LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guests: Lawhill Maritime Centre Students!

What does it long to be told?

Dear Lovelets —

I’ve been writing myself a daily letter from the Spirit of Unconditional Love for over twenty years now, and sometimes the voice that comes through gets cheeky. It likes to razz me a little bit, knock me on the side of the head, tease me for how dense I can be to really get it — to understand once and for all how loved I am, and how all the love that I will ever need can be generated from within me, without anyone else ever needing to be part of it.

Sometimes that spirit looks back at the wild and depraved and desperate things I’ve done across the journey of my life, trying to convince people to love me. It reflects upon all the years I spent trying to, like, EXTRACT love from one person after another — as though love is a rare and precious resource that only that one singular person had, and without it, that one person’s love, I would die a wretched death.

The Spirit of Unconditional Love (what we call SOUL around here) looks back at all that and says, “Seriously? You thought you needed to get your love sourced from that guy? THAT guy? You thought THAT was the fountain?”

And sometimes SOUL goes on to say this:

“Dude, no offense to that guy, but he didn’t even have any love for himself. How in the name of heaven was he going to deliver any to you?”

And furthermore:

“Why would we have hidden all the love you needed inside the being of somebody else, and then make you go hunting all over the world for it? Is that how you think things work around here? That’s LITERALLY CRAZY. That doesn’t even make any sense. Why would we make it so hard and dangerous for you?”

In fact, it was crazy, it did not make any sense, and it was hard and dangerous for me. Because I simply could not understand that the fountain of love is within me.

Once again, SOUL chimes in to say: “OF COURSE THE FOUNTAIN OF LOVE IS WITHIN YOU! WHERE ELSE WOULD WE PUT IT, DUMMY?! (The Spirit of Unconditional Love calls me “dummy” affectionately, don’t worry. We’ve been together a long time. We can tease each other pretty loosely at this point.)

Seriously, though — where else could an infinite source of love be found, if not within each one of us? And often, of course, it’s the last place we think to look for it. Here we are, begging for drops of love from the world, when our own hearts are a limitless reservoir.

Our special guests this week are brought to us by LFL alumnus Arshay Cooper, whose heart is an infinite ocean of compassion — but who had to start doing this practice of writing himself letters from Love before he learned to drink from that source himself, rather than just pouring it out upon others.

This week, Arshay comes to us from Simon’s Town, South Africa — where he developed a rowing program and serves as a mentor to a very special group of kids at the Lawhill Maritime Centre, a career training program for high schoolers. Arshay shared our practice with a group of teenagers, and, like magic, they were all open to not just writing letters, but reading them aloud to one another and to us. They allowed themselves to be beautifully vulnerable, and the secret formula is: Arshay asked. That’s it. I hope you will enjoy what Love had to say through these wonderful kids.

And I hope you will watch this powerful video about Arshay and Lawhill — it’s a tribute to the strength and heart that we can find in community.

To Arshay, Lawhill Maritime students, and all of you: let’s keep going!

Love,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know today?

Oh, how exciting! The question that started it all! The question that starts it all — the question that summons us, that opens the portal, that lets Love in. The heart-flooder, the mind-fodder, the mother and the father. Here we go.

Sweetheart. Good job.

That’s what we want to say to you today: GOOD JOB.

You say it all the time to Pepita — praising her with warmth and enthusiasm every time she sits for a treat, or runs to you when you whistle, or even when she jumps up successfully on the couch, and often when she’s doing nothing at all. You just come over and gather her tiny head in your hands and kiss her forehead and you tell her what a great job she’s doing, how incredible she is, how much you love her, how beautiful and perfect she is, how proud of her you are. And she smiles up at you, because you know she understands.

But do YOU understand?

How long has it been since you heard those words — good job! — directed to yourself, in your own mind?

Striver, seeker, our most ambitious sprite, goal-setter: listen. Sit with us for a moment. Let us gather your head in our hands. And please consider what a good job you have done.

You found us.

This is what we want to praise you for. Love-hungry, love-starved, full of shame and fear — you found us. You asked for love, and we arrived and spoke to you, comforted you and guided you. And here is the kicker: you made the decision to believe that this is real. That we are real. You make the decision every single day to believe you are being spoken to, even right this moment, by invisible agents — a coalition, a host, an army — of extraordinary grace and power.

You didn’t have to do any of that, kiddo. You didn’t have to seek us, you didn’t have to find us, and you didn’t have to believe that we are true.

You were not raised to believe in anything that could not be seen, held, calculated, measured, or proven. Your culture further taught you what worth really meant — and it was, again, only that which could be seen, held, calculated, measured, proven (and let’s just say it: bought and sold for profit, no matter how much misery that profit might bring).

But here we are, twenty years into our invisible and unprovable relationship. And here you are, still believing in our love for you, and still making this not only the central spiritual and creative practice of your life, but also centering us as the most important relationship you have. Here you are still knowing this is all you will ever need, that we are all you need, as you move through the often blindsiding, ever-wild, earth-shattering, terrifying changes of life.

And this is why you are okay, when once you were so, so far from okay.

You are the evidence itself, sweetheart, of what a daily administration of Unconditional Love can do to a human spirit. And you are also the evidence that nobody’s got to give it to you; that you don’t have to tap dance anymore for anyone’s approval or understanding; that you don’t have to go out there anymore with a begging bowl, pleading for somebody to see you and take care of you; that you don’t even have to worry. That all of it, all the nourishment you could ever need, this banquet of love, is available at each moment, generated from within you and from without, from above, below, all around — all of it available by simply asking the question: Dear Love, what would you have me know today?

We would have you know that we delight in you. You are our favorite. And yes, to your joy, you have read those exact words “you are our favorite” show up in so many letters by so many Lovelets over the last year, as the Spirit of Unconditional Love reaches them, too, and speaks to them just as it has always spoken to you, telling each and every one of them the holy, absolute truth. That they, too, are our favorite.

All we have around here are favorites, honey.

And all we want to say is: good job, good job, good job.

Let’s keep going, bright heart.

Let’s see this thing all the way to the end. And the end doesn’t even exist.

Prompt

Whether you’ve been here since the beginning of this project 18 months ago or you’re new to this space (welcome!), you know by now that the question I spontaneously and desperately asked out loud decades ago will always serve us well. And so, this week let’s get back to basics and find the answer to this: Dear Love, what would you have me know today?