Interfaith Celebration Gathering

 

 

Pass It On

 

A hundred years from now it will not matter what you are wearing today, what your bank account has in it, what kind of car you drive, or how big your house is. What will matter is that you were important in the life of another person or creature on this planet.

 

The gifts we give to others of love and caring today are the gifts that will make a difference down through the ages. The healing and love we give ourselves so that we can be able to give love and compassion to others will continue to flow from one to another to another.

 

Dysfunctional behavior is often called the gift that keeps on giving. A child raised in dysfunction becomes an adult who teaches his or her children the same type of dysfunction. And they teach their children, and so on and so on.

 

We begin the process of offering love and compassion to others by offering it first to ourselves. Most of us are our own harshest critic, and we have little patience with ourselves. We fuss at ourselves when we are ill, or when we fall short of our goals, or when we look in the mirror and see an imperfect face looking back at us.

 

But we cannot give others what we have not experienced ourselves. Thus we need to learn to be compassionate with ourselves. We need to be gentle with ourselves, allow ourselves to make mistakes, to be less than perfect. For it is through this show of compassion toward ourselves that we can learn to open up and not only experience God’s love and compassion better, but be better able to be compassionate with others.

 

Compassion is mentally putting ourselves in another’s place, feeling their hurts, and extending them love and maybe a helping hand. This is the type of love we get from God. The least we can do is learn to pass it on.

May the God of love add a blessing to these humble words.

AMEN

© 2011 Rev. S. Suzanne Fisher