To the visionaries, the hopefuls, the longing-to-doers.

I’m not going to tell you about the issues – the many issues – of recreated wheels.

Of doing what someone is already doing and calling it being inspired.

Of the confusion and division this causes.

The distraction from the real work.

The work of bringing love.

Because with all issues considered, we still are all in this together, and truly, having options really is a very good thing.

So while you may be inspired by what one organization is already doing, and you’d like to duplicate it or glean from it – the many issues aside for a moment – there can be good to it.

But I offer you today, a word of encouragement.

If your ideas are not founded – founded – founded – in goodness, but if in the founding, there can be deceitfulness found, ill-intentions, selfishness – it will perpetuate the already very prevalent challenges in the work of bringing love.

The issues derived from a founding of works, items or services without a base of integrity mark an already war torn community of bereaved individuals, festers the already vulnerable wounds of division, of a belief in shame, and it parasitically consumes the energy and the hope that individuals have in themselves and in each other.

We are all touched by this.

If you are considering founding a work, an item or a service with an underlying premise of providing love, you will either be the one tempted to found without integrity, or my thoughtful friend, you will become subject to this issue, cast upon you by others.

You will be targeted.  Bullied.  Harassed.  Lied about.

You, and your works.

And it will have not a thing to do with your works.  Or you.
But, dear friend, if you are feeling a call to create something to bring love, it may be that you have yourself been wounded.

And as you read published works that depict you as every hurtful thing under the sun, words and names that touch you in intimate spaces that the accuser could not possibly know not of,  as if hate has been magnetized to your most vulnerable places, you will crumble.

You will fall.

You will weep.  You will wail.  You will be weak.  You will be broken.

And, in those most vulnerable spaces, you will see all of the things that you are guilty of, the sins that you have committed, the ways that you define yourself as bad, and in your most private space, you will believe that you are weak.  You will believe that you are broken.  You will believe that you are the monster that others have crafted you to be.

How can you possibly bring love to others, when you are even conveyed as so horrendous?  If someone could conjure up such articulately precise details of your ugliness, surely it must be true?  Believable, at least?

Oh, my warrior friend.  Before you enter the space I have been brought to and which I will be brought to again, hear me.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen to the message cast against you.  Listen to the accusation.  Listen to the person.

If you are called to be a love bringer, then you will need to bring love.

It’s that devastatingly impossible, and yet it’s just that simple.

Underneath the accusations, underneath the finely manicured words of hate, underneath the pretenses and the malice, there is a heart, that you have the privilege of speaking love to.  Not because you were inspired, not because enough time has passed from your last pain and so you’ve acquired a certain amount of words or phrases or things to say.  But literally from that broken place, from that crumbling, from that chasm, you have an opportunity that you might not be given at any other time.  The opportunity to hear.

Don’t miss it.  Don’t miss it.  Don’t miss it.

The accusations, the slander, the shaming, the projection of guilt, all of these are distractions.  Distractions from the work of bringing love.

And if in time your organization becomes a popular name in any context, know that the name itself becomes a target.  It becomes a hot button word.

It becomes a coat tail.

And the slander, the gossip, the hate thrust upon my coat tail has eaten into my heart.  Some days, I slip into the chasm because of the weight of what’s on my coat tail and I believe the lies.  I believe I am deserving of shame, of accusations, of falsehoods, of hate.  I believe I am deserving of hate.

And how can I ever be a love bringer, if I am deserving of hate?

You can try to shake it off, friend.

You can try to pick apart, to pull apart, to work with manicured precision to remove each weight of hate.

Or, you can simply stand.  If you don’t know how to walk forward with the weight eating at your heart, simply stand.

You will learn to walk again.

And every time you do, you will teach others that they don’t need to eat at hearts in order to stretch their own legs.

And you will bring love.