May We Hear the Words

I’m so grateful to all those writers who have given over their lives to writing about spirituality, compassion, the mind, the heart. To write about how we can be saner, better. My shelves have been full of their works for the past decade, and now my Kindle is too.
 
I remember being 13 or so and seeing Marianne Williamson on Oprah.
 
Marianne had spent years quietly studying and developing her own spirituality and had then written A Return to Love— a simple, elegant, paradigm-shifting book about letting go of living in fear, and returning to love.
 
I watched her on the show. I had never heard anything like this before. ( Even now, hundreds of spiritual books/lectures/retreats later, I don’t think I’ve heard anything like it). I had never heard anyone speak up for love that way — herald and amplify it. I had never heard anyone so passionately stand for the innocence and brilliance and power of all us. I had never seen anyone bring the divine into the room, with such certainty and depth of calm.
 
I bought the book. Right away. I read it. I internalized it. I began living my life by its principles — thinking of my life as surrendered, as a creative partnership with the force of good/love/service.
 
That’s a pretty good way to get over your own small bullshit stuff, to get lifted out of your issues and anxieties and ego obsessions. It was a pretty good way to get through high school with some level of sanity in tact, too.
 
I still have the book, a tattered copy. Somewhere along the way in life I picked up one or two other copies, they are newer and a little less loved, available for lending out to friends and clients.
 
Marianne, thank you.
 
I’m indebted to her, and to all of them, the writers that share a radical spiritual message. The people whose voices counter the cynical chatter of the commentators on the news. The people who say: there is more to this world than meets the eye, so much is possible, from you and within you.
 
May we all lean toward the voices that open us, that lift us, that soften our hearts, that soothe our hurts, that allow us to rest peacefully on this bumpy ride. May we hear the words that remind us where we came from and who we are.
 
Love,
 
Tara