The Five Recipients of Your Kindness

Self: charity begins at home in the heart.

Other – Individual: Friend or Stranger:  being kind to an individual in awareness of their separateness and uniqueness.

Other – Humanity: the whole world will flourish from your simplest act of kindness

Nature – All that is not human: animal, plant, mineral.

Spirit –Ask yourself what kindness does an angel need, think of the gifts of the Shepherds and the Kings not as tribute but as kindness. Can you imagine how the spiritual world rejoiced at those gifts?

Future – Acts of kindness have a legacy.

No recipient is of greater or less significance.  The moment we place a personally determined value on those we are kind to we are in judgment and offering or denying favors to those we hold in favor or disfavor.  Favors are not kindnesses. Kindness is not conditional.

I favor others all the time. We all do. These Holy Nights’ attention to kindness is waking me up to distinctions in my thoughts about kindness. Even after the birth of new insights around kindness, will there be an epiphany in my integrity? New insights take a while to become integrated into the bones of being. I will become kinder overtime. Favors will fade and kindnesses will increase.

With these perspectives in mind, let’s imagine the kindness of caring.

There are three threads of caring

Affection: caring living as feeling for the recipient of our care. Our feelings radiate with reverence and gratitude.

Consideration: caring living in thinking about the recipient. Our thoughts light up with wonder and awe.

Attention: caring living in our behaviors and responsibilities toward the recipient. Our will serves with devotion.

With affection comes the kindness of interest.

With consideration comes the kindness of seeing needs.

With attention comes the kindness of meeting of those needs.

Such a beautiful picture.  Three simple gestures.  But weaving just three threads together in a conscious, meaningful way can be difficult.

Caring is not simple; it is complex. I mentioned five recipients of your kindness.  Interest in all five recipients all the time will cause us to be out of focus. Seeing the needs of different recipients will astound us at how conflicting the needs can be.  Meeting all needs…impossible. Kindness does not require heroics.

We must limit who we care for at any given time. How do we choose?  This is a question to ask during the Holy Nights, only the angels can guide us. They won’t give us a formula, but they will show up, intervene, and offer us surprising inspirations.

In writing this, the inspiration comes to suggest that we are always working on developing our capacities for caring, for being interested, for seeing needs, for meeting needs with humility, with forgiveness for not getting it right, and with joy.

If each us cares wholeheartedly for just a few minutes each day for each of the five recipients…oh, how we all will begin to flourish. Remember, begin with yourself…how can you care for yourself today? Then pet your cat…they always need petting then clean their box.. Smile at someone who needs a smile.  Most often caring is a tiny gesture even when the need is big.

At the end of the day, ask yourself about your acts of caring.  Were you interested? Did you see needs?  Did you meet needs?