Mérida McCarthy
Program Coordinator at Charter for Compassion
I wonder what happens when you start the day listening to Ron Nirenberg, current Mayor of San Antonio, in conversation with Marilyn Turkovich, Executive Director of Charter for Compassion, about how compassionate infrastructure in cities can affect the well-being of its citizens and how the dream of having a Compassionate USA may materialize; what this can look like and how we can achieve this goal. Then, we hear the happiest man on Earth, Matthieu Ricard, talk about The Path to Wisdom in a conversation with Lynne Reeder, Researcher and Leader of the Australian Compassion Council (ACC). Ricard has been an inspiration to many through his research and many books about Happiness and Altruism, offering us ways to develop the potential for compassion, proving how essential they both are for the wellbeing of humanity.
This could possibly be exactly what one needs to trigger the compassion we’ve buried within and start to make the changes necessary, in whatever our area might be, to alleviate and free ourselves and others from suffering - that is the point of Compassion, after all, isn’t it? Continue reading here.
Kindness matters
It's Time
bymarilyn turkovich
A few things that I've learned last week are embedded in the two messages above, the first by Mary Oliver who wasn't thinking global disasters when she wrote this line, but nonetheless offers a possible prelude to a new way of reflection and action. How many times over the last days have you heard pundits say we need to wait before we know how to assess the horrific massacres in Israel and Gaza. Have we been given a "box full of darkness" with this Israeli nightmare? Or for that matter the "black box" that has been given to nearly 200,000 Venezuelans who have crossed the Darian Gap this year seeking a new life. How does a country survive when nearly 8 million of its people have fled. The list needs to include "black boxes" given to the Sudanese, the Syrians, the Afghans, and thousands of pockets of others.Continue reading here