The Art of Onward: What is Love Telling You?

spiritual sustenance for February

Hey Blue Roomies. How are you doing?

I’m genuinely asking… inquiring like we did during the early days of covid. Remember that? So full of tender concern we were. We listened for the answer before plowing ahead with the business at hand. It’s a small piece of the pandemic I treasure and hoped would continue. So I’m continuing it, and invite you to do the same. Ask the people you meet how they are. Give the other person as much time and care as they need to answer. Take the time you need to answer as well. That practice matters more than we know how to calculate.

The last several weeks have been profoundly destabilizing for many people I know. Like the friend with the trans kid who’s packing up and leaving the only home that child has ever known because it’s no longer a safe region in which to live. Or the immigrant I know who isn’t leaving her house except to go to work. Or the spouse of a friend who expects to be fired at any moment because his scientific work to keep our planet livable is no longer validated by our government. Or further from home, consider the clinic in Africa providing treatment for kids with tuberculosis—the long line of kids waiting in the sun, three of whom received care before the rest were abruptly turned away when the orders went into effect. Imagine being the parent of child number four in that line. (Even if you believe there’s wasteful spending and we should cut back or be more efficient, how about we use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer?)

Anyway, there’s a lot of free-floating anxiety. Now is a time for courage, which is our world-building value for February in our Art of Onward series. Courage comes in all kinds of forms, which we’ll explore together in our Zoom conversation on Monday, February 24 at noon Eastern.

I’ve admired Karen Wesley’s work for quite some time and think she’ll be a great conversation partner for this one. Karen is an award-winning blogger, writer, community creator, mental health/autism advocate, and contributing writer for the Hogg Foundation of Mental Health, University of Texas. She writes about grief, healing, and resilience from the perspective of a black woman in midlife. Her newsletter is called I Write Hard Things. Kinda says it all, doesn’t it?

Karen Wesley of I Write Hard Things—our guest in February!

Hope you’ll join us in for that gathering in two weeks; Zoom link and complete schedule is below as always.

But before we get there, today’s post is an offering of spiritual sustenance. At risk of sounding like the biggest Pollyanna on the planet, I want to speak love into this moment.

We’ve been in a worship series at the church I serve called Letters from Love, inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert’s newsletter of the same name. Our premise is that scripture is God’s Letter from Love to us. The love we see there isn’t milquetoast; it’s affirming yet challenging, enduring yet dynamic, grounding yet transformational.

As part of that series, I led a mini-retreat via Zoom on a recent evening, guiding people through a process of writing their own letter from love. I shared a series of prompts and exercises that led up to a time when we each wrote a response to the prompt, Dear Love — What would you have me know today?

Our little group found the mini-retreat to be a nourishing, peaceful time—a space we all needed, including this here retreat leader. I recorded my portions of the gathering, and I’m pleased to make it available to you for this month’s spiritual sustenance. It is below.

Before you start this process, I recommend “setting the table”: move to a quiet uninterrupted place in your home, gather any comfort items that help you feel settled and grounded (candle, blanket, beverage), and have a good journal/paper and pen handy. (Hand-writing is recommended over typing for this kind of soul work.)

The recording is about 45 minutes long, but I’d set aside at least 75 minutes for this exercise, because there are places to pause the recording and do your own work.