“The highest form of wisdom is kindness.” – The Talmud.
“Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.” – Elie Wiesel.
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A work of art, an act of love, has always helped me understand the nature of suffering and anxiety and a way towards healing. Kindness is an art, a shortcut to happiness. And for me, art is kindness.
Anger is poison spelled differently.
It’s not that I’m better than anyone else, just that I want to get better than me.
Blogging and photography, in particular, have helped me develop some insight into transforming my pain and anger into developing the better parts of me.
Writing, blogging, photography, painting, weaving, sewing, kindness, helping people experiencing poverty, and meditation can all be acts of love. They heal and make us better humans.
The person who believes anger and power will heal the broken parts of themselves misses the point. Those things are corrosive; they rot the soul. They feasted on mine.
Art, love, giving, and helping can all be acts of love, as is art for Maria and me.
Kindness and generosity have nourished me and others, which lifts my soul. They have healed me and helped me live the life I want to live.
Happiness is not an accident; when I am happy, I learn how to live more and more of my life profoundly and with meaning.
Spirituality can do this for me, but anger and judgment cannot. There is nothing for me to listen to hatred and judgment. With meaning comes joy and compassion; with joy and compassion comes meaning.
I’m learning that I don’t need to respond to hatred and cruelty with hatred and cruelty. I don’t choose to live that way.
Love and empathy strengthen the soul, and hate and cruelty destroy us in time as they almost did me. That’s the point of spirituality in our time. Hatred gets me nothing. Love and kindness – and art, indeed – always bring reward for me.
The flowers tell the story. Whenever I take a photo I like (or anyone does), I feel like a better person than I was. I’m giving something out to the world that helps me and others.
The mystical Kabbalah, a central component of Jewish mystical thought, says love and kindness are gifts from God, who tells his followers that it is a crime to waste this gift or the gift of creativity, which the Kabbalah calls “the creative spark.”
Everyone is given these gifts of love and kindness; Disregarding them, says God, is a sin to be punished. “First mend yourself,” says the Kabbalah, “then mend others. He that can’t endure the bad, will not live to see the good.”
In the Kabbalah, God says that when I hurt another human, I kill a part of me. That’s how it was meant to be.
