Max Ehrmann: Desiderata
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Michael Simms: Oh Darlin’
The intimacy
Of strangers is luminous, the way
We wish well for the man who lost
His car keys, the woman coming in
Out of the rain, the girl who missed
Her bus, the boy who stutters.
Lauren Camp: Leather World, This Bird, This Sky
I came here from temporary
and perpetual rages—the whole sky
of wind. Secret birds
take the ruin of garden.
Michael Simms: Ten things I should have figured out before now
Love is complicated. Courtesy is simple. Start with courtesy.
Carolyn Gregory: Listening
Compassion unfolds her bright blue
wings and shelters us.
Buddha Shakyamuni: Well-Spoken
A statement endowed with five factors is well-spoken, not ill-spoken; it is blameless and not faulted by knowledgeable people. Which five?
Chris Hedges: The Miracle of Kindness
Take a brief journey through the eyes of American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges to Jerusalem, Gaza, and Iraq, and discover the sacred bonds that make us human.
Michael Simms: Scarf
The old man and the blonde woman smiled and waved at me, and I felt a surge of gratitude to be among such decent people in this lovely city in a dark time when the light of kindness seems so rare.
Michael Simms: Dogsbody to the Muse
Sometimes it’s painful to watch a group of poets trying to work a room as if they were politicians. The AWP conference, as the wag put it, is comprised of 15,000 introverts pretending to be extroverts.
Naomi Shihab Nye: To Netanyahu
My Palestinian father named his donkey after you…
Now I think he insulted the donkey.
Danusha Laméris: Small Kindnesses
For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Trees Gossip with the Birds
When the orange sun sinks over the AZIZI sign I feel
the darkening world soaking up all the extra noise
Video: We are built to be kind
Human nature is often portrayed as selfish and power hungry, but research by Dacher Keltner finds that we are hard-wired to be kind.
Charles Davidson: From Blue Mountain Ridges to Desert Sand Concentration Camps
North Carolina Pastor Kim Wells charges her congregation to take action against the government’s abuse of children on the border.
