kindness – Page 6 – Surprised By Joy

A Thin Place

June 13, 2021Posted in meditation, ParenthoodTagged faith, family, friendship, kindness, meditation, mindfulness, parenting

“Nothing among human things has such power to keep our gaze fixed even more intensely upon God than friendship.” – Simone Weil

We baked cookies for our neighbor and her husband yesterday. They have been taking 24/7 care of her elderly mom for a week now since she suddenly became sick and unable to care for herself. My daughter made a card for them and we put the card with the cookies and some puzzles and set off to deliver them. My neighbor’s mom only lives around the corner. My daughter wanted to carry the basket and when she handed them over, our neighbor cried. Then I cried.

It was a holy moment, the kind of moment that Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal church calls a thin place where God is just that much closer. The unexpressed weariness and worry in our neighbor met the softness of a kind gesture and out leaked some tears from the River of Life.

I’m completely flummoxed by how to teach faith to my kids. I look back to the Sunday School and all the church activities from my youth and while they were fun, I just didn’t get it and neither did my siblings. It was only life in it’s raw, humbling way that made me search for the wider current that unites us all. Now I can tell you Christian stories, practice Buddhist-inspired meditation, find God out in nature and read anything deep in order to keep life vital.

So I’ve tried Sunday School for my daughter as a base hoping that it starts the seed that will grow into whatever works for her. But yesterday, witnessing two grown-ups cry over a plate of cookies while the spark of the Divine crackled in the air taught more than 100 Sundays. Even my toddler just stood there smiling watching something he didn’t understand. It reminded me that the unplanned lessons sometimes are the best.

The Choice Between Right and Easy

June 6, 2021Posted in meditation, ParenthoodTagged good, inspiration, kindness, meditation, mindfulness, Nicholas Christakis, parenting, wisdom

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

In the fourth book of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the dark wizard Lord Voldemort has returned and the headmaster of Hogwarts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Albus Dumbledore says, “Soon we will all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.”

I don’t know much about fighting dark wizards but making the choice between what is right and what is easy seems like something that describes the job of parenting. Maybe I’m predisposed to think that because I’m reading Harry Potter out loud to my child but nonetheless here are some of the many choices I think we as parents face:

We have to decide whether or not to teach our children manners or let them discover them at the hands of their maybe less tactful peers.

We have to decide whether to inculcate a sense of respect for nature and resources of the earth or risk ruining the earth for themselves or our grandchildren.

We have to choose between instilling a deep sense of kindness and compassion for others or suffer knowing that we might have added to the aggression of this world.

We have to choose between raising children that have a healthy sense of boundaries and self-worth that they inherited from watching us or let them figure it out on their own perhaps after doing great damage to themselves.

We have to choose between letting our kids spend their days immersed in screen time or engaging with them to foster real experiences and adventures in this world.

And none of these choices is easy because it means we have to walk that walk when we are distracted, tired and want to live our own lives reasonably well. But I find it interesting that the distinction is not between right and wrong but between right and easy because it’s effort not evil that defines the choice.

Speaking for myself, I don’t do perfectly on any of the parenting choices but more often than not I make the hard choice as I know most parents do and have done throughout all the ages. There is some science to support why as I learned when I listened to an interview Nicholas Christakis, the Yale sociologist who studies how we have evolved as a species. His view as laid out in his book Blueprint is that our evolution has come with some uniquely wonderful social features – to love, to teach others, to cooperate. He holds that humans are wired for good which is so inspiring to hear.

Because we aren’t alone in our choices. We have the magic and faith that comes from our relationship with the Divine and we have our connection to each other. In Harry Potter, Dumbledore’s pronouncement about choosing between what is right and what is easy is part of a moving speech about how unity and friendship carries us through the hard choices and hard times. Our connection to everything that is bigger than us powers us through the moments when we have nothing left in the tank. Over and over again we discover we can do hard things – and we do!

The Gift of Perspective

December 3, 2020Posted in ParenthoodTagged kindness, parenting, perspective, the gifts we give each other, wisdom

“If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path.” – Buddha

I thought I had a great way to teach perspective to my kids. I asked my daughter how many houses she could see when she looked out the ground floor window of our house, it was about three. Then I took her up to the floor above and ask her how many she could see and it was about seven. Finally we went out onto the little deck on our rooftop and I asked her how many she could see and it was more than she had numbers for. “Olivia” I said “this is the perspective that you get when you are older, you know that everything fits into a larger picture and you are able to see more of it.” Brilliant, right? The problem was she was only three. 🙂

I find myself pondering the little crumbs of wisdom other parents have given me since I became a parent until they finally click. Someone said when my oldest was a baby in a bucket car seat, “At this age, parenting is physical but after that it becomes psychological.” And when my daughter got to the age of choices, power struggles and motivation to do chores, that line made sense. Another said when my son was born, “The great thing about having two kids is while you love them both, you like at least one of them at any given time.” And when I realized that the Universe is kind enough to make it so only one of their phases really pushes my growth at a time, I got that one. Most recently someone said to me, “It gets easier. It gets less busy.” And I can’t wait to discover when that becomes true.

It strikes me that this is the gift we give to other when we share our experience. We mark the path of how they can go forward like rock cairns on a hiking trail. They are tokens of kindness and wisdom for others to follow so that they know they are going the right way and they are not alone.