they always deserve it.
I love them because we are bound together in this terrifying, beautiful experiment—and I would rather we rise together than fall apart in isolation.

I love not because it makes sense.

I love because the absence of love would be more unbearable than the betrayal.

V. Staying Soft in a World Gone Hard

There is a brittleness creeping over everything.
A defensive numbness. A shell of sarcasm. A clever cruelty that passes for strength.

You see it in the memes.
You hear it in the laughter that doesn’t reach the eyes.
You feel it in the silence after someone shares something raw and real—and no one knows how to meet them there.

But let me say this with everything I’ve got:

Hardness is not strength.
It is fear dressed in iron.
It is despair pretending not to care.

Stay soft.

Not naïve. Not passive. Not gullible.

Soft enough to feel.
Soft enough to cry.
Soft enough to see beauty, even in the rubble.
Soft enough to still believe in someone else’s redemption, even if your own feels far away.

The tyrants—both the loud ones and the quiet ones—want you numb.
They want you cynical.
They want you to burn out your compassion and replace it with cold calculation.

Do not give them the satisfaction.

Tenderness is not weakness.

It is resistance in its most elemental form.

VI. And If It Cannot Be Saved

What if we lose?

What if democracy cannot be reclaimed?
What if the lies win?
What if the waters rise, the rights vanish, the empire holds?

What then?

Then love anyway.

Because love is not always a tool for salvation.

Sometimes, love is the only dignity left.

I think of the hospice nurse who sings to the dying.
The soldier who carries out the wounded after the retreat has been called.
The mother who plants a tree even as the storm clouds gather.

That is the kind of love we need now.
Not triumphant.
Not victorious.
But true.

Love does not need a future to matter.

It just needs to be real in the present.

VII. To Bless What Has Not Earned It

To love something is to bless it—not with approval, but with awareness.

You bless a child by telling them they are more than what the world sees.
You bless your city by showing up when no one else will.
You bless your country by haunting it with its own promises.

To bless is not to justify.
To bless is not to excuse.
To bless is to say: You are not worthy, but I will act as if you could be. Because that’s the only way anything ever becomes worthy.

This is not a strategy.
This is not optimism.

This is faith without guarantees.

This is hope in the absence of evidence.

This is the ancient, sacred madness of those who love not because it works, but because it is right.

VIII. The Final Ember

You are not weak for feeling broken.
You are not foolish for holding on.
You are not naïve for choosing tenderness in the middle of collapse.

You are simply awake.

And the awake ones—though weary—are the ones who carry the ember.

So carry it.
In your kitchen.
In your work.
In your protest.
In your breath.

Carry it through your grief, through your fury, through your fatigue.

And when someone next to you says, “It’s over,” you answer:

“Maybe. But I’m still here. And I still love. And I will not go out.”

Even if the country does not survive.
Even if the truth is buried.
Even if we lose more than we win.

We still love.
We still bless.
We still burn.

Not to restore the old.

But to make space for what may still be born.

Light your match.

And bless what burns.