making a difference

Mind the gap.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

How lovely things would be if the way we picture ourselves doing something in our heads is the way it plays out in real life. The beautiful prose, perfect plotting, and subtle characterization all laying themselves down on the page when pen is lifted rather than being cruelly translated into the awkward phrasing, cliched plots, and stilted characters plaguing a first draft. If perfect leaps, spins, and arabesques just happen rather than the more likely falls on the bum. If we were already perfect rather than striving. If there were no gap between where we are and where we would like to be.

With all the armchair quarterbacks and critics out there on virtually every issue, you’d almost think effort and expertise don’t count for anything. And yet, mastery is always the result of effort. Full stop. Every master painter, skater, dancer, author, was once a novice. In fact, that journey from novice to master is the important thing, and those hacks on the sidelines are missing the point. As Theodore Roosevelt said:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

So this gap, between where we want to be and where we are, is where we focus our efforts and attention. Not on the critic, because everyone stumbles. But we press on. For to be great at anything takes practice and effort, and our attempt is awkward and halting, ungainly and bumbling at first. But it gets better. And those sitting on the sidelines, afraid or busy criticizing others, aren’t moving forward unless they, too, mind the gap and try.

What kind of difference will you make?

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Jane Goodall was an inspiration. She will be missed. Consider her words above today.

Think of all the people you’ve brushed up against as you went about your day today. Were their lives made better by the encounter? Even something as simple as a greeting or smile can brighten someone else’s day, and they in turn will be more encouraged to brighten someone else’s day and so on and so on and so on.  Good cheer ripples out into the world endlessly. So, of course, does a dour grumpy mood. But who needs more of that?

Consider your actions today. You’re making ripples of one kind or another.

Peace sprouts.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

What can we do to help? The problems seem great, and we seem so small.

Consider these words from Pope Leo XIV:

“Do not be afraid. Be sprouts of peace where the seed of hatred and resentment is growing; be weavers of unity where polarization and enmity prevail; be the voice of those who have no voice to ask for justice and dignity; be light and salt where the flame of faith and the taste for life are fading.” — Pope Leo XIV

Every giant tree starts as a tiny sprout. Be sprouts of peace.

We have more control and are stronger than we think. What we do makes a difference. Let’s make it a good difference!

No offering too small.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Speaking to graduating law students, Julian Aguon said

No offering is too small. No stone unneeded. All of us – whether we choose to become human rights lawyers or corporate counsel, or choose never to practice law at all but instead become professors or entrepreneurs or disappear anonymous among the poor or stay at home and raise bright, delicious children – all of us, without exception, are qualified to participate in the rescue of the world.

And this is true for any profession, calling, or vocation. We each matter. We each contribute to the mix. We each are qualified to rescue this world.

In any time in history, including our own in which we now find ourselves, some individuals stand apart from the crowd on behalf of what is right. Their example inspires others from that moment forward in time.

Who are those role models giving us strength now?

How can we shine the light for those to come?

Hold the line of love.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

What is our job in these troubled times? During any times, but particularly during times where we are seeing peoples’ rights eroded and trampled, when legal safeguards are flouted, and when authoritarianism is on the rise, our job is to hold the line. Continue to be a place of comfort and succor to the hurting, feed the hungry, grieve with the mourning.

Hold on to your loving and generous spirit.

In the words of Bishop Charleson:

Snow monkey or penguin?

Posted on by Shari Swanson

The Japanese Macaques, snow monkeys, are a deeply hierarchical society, their status in the group inherited from their mothers. Living in frigid temperatures, the upper class snow monkeys spend their time in natural hot springs, leaving the rest to huddle in the snow and look on as they luxuriate. The Emperor Penguins also live in frigid conditions, huddled together, but they constantly rotate, letting those most exposed on the outside come to the center for warmth. They take turns. It keeps those in the center from overheating and those on the fringes from freezing.

Sharing is an interesting phenomenon. It’s easy to see that when a society shares its resources, the whole group benefits, but how does that play out in the human species? Do we see the benefit to the whole group from sharing what we have, or do we focus on clutching more and more into our own fists? Some humans are uniquely able, it seems, to rationalize selfish behavior even when looking directly at the needs of others. But others consider their own resources an opportunity to help others. This is true both on an individual level, and on a larger societal level. It’s an interesting matter of perspective.

Some snow monkeys, some penguins. Which are you?

Look out for each other.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

I was recently reminded about a story from 2017 where two little boys were caught in a rip tide and swept out to sea. Their entire family and four woud-be rescuers tried to swim out to save them but ended up similarly stranded.  Officials on shore stood, helpless, waiting for a rescue boat while the family and would-be rescuers floundered.

But then the people on the beach did a remarkable thing. People from all walks of life, across every possible difference or division, linked arms together and formed a human chain stretching out into the ocean until they reached those stuck and and then passed them person to person, beginning with the little boys, Noah (11) and Stephen (8), and ending with their grandmother who had tried to save them, back to safety.

Stories like this don’t get a lot of press. But it’s why we’re here.

To help each other. To make a difference.

Dance. Now.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Have you ever been to a ghost town? You see the saloon and can picture it with card games going on and drinks being slid down the bar to thirsty patrons. The hoofbeats of horses maybe bringing strangers into town, the scurry to safety if a gunfight breaks out, breaking glass, swishing skirts, laughter and tears. Lives lived and lost all as rich and complicated, full of joy and strife, as your own. And those people who once lived there, chugging their whiskey and loading their pistols—they’re gone. Their time came…..and went.

In Dead Poet’s Society, John Keating (played by Robin Williams) encourages his young students to remember that life is short and that they need to live fully now:

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish…what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

We dance because, for now, we inhabit these bodies and it is joyful to get lost in the beauty of music and move to its rhythms. We sing because we have a song. We love because that’s what life is all about.

Isn’t it?

In the end, only kindness matters.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Most of us will not be inventing a vaccine to end a pandemic or donating millions to the research. Most of us will not be heroes in the saving the day sense. 

And yet each of us has incredible power to choose how we want to meet each day when life is so stressful. Whether we want to retreat into a cocoon focused only on our own wants and needs or use this as an opportunity to reach out to others. Whether we want to add to someone’s anxiety or be their shelter in the storm. Whether we want to be comforted or to comfort. 

And the impetus for any acts of kindness comes from the deep recognition of how important those acts of kindness have been to you when you have despaired. The kind gesture, the comfort of a friend simply abiding with you as you travel a dark path, the reminder that you are precious when you’ve forgotten and can see only your mistakes. These have been your lifeblood. And you can offer that gift to others, particularly now.

Take a moment to enjoy this profound poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. 

Kindness matters. 

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye – 1952-

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

What are the children saying?

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Children have a way of shaking things up. Don’t they? They see things we’ve stopped noticing. They question things we’ve started to take for granted. They cause us to stop and notice. They hold up a giant mirror to us and cause us to do some soul-searching.

That is, if we take the time to listen.

Why is that person asking for money? Why are people starving? Why do some people get treated better? Why do you say one thing in public but do another in private? Is this fair? Does everyone cheat? Does everyone lie?  Is there a better way?

They force us to confront the gap between what we say they should do and what we do, or what society does, or what their friends do. Most adults suffer from some degree of cognitive dissonance: the mental discomfort from holding two or more differing beliefs, ideas or values at the same time. We value honesty but cheat on our taxes. We tell them not to bully others but then bully them or laugh as others are bullied. We tell them never to hit someone else while spanking them. We tell them all children are precious but then harbor racial or gender biases.

They notice.

And they point it out.

For those of us listening, this is a time to ask ourselves what we do, in fact, stand for and then work to align our lives with those values, to be internally and externally consistent.

For an unbelievably uplifting video of a diverse group of kids singing their hearts out, please watch this video. It will start your day off with hope and promise and excitement for the future of our nation and world.