Last week's newsletter message about David Breaux hit a chord in so many people. He was a gentle man who spent endless hours on a bench, listening to people. He gave them a prompt, asking what they thought compassion meant. He was not inviting a philosophical conversation but a heartfelt conversation. So much sharing can happen on a bench. Often, i...
For those of you who follow the Charter for Compassion and read our newsletters every week, you know that our topics vary greatly. As you may also know, we have just started our 40 Days of Peace program commemorating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. Each day, until February 28, we are adding events to our calendar to inform, reflect on an...
"I remember the big white house on Steiner Street, and my little sister Dagmar, and my big brother Nels, and Papa. But most of all, I remember Mama." These were the opening lines from the play, later an early 1950s television series, I Remember Mama, the story of an immigrant Norwegian family living in San Francisco in 1910. The story is told throu...
I love the Golden Rule. "Treat Others as You want to be treated", or even more so, the Platinum Rule: Treat Others as They want to be treated. There is also the action-packed wording from GoldenRuleism: "Do for all others, both directly and indirectly, what you would want done for you. Don't do to any others, either directly or indirectly, what you...
There is plenty to do, for each one of us, working on our own hearts, changing our own attitudes, in our own neighborhoods. ~Dorothy Day Nelsonville, Ohio is a small town nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Ohio, USA. There are less than 6,000 residents, which in some global cities might constitute a city block. Th...