Praciticing Compasion

Practicing Compassion: Taking Time to Appreciate Who Is Here

Trees give of themselves constantly. They are always giving shade, giving leaves for compost, giving their woody scent, and even their majesty.

It doesn't take much to be compassionate. Sometimes it is a matter of just taking time to be yourself, offering just who you are to another human being.

Mother Theresa is famous for saying that the worst poverty she ever saw-- in the course of a lifetime of work with the destitute poor -- was the poverty of loneliness experienced in the West.

We are so busy here.

But we could pause more. Pause and be, with a neighbor, with a spouse. With a clerk at the store. With a child. With a parent. With a co-worker. We could pause and be with just one more person a day, to slow things down a just a little bit more. Not the one-second, "Who are you; I'm fine, how are you." But going to the next sentence, where you begin to experience a connection.

When you stop, and take a moment, you may think you are reaching out for the sake of the other person. But you also reach out for your own sake. In reaching out, your heart has a moment to breathe and to be as big as your heart wants to be and needs to be.

You get to experience, even if for a moment, what it is like to be a tree.