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814th Week: Being Kind Doesn’t Mean You Have to Agree
In a recent On Being broadcast on NPR, I heard a story about Howard Thurman’s grandmother. Howard Thurman was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement and was an influential theologian. He was a mentor of Dr. Martin Luther King and also one of the principle architects of nonviolent protests. His grandmother was a former slave who owned land in an area where there were also white people.
Apparently, Thurman’s grandmother had a neighbor, a white woman who apparently was unkind to all in her neighborhood and not just to Thurman’s grandmother. At one point, the neighbor began to gather chicken droppings from her chicken coop on a regular basis and dump them on the garden of Thurman’s grandmother. Rather than retaliate, his grandmother turned the chicken droppings into the soil each time they arrived. In time, her garden flourished because of all the natural fertilizer in the chicken droppings.
The neighbor woman eventually became quite ill and, because of her way of relating to people, no one was willing to visit her or help her. One day, Thurman’s grandmother went to visit the woman, taking her a large bouquet of flowers. The woman was surprised and delighted to receive the flowers and commented on how beautiful they were. Thurman’s grandmother said in response that the flowers were so beautiful because of all the neighbor’s contributions of fertilizer to her garden.
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754th Week: Psychological Support in Troubled Times
For mental health practitioners and others in the healing arts, it’s helpful to have a way to sit with people’s suffering and distress without getting caught up in it ourselves. In reality, for everyone, regardless of the focus of your work, it’s helpful to have a way to cope with the suffering and distress in the world so that you don’t become swept away by it.
For me, doing therapy with an open heart is essential and yet having my heart open means that I can’t ignore, deny, or distance myself from the suffering of others. Instead, I use the Buddhist practice of Tonglen to metabolize and manage the emotional experiences—my own and those of others—that touch my heart or threaten to overwhelm it. What I want to share is my version of this practice. In Sanskrit, Tonglen means taking and sending, and it’s a breathing practice that focuses on neutralizing activating emotions in oneself and in others in the world who feel the same way.
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2024 October Meditation
This month we continue with our focus on radiating love from the heart. This time, radiate love not only to yourself but also radiate universal love to the deep and creative intelligence of Nature, the creative intelligence of this magnificent planet. You can think of the being of the planet itself as Gaia, a living presence we know as Earth. Call forth the optimal earth, our earth in its optimal expression, living its optimal life. Offer Love to this planet that gives each of us life, as well as giving life to all the other beings of every kind who inhabit this beautiful planet.
Here’s the audio version of the meditation, with music:
If you’d rather do the meditation with images from nature, here’s the YouTube version:

September 2019 Audio Meditation
If you would rather have images as you listen, here’s the youtube link to that version of this month’s meditation:
https://youtu.be/1bhHDhp_s-U

2025 January Meditation
As we begin a new year of audio meditations, we also begin a new set of themes for the year. We’ll explore stillness and timelessness, along with the centrality of choices, frequencies, and possibility as the year moves along. For this month’s meditation, I invite you to find that place of stillness inside that is both a refuge and a resource, a quality of deep quiet and the experience of just being…
Here’s the audio version:
If you’d rather listen while having nature photos, here’s the YouTube version: