LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Rowan Mangan!

Where too hard and too soft intersect

Dear Lovelets!

My beloved friend, the poet and author and podcaster and teacher Rowan Mangan, is our special guest this week, sharing a letter from Love that poured out of her as a sweet and sacred and gorgeous poem that is equal parts a howl of anguish at the terrifying state of the world, and a tender and affectionate balm for the anxious human heart.

What else could Unconditional Love BE but that?

ALL OF THAT.

Love is both the cry in the dark and the answer to that cry — all at once.

Again and again over the years, Love has reminded me that the world is not necessarily designed for human security or comfort. Never, ever, were security and comfort promised — at least not when truth was being spoken. But peace can be found anyway, we are assured, simply by asking for help from within, from above, from the ineffable, invisible, unflappable and mysterious ALWAYS/NOW.

At the heart of every spiritual tradition and wisdom tradition the world has ever experienced, this truth is known.

Let us know it for ourselves today, okay?

And please, please enjoy Roey’s rapturous and beautifully delivered poem.

It is everything.

YOU ARE EVERYTHING.

Love,

Your Lizzy

Dear Love, how can I find shelter from the storm?

Precious little walnut brain, here’s the thing: you can’t. You can’t find shelter from the storm.

But here’s the other thing: also, you can. You can find shelter from the storm.

Stay with me, as I know you will, because I know my baby girl loves herself a paradox, because she knows that God is always and only to be found within the giant, limitless arena of paradox. So here comes another one, and I trust you can follow along.

First, why you can’t find shelter from the storms of the world, the storms of your life: because you aren’t supposed to. You aren’t supposed to, and also you cannot. Remember what the monk in India taught you, that if you dig the deepest hole in the world and hide in it, the world will still find you.

What he meant was: your destiny will still find you. You cannot escape your soul’s curriculum here in Earth School, even if you make the biggest pillow fort to bury yourself under. What is meant to happen is going to happen, and there is no stopping it. As your first sponsor told you, “Nobody’s tomorrows are promised. You could get hit by a car on your way to a funeral. So stop worrying.”

Honey, you can be the most careful, cautious person in the world, making choices from the data assiduously gathered to within an inch of its life, running all the scenarios and outcomes a million times over in your head, still trying to control every single detail, and still — destiny will find its way to your house, like cockroaches or beach sand. It knows where you live. There is no keeping it out.

Strangely, beloved, this is good news.

It means you don’t have to work quite so hard to stay safe, or to control the world in such a way that it is no longer dangerous for you or others. The world as you perceive it with your senses was never designed to be safe. That’s not its job. Never was.

The world is doing exactly what the world is supposed to be doing, and I would suggest that you give the world back to itself, every time you find yourself exhausting your little human mind and body by trying to steer everything in a different direction — namely, a direction that would be more relaxing for you.

How about you cut out the middleman — meaning, how about you stop trying to alter the world in order to find peace, and just find peace?

Because here is the really good news. The other side of the paradox is that you CAN find shelter from the storm, but not in the ways or places or people or outcomes of the world. Conveniently, we have placed shelter within you, not outside of you. We decided that the safest place to store your hideaway was in the deepest recesses of your being — where it can always be resourced, not in some billionaire’s bunker underneath Antarctica where you only think you can be safe.

Come and find shelter inside your mind, little one. You know it’s there. You have experienced inner peace — another word for shelter from the storm — in the most unlikely of places. You have found it in cancer wards of hospitals; in funeral homes; in a three-hour line at a border patrol; entering a country when you are exhausted after an 11-hour flight; in the middle of an argument; in the hour after someone told you that they never wanted to see you again and didn’t love you; in a divorce court; watching your partner’s body go into the cremation flames; the day after the election results were announced; in a stalled elevator in the dark.

How did you find that peace? You sat. You settled. You breathed. You called my name and ask for guidance. And I gave you the key to the inner sanctuary — the only shelter you will ever know.

Your shelter is, to quote your beloved Byron Katie, a mind at home with itself. This is your work going forward, tiny soldier — to build yourself a shelter made of your own serenity, and nothing more will do.

One day at a time, I will show you how.

This does not mean I will leave you alone to handle the storms of the world in your terrified solitude. Ask me for help in your waking hours in what you call the problems of the real world and I will help you.

I will show you who to walk toward and what to walk away from. I will show you where you can serve, and where you must surrender all control. I will show you how to not waste your time trying to move immovable boulders, and when to push with all your might. I will show you where the secret lever is that changes everything, but always it’s within.

Don’t try to turn off the storms, my love. Just lean into my voice, angel. My voice is shelter from the storm. My voice. This union. This knowing. This peace. Nothing less, and nothing else.

All you need is already in your hands, between your ears, in your heart.

That’s all, dearie. Have a beautiful day, come what may.

I love you.

Prompt

If you are also feeling that sometimes, it’s all just too much — too much external and internal noise and doing and happening, I invite you to join me in posing this question: Dear Love, how can I find shelter from the storm? And as always, if that doesn’t feel quite right, you can instead pose the question that has never yet failed me: Dear Love, what would you have me know today?

I am thrilled to announce the Onward Book Club’s first in-person event! My conversations with authors are usually conducted on Instagram live, but on September 11th the one and only Jesmyn Ward will join me at Symphony Space in NYC to discuss her latest novel, LET US DESCEND, as we celebrate its paperback release. You can find all the info and tickets here: Symphony Space. I hope to see some of you there!