There’s a place in my brain where hate won’t grow.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Jerusalem”
Sometimes a seed of compassion
slips into my brain and lands in a place
where before only anger could grow.
These seeds appear
when I stop seeing humans
as only our actions and start
seeing all of us as walking wounds.
They appear when I see others
finding ways to be generous, to be kind.
If I offer the seed the barest scrap
of attention, it begins to grow roots.
Then a stem. Then seed leaves.
More leaves. A bud. But what allows
for this growth is far beyond me—
rather some gift that comes through
when me and my story get out of the way.
This is how I sometimes come to find
a whole field of inner daisies thriving
in a place I once torched to the dirt.
At first, they needed my constant care.
Then they reseeded again. And again.
They spread into such unpredictable
places. Sometimes outside my inner world.
The same way the seeds arrived in me.
Through kindness. Through love.
It’s beautiful.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Dear friends,
Today was day 120 of the monks walking from Texas to Washington DC to bring awareness to mindfulness and peace, compassion and connection. Today, after 2,300 miles, they arrived. What an amazing way to shine light on what is good inside all of us. How do we embody peace instead of arguing for it? What a question to live into.
Posts Tagged ‘kindness’
The Spreading
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, daisies, humanness, kindness, love, monks, wounds on February 10, 2026| 6 Comments »
Gesture
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heart, kindness, kyra, love, rocks, simple, small gesture on February 7, 2026| 2 Comments »
Most days, I rearrange the small stones
on the front porch into a new semblance
of a heart. What moves them? The wind?
A mouse? I gently reshape them with my palms.
They have been here over four years now,
since the day you placed them beside the door,
the day my son did not come home.
Two dozen-ish penny-sized gray and white stones.
Rough to the fingertips, soft to the spirit.
You taught me how simply we might care
for each other with whatever is here.
Small rocks. Fallen petals. Tall stems
of dry grass. A touch of love.
Two willing hands.
When They Asked Me, “What Is Your Current Hyperfixation”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hyperfixation, kindness on January 30, 2026| 14 Comments »
I could have said potato chips. Always true. Plain ones. No flavors. Potato. Oil. Salt. I could have said black licorice from Finland, also always true. Or long flowy pants with no front pockets. That’s new. Tending my eight aloe babies still recovering from their transplant. Counting orchid buds about to bloom. How many grams of protein in a serving of anything. The insane softness of my daughter’s inner arm. How baby swifts can fly ten months without stopping. Imagining Rodin and Rilke watching sunsets together. But what I said felt truest of all—I am starved for all stories of kindness. The young man delivering diapers to immigrant families in Maine. The woman sending socks to my friend with cancer. The stranger who walked a labyrinth with me. My husband offering me the last egg in the carton. Anyone who smiles and says hello in the grocery store aisles. Anyone who says hello back.
The Channeling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged divinity, fear, kindness, rising, uncertainty on January 20, 2026| 5 Comments »
We might as well be divine.
—Kate Horowitz, “i tell the ghost of carrie fisher the world is ending”
We might as well be divine.
As masked agents arrive
with guns, curses
and brutal disrespect,
we might as well be divine.
We might as well sing at the edge
of collapse, bring forth the kind
of harmony that calls goosebumps
to arms and hot tears to eyes.
As we march, as we gather,
as we fight for each other,
we might as well be divine.
As rivers shrink and sinkholes
appear and we face water
bankruptcy worldwide,
we might as well share
what is not ours to own.
And be kind to each other.
And praise what good we find.
This is it. It’s like this. Nothing
but now. What we bring,
who we are, this is all.
As tears fall fast and voices rise,
as fear grows thick and viscous,
we might as well be channels for grace,
we might as well be divine.
Through Her Discipline of Kindness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged discipline, friendship, kindness, Kyra Kopestonksky, learning, legacy, teacher on January 13, 2026| 12 Comments »
for Kyra
She brought her cello to the desert,
playing long, slow notes to cactus,
canyons, the night, knowing
it matters to bring music
wherever you go. She taught me
to sing in the face of fear,
even when the mountain lion
held her with his amber eyes.
She taught me to plant
a weed in a pot and wait
with great patience to see
what kind of flower might bloom.
To bring something chocolaty and sweet
to share with others wherever you go.
She taught me to share scars,
even when they make others wince.
To use more garlic,
to read poems to strangers,
to dance barefoot in the grass.
I did not want to learn how quickly
a life can go from vibrant to silent
to gone. Did not want to learn
how great a hole one human can leave
in so many lives. But I am grateful
for all that she teaches me still—
the beauty in the ache, how to hear
the missing laughter in the silence,
how to read the letters that
don’t come anymore, how love
is so much bigger than a poem,
how she is no less herself now
than she was when she was here,
how even in her absence
she still teaches me discipline.
In a Difficult Time, I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brahms, concert, kindness, Kyra Kopestonksky, music on December 23, 2025| 6 Comments »
for Kyra
In a corrugated metal culvert, tall enough
to walk in, Kyra made us a nest of warm blankets.
We entered the steel tube from the same side
the flash floods enter each fall, and we curled
into the softness she’d prepared. Meanwhile,
she settled on a stool and began to bow her cello,
a Brahms lullaby meant to lull and soothe.
Above us, cars hummed along on the highway.
Beside us, daylight glowed from both round ends.
Inside me, what was broken was still so deeply broken,
but I felt, too, the gentling that arrives with surprise
beauty. There are times someone tends to our hearts
with such warmth, such goodness, our hearts
cannot help but bloom. Even when the heart soil is barren.
Even when there’s no chance for rain. Even in the midst
of breaking—there, just at the edge of perception—
the heart a wildflower in spring. It is simple kindness
that grows us, the kind she brings with her everywhere.
Even now, I can see her swaying as she played,
her body a radiant pendulum draped in red velvet.
Even now, I hear the long, sonorous notes of her song.
Even now, I think of her smile, humble and shy, and
how that moment still reverberates—her cello, our sighs,
the laughter that somehow finds its way to our lips
in the saddest of times. Years later, her kindness still echoes.
So Soon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged christmas tree, kindness, light on December 18, 2025| 4 Comments »
An hour after we light the tree,
it’s hard to remember
how the room used to be—
so soon we relax into radiance.
It makes me want to whisper
luminous words, string kindnesses
together like twinkling garland,
hang them wherever it’s dim.
If we all spoke in light,
imagine that glow—how
quickly even the darkest spaces
inside and between us
could become welcoming,
warm, even, imagine, incandescent.
In the Airport, I Wonder about Enough
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged enough, fear, helplessness, kindness on July 28, 2025| 8 Comments »
Could they ever be enough,
these stumbling attempts
to bring kindness to an aching world?
Enough, this holding the door for a stranger,
this saying I’m sorry, this holding a place in line?
How could it be enough, asks the ache,
when today I saw the photo of the mother
holding the starving child in Gaza,
his brown legs as thin as my wrists.
I am sick with helplessness.
What does it mean, enough?
Beside me on a bench,
a man I have never met is humming.
His tune blooms like a sun in my chest.
The warmth twines with the beat of my question,
How could any small act be enough?
Until the child in the photo and all children
are safe and fed and loved and held by loving mothers
who are safe and fed and loved
and held by loving others who are safe
and fed and loved—until then,
how could anything ever be enough?
The old man beside me has started to sing.
His eyes are closed, and his
low gentle voice braids beauty
into everything around him.
Even the questions that will never
have answers. Even this terrible ache.
How deeply I want to believe
it is not too late to save this world.
Anyone can see she’s a beautiful woman, but god,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, generosity, goodness, kindness, ping pong, play, role model, transformation on March 16, 2025| 9 Comments »
for Erin
Anyone can see she’s a beautiful woman, but god,
she has never been more beautiful to me than when
I brought my great nephews to the loft of her barn
and she picked up a red ping pong paddle and let
the small, fretful boy across the old green table make up
the rules for the game. And every time he’d change the rules—
assigning points for hitting the ball over the exposed beams
of the barn or points for hitting the ball into narrow window frames—
no matter the rules he contrived, she would shrug and say yes
and laugh and let the ball be forever in play. There was sunshine
in her voice when she praised him, pure radiance
in the way she squealed as the ball ricocheted
in the rafters, honest incandescence in her smile.
This is how generosity and goodness survive—
they’re passed on one brief interaction at a time.
When the boys and I left that dusty, sacred space,
fully covered in dust and hay, I swear we, too, were luminous.
Some Good News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged goodness, humanity, kindness, news on February 25, 2025| 4 Comments »
It’s like driving over a hill
the day after a flood
only to discover on calm water
a gathering of trumpet swans,
the elegant stretch of their long necks rising,
their white wings spread wide in arrival.
Or like skiing through a vast valley
only to find another trail that leads you
into a grove of elder cedar trees,
their great trunks humbling you,
their balsamic scent opening
in the shade like holy incense.
Yes, that’s what it’s like when,
in a world that feels hostile and hateful,
you arrive in a faraway town full of strangers
who welcome you into warm rooms
filled with bright cloths, with soft guitar,
with fringed yellow tulips in blue vases.
Yes, that’s what it’s like when,
after listening to the firehose of the news,
you meet new friends who speak with you
of moss and making baskets and singing and seeds,
and your heart leaps up like a crocus in spring,
alive with the truth of how good it can be, this life.