Photo: Narcissus
It may be fashionable to be unkind,
To dismiss civility as weak
And see polite discourse
As reflecting ‘snowflake’ fragility.
One wonders, though,
About the price of bullish ways
On our children
Who are learning
Not what we say
But what we model.
Will they grow to celebrate insult
As denoting power,
And be enthused
By pseudo-charm;
Or will they see
The true resilience of empathy
So hate and war
Can finally be
Disarmed?
For The Daily Post
Deny hate a room
In your heart
Anywhere.
Fill it instead
With soul truths:
The sweet breath
Of infants
Asleep against your chest.
Does not differentiate
Who is worthy of care.
Deny hate a room.
Allow compassion
Instead
To take hold
Everywhere.
For The Daily Post
Photo: Ofir Asif
Do not let anyone tell you
That kindness
Is a privilege
For other times.
Do not let anyone convince you
That truth
Is peripheral
To the necessity of
Getting some things done.
Do not let anyone berate you
That hope is
Irrelevant
And you are somehow
Weak
For holding on
To empathy, veracity, civility, belief.
They are all
Relevant.
Especially
Now.
For The Daily Post
Photo: Ofir Asif
Some photos of a layered world aren’t pretty. Some are there to remind us of history that shouldn’t have happened yet did: People stacked in slave ships’ holds. People forced to march. People warehoused in concentration camps. People massacred. People just like us … stripped of dignity. Dehumanized.
And yet. People they each were. Each one a universe of thoughts and soul and feelings. Each one worthy. Each a human being.
Layered in the bowels of our collective histories are memories that hurt as the agony they resurrect is peeled away so they be seen. And yet they may be there exactly to remind us what we should know … and never repeat.
Photo: Atara Katz
Differentiate the urge
To disobey
For pure defiance’s sake,
From the value of resisting
Those who violate
Or lower what’s at stake.
Refuse the rush
Of righteousness
That rebellions can wake,
And replace it with the strength
Of discerning hate from kindness,
Truth from fake.
For The Daily Post
Photo: Amitai Asif
Like pebbles on the beach
Like grains of sand
Like leaves upon the trees
Like flowers in a meadow
May we never be alone
In sorrow
And in hope.
May we find solace
In each other
And may compassion
Weave heart strands together
So we remember
How alike we are
Each one its own true flower
Each one part of the whole
In sorrow
And in hope.
For The Daily Post
Photo: Amitai Asif
As tensions hold
The edge
Between manageable
And overwhelmed,
Between spared
And flooded,
Be tender.
As scales tip
To potentiate
Disaster
And fluctuate
From safe
To calamitous,
Be kind.
Remember how
Critical times
Hold within them
The balance
Of rebuilding
On the fabric of
Strength
And profound
Understanding.
For The Daily Post
Lighted path (Photo credit: unknown)
There’s ennobled a path
For each person
Who strives
To live life
Reverently enough
To keep all
Dignified.
For The Daily Post
An Incoming Storm
Organize
To call hate by its name.
Mobilize
To tamp it with the fact:
That we all are equal
All human
All the same.
Organize
To nip the flames of violence
By speaking up
For truth.
Assemble
Not in fire
But in numbers
Old and youth.
Organize
To let terror have no place
It has no valid
Salute.
Marshal
Not guns or clubs
But tolerance
It is the only nationality
The one acceptable
Route.
For The Daily Post
Photo: Osnat Halperin-Barlev
There’s a tether that connects the hearts of care, the souls of kindness. It is tangible. It is sublime. It has a quality of light which bridges time and place, happenstance and circumstance.
It is not about words. Or at least not exactly. It is the way one can be seen: if known by name or face or only by the recognition of a shared humanity. It is the way one can be heard: by action or response, reflection or emotion, by prayer and by thought. It is the way we all are one, essentially, affected by the pains and joys that grip even those whom we may not know, and yet are part of us, in one way or another.
There is a tether that fetters heartbeats to the expressions of another. It is seen in young and old as mirror neurons and empathy weave the tapestry of wisdom and pulse with compassion.
There is a tether interlinking who we each are with who we can be. It exists in sharp relief to whom we might become if we risk the loss of that which nourishes what ticks within.
“It is a chain to care,” some say, reluctant of obligation. “A leash. A hindrance to independence.”
Not so, for it is not restraint, but rather a foundation. A cornerstone of interconnection. We are none of us truly an island, and all part of a shared future: the air, the earth, the water, the resources, the young and old, the hearts and minds.
For The Daily Post
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