As the mystery of love unfolds it resonates with/in us: "When we are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to be able altogether to contain it within ourselves. It radiates towards the loved one, finds there a surface that arrests it, forcing it to return to its starting point, and it is this repercussion of our own feeling which we call the other's feelings and which charms us more then than on its outward journey because we do not recognize it as having originated in ourselves. – Marcel Proust
As children we are closer to our feelings and we are motivated to repair our broken relationships by forgiving because we rather be friends and play together. Being able to truly forgive is more of a possibility when we are able to be in touch with our innocence. Dag Hammarskjold says this well: "Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.” But then, it can be easier to forgive others then our own selves since it often requires us to let go of our unforgiving selves.
Greetings! This is a lovely poem, thank you for sharing it. I believe we feel kindness in its happening when our gentle nurturing presence comes alive in offering/receiving love during the moments of humility and oneness with the world. It reminds me of Parker Palmer's intuitive sense of kindness that resonates with my own sense that I am struggling to share here: "Š as winters turn into spring, I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility; for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger's act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again." (Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation)
Thank you Pavi for sharing your provocative thoughts on Gandhiji's preposterous ways; this is truly ingenious. Gandhiji was a man well ahead of his time and we are just beginning to catch-up with his way of thinking, particularly if we were to imagine our experience of being in Sean Carroll's universe rather than Lewis Carroll's universe. As it turns out, according to Sean Carroll, the Professor of Theoretical Physics at Cal Tech, we all may be living in a preposterous universe - please note the name he has chosen for his website: preposterousuniverse.com! His deeper thoughts on the Preposterous Universe can be found here: preposterousuniverse.com/preposterous.html, and for a light hearted version here he is on the Cobert Report: preposterousuniverse.com/talks/videos.html. What took the rest of us so long to realize the truth of the pervasiveness of the preposterousness?
Thank you for sharing Pancho's insightful perspective. Pancho's thoughts on vulnerability resonates with my own research on this topic and also bring to mind the thoughtful interview that Richard Whittaker had conducted with Professor Charles Bigger (see attached). Professor Bigger shares this precious insight in the interview, "... I think aesthetic education would be so important early. To develop people's vulnerabilities."