None of us know what might happen even the next minute,
yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.Paulo Coelho
From Eat, Pray, Love to Big Magic to City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert’s work has been a personal journey of discovery. To be in the room at her Perth event with Business Chicks earlier this month was a privilege.
The conglomeration of ideas, emotion, experience, and a mystical move of energy and light that tugged at my heart made it a transcendent experience. I felt as if I’d been to church and God had reached down and touched me. Sometimes, God uses our humanity, our story, our shared mystical moments to touch others and this is what Elizabeth Gilbert brought to the room.
God comes to us in many ways. God is light, life, and love, and so much more. God can speak through nature, through a holy book, or through a person who shares their story.
Since that day, less than a month ago, a LOT has happened. The Covid-19 pandemic has spread around the world and changed it forever. The encouragement Elizabeth Gilbert gave on that day has stayed with me and I could write for days about all she said, but there were a few things I’d like to share with you.
Being in a room with a couple of hundred women, a couple of my closest creative friends, and Elizabeth Gilbert, one of our favourite girlfriends (even though she doesn’t know it!) was a gift.
Amanda, Jodie, and I blogged about Big Magic when it came out in an online book club and we often quote what Liz posted on Instagram or what she’s saying to Oprah or written in her latest book as if we just had coffee with her the other day.
Liz has definitely shared our creative ups and downs, cheered us on, inspired our creative paths and, for the first time, we were actually in the same room, in the real world.
What transpired over two hours of storytelling left us with tears in our eyes, wordless wonder, and gratefulness to have been there together.
I know I’m rhapsodising and probably making some of you doubt my sanity, but some people’s purpose in the world is to put words on feelings, to articulate things that we innately know but can’t quite say, to leave us in speechless wonder, and help us acknowledge that, ‘It’s all going to be all right.’
What resonated with me most that day was Liz’s calm voice telling us that there is power in being the calmest person in the room. That if we tell ourselves it’s all going to be all right, we can relax.
When we say that everything is going to be all right, we don’t mean perfect or unchanged or the way we expect it will be, we mean that we will come out the other side–hopefully stronger, wiser, and kinder.
In these uncertain days, we need to tap into the collective wisdom of those around us. We need to limit the number and ensure the quality of voices we listen to in these days of isolation and fear. We need to listen to the ones who are quiet and sure and steady.
In this time when we are unsure of what’s happening and why and how to make meaning out of it, I’m sitting here in wordless wonder at the world in all of its beauty and complex uncertainty.
I’m believing that there is a God and, like Liz, I’m telling myself, ‘It’s all going to be all right.’
Collateral Beauty
Today’s Collateral Beauty is found in the words of poet, Morgan Harper Nichols. I found beauty in these words and I hope you do as well.
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