LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Emma Gannon!

Ask how, not why

Dear Lovelies: 

Many years ago, when I was suffering through a terrible season of pain and losses, I started asking Love a lot of questions that began with the word “why.” I wanted to know why such hard things were happening, and I also wanted some detailed information and predictions about when all the suffering would all end. But Love had no answers for me. As Love told me many years ago, “Sweetheart, that’s not my department.”

So what is Love’s department? What is its role?

I believe that Love’s role is to bring us comfort during the terrible storms of life. 

I believe this, because that is what Love has assured me many times that it is here to do — to provide comfort, solace, company, and encouragement in the darkest hours. 

And that is no small thing.

The more comforted I can be by Love, the more Love I am capable of bringing into this exhausted world.

And that, too, is no small thing.

My prompt for this week is to get some rest, dear ones. I’ve been reading that instruction again and again in your letters, and it seems now almost like Love’s commandment: Rest, rest, rest.

I love you all very much. Be well, Lovelies, and thank you for your infinite hearts.

Dear Love, what would you have me know?

My love, my child. When you are sick, rest. When you are tired, lie down. When you are sad, weep. When you need nourishment, eat. When you are lonely, reach for people. And when there are no people, reach for me.

Take care of yourself this week, my little sneezy, coughing one — but don’t make a fetish out of being sick. Don’t let your mind spin big dramatic stories about how doomed you are because this is the third lung infection you’ve had this year. There’s just something going on, my dear. There are things going around, and you are getting them. And that’s okay.

I’ve told you this before, and I will tell you this again: the body is the simplest part of human embodiment. It just does what bodies do. They’re born, they grow, they get sick, they get well, they get sick again. They’re vulnerable to things. Eventually they decay, and then they die. This is just a natural process — nothing could be more natural than these processes. So. Don’t fetishize being sick.

The hard part of human embodiment is not the body, but the mind. Dealing with and handling the strong emotions and stories that the mind generates around the body, and around the world.

My little tiny wheezing bluebird — I live in your heart, but I speak to your mind. And I am here to calm you. I am here to comfort you. Your mind has become troubled this week with concerns big and small, intimate and global. You struggle for clarity and perspective, and you suffer in your “why” questions — just as you have always suffered when you ask “why” questions.

Rest the spinning helicopter blades of your thoughts and sit with me, again in this moment. Here we are again, in this moment. Here we find ourselves again, after all these years together, in the stillness. Again.

My dearest one, I have no answers for your questions. As you know, answers are not my department. I am Love. My job is to love you through all your moments, and to be comfort in the dark hours. To be with you, as you journey through this sometimes very frightening incarnation. Most of all, I am here to speak from your heart to your mind, as though it were a troubled child, which it is.

My cherished baby, the world outside shows no sign of coming into peace and coherence anytime soon. As the outside world becomes more incoherent, and as your aging body becomes more difficult to manage, internal coherence will be ever more vital. Ever more vital. Keep me closer than ever, and ask me to settle your fears and sorrows. I will never not be here. I will quiet your storms, so that, when opportunities arise for you to be of service, you will be of service — rested, sane, sober, and present. I have always used you where I’ve needed you. I’ve settled and calmed you, so you can settle and calm others. And bring stillness. And in that stillness, and in that comfort, we heal.

A prompt for this week (and beyond)

Rest. Then rest some more.

And if you missed Tricia Hersey, the Nap Bishop herself, speak with me about her book REST IS RESISTANCE on the Onward Book Club, check it out here!