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Empathy Principles

  1. The validity of someone else’s opinions/beliefs isn’t dependent upon my ability to understand them. Logic is the slave of Emotion. Treat what a person thinks with the same kid gloves you would handle how it makes them feel.
  2. Abstract hate is a self-inflicted wound. If you hate someone else for saying hateful things and for promoting and spreading hate-filled ideas, and you decide to publicly post about your hate of the haters, you just became the thing you hate. And worse yet, you just endorsed hatred as the appropriate response.
  3. There will always be people who can afford to escape to Cancun. There will always be people who can get a reservation at French Laundry.
  4. Sometimes it rains in Southern California and sometimes it blizzards in Texas. It is impossible to ascertain WHY bad weather happens to people who don’t own coats while the snow is still falling. Maybe it is no one’s fault. The same people who get red-face angry at religious people for tying up all narratives into a crisp, red bough of “all actions come with a consequence” and “sinners in the hands of an angry God” seem quite judgmental about environmental truth and consequences.
  5. You might hate AOC. You might loathe Rush Limbaugh. They are human beings with families of their own. What you say about them says much about you, how you were raised. Don’t embarrass your ancestors by lowering yourself to the standards of someone you have no respect for.
  6. Respect is an action, a decision. By demonstrating your capacity for it, you make the best argument. Sometimes silence sets the table. It’s where all the cooks place their best dishes. It’s where all the children want to eat. What if we all took a moment to chew our food and listen?
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Prayer

Lord, if you are moving, let me still myself.

Let me be a pauper of a vision to myself

so that all eyes–my eyes–stay steadfastly on You.

Sometimes I declare You give me words and I thrash

about. They are like unruly children with a fierce

energy and agenda of their own. Slow me way down, Lord,

like a low creek bed in a cavernous mountain. Create

a covenant in me, between us–the intimate bounty

You pay let me always remember. Let me always

cling to the truth of cost and sacrifice and that none

of it was me.