A revolution of hope and tenderness

Tenderness is the word my best friend and I chose as our focus for 2017, and I'm delighted to see Pope Francis choosing it as a theme for his TED talk, too. He also uses a lot of other words I love, like hope, solidarity and inclusion, and reminds us of the story of the Good Samaritan as a model for each one of us to care for the suffering among us.

"...a tiny flicker of light that feeds on hope is enough to shatter the shield of darkness. 

A single individual is enough for hope to exist, and that individual can be you."

"...tenderness is the path of the strongest, most courageous men and women."

There are so many good lines in this TED talk that you might want to listen to the whole thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36zrJfAFcuc

If you do nothing else for yourself today, have a listen to this man,
and join the revolution of tenderness!

Listening to voices of love

I'm not a crowd counter, but I would guess that more than 4000 people gathered near the steps of the Alberta Legislature on Monday night, and thousands more continue to gather in other cities and towns across Canada to stand in solidarity with our grieving Muslim communities. Six of our Muslim brothers in Quebec City, members of our human family -- a computer programmer, a university professor, a pharmacist's aide, a Hallal shop keeper and two newcomers to Canada who were fathers and husbands and brothers and uncles and friends -- died when a university student shot them after their evening prayers on Sunday night.

It's not much of a stretch to link the events in Quebec to the fear and lies being spread by certain politicians in our midst who are focused on closing our borders to immigrants and refugees. It hurts to listen to them create undue fear and insult those who simply want to live in peace and security by insinuating that they are terrorists -- to the point that I'm finding it harder to listen to the news for all the political lies and finger-pointing we have to wade through to get to the real stories of families who are often fleeing terrible situations for a better life with us here. Perhaps you've seen this list from the American Centre for Disease Control already, the point being that terrorism is a poor excuse for closing borders:

Such stupid excuses to close borders are enough to make anyone lose heart. Thankfully, a friend of mine from work was doing a Toastmasters presentation last night and she reminded me why I need to continue to pay attention. We spent some time chatting about how a book called Becoming Human dragged her from her home in Aleppo, Syria, nine years ago to come to Canada and join L'Arche, a community that helps people with and without disabilities to belong with and to each other. She reminded me of the L'Arche dream to "build a world where everyone belongs," and in the process, she put the heart back into me. I realized that shutting out the world only allows the wrong rhetoric to gain strength. I need to be aware and to refute it every chance I get. Even with these moodlings.

I'm not sure how we can convince those who are living in fear of immigrants and refugees to believe that everyone belongs -- except to invite them into relationship and to treat them with such tenderness that their fear is banished. It takes time and effort, but most Muslim members of our human family seem to be more than willing to show us the way, laying down their own anger and anxiety to reach out and invite us in to be with them in peace and to pray with them. On my way home from work, I pass a mosque that has thrown up a sign since the shooting inviting passersby to get to know Islam. They are living proof of the words spoken by one Muslim man to our mayor: "We Muslims hear whispers of hate, but we just listen to voices of love."

Every single person on the planet is called to listen to voices of love and to build a world where everyone belongs. So what will you do to help?

A year for tenderness

My best friend and I have had a tradition of picking a word at the beginning of each New Year, a word that we want to focus on for the 12 months to come. Usually the words are tied to our hopes and dreams, or to personal attributes that we want to work on.

2016's word was Trust, and it turned out to be a year in which I had to do lot of work on my trust in God. There were a lot of times when it was hard to see Her and Him working in the details of my life and the lives of those around me. It required a real effort on my part to let go of my own ego (a never-ending battle) and really listen to the people in my life so that I could love them better.

And though it was a very difficult year in many regards, I reaped many benefits, including the commitment to more regular centering prayer and a greater openness to possibilities even in situations that seem negative. God is in charge, and I think my trust in His and Her goodness and mercy increased in 2016. Even so, it was a tough year that broke me and some of the people around me in unexpected ways. Being brought to our knees by circumstances beyond our control is humbling and, to be frank, exhausting. I don't think I've ever cried as much as I did in 2016, angry, sad, and happy tears, but perhaps that just means I'm getting softer as I age!

When I was in Taizé in October, I brought home a postcard of the Madonna of Tenderness, above, written by Frère Eric, and she is posted near my desk. See how tender the Mother and Child are to each other? His little hand wrapped around her neck, caressing her cheek behind the veil, her cheek against his? If we could all feel the tenderness of mother for child and child for mother more often in our lives, this world would be a much different, more hopeful place.

And so, my word for 2017 is tenderness. I need a little more tenderness in my life. I need to be more tender toward the people around me, and I also need them to be tender toward me. I want to see the world become a place where tenderness and forgiveness and acceptance is chosen ahead of blaming and anger and apathy, where we can all find the peaceful places in our hearts and open them wider instead of becoming overprotective of what we think is ours. I want to remember that all the abundance of goodness, beauty and truth that we have has been given to us by our Tender God, our God who tends us and is attentive to us, our God who is more generous and loving than we can imagine.

That's my word, and I'm sticking to it.

If you were to pick a word for the year, what would you choose?