Adolfo Quezada

Not long after graduating from college I read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond for the first time and I was intrigued by his admonition to “simplify, simplify.” I committed then and there to simplify the rest of my life.

My intrigue and my commitment to simplicity lasted about an hour and a half. Before I knew it I was on the fast track to a complicated life chasing dreams, starting a family, and facing the realities of subsistence.

Through the years, when life became too overwhelming for me, I remembered Thoreau’s advice to simplify and I made sincere but insubstantial gestures to quash my desire for prestige, power, and possession. I tried to avoid my greed and deny my ambition but my concocted attempts to control these tendencies only led to more complexity. The pronouncements I made to myself about simplification were written in the wind and I soon found myself in the same maze I thought I had left behind.

Fortunately, the vicissitudes of life have a way of teaching us the lessons we need to learn – the hard way. Eventually we learn that simplicity is not about what we do or cease to do, but about who we are essentially. It is not about the things we possess, but about our attitude toward those things. It is not about leaving the maze, but about how we respond to its challenges. It is not about choosing a simpler lifestyle for ourselves, but about respecting our natural simplicity of the heart and honoring that simplicity in the midst of a complex life.

With simplicity of the heart comes humility. That is, a willingness to be who we are without pretenses, to have what we have without pride or shame, and to accept all that comes with life, including its simple pleasures and its complex difficulties.

With simplicity of the heart comes moderation. Too much of anything leads to gluttony and waste while too little of anything leads to destitution and death. Whether we are dealing with matters of the mind, body, or spirit, a simple heart takes what it needs and leaves the rest for others.

With simplicity of the heart comes awakened presence. It doesn’t help for us to plan to live a more simple life because simplicity by its very nature exists only in the present moment. In fact, simplicity constantly calls us back to the here and now.

With simplicity of the heart comes contentment. Ironically, the more we desire simplicity and the more we expect it in our life, the more elusive it becomes because simplicity casts away desires and expectations and is grounded in the reality of what is.

With simplicity of the heart comes detachment. While it is true that material possessions can get in the way of simple living, we cannot assume that a life lived in dire poverty is a life of simplicity any more than we can assume that a life lived in affluence is a life of complexity. What determines simplicity is our philosophy toward what we have or don’t have.

With simplicity of the heart comes gratitude. We are appreciative of life and all that is a part of it. We are grateful for the intricacies of creation and the opportunity to enjoy them. We thank God for all we’ve been given and for the opportunity to share it with others.

With simplicity of the heart comes faith. Life is simple when we live in congruence with our basic beliefs, but it becomes complicated when we are divided between choices. Essentially, duality breeds complexity while simplicity is the fruit of single-heartedness.

With simplicity of the heart comes love. Rather, with love comes simplicity of the heart. Our love for others compels us to share with them from our bounty; our love for our self prompts us to unburden our life of that which we do not need; and our love for the Spirit within diminishes our attachment to the external.

The circumstances of our life do not have to be a certain way in order for it to be simple. Simplicity can permeate our life regardless of the circumstances in which we live. What ultimately determines how simply we live is our relation to those circumstances. But we must constantly monitor our external behavior to ensure that it is congruent with our simplicity of the heart.

The more simple we are,

the more complete we become.

                         Auguste Rodin

When clients with whom I worked in my counseling and psychotherapy practice were beginning to dissociate I would ask them to pick up their car keys and examine them carefully, or I would ask them to touch the table next to them and tell me how it felt. Sometimes I would ask them to feel the weight of their body on their chair. The idea was to have them ground themselves in something concrete, much as an electrician creates a conducting connection between an electric circuit and the earth, so that they would remain present and conscious of their reality.

But it isn’t just dissociative clients who need grounding – we all do. There are times in our life when we are barely holding our life together. We may be facing great stressors; we may be reeling in the wake of a major loss; or we may be living through other difficulties. Whatever the case, in the midst of our chaos or confusion, sorrow or anxiety, we need to ground ourselves in the reality around us.

We may be too agitated to pray or meditate, but we can still notice the intricacies of a solitary flower growing wild in an empty field. We may be too overwhelmed by deadlines to move ahead with the tasks before us, but we can still take time to observe a colony of ants working diligently and purposefully, doing what they must do. We may be too scattered even to gather our thoughts, but we can still gather colorful pebbles from the ground. And, when in the darkness of our crisis it seems that God is nowhere to be found, we can still connect with our Ground of Being by grounding our body and our mind.

We ground ourselves through our physical senses – sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste – because our senses can only be experienced in the present.

The sight of a hummingbird has always grounded me. When I am distraught, confused, or overwhelmed, I go out and spot a hummingbird. I watch it feed and fly and I watch it stop and rest. I gaze upon it with focused attention and become calm.

The smell of freshly-baked bread brings me into the present very quickly. No matter how large my worries, they are mitigated by the aroma that portends the comfort of home and the love of family.

When life is moving too fast and my schedule has grown beyond my ability to cope, it is balm for my mind to hear the soulful chimes from a nearby church. The church bells seem to toll for me alone, reminding me to stop what I am doing and just be.

Nothing grounds me in the present like my huge long-haired German shepherd, Panzon. I touch his thick fur coat and it is like touching the wilderness. Whatever my state of mind and regardless of my emotions, Panzon is there to calm me down and keep me grounded.

It’s hard to believe that something as simple as my first sip of coffee in the morning can ground my day (no pun intended). It’s not the taste of the coffee that grounds me as much as drinking it in the company of my wife. The good taste goes beyond the flavor of the coffee to the moments we share as we begin the day.

There are so many ways to ground ourselves in the midst of stormy times. Some of us walk barefoot in the grass, some exercise or practice yoga, others do routine chores, while yet others take a leisurely bath or a quick, but stimulating shower. Some of us finger prayer beads, while others garden or go for a long walk in the desert. Some embroider while others pull weeds or cook a meal. The way in which we ground ourselves is sometimes simple and spontaneous. We may doodle on the margin of a book; we may play with a loose string on our shirt; we may stoop down to tie our shoe; or we may thoroughly examine a button on our sweater.

Once, after experiencing a major loss, I grounded myself by watering the grass in my backyard by hand. I felt so powerless at the time, yet I believed that I could still make a difference to the grass. And just watching the cascading water soothed me enough to make it through the next hour.

When the circumstances before us seem too large or too overwhelming for us to handle, we simply place our attention on something smaller. When the forest is more than we can absorb, we focus on one tree. We acknowledge the macrocosm, but focus on the microcosm. We ground ourselves by connecting with the earth however we can.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

                                          Buddha

Our soul refuses to build its nest among the noises of the world and will not stay in the midst of busyness, compulsivity, or superficiality. Instead, it seeks a place to retreat, reflect, and replenish.

But sometimes, no matter how much we try to meditate, our mind is simply too agitated and will not be tamed. At times like these we are tempted to despair; instead, we accept our state of mind without judging ourselves and without drowning in our frustration. If all we can do is be aware of our frustration and breathe, that’s all right. The important thing is that we show up.

Often, our perseverance breaks through even the thickest of fogs and our mind begins to clear. Through practice we discover that meditation cannot be forced, rather, like spirit, it comes when and how it wills. It is like a fawn that comes forth from the forest not because it is being chased, but because it is being lovingly summomed.

Only when we slow our pace and stop to rest a while do we provide the peace our soul requires. We stop what we are doing and take the time to gather the scattered forces of our mind. With pure intention and focused attention we turn to one thing only – the sensation of our breath. Breath is spirit and spirit is the essence of our soul. We remember to breathe and forget to think; we listen to the silence that engulfs us; and we descend into the sweet reverie of meditation.

Meditation quiets the cacophonies of our mind and halts our habitual ventures away from the now. When noises distract us and incessant thoughts bombard our mind we simply acknowledge the noises and return to the sensation of our breath. We acknowledge the thoughts dispassionately and detachedly and we return to the sensation of our breath.

We slow the pace of our life and the beat of our heart even as we are conscious of the reality around us. We are aware of our beating heart as it sends blood coursing through our veins, carrying life to every part of our body and we return to the sensation of our breath. We hear the first bird of the morning singing out to herald the day and we return to the sensation of our breath. We notice the ticking clock reporting the passing of our life as one moment dies into the next and we return to the sensation of our breath.

We breathe in and we breathe out, we breathe in and we breathe out. Our breath imitates the cycle of life and death.

In meditation we open to the vastness of being and experience oneness with all creation. This intimate communion becomes the prayer of our soul. In deep communion we simply rest in the presence of God with single-hearted, loving attention. In sacred silence we abandon our efforts to induce peace and peace ascends from the depths of our being. We drop all conceptions of the God we endeavor to know and breathe the breath of the unknown God.

In the hour of blessed communion we descend to the depths of our being and experience the full dimension of our nature. Our mind is suspended in pure devotion, our heart is touched by divine animation, and our soul receives a glimpse of heaven. In the clarity of communion we know that eternity is now and that it is in the eternal now that our soul abides in God. In this beatified state of being we are infused with love for all that is.

In this union of heaven and earth we are touched by divinity, yet, our humanity is more real than ever before. Rather than leave the world to be with God, we are thrust back into the thick of life to experience God in every soul. In the wake of meditation our soul is restored, our cup overflows, and goodness and mercy follow us through the day.

Ultimately, the effect of our meditation is not to be measured by how ecstatic we feel or how deeply we venture, but by how we share in the open what we have received in secret. We offer ourselves in service when and where we can, but we soon discover that we cannot go for long without returning to the fountain of our sustenance. Like the hummingbird that must return often to its source of nectar, we too must return to our source of spiritual nutrition. So we take the time to leave the crowd, to rest a while, and to remember God.

Now let me sit in peace and listen to

your words in the soul of my silence.

                                     Rabindranath Tagore

It has been two years since I said goodbye to my mother at her deathbed. It was the second goodbye because I had already been saying goodbye to her throughout the decade since the onset of her Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s seems like a cruel joke played on humanity by nature. To lose the life of a loved one inch by inch, memory by memory is heartrending; yet, this is the course that this disease takes. One day my mother was forgetful, which seemed normal for an older person, and the next day she was repeating herself often in the same conversation. Then big pieces of life went missing and her personality took on a different face. Whom I had known and experienced for so many years was no longer with me. She was still my mother and I was still her son, but we hardly recognized one another.

It became a new relationship and then no relationship at all, at least not in the conventional sense. Each step of this dreadful journey broke my heart piece by piece. The person whom I had loved and who had loved me was already gone, yet, she was not gone. I could no longer communicate with her as I had before so I tried new ways of reaching her.

Often I would take her out into the front yard of the nursing home where she lived. I would roll her wheelchair to the shade under the large orange trees and let her watch the black ravens playing in the grass. I would pick off an orange tree leaf and crush it so she could smell the fresh scent. She seemed to like that. Mostly, though, I would just sit in silent presence with her.

My mother, who was 95 years old, did not want to die. She had made that perfectly clear when she could still communicate her thoughts. One of her favorite sayings was, “We all have to die sometime.” But then she would quickly add, “But not just yet.” Life was exciting for her and she simply did not see the point in dying. My mother was a force of nature moving through life with purpose and passion. She knew what she wanted and persevered until she got it. She was a survivor who knew how to make it through the rough times and how to find joy even through the pain and suffering of life.

My mother could take an ordinary, ugly, discarded piece of junk and convert it into a piece of art. A little gold paint here, a little sequin there, and presto, a transformation had taken place. She loved to travel to exotic places and faraway lands. She had lived in half a dozen states and three countries, and she had travelled on three continents. In her younger years she was a poet. Decades before the women’s liberation movement, she was already quite a feminist. She wrote for publications about living and loving and about defending the freedom of the feminine spirit. She raised seven children and was married to the same man for more than six decades. Above all, she loved the ocean. The sound of the waves soothed her heart and the vast blue waters called to her soul.

One day, as I sat with my mother outside the nursing home I was wondering what might be going on in her mind. I was lamenting her condition and questioning the purpose this state of her being might be serving. As we watched the black ravens on the lawn, a man with two children entered the yard. He sat on one of the benches watching his children, a girl and a boy, probably three and four respectively. They were jumpting on and off the benches and tossing oranges into the air. It was delightful to behold. They were so innocent, so carefree, so willing to just be without purpose or motive. Then it dawned on me that just as these children were responding to life from who they were and with what they had in that moment, the same could be true of my mother. She was also responding to life from who she was and with what she had in that moment.

I concluded that life comes in all colors, breadths, and depths, and cannot be judged according to arbitrary expectations. In the eyes of God, life is precious from our first breath to our last, regardless of its apparent quality. Life is miraculous in and of itself and does not need to be justified. Life is life and, whether hardy or faint, it must be cherished for its inherent value.

Then it was time for the second goodbye. As I sat by her bed the night she died I was amazed that this woman, who had been in perpetual motion all of her life, was now so woefully still. How could I say goodbye to the woman who had given me life and had raised me into adulthood? How could I reconcile myself to the reality that the vibrancy and strength that had influenced my life so greatly was now gone? Only a week before, she had taken my hand and held it to her face. She must have known then that her death was near.

As I said goodbye to my mother I was somberly aware that her disease had darkened her final years. I wondered to myself how she had managed to live through it all. Then I remembered her simple and childlike faith. I remembered how much she had loved fairies. She told me once that, for her, fairies transcended the ugliness in the world and gave hope in the midst of darkness.

Come Fairies, take me out of this world,

for I would ride with you upon the wind

and dance upon the mountains like a flame!

                                             William Butler Yeats

Let it go, begin again. This is the essence of self-forgiveness, the merciful mantra that heals the soul. Yet, self-forgiveness is one of the most difficult tasks of our life.

I wish that my father would have believed me when I told him that he was dying with no debts and that he was entering into the next phase of his life completely cleansed by the mercy of God. Better still, I wish someone would have helped him to experience the power of self-forgiveness many years ago so that he might have believed in it. I wish that as my father faced his last weeks of life he might have been able to anticipate death more peacefully.

My father was not afraid of death, but he was afraid to die unforgiven. He was a good and faithful man who, like most of us, had committed his share of offenses in the course of his life. He talked with me about some of them, especially about those that had hounded him throughout his life. My father had not forgiven himself for those offenses and he didn’t believe that God had forgiven him either. I remember the anguish in his eyes when he asked me whether God would forgive him. All of my assurances to him that he was indeed forgiven by God fell on deaf ears and my father continued to dread what might happen to his soul.

I sat with my father through the last night of his life. Those were long and arduous hours for him. He kept asking me how much longer he had to wait to die. At dawn he seemed more peaceful, and with the morning light came his freedom of all encumbrances.

We may indeed be guilty of wrongful actions during our lifetime and we are surely indebted to those whom we have harmed. They may or may not have forgiven us, but in either case, it is our self-forgiveness that we need the most. It is what we hold against ourselves that we must lay down and leave behind.

The difficulty with self-forgiveness was a recurring theme in my counseling and psychotherapy practice. Clients would tell me that although they felt forgiven by those whom they had hurt and forgiven by God, they could not forgive themselves.

Besides the emotional and psychological impact on our life in general, not forgiving ourselves for the wrong we have done takes a toll on our physical health. It affects the chemicals in our brain and results in vascular headaches, abdominal disorders, and hormonal imbalance.

Why is it so difficult to forgive ourselves? For some of us it is because we take seriously our responsibility for our actions and we believe that self-forgiveness is just an easy way to relieve ourselves of that responsibility. For some of us self-forgiveness is out of the question because we believe that it would dissipate our feelings of guilt and culpability which we think we deserve to feel. For some of us self-forgiveness is something that we believe we don’t deserve and haven’t earned.

Actually, in self-forgiveness we still hold ourselves accountable, and we still have to face the consequences of our actions. Self-forgiveness does not mean that we condone our wrongful actions or that we minimize the gravity of our offenses. It does not give us permission to repeat what we did wrong. Self-forgiveness does not obliterate our conscience. We still admit our mistakes and repent, that is, we turn ourselves around and make the necessary changes in order not to repeat our mistakes. Where we can make amends, we do; where we can learn from our mistakes, we do.

In self-forgiveness we decide to no longer hold our wrongful actions against ourselves. It’s that simple. We make a cognitive decision to forgive ourselves once and for all for what we have done. We let it go and begin again. Of course we don’t deserve to be forgiven and we can’t earn forgiveness. A gift is a gift precisely because it is not deserved or earned. Self-forgiveness clears our slate and gives us a chance to begin again. Self-forgiveness also enables us to be forgiving of others.

I have come to believe that self-forgiveness is more than the singular act of pardoning ourselves for specific offenses. It is also a state of being that we inherit from our Divine Self. It is the state of perpetual and unconditional forgiveness in which we are held by God and in which we can also hold ourselves. We alone hold the marker for our indebtedness and we alone can cancel the debt we hold against ourselves.

You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the

end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self.

                                            Maya Angelou

Even now I still regret a major mistake I made back in my college days. My mistake wasn’t something I did, but rather something I didn’t do. I had an opportunity to speak truth to power and I failed to do so.

I was enjoying my affiliation with my college fraternity and I thought my roommate Harry (not his real name) would enjoy the experience too. I invited Harry to apply for membership to my fraternity and I personally presented his application to the fraternity for consideration. I knew that Harry was a good and decent person and that his academic record was superb so I assumed that he would be readily accepted.

To my surprise, Harry was rejected for no other reason than that he was Asian. I couldn’t believe it. I had no idea that such discrimination was still rampant and that it was actually codified in the fraternity’s national by-laws. I protested, but to no avail. I had to face Harry and tell him he was not wanted because of his race.

Harry was gracious about it. He told me that his only surprise was that I had assumed that he would be accepted without a problem. I felt naive. I had been oblivious to the prejudice and discrimination that existed toward Americans of Asian descent. But Harry was familiar with it. In fact, being rejected by a college fraternity was nothing for him compared to the treatment he had received at the hands of the U.S. Government. Harry told me that at the age of four he was forced, along with his entire family, to leave his home within 48 hours and be bused to a Japanese American internment camp where his family was incarcerated without even a scintilla of due process. His family’s only crime was being Japanese American.

Harry told me that, although the internment years were traumatic for him and his family and had left emotional scars, he was not bitter. Instead, Harry was focused on working hard in college and making a good life for himself. Yet, here he was, nearly 20 years later, still experiencing overt racial discrimination by a college fraternity.

My mistake was not that I had invited Harry to join the fraternity, but that my protest in response to the fraternity’s rejection of him did not go far enough. I am ashamed to say that it did not even occur to me at the time to resign from the fraternity as a sign of my protest. I was disappointed and angry, sure, but my protest needed to be vehement and dramatic. I should have said to the fraternity that Harry was with me and that if they were going to reject him on the basis of race, then I didn’t want to be a part of the fraternity. But I didn’t say that. I missed the opportunity to speak out against blatant discrimination. It didn’t matter that my words and actions would probably not have changed anything immediately, but it did matter that I didn’t even try.

I cannot change the past, but in the years since that incident I have had plenty of opportunities to speak truth to power and I have done so.

“Speaking truth to power” is a Quaker expression. It means our courageous confrontation with an authority that we believe is doing harm, but who has power to punish us or deprive us of something we want in retaliation for what we say. Speaking truth to power is risky business because we may end up losing a job, a relationship, or the support of the one whom we confront. Voicing our protest against unfair policies or behavior is not limited to governmental authorities. It can also include standing up to unfair employers, abusive spouses, or menacing bullies.

Speaking truth to power on behalf of justice, fairness, and equality is an awesome responsibility which must be taken seriously. It consists of more than throwing verbal stones or reacting thoughtlessly. First, we have to be awake and alert to what is happening in our midst. In other words, we have to learn the facts. Second, we have to discern what our most effective course of action might be. Third, we have to acknowledge our fear of the consequences for speaking out; and fourth, we have to evoke the courage from within that permits us to speak out in spite of our fear.

We don’t have to be boisterous or violent in order to speak truth to power. Sometimes the gentle voice of a mild-mannered person resounds with sincerity and purpose in the ears of the most powerful authority. What is required, however, is a brave heart to push us through the cloud of fear in which we find ourselves. Also required is that we listen to the spirit within us. It prompts the appropriate words that can make a difference in the way authorities conduct their business with us and with those who come after us.

Speaking truth to power and challenging the opinions and beliefs

of others requires courage. Finding your voice requires courageous

thinking. Speaking your voice requires couageous action.

                                                                        Leland R. Beaumont

Some years ago eleven of my friends and I attempted an experiment based on Stephen Levine’s book, A Year to Live: How to Live this Year as if it were Your Last. We committed to live for one year as if it were our last. We lived in the shadow of death on a daily basis and met together once a month to share our experiences. Of course, this was just an experiment so we didn’t really experience what those who are terminally ill experience. We knew from the start that, at best, we would garner but a glimpse of what it would be like to know that one is dying within a year. When it is not really upon us it is easy to romanticize death and to be cavalier about its eventuality. The truth is, no one can know what the experience of facing death is like until they actually experience it. But our experiment at least compelled us to be conscious of our ephemerality.

The group, which included men and women from all walks of life, bonded rather quickly, perhaps because of our willingness to face death together. While I will not here disclose any content of the group’s private conversations, I can speak in general of what I personally experienced during my pretended “final year of life.”

Living with death awareness was not the same as obsessing about my mortality. Rather, it had to do with remembering that my time to live was finite and should not be wasted or misused. Something important happened when I reset my lifespan so radically. A sense of urgency came over me; not an urgency to accomplish more before I died; rather, an urgency to awaken fully to the life before me. Suddenly I wanted to taste the sweetness of life more than ever before. I found myself paying much more attention to the intricacies of life, including the ordinary things around me. I began accepting the gifts life handed me and enjoying them fully before I would have to let them go. Paradoxically, in the face of death, I became more alive than ever.

Even when I admitted to myself that death was not immediately pending, the awareness of my inexorable death prompted in me a desire to live authentically. The experiment challenged me to examine how I was living my life and to consider whether that was the way in which I wanted to live out the rest of it, however long it might last. Of course I realized that just because I was considering a shorter lifespan it didn’t mean that I would have any more control over it. I knew that this “last year,” like past years, would include its share of suffering and pain; ecstasy and joy. What was in my control with death awareness, however, was how I would respond to whatever my life presented.

Living with death awareness evoked authenticity. It was clear to me that even before I died physically I had to die to some aspects of myself that were harmful. I realized that, like the tree in spring, I would not experience the growth in summer unless first I allowed myself to be pruned. But to be pruned is painful and to die back is frightening. Nevertheless, it was only by allowing death to come to what had been; and by grieving it appropriately, that I could welcome the new buds of life. It was not a matter of killing off parts of myself, but of releasing that which was no longer life-giving and embracing that which was. The death that came to my self-containment, self-condemnation, and self-consciousness gave way to a life of self-sacrifice, self-acceptance, and self-effacement.

Living with death awareness prompted me to reset my priorities in life. That which was truly significant received most of my attention, while the less significant received the least. For example, forgiveness seemed very important as I stood in the shadow of death. As I pondered my life I remembered mistakes I had made and ways in which I had hurt others in the past. I asked forgiveness from those whom I had harmed, from God, and from myself.

Living with death awareness intensified my yearning for union with God; not the conventional God of organized religion, but God in the raw. I craved to know God in nature. The trees and the birds, the grass and the squirrels were authentic to me. I experienced God in the face of an old man, bent over with the burdens of life, yet happy to be alive. I experienced God in a teenage girl, afraid of what the future held for her, and excited at the same time. I experienced God in the homeless man shuffling down the sidewalk pushing his life’s belongings in an old grocery cart, and in the middle-aged woman, waiting for the bus that would take her to work yet one more day. I experienced God at every turn, especially when I turned within. There, I experienced unconditional love.

It seems that death awareness brings our focal point to love: love of family and friends, love of life, and love of God. Nothing matters as much now as the connections of the heart. How precious the moments we share with one another, how ephemeral our embrace. Yet, from these temporal gifts comes that which will not be taken from us – the permanence of love.

The group disbanded at the end of the year as planned, and we each went our separate way; but we were not the same as when we had begun. Living with death awareness, even experimentally, had been a sobering experience for us. Life would no longer be measured by the number of our days, but by the way we lived and loved.

We know in our head that we will die. But we have to know it in our heart.

We have to let this fact penentrate our bones. Then we will know how to live.

                                               Larry Rosenberg

It was the greatest gift I have ever given, yet, I wasn’t feeling generous when I gave permission to the heart surgeon to harvest the heart of my brain-dead son in order to save the life of another father’s son. Neither my wife nor I wanted that opportunity to give. Neither of us wanted to let go of the heart we loved so much, but in that moment it seemed like the natural thing to do.

Ultimately, generosity is about letting go of something that we prefer to keep for ourselves. It may be our property, our resources, our time and energy, or something much greater to which we cling. The tighter our hold on it, the more generous it is to finally release it.

Generosity manifests through selfless, benevolent, even sacrificial acts of giving, but it is more than the practice of philanthropy or the spirit of charity. It is an intrinsic characteristic of our humanness. The words “generosity” and “generous” come from the Latin generosus, which means “noble birth.” The Latin genus means “clan” or “kin.” Generosity, then, has to do with family, the family of humankind. It is a generative trait, a part of our DNA.

Generosity is the nature of the universe and the impetus of our life. We were born to give. Even as infants we gave pleasure by our very existence to those who bore us, and we have been giving ever since. Children love to receive gifts, but even more, they love to give gifts. I remember when my children were little they would delight in gifting me with scrawled drawings or school craft projects which they finished just in time for Father’s Day.

My belief in the irrepressible spirit of generosity was formed early in my life and by a most unlikely influence. From the children’s story of The Littlest Angel I learned that, no matter the scale of our bounty, we always have something we can give. The Littlest Angel is a story of a four-year-old boy who dies and goes to heaven. He misses his life and all the wonderful things he had known on earth. He is especially sad because he hears that the baby Jesus will soon be born and he has nothing to give him for his birthday. Then he remembers a box he had kept at home under his bed that was filled with his personal treasurers, including a dog’s collar, two rocks, two bird eggs, and a beautiful butterfly. This was all he had and he gave it all. I learned from this story that sometimes we give from what we have and sometimes we give all that we have. His humble gift was well received and it became the Star of Bethlehem.

Our ability to give has nothing to do with the condition of our bank account and everything to do with the condition of our heart. A closed heart is forced by fear to cling to what it has lest it be diminished. An open heart is compelled by love to give up what it has for the sake of the beloved or for a greater cause.

In giving, our intention is everything. When we give - regardless of the quantity or quality of our gift - with the intention of receiving something in return, it is not generosity that motivates us, but our desire for compensation. It may be public acknowledgment and credit that we seek or it may be favor that we curry with the recipient of our gift. Whatever our expectation of reward may be, our gift is not a sign of our generosity, but of our contractual prowess. This includes any quid pro quo arrangement we may think we have with God.

In the face of major catastrophes and global starvation it sometimes seems futile to give from our modest reserves, yet Mother Teresa reminds us that, “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one.” In other words, when we give, even from our scarcity, we stay true to our noble birth and we honor our humanness.

The most generous gift of all is the gift of our selves. When we enhance the lives of others through our support, our attention, and our compassion, we are giving the gift of lovingkindness. When we open to others the window to our soul and show them glimpses of our vulnerability, our spirituality, and our deep-felt emotions, we are giving the gift of intimacy.

The coin of generosity has two sides: on one side is giving, on the other is receiving. Together they create the currency of the heart. To give is generous, but to graciously receive is also generous for it allows the giver to participate in the economy of love. Whether we are giving or receiving, generosity promotes life and generates the universe.

Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you

do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.

                                                Khalil Gibran

God grant us grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed, courage

to change the things which should be changed,

and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

                                                   Reinhold Niebuhr

Serenity is rooted in the acceptance of what is. To lament a plan gone awry or to feel disappointment when something on which we counted does not materialize is natural and understandable, yet, to remain for long in the grip of discontent dulls our senses and diminishes our vitality. It is better to accept the actuality of what is and work from there.

But before we accept the adverse circumstances in which we sometimes find ourselves, we must first ascertain their inevitability. Gratuitous acceptance is not approprate when intolerable circumstances are changeable. And acceptance does not mean wholesale condonation or acquiescence to the unhealthy conditions before us, it just means that we acknowledge the reality of what is.

Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer” quoted above reminds us that it takes wisdom to discern what can and cannot be changed. We are guided by the wisdom of the soul. The soul may ask us to accept what is and to make the most of it or it may encourage us to push for change. Niebuhr also says that it takes courage to change. Courage is not the denial of circumstances; rather, it is the force within us that empowers us to overcome them. Neither is courage bravado or mindless impulsivity. Sometimes it takes more courage to accept what is, without attempting to change it, than to pick up a sword and fight for change.

Life is unpredictable. When we least expect it we may be hit with a major crisis that impacts us greatly. It may have to do with our health, our livelihood, our personal security, a broken relationship, or the death of a loved one. The crisis is usually sudden and unexpected and catches us off guard and unprepared. We may attempt to respond to the crisis by minimizing it, ignoring or denying it, or we may try to escape it through abusive and addictive behavior. But accepting a crisis courageously means that we allow the natural emotions that arise to be experienced and expressed in a healthy manner. It means that we accept the changes in our life that result from the crisis, and we accept that, personally, we will never be the same again.

As we accept life we also accept the suffering that is an inevitable part of life. But only when suffering is truly inevitable do we cease our resistance to it and enter into it with our whole being. To accept suffering means that we come to terms with it. It does not mean that we become victims, but that we face it with resilience and determination, yet remain open in order to learn and grow from it. We allow the suffering to prompt necessary changes in our life, spark our creativity, and promote our self-awareness.

Before we can accept the circumstances of our life we must first accept the totality of who we are. We must accept the beast in us as well as the beauty. We must take back those parts of us that we have disowned, including those we consider dark, animalistic, and primordial. We do not choose between the good and evil in us; we do not select the beautiful and leave behind the ugly. We accept our creativeness and our destructiveness. We face the lightness of our being as well as the darkness; nothing is hidden and nothing is judged.

We accept the times in our life when we have failed, that is, fallen short of what we expected of ourselves. We accept our failures as opportunities to learn from our mistakes. We accept that some of our dreams have gone unrealized. We are disappointed, but then we go on to dream new dreams and work toward their fulfillment.

We accept ourselves as transitional beings. We accept that we are impermanent and that sometimes change happens whether we like it or not. To accept what happens to our body when we get sick or as we age is not resignation. First we do our best to stay well, then, when it is evident that the changes to our physicality are beyond our control, we accept what is.

We accept ourselves with humility. We are precious creatures born of heaven and earth. We come into the world with wondrous possibilities and humbling limitations, and we are accepting of both. Although we may choose the path of spirituality, we accept the reality of our earth-born, earth-bound creatureliness. Holiness is first of all humanness. We touch heaven with earthen hands.

The path to true happiness is one of integrating

and fully accepting all aspects of our experience. 

                                                   Sharon Salzberg