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March Newsletter: A Letter From Love
🕑 Added 2024-03-01 16:00:13 +0000 UTC(For this month, I'm sharing my first foray into two-way prayer, or as Liz Gilbert calls them, "letters from love". You write the question, then wait to get written back to. I've continued this practice daily since this one.)
Love, what would you have me know today?
Today, when you typed this question out, you looked at it and cried. Or rather, you did your best attempt to try and cry, letting out sobbing breaths as you massaged your dry eyes. The only things that came up were: This sucks. It hurts. It’s cold. So you went back to your bedroom, turned the space heater and electric blanket on, and got back into bed. You asked the question again, in your head: Love, what would you have me know today? You waited for stillness, peace and clarity to come, and instead you felt sick to your stomach. Eventually you turned the podcast back on you’d been listening to, around the same time that the workers at the apartment next door to yours turned their leaf blowers on. You turned up the volume on your computer and listened as Liz Gilbert talked to the hosts of We Can Do Hard Things about the mystical power of love. Amanda Doyle was about to read her letter to love, and you hoped it might spark something inside yourself. Just as she began to read, suddenly the whine of the leaf blowers reached a deafening pitch. The invisible leaf blower guy had to be right outside your window, or from the sound of it, right beside your bed. You gave up, turned the podcast off, and listened to the awful, stuttery leaf-blower engine.
That was the right choice, because that leaf blower guy was not hired by the apartment next to yours - he was an angel sent by me directly to your window in order to convey this message to you. Sometimes we get peace and stillness. Sometimes we get that hour at the beach, looking into the perfect blue waves. And it’s beautiful. And sometimes, we get the leaf-blowers outside the apartment while your favorite podcast blasts ads you can’t skip because you’re lying on your stomach with a heating pad on your shoulders. And you know what? That’s pretty fucking funny. And I know you like to laugh.
That’s the thing: I made you to experience both things. I made you to like both things. The beauty of stillness, and the comedy of commotion. The richness of the inner soul, and the ridiculous absurdities of what people do every day. I made you to like both and choose neither, to hold and carry both. When you miss that inner richness, and you cry for it, those tears are the start of laughter. They carry the water of that deep ocean of stillness into those lives of chaos that you love so much. You bear that water for everyone who sits down to try and be still, and instead hears the sounds of leaf-blowers. When you sit and listen to that leaf-blower, you’re hearing it with all of them, for all of them. Someday, there will be a beach, there will be a sunrise, there will be something you never even thought of that will bring you back into that stillness. Today, there are leaf-blowers, and letters from a ridiculous love that bring tears to your eyes, tears that feel joyful this time. Trust me: life is funny.
Comments
Greylyn Morningstar
I keep thinking about this one. Life is so unexpected sometimes. Four years ago I fell down my stairs and hurt my back in a way that profoundly changed my life. For the first six months, I spent most of my day in bed. I tried any drug I could to make the pain bearable. And when I was in bed I felt so horribly trapped in the fear that this would be the reality of the rest of my life. It was in this state that I was able to access an inner spiritual life. In that period of convalescence and disconnection from my body I found inside me a seeking passion, and I came alive in a different way. I started drawing again, I started reading again. Today, as my pain is lessened and I have learned to care for it, I haven't lost the wisdom I gained from it. I learned that there is in fact a part of me that is unkillable that will meet me wherever I am, even among muscle spasms and leaf blowers. Today I wrote my first letter from love. Thank you for sharing yours ❤️
Meggie
opal !! <3
Raíssa Leão
I can almost hear your voice listening to this. Your love and longing for life pours out and spills from your words. Life is funny and very simple at the end of the day; we’re all very simple, but we do love making things more complex from time to time. So that we can cry. Or laugh.
everette
life is funny, makes me think of the buddhist monk who put fireworks in his pocket, knowing his death was coming soon. during the traditional burial when the other monks sit him aflame (in the clothes he was wearing at the time of death), the fireworks went off, making everybody laugh with tears of joy.
damian
read this on the bus while coming home yesterday. made me tear up. got home, reread it and teared up again. it's now 3 a.m. and here i am. i consider myself to be a melodramatic person, but not necessarily in a bad way: i just tend to incoporate my feelings in every situation i go through, in every landscape i look to... especially loneliness (i live in the most populous city of southern hemisphere, after all... it gets pretty lonely sometimes.) i try to let all of that flow right through me but sometimes all i get is public transportation noises overlapping the music i'm trying to listen to on my headphones, or my cats knocking my stuff off my desk, and you're right: it's funny. life is funny. thanks for sharing this! made me think about the perspective from which i see my own life, once again.
Two Snails in a Snenchcoat
Every post on patreon is such a treat, I always receive great insights that stick with me. Thank you :)
Bita
I agree, life is really funny. For some of us life is a sitcom, don't spend your entire afternoon being mad about it. Just laugh it off.
duke
It’s so so hard to let life be funny. Genuinely did bring a tear to my eye, but things will get better. Things have to get better.
Holiday
I’d think my cat is my guardian angel, he always finds the perfect time to disrupt my pain with annoyance and scratching at the door
opal !
❤️❤️ :(
con
this is gorgeous, thank you for sharing. It is absurdly important to recognize the duality in ways we can feel joy. if even for a brief moment in the fast pace nature life tends to be.
Holiday
Lol I see this when I listen to your music before work and put myself into a state, and before I leave my neighbors upstairs start playing Justin Bieber on full blast and distract me enough to change my mood for the duration of my day. Does that cycle not get exhausting?
bluekrby
this is my favorite so far, thanks for sharing this
Thom Pyle
A really comforting, reassuring, human read. Thanks Will peace and love ❤️‼️
Avi Hessel
this is beautiful, thank you so much for sharing!
Holiday
Hiiiii good morning
