Our Peace Nurturing Practice for this week is gentleness.

Our world, nation, and beings everywhere are shaking from external events in a variety of fashions, some with great anger and fear.  Instead, we can choose to respond to this trepidation and worry, this veritable “call for love[1],” with gentleness. We approach ourselves and others tenderly, lovingly, respectfully. 

It may be fashionable to protest, complain, spread stories about some horrible thing done by so and so in reaction to some other horrible happening.  It is so commonplace now, it’s almost automatic for folks to be repeating and spreading the latest “Shocking News!”  However, it is decidedly not peaceful or even productive.  If something needs fixing, let’s fix it without a barrage of mean-spirited words which separate us from one another and our peace. 

How refreshing and joyous it is to speak and act gently.  We can even express extreme dissatisfaction gently.  We do not have to be mean in order to disagree with another’s actions.  When we look with eyes that see only love or a call for love, everything changes; we can remain what we are: beings of love who automatically treat all others with love.

[1] “…fear is an appeal for help. This is what recognizing it really means.  If you do not protect it, He will reinterpret it.  That is the ultimate value to you, in learning to perceive attack as a call for love.”  A Course in Miracles: Text, Chapter 11, Section II: The Judgment of the Holy Spirit.

As I respond to everyone and everything,

including myself,

with gentleness

my heart fills with peace.

Reflection:  The first time I grasped the awesome power of gentleness was in 2014 when an incident with my left leg left me unable to walk for some months.  My friend Sheila, knowing my inner drive, placed little signs around my house on mirrors and walls and then handed me one which said: GENTLE.

Amazingly enough, simply reading that word, hearing it within and then feeling it, softened me.  Sheila’s sweet little signs helped me relax and let go into healing: tender, blessed healing.

Today turned out to be a tip-top time for me to practice gentleness because around 8:30 am, I was faced with an anger-laced lecture from another.  I could have responded in kind, a most tempting option or tried to stick to the practice of gentleness.  Knowing lashing back would not be or feel peaceful, I simply breathed with the discomfort for the next 10 – 15 minutes.  While breathing and soothing myself with my hands on my heart, I began to see the situation as a “call for love” for myself and the lecturer.

This practice of putting my hands on my heart when something is unsettling is essential for me.  It a physical clue which guides and allows me to calm inwardly because I am honoring how I feel not how I think I "should" feel. I literally shift processing of information from my mind to my heart which is always ready to respond with compassion for myself and others.

With no plan other than gentleness for all, I began to speak, my hands still on my heart.  It felt as if the words were a script that was coming from within me; they were clear, purposeful, respectful, and gentle.  Then there was silence. It felt peaceful, that silence, and it also felt as if time evaporated while we took that tender "time out."  It was a silence in which the gentle, yet powerful words soothed us both. Everything shifted; frustration disguised as anger morphed into words of apology!  Peace within both of us was restored through the practice of gentleness.

Your turn:  How has the practice of gentleness worked for you today?  Did it bring you inner serenity? How might you be more gentle with yourself? With others?

Your comments and suggestions are welcomed.  (Click on the blue link below.)