Consider a silent breakfast.
Author: Patrick Rhone
My winter not-doing-house-restoration-today uniform:
Button down shirt, extra-fine merino sweater, jeans, vintage Penfield 60/40 jacket, L. L. Bean boots.
This is a test…
This pandemic is a test of your empathy and compassion 1. It’s a test to see if you’re willing to make even the smallest sacrifices to protect others from a potentially harmful disease. A test to practice loving your neighbor as much as yourself 2 .
It’s a test to see how much you care for the community by giving up the personal pleasures of restaurants, movies, and other entertainments for the sake of keeping strangers healthy.
It’s a test to see if your are willing to give up seeing family and friends in order to keep them safe.
It’s a test to see if you’d make even the smallest changes to protect others — such as wearing a mask when in public 3 or keeping a modest distance.
It’s not a hard test. It’s simply a defining one.
- Karuna ↩
- Mark 12:31 and Matthew 22:36-40. This notion is alive in Islam as well ↩
- The mask is not to protect you from others (though, it does to an extent). It’s to protect others from you, the wearer. ↩
Feeling grateful to Micheal Wade for this civil political debate we had on Twitter.
Cases were made. Viewpoints exchanged. Ground was given. Complexities of the issue noted. We walked away with minds not changed, yet enriched.
This is the way.
A waiting room can be a monastery with the right mindset and tools.
Nicholas Bate has some handy free stuff to give you and the only space it will take up is in your mind.
And now, enjoying tea in my favorite bowl.
If there’s one quality I simply can’t abide, in anyone or at any time, it’s hypocrisy.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Keep your word, honestly and faithfully.
No matter the cost, the cost is never higher than your dignity and honor.
The more I talk to, read about, and really listen to the way they process problems and come up with practical solutions, the more I’m convinced that our current generation of kids 18 and younger have all of this figured out and we should just hand the world over to them.
Embrace difference…
Difference is a blessing, not a challenge. We define ourselves by knowing other people. We know our world by learning about difference. What is the word we often use? Tolerance. Is that a positive notion? Not really. ‘For the time being, I will tolerate you?’ I’m against that concept. It means difference is a threat. Difference is a blessing and you don’t tolerate a blessing. You embrace it.
— Mohammad Mahallati