Heart Food for 2012

Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear. (Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well) (this image and this following quote is from World Without Hate fb) Your car is German. Your pizza is Italian. Your falafel is Lebanese. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Brazilian. Your movies are American. Your tea is Tamil. Your shirt is Indian. Your oil is Saudi Arabian. Your electronics are Chinese. Your number's Arabic, your letters Latin. And you complain that your neighbour is an immigrant?

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering...I am determined to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, and hope. I will not spread news that I do not know to be certain and will not criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure...I am determined to make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small. (From Fourth Mindfulness Training - a huge resolve yet perhaps this will help me and readers to guide our choice of words.)

If we want what we haven't got -- we've got to do what we haven't done. (words of common wisdom from a young friend.)

Be helpless and dumbfounded, unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace to gather us up.
We ae too dull-eyed to see the beauty.
If we say Yes we can, we will be lying..
So let us be not sure of anything
...in a zero circle, mute, we will be saying finally,
with tremendous eloquence, LEAD US...
(and) become a mighty kindness. (Rumi's Zero Circle)

Everything is arbitrary except metaphor, which detects the essential kindship of all things. (Charles Simic)

We know all too well the cruelties, hurts, and hatreds that poison life on our planet. But my daughter and I have come together to write this book because we know that the catalogue of injuries that we can and do inflict on one another is not the whole story of humanity, not by a long measure — as I hope you will see and as you no doubt know in your heart. We are indeed made for something more. We are made for goodness.

We are fundamentally good. When you come to think of it, that's who we are at our core. Why else do we get so outraged by wrong? When we hear of any egregious act, we are appalled. Isn't that an incredible assertion about us? Evil and wrong are aberrations. If wrong was the norm, it wouldn't be news. Our newscasts wouldn't lead with the latest acts of murder or mayhem, because they would be ordinary. But murder and mayhem are not the norm. The norm is goodness.

From the book Made For Goodness By Archbishop Desmond Tutu written with his daughter Mpho Tutu. Copyright 2010

Higher Ground and Stand By Me

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