SOUL MAIL Sunday: Know You Are Love
Welcome once again to SOUL MAIL Sunday, this 30th day of August, 2026.
The thread that has tied together all the happenings of this week has been the SOUL MAIL message for today: Know You Are Love.
Three main questions arose and wove themselves through my week.
The first question was:
What do we do with the past?
My son sent me a text sharing that he was aiming to be creative in how he could use the past to help shape a better world, while not allowing fear to control him. What a wonderful intention!
Although we may have many cherished memories, digging into old wounds and painful memories can trigger fear and sometimes get in the way of our creativity.
My nature friends started talking to me.
The gecko from my front porch became a color-shifter, similar to the shape-shifting Maui character in the new Moana movie that I saw with my grandsons this week. Just like the music and drum beats I loved accompanying Maui's shape-shifting, I loved the rainbow of colors the gecko seemed to present every time I came upon him.
These experiences triggered memories of my dad's father, who was once a percussionist in a Radio City orchestra. When he retired, our home became filled with his percussion instruments, which my brother and I enjoyed using.
Later in life, when my grandfather learned that I was planning to get married, he did not accept my husband because he was a person of color. He refused to welcome us into his life, never visited with me again, and never met his great-grandchildren.
Years later, while looking through old family photographs, I discovered a photo of him and his orchestra in blackface, intended to mock and demean Black people.
I felt shocked and embarrassed. I tore it up and threw it away.
I had to do a lot of forgiveness work.
Today I am able to look again at my grandfather's history and recognize what I want to carry forward—and what I don't.
He passed on his love of music and rhythm to my dad, my brother and me, my children, and my grandsons.
But I do not want his racism to take space within myself.
I saw the hatred of racism in the news this week when I learned about a store display resembling the racist minstrel shows and blackface imagery of my grandfather's era. I choose to continue boycotting such stores and to be part of the light that supports the transformation of systems that still promote racism.
There may be parts of our past that are painful or shaming.
Perhaps we can learn that we don't have to deny them, erase them, relive them, or allow them to control us.
We can inherit something without inheriting everything.
This led to the second question:
Why do we fear the darkness inside and all around us, and how can we keep fear from controlling us?
Mother Nature sent me another messenger: a large cockroach high on the kitchen wall.
Its message was to take a deeper look into the darkness.
I returned to my bug-store ally. I learned more about using an invisible bait spray indoors to allow the remaining ants and roaches to carry it back to their nests, as well as using outdoor roach granules for those trying to enter my home.
But I also realized that I needed to do some good old-fashioned deep cleaning of those dark places where dust, debris, old stuff, and insects collect—under kitchen appliances and sinks, inside closets, in corners of the garage, and elsewhere.
When we explore the idea of darkness, we discover that it isn't necessarily an enemy of light.
Darkness can actually be a place of gestation, where things develop—a baby in the womb or a seed underground. We restore ourselves in the darkness of sleep. The peaceful darkness of meditation allows SOUL MAIL messages to emerge from an inward, unseen place.
The thunderstorms we experienced this week arrived with darkness, wind, and rain. The wind cleared trees and left debris on the ground, while the rain nourished the earth.
But there is another kind of darkness—the kind that accumulates.
Metaphorically, there is a darkness in our country in which old wounds, greed, hatred, racism, resentment, excess wealth, and whatever we allow to accumulate can begin to interfere with life.
One kind of darkness gives life, while another can obstruct it.
Not all darkness needs to be conquered. But some darkness has become debris that needs to be cleared.
It requires getting our hands dirty and doing some hard work.
Maybe it is in the greatest darkness of human behavior that we learn to see and appreciate the truth.
I appreciate the Hispanic landscaping crew in my community, led by Leo, who cleared the storm debris from the tennis courts so that we could get healthy exercise. I am grateful that, despite the language barriers, we have gotten to know, communicate with, and appreciate one another.
I also decided this week to answer a call from a respected civil rights leader and member of the clergy to help organize people in my neighborhood to build community and support one another as we walk together to the midterm voting polls.
I met a young woman at dinner with my yoga group who came here from Mexico many years ago and became a U.S. citizen, but has never voted. She would like help registering to vote.
Somehow all of this activity fits together and means something profound.
I read the SOUL MAIL Know You Are Love, and it seems to be pointing toward an answer to the question of how we keep fear from controlling us.
Perhaps it is rooted in the depths of the human soul and in the creation of nature around us.
And now the third and last question has come:
What does the power of love within us ask us to do?
This is when today's SOUL MAIL message begins to speak to us.
Love is not something we merely feel. It is something dynamic from which we live, create, respond, remember, change, and act. It isn't simply something being given to us. It is something already at the core of who we are—and something we continually make manifest through what we do.
We actually see and experience love happen:
Leo and his landscaping crew clearing storm debris so people can play tennis.
Finding ways to communicate across a language barrier.
A yoga friend from Mexico who became a citizen wanting to vote for the first time and accepting an offer of help.
Responding to an invitation to help my neighborhood organize and support one another as we walk to the voting polls.
My friends responding to SOUL MAIL messages and telling me that they helped them reconsider their own family relationships.
My friend Cheryl using my Ribbon in the Sky painting, which I gifted to her, to hang in a room where she will be leading a Women's Support Group.
Stevie Wonder: RIbbon in the sky - watercolor collage - 2002
These are all examples of the same question: What does love look like when it gets up off the page and enters the world?
Maybe this week's answer isn't a list of instructions.
Maybe it's simply:
Know you are love—and then notice what love asks you to do.
It may ask us to:
Create.
Listen.
Remember.
Release.
Clean.
Speak.
Set boundaries.
Build community.
Help someone find their voice.
Protect what is vulnerable.
Keep making something new.
Perhaps the challenge isn't to become someone who has never experienced darkness or fear.
Instead, it is to become someone who can move through darkness and fear without becoming them—and at the same time make life more possible.
And now I come back to my experience hearing Moana in song, reminding me of the idea that we may hear a voice whispering inside us—a voice that is uniquely our own and cannot be silenced.
Today's SOUL MAIL reminds us that who we truly are is LOVE.
You may view the SOUL MAIL image and read or listen to the poetic message below.
To know I am love may take practice.
I know I am love, so I don't have to let fear make my decisions.
I can set a boundary without becoming hard.
I can face painful history without becoming trapped in it.
I can care for others without abandoning myself.
I can act when action is needed.
I can rest when rest is needed.
I can make room for something new.
May we remember that knowing we are love isn't merely something we think.
It is something we practice.
And perhaps, as we move through the coming week, we can simply ask:
What is love asking me to do now?
