Pain and suffering are greatly misunderstood in this world.  It is part of our existence, in both the plant and animal kingdoms, that things can happen that maim or hurt or try us, that can cause us great suffering, illness and even death. We choose to see the pain as unnecessary, as totally preventable; so […]

  The time between the mother’s diagnosis of cancer and her death was just about a year, a year that Alyssa Monks, an artist, spent in taking care of her mother. And this is what she learned from this experience: “We’re all going to have big losses in our lives…They bring us to our knees…So […]

If we come upon a stump of a tree or a felled tree, we can see the rings which tell the story of the tree’s growth. The lighter rings are laid down in the spring when there is plenty of water and the darker ones laid down in the summer and even early autumn. The […]

There are two ways to be compassionate. From a cultural viewpoint compassion is caring about another person. It might be being with someone who is grieving and helping them through it. It might be feeding the homeless. Or visiting someone who is sick. It often comes with pity attached, feeling sorry for the other person, […]

For a while my son-in-law owned a trailer park in Florida. He said that inevitably each month at least one of his tenants would come in to pay off part of another’s rent for that month. The reason: “He’s short this month,” or “she needs some help.” People who work with the poor would say […]