by Rev. Elizabeth Rowley,
Spiritual Director
August 30, 2019
When I was a little girl, I went on a day trip with my grandma Ginny. She loved to have fun and was very adventurous. This time we were going on a train ride with open top railway cars through the Santa Cruz mountains. There was an older woman on the train seated next to me who shared the story of her declining health with me. I remember feeling very sad as I listened to her. I told her that I didn’t know what to say. She asked me this: “What does your heart want to say?” My heart wanted to say, “I love you,” which I said, and she teared up and thanked me. What a unique and defining moment that was for me. One which I have never forgotten and this happened when I was seven years old.
Speaking from the heart can be vulnerable and takes courage. I grew up sharing from my heart openly and unabashedly. As I matured, I was told by others that I wore my heart on my sleeve, and I ought not to do that, which caused me to believe that it was a bad thing to speak from the heart. I stopped doing so for a few years, which caused me to feel closed off, isolated, inauthentic, and stifled. That didn’t last long because the love that lives within me wanted to be shared and spoken.
When you speak from the heart, from love, it is a gift you give to others and yourself. It is a very liberating feeling to share the love that lives within you.
The love that lives within you is Divine Love. When you feel the love of, or feel love for your partner, parents, children, friends, etc., you are experiencing this love that lives within you. You are experiencing the Divine. It’s an irresistible cosmic force that comes from the deepest place within you. Let this love cast out fear. Allow yourself to live, move, and have your being in and from this love. Turn up the love dial and send it out to all you know, into your neighborhood, city, state, nation, overseas, the planet, the universe, multiverse, cosmos, and beyond the great beyond. There’s plenty to go around!
Jalal al-Din Rumi, 12th-century Persian poet, and Sufi master observed that “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Perhaps there are barriers ingrained in you from society, social or family structures while you were growing up. See if you can locate any barriers within built against love. Bless and thank them for getting you to where you are today and shine the light of love upon them, allowing them to dissolve. The world needs your love.
In closing, I ask you this: “What does your heart want to say?”
Now say it!!
And so it is.