|
Today's
Quotation:
Kind words are the music of the world.
They have a power
which seems
to be beyond natural
causes, as if they were
some angel’s song which
had lost
its way and come on earth. It seems as if they could almost.
. . soften the hard and angry hearts of
people. No one
was ever corrected by a sarcasm— crushed, perhaps, if
the
sarcasm was clever enough, but drawn nearer to God, never.
Frederick William Faber
|
|
Today's
Meditation:
We
all have the capacity to spread kindness. Having the
capacity to do so and actually doing so, though, are not
necessarily connected-- many of us forget during the course
of our busy, hectic days that we do have this capacity, and
we spend our time instead trying to get things done, trying
to make things work, trying to organize and structure our
lives so that they become easier. What power we lose
by not allowing ourselves to be kind!
Whatever
you conceive God to be, it seems pretty obvious that one of
our goals in life is to draw nearer to God by learning to
behave in ways that uplift life, that contribute to the
peace and love of this world, thus making it a more
hospitable place in which to live. Aren't we always
striving to develop ourselves into what we perceive to be an
ideal, a certain way of being? Can we ever reach that
ideal if we stoop to using tools such as sarcasm or insults
when we're dealing with other people?
More
is accomplished by kindness than we can even imagine.
Books and magazines are filled with stories by people who
have remembered a certain teacher's kindness, a certain
boss's encouragement, a certain adult's compliment for
something that someone has done. These simple little
incidents have been remembered for years, helping their
recipients through many situations just by being there in
their memories.
I
can be kind today. When someone is rude to me, I have
the choice of being rude back or showing kindness.
When someone seems to need help, I have the choice to offer
some help, no matter how slight it may seem, or ignoring
their needs. It's always my choice to be kind or not,
and when I make that choice, I'm choosing to expand or to
limit my contribution to the music of the world.
|
