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Posts tagged ‘kindness’

Jan 28

Dappled with Light and Love

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.”― Kate DiCamillo

Love
Not the surface greeting card stuff
The kind that sticks and stays
That accompanies and sits quietly in grief
That leaps with joy in the wins
And all of the ordinary days in between
Tough, resilient, soft, kind
Sees humanity in others
That does not diminish in disagreement
Nor demand agreement
No lectures, shame, othering, pontificating, I told you so, I was right
Found in small acts
Yielding
Conversation and connection
May you find this kind of love today
And offer it first without condition
Be a helper, a door opener, a homecoming
Cast light, love well

“Do you know what hurts so very much? It’s love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.”― Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Jan 26

Part the Veil

“Be the lighthouse in the ocean.”― Delphanie Frank

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
– Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (Prayer for Peace)

In rupture, seeds of repair.
In grief, roots of love.
In hope, the path forward.
Be kind.
Be present.
Be help.
Be the lighthouse.
Peace. Hope. Love.
Cast light.

“My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other’s presence, each other’s wonder, each other’s human plight.”― Eudora Welty

Jan 23

Poetry of Pause and Presence

“We look about the world, by the light we have made, and realise it’s all vulnerable, and all worth saving, and no one can do it but us.”― Kathleen Jamie, Findings

“The way we are living,
timorous or bold,
will have been our life.”
― Seamus Heaney

Hope and grace
Kindness and laughter
Light and joy
Love

All present in this day, within
Amidst chaos, noise, busy
May we have sense and boldness
To choose these again and again
Over worry, fear, apathy

To love the live we’re shown
For this day will not come again
Poetry of pause and presence
To be made new.

“How perilous is it to choose not to love the life we’re shown?”― Seamus Heaney, Opened Ground

Jan 16

Kindness that Ties Shoes

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing
inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

Love overcomes fear
Wrestles it to the ground
Calling us to kindness
Simple acts
Ripple effects
Compassionat action
Tying shoes
Smile to a stranger
Opening a door
Peace walking in ordinary days
Cast light

“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection – or compassionate action.”― Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

Jan 14

Path of Love

“In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.”― Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

“Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

Long run
Endurance
Daily decisions
To be kind
To care
To not succumb to indifference, to fear
To ask
To listen
To compassion
To go deeper
To understanding
To hope
To take right action
To walk the path of love
Fresh courage, soft heart, gentle spirit, generous heart
Cast light

“No one has ever become poor by giving.”― Anne Frank

Jan 13

Building Bridges

“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.”― Joseph Fort Newton

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”― Bill Bullard

Less assumption, judgment, fear, indifference
More questions, listening, gentleness, humanity
Multiply rather than divide
Compound human interest
Invitation, welcoming, belonging
Kindness, compassion, peace
Build bridges
Make connections
Cast light

“We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for.”― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Jan 11

Open Heart, Beams of Light

“Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.”― Walt Whitman

“You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.”― Wystan Hugh Auden

Reverence. Awe. Wonder.
Right here.
Right now.
More than enough.
Abundant, overflowing.
For a grateful, full, soft heart.
To live awake on ordinary days.
With extraordinary care, love, kindness, light.
May I move it into action with expediency.
Inches, acts, beams.
Cast light.

“To live in the kingdom is to be ready to rub shoulders with all kinds. God’s love is given freely and is accepted by many. I pray for a heart that is open to those who are not like me.”― The Irish Jesuits

Jan 9

North Star

“One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own.”― John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong

“It is a strange and wonderful fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said, ‘Being here is so much,’ and it is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free.”― John O’Donohue

Compassion
Kindness
Generosity
Gentleness
Decency
Humility
Empathy
Humanity
Encouragement
Abiding
Accompanying
Gratitude
Grace
Love
Give, receive, repeat.
Cast light.

“If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”― W.H. Auden

Dec 27

The Work of Christmas

“The Sabbath is the day on which we learn the art of surpassing civilization.”― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath

“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.”
― Howard Thurman

The work of Christmas.
To heal.
To feed.
To release.
To rebuild.
To bring peace.
To make music.
To be kind.
To be grateful.
To be generous.
To cast light.
To love.

“It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and oppressed—this, despite the gospel.”― Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

Dec 16

Illuminate and Animate

“It is not over,
this birthing.
There are always newer skies
into which
God can throw stars.”
― Ann Weems, Kneeling in Bethlehem

“Joy doesn’t demand we silence our grief. It asks us to make just enough room for God to slip in beside it. And sometimes, that tiny crack of space is all joy needs to return.

Blessed are we who cannot fake cheer,
who sing soft instead of loud,
who light blue candles in December
and still hope joy might come.” – Kate Bowler

Hope, light, joy
Even, perhaps especially, on the ground of grief
Thin places and spaces
Cracks for light to enter
Hem of heaven
A particular grace
Throwing stars
Newer skies to illuminate and animate
Once again
Be kind, generous, a warm embrace
You are one of the stars to another’s dark sky
Blessing of a smile, a call, an invitation, place of belonging
A room at the Inn
Cast light.

“Like a thin place, a blessing can help us perceive how heaven infuses earth, inextricable from daily life, even when that life is marked by pain. In the midst of grief, when our loss can make the boundary between worlds feel horribly solid, insurmountable, and permanent, this comes as a particular grace.”― Jan Richardson, The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

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