5/18/2020 - From Tribe and Fire

Rather than relay to you what my focus is for the week, I want to share someone else’s words. I have only 2 requests: Read it, and then read it again. On the 2nd read-through, go slow and imagine each bit of imagery provided, as separate moments in a life. Then think about them all strung together, like lights on a string across your backyard patio at dusk.

Small Kindnesses  ~  By Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk

down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs

to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”

when someone sneezes, a leftover

from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.

And sometimes, when you spill lemons

from your grocery bag, someone else will help you

pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,

and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile

at them and for them to smile back. 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. So far

from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these

fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,

have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

--

If you feel like it, please share with me your thoughts after reading this. How does it make you feel? How does it make you want to interact with the world around you?

Go out and do that this week.