Author: Anne

Before you know what kindness really isyou must lose things,feel the future dissolve in a momentlike salt in a weakened broth.What you held in your hand,what you counted and carefully saved,all this must go so you knowhow desolate the landscape can bebetween the regions of kindness.How you ride and ridethinking the bus will never stop,the passengers eating maize and chickenwill stare out the window forever.Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,you must travel where the Indian in a white poncholies dead by the side of the road.You must see how this could be you,how he too was someonewho journeyed through the night with plansand 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 voicecatches the thread of all sorrowsand you see the size of the cloth.Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,only kindness that ties your shoesand sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,only kindness that raises its headfrom the crowd of the world to sayIt is I you have been looking for,and then goes with you everywherelike a shadow or a friend.Poem by by Naomi Shihab Nye - Poet, songwriter, novelist    Born 1952 - REFLECTION:What sorrows have you experienced that have given way to a deeper kindness?How can you be more kind?

What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them.  And they have changed since then....We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a Stranger.Excerpt from the play:  THE COCKTAIL PARTY  by T.S. EliotREFLECTION:We often form an opinion of a person based on behavior we believe to be acceptable or unacceptable. We can lock on to that belief and decide that is 'who they are."  We forget that at every moment we can become new. What if you could open to the possibility you are meeting a stranger.  How would that change/shift that relationship?  

My beloved child,break your heart no longer.Each time you judge yourselfyou break your own heart.You stop feeding on the love,which is the wellspring of your vitality.The time has come, your timeTo live, to celebrate…and to see the goodness that you are…Let no one, no thing, no idea or ideal obstruct youIf one comes, even in the name of “Truth”,forgive it for its unknowingDo not fightLet goAnd breathe – into the goodness that you are.Poem by Swami KripalvanandaREFLECTION:If you are like me, you often judge yourself.  Yet I know this serves no one, least of all, me. How can you stop breaking your own heart and see the goodness that is you?What will you do today to live, to celebrate you?