Courage Empowers Our Kindness Journey Courage takes you out of your comfort zone and into your power center. Dr. Debra Reble Many people think that kindness is a wishy washy way of living. Quite the contrary, kindness is a powerful force for good in the world, and it becomes an even greater force when empowered by courage. The word “courage” comes from the French word “oeur”, which means “heart.” By […]
Embrace Curiosity on Your Kindness Journey If you understand each other, you will be kind to each other. John Steinbeck This is an update of a previous post. It is #4 of our series: The 9 Cs of Kindness. We all make judgments about others, based on attitudes we acquired from our families or from our own experiences. Over time, they become a part of us. When we withhold kindness […]
We’re All Connected in the Web of Life We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness. Thich Nhat Hanh As I write this, the world is watching the daily unfolding of horrors in Ukraine, as the war continues. The massive destruction of cities and infrastructure is hard to watch, and our hearts go out to the millions of people who have lost their homes, their livelihood, and the […]
Commitment to Kindness Becomes a Way of Life Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Maya Angelou When we make the choice to live with kindness, we are choosing a way of life that invites us to think differently about how we meet each day. That choice brings with it a commitment to start where we are […]
Living with Kindness Is a Choice What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. – Jane Goodall – As Larry and I continue to explore what it means to us to live with kindness, we have discovered that there are several aspects of the kindness path that are defined by words that begin with the letter C. Here […]
You’ve Got to Be Taught to Hate and Fear If people can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Nelson Mandela Recently, Larry and I were discussing our concerns about the increasing expressions of hatred and fear of others in our country. We realize that this has been an ongoing part of our history, […]
Love or Fear – What Do You Choose? What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. – Jane Goodall This moment is an opportunity to look at our lives and to evaluate where we are and what we choose to create in the new year. What do we see when we look at our world today? We see […]
Candles Light Our Celebrations In times of deep darkness, we not only need light, we need to be light for one another. Parker J. Palmer At this time of uncertainty for many people, we want to focus on things that sustain us and bring us peace and joy. Many of us are uplifted by our spiritual traditions. We want to acknowledge three celebrations happening at this time – […]
Reflections on Giving and Receiving When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed. Maya Angelou This is a season of giving and receiving. In our hurried lives, we often get so caught up with the making or buying, then wrapping and maybe mailing of gifts, that it becomes more of a chore than a celebration. For many people, the season brings unfulfilled expectations, or feelings of guilt […]
You are Creating the Future, Not Just for Your Life, but for the World We can’t heal the world today, but we can begin with a voice of compassion, a heart of love, an act of kindness. ~ Mary Davis Do you believe that you have an influence on the future of the world? I believe that we do, and when we realize this, we take our daily choices […]
Meeting Today’s Challenges with a Pandemic of Love When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed. Maya Angelou This week, as I was checking our “Nextdoor” feed online, I saw a post titled, “A Pandemic of Love Asheville.” Suzi Israel, who runs our local Pandemic with Love chapter, had posted the story of a young man whose life was changed because of local volunteers. I shared […]
What We Can Learn from Indigenous People “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” Iroquois Maxim In The United States, we just celebrated our national holiday of Thanksgiving – a time to pause and remember how much we have to be grateful for. This is a good time to consider where we have been and, more important, to think […]
The Everyday Spirit of Thankfulness Gratefulness allows us to nurture a keener eye that no longer rushes past the small everyday moments that make up the larger part of our lives. Guri Mehta How wonderful it is to take the spirit of Thanksgiving into every day. We often go through our lives without noticing the things around us that help to create the setting for our life experience. Most […]
World Kindness Day 2022 What an incredible power we have, to walk through the world, making somebody’s day. Krista Tippett Dance for Kindness is a world-wide event that is part of World Kindness Day, an international holiday that was introduced as a day of observation by the World Kindness Movement (WKM) in 1998. We love this celebration of kindness through uplifting music and dance. It provides an opportunity for […]
How Can We include ‘Difficult’ People in Our Kindness Circles? The most rewarding things you do in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done. Arnold Palmer Can we overcome beliefs that we hold that prevent us from being kind to some people? It is so easy to exclude people we consider to be risky to engage or unworthy of our kindness, because of ideas that we […]
Room at the Table Let our hearts not be hardened to those living on the margins. There is room at the table for everyone. This is how it all begins, this is how we gather in. There is room at the table for everyone. Carrie Newcomer Recently, we were introduced to Carrie Newcomer’s music, and it has enriched our lives. Through her music and in her life of service, she […]
Can We Change Our Narrative? I always bow down to the so-called average person who shows that, in fact, average human people can and do change the narrative in a very profound way. – James O’Dea – A narrative is a story that “connects and explains a carefully selected set of supposedly true events, experiences, or the like, intended to support a particular viewpoint or thesis” What narratives […]
You Are a Walking Neon Sign Identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is a process that you must be active in. Joss Whedon We are all energy beings. The energy of our mood and our current thoughts does accompany us as we move about in our day. It shows up in our posture, the expression on our face, the way we move and in the […]
7 Easy Steps to Compassion We can’t heal the world today, but we can begin with a voice of compassion, a heart of love, and an act of kindness. Mary Davis This morning, as I contemplated compassion, a tiny spider descended on an invisible thread before me. Hello, I said silently as she continued her journey. Hurry off the floor before some unaware foot crushes you. I recently […]
That Could Be Me I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it. Maya Angelou During the last few months, in our community and around the country, the homeless population has grown dramatically. As a result, more and more people are using online platforms and public meetings to complain that the presence of people living on the streets is having a […]
The Power of Not-Knowing I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. – Richard P. Feynman – Have you ever noticed that sometimes what you know about someone gets in the way of your being kind? Perhaps: they did something that you don’t approve of, and you can’t let go of it in your mind, you made an […]
Kindness and Gratitude Dance Together If you begin and finish your days with thoughts of gratitude, you’ll find yourself living from a place of abundance rather than lack. Erica Layne September 21st is World Gratitude Day, so we thought this was an opportunity to think about how to bring more gratitude into our lives. We have noticed that the more we live with gratitude, the more we are […]
A Kind Way to View People with Disabilities There is no greater disability in society than the inability to see a person as more. Robert M. Hensel At this point in my life, I cannot walk, and I use a wheelchair when I go out. Some people see me as being disabled. Although not able to do some of the things that I used to love doing, I am […]
A New Way of Looking at Compassion If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~ Dalai Lama Compassion, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is a “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” In other words, we want to help when we are aware of the suffering of others. Thinking about the role of compassion in […]
An Upgrade to the Golden Rule Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. The Golden Rule How do you want to be treated? We each have an answer to that question, and our answers may have different details, but most can be summed up as being treated with kindness. If you want to be treated kindly, the answer is simple: treat other […]
We Are Each on Our Own Kindness Path Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness. Seneca We are each living with the gifts and challenges of our life journey – perhaps similar, […]
How Love and Healing Arose from the Tragedy of Sandy Hook Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. – Aristotle August 14, 2022, update to this story: After the mass murder of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School […]
When Will Love and Kindness Overcome Hate and Fear? “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” … Audre Lorde This week commemorates the ten-year anniversary of the mass shooting in a Sikh gurdwara […]
