Top

kindness Tag

Forgiving Small Slights

The people around us are only human. We are also only human! From time to time, people may say or do something hurtful, such as saying a harsh comment, forgetting to invite you to something, or any number of things. It’s ok to forgive them. In fact, it’s excellent to forgive them. Jesus said we should forgive others “70 times 7 times,” a symbolic number meaning endlessly. For much of my life I’ve been a silent grudge-holder, remembering many slights from others and secretly replaying them in my mind. That doesn’t lead anyone to love or peace or friendship, and only left me exhausted. Now, I’m working on just letting it go. I let it go because I love myself, and I am learning that nothing...

Bringing Who You Are into your Daily Life

After I had a beautiful experience of the Divine, the daily world seemed really awful. I didn’t like it. I wanted to leave it. I could not see all the beauty of God in the world around me. Over time, I’ve learned to see beyond appearances into the divine light within – most of the time. OK, a lot of the time. At least, definitely more than some of the time! I’ve also gotten better at connecting to love and God in my heart and bringing that into my world instead of letting the world overtake me.  Learning to keep this experience of God in my life alive has been a long climb, and I still work on it every day. I still struggle with understanding how such beauty...

The Next Step

In tragedy or in triumph, whether you’re building something beautiful or repairing something broken, often all we need to do is to take the next step. When I’ve been in very difficult situations and very lost, it was easy to see a big world in front of me, become overwhelmed, and just shut down. Conversely, when I’m working towards making something I care about, I can get ahead of myself, become anxious, and also shut down.  The next step is right in front of you. Don’t make a situation more daunting than it needs to be. Just take the next step, whatever it may be. Hopefully, it will be easy for you to discern what the next step is, for whatever is occupying your mind and...

Accepting Your Life

Accept your life as it is, right now. Appreciate the things you have already. Be thankful for the many blessings in your life. Allow the things you are grateful for in your life to blossom and grow. It can be easy to worry and to see the worst in the world. Look deeper. God is in you. God is with you. God is guiding you. I have been practicing appreciating my life and the many blessings in it, even as I have caught myself worrying about many things in my life and in our world. Worrying does no good for anyone. It doesn’t help make things better. It doesn’t improve one’s life or the world. It leaves one in a rut. However, accepting and appreciating what...

Love Yourself by Loving Others

I wrote last week about loving yourself, but today I want to write about how showing love to others is a way to show love to ourselves. When you see past someone’s pain and mistakes into their light within, you are also seeing your own inner light. When you love others by giving them blessings and joy, you also give blessings and joy to yourself. “What you do to another, you to do yourself. What you fail to do for another, you fail to do to yourself” (Conversations with God). Or, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12).  Loving another person is akin to loving yourself, because we are all one. How can we show love to others? Well, it helps...