Gentle is my word for the year. I want to be more gentle. To paraphrase Br. Curtis Almquist of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, “I am gentle, except when I am not.”
And yet, a single quality cannot stand alone. Pablo Casals speaks to my particular word: In life one must show strength and gentleness. Gentleness without strength will never produce worthwhile, satisfying, or comprehensive results. Whatever your word, you can’t have one without the other. For example, we can’t function only with cold water, nor would hot serve all our needs. It is not an either or choice.
Gentleness just came to me as my word for the year; I didn’t analyze what the ‘best’ word would be. Briefly (no more than a minute) I tried out a few other but no, gentleness was IT. Gentleness to balance my strength because sometimes my strong personality expresses itself with a sharp edge that cuts out the gentleness of the heart that is called for and that I want to express.
Right now the challenge is to know when to call on kindness to blunt my strength. I’m still in my head about it, but I trust that the thinking process will diminish and natural knowing will take over. It is something akin to turning on the hot water to wash dishes and the cold to take a drink; we know what to do.
And yet, a single quality cannot stand alone. Pablo Casals speaks to my particular word: In life one must show strength and gentleness. Gentleness without strength will never produce worthwhile, satisfying, or comprehensive results. Whatever your word, you can’t have one without the other. For example, we can’t function only with cold water, nor would hot serve all our needs. It is not an either or choice.
Gentleness just came to me as my word for the year; I didn’t analyze what the ‘best’ word would be. Briefly (no more than a minute) I tried out a few other but no, gentleness was IT. Gentleness to balance my strength because sometimes my strong personality expresses itself with a sharp edge that cuts out the gentleness of the heart that is called for and that I want to express.
Right now the challenge is to know when to call on kindness to blunt my strength. I’m still in my head about it, but I trust that the thinking process will diminish and natural knowing will take over. It is something akin to turning on the hot water to wash dishes and the cold to take a drink; we know what to do.