The more time I spend in isolation, the more important the channeling of this morning blog has felt to me. By channeling I mean that it is such a conscious time of listening for what Love wants me to hear and share with the world. It is the kind of conscious listening and leaning that I am trying to bring to my whole day and night.
Often before I go to sleep I invite Love to tell me what I need to hear. That’s what happened last night. And then sometime during my toss-and-turn night I heard this:
Use this quote as the title of the blog: Now We Go Forth.
That’s perfect, I thought in my half sleep, half waking state. I love that quote.
But when I woke up this morning, I had no idea why it was so perfect or even where the quote was from.
So I Googled it, thinking i knew the source. But it wasn’t there. So I Googled a little more deeply, and this is what I found. . . a series of prayers from a variety of places and times:
Go forth into the world in peace;
Be of good courage, Hold fast that which is good,
Render to no one evil for evil.
Go forth into the world in peace.Strengthen the fainthearted,
support the weak,
Help the afflicted,
Honor all persons.
And now may we go forth
in the certainty of faith,
in the knowledge of love,
and in the vision of hope.
And in our going, may we be blessed
with all good things on this day
and forevermore.
I’ve had no plans to go forth right now. I have a full plate of client deadlines that have to be met. So I have been holding in my heart those who are protesting. Holding them in Love. Holding those policing the protests in Love. Holding the leaders who feel they have to make decisions about those protests in Love.
I spent a lot of my youth protesting in anger — and was hauled out of protests by police. But because I was a white woman, that was all that happened. I was dragged off, given a stern talking to, and released. More recently when I have marched, I have marched in peace.
So I’ve been praying to know how to participate in raising my voice in Love for Truth other than in these posts. Just as I have been praying deeply about the lack of Love-based leadership and am filled with gratitude for the voices who are courageously speaking the Truth to evil.
I have been praying to listen for what else I am being asked to do.
So is the title of this blog that came through my answer?
I don’t know. Which means more listening, leaning and prayer.
And I think that’s the whole point. I won’t know if I don’t keep listening.
And whatever answer comes, what these prayers I found give me the answer of how to go forth: Holding fast to Love. Honoring all persons in the knowledge of Love. To bring strength and courage and hope and healing. In Love.
We are all emerging from isolation. And as we move out into the world we are all being asked to return as different people than we were three months ago. We are all asked to go forth in Love, in wholeness, with less and less focus on our own agendas and more and more attention to the healing of our world.
What is surfacing now is what we have all tried to ignore. The radical inequalities that have been foundational. And the only way those inequalities are ever going to heal is if we go forth in everything we do led by Love, listening to Love, leaning into Love. If we recognize that hate and fear divide us. And then we invite the Love into each of our lives that always unites us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life, mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows.”
As we each begin to go forth more and more into the world, we have only one imperative: Go forth in Love. Love one another. Love this planet. Love our world whole.
So for me, that’s message enough. To let that be today’s practice of we: Go forth in Love. Love everyone I meet. Love this planet. Love this world whole.