The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

THE VILLAGE

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This video guts me. It filets me in a way that makes me more aware of what I should be aware of and maybe what I shouldn’t be aware of as much.

Most of the time when I stand up for the LGBTQ Community in any of its forms, I’m often asked, “Is there somebody in your family that’s like that?”  The generalize thought is that would be a reason why I should stand up for somebody that’s different than me, somebody who’s life and lifestyle I will never be able to understand or on my best day, comprehend.  Somehow the thought is, “Well, I could maybe understand if someone close to you lives this kind of lifestyle or why they chose it and you’re showing support”  Uh, NO, NO, when you interacted with those who live such lives and the people who love and support them suffer, you’d know it’s anything but a choosing anyone would purposely put themselves through and yet, STILL, THE ASKINGS.          .          .
I am also asked what’s your most difficult kind of funeral to conduct and my knee-jerk reaction often is a baby, especially one that may be premature; but in my heart of hearts, I think again the one the ones that get me the most are not suicides but suicide because somebody is different sexually, and a family member or members or society can’t accept that and they find no other way to cope, but to die, to commit suicide.
So yes, there’s somebody in my family that’s different,  just like there’s somebody in your family that’s different, just like everybody in the world is different and so now I have to choose, will I be different too and maybe more importantly will I treat people differently because of my differences?
QUESTIONS, CLASS?
Uhhhhh.    .   .if it takes a Village
.        .       .maybe it really takes a
BETTER ONE!

What say YOU?

EVERYDAYNESSES

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“A flat tire. An extra fee tacked on to a hotel bill. A cracked screen on your phone. A bike stolen from your garage. A large charge that they won’t refund. A deal blown up by a missed email.

Nobody likes these things. But does anyone think that a life without them is possible?

No, of course not. We understand that sometimes you get ripped off. Sometimes you make mistakes. Sometimes stuff falls apart on the one-yard line.

Ok, then why are you so upset? You know it’s a statistical certainty, a basic fact of life. Yet here you are, cursing it as if it’s unfair. As if you’ve been singled out. Instead of just accepting it, instead of just saying to yourself as Marcus Aurelius tried to say of shameless people (who he also believed were a statistical inevitability), ok this is one of those people. Don’t ask for the impossible, he said, don’t get upset that someone who was bound to exist, exists or that something that was bound to happen, has happened.

We can’t escape it. We can only accept it…and be grateful that it’s rarer than it could be.”
When I read this in a random DAILY STOIC post I started wondering why I don’t like it when bad things happen to good people for no apparent reason or any catchy rhyming, especially to this trying-so-hard-to-be-a-better-person striving to do good for good.         .           .
B  U  T .      .     .the sacred isn’t always what you think it is or where you think you can find it.     .      .Embrace your EVERYDAYNESSESS
Now about that flat tire, well right after the leaky pipe but before the locked keys in the car or the lost credit card that I swear I put in my secret SECRET place and my pen, my Montblanc Pen.        .        .

Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst: 
BRING YOUR EVERYDAYNESSES
TO YOUR
EVERYTHINGNESSESS
ENCHANTMENT ABOUNDS
(and be the Caring Catalyst you are but rarely recognize)

JUST A MOMENT: FINDING THE SACRED

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Maybe the question isn’t so much where do you find the sacred, the holy as much as where does it find you? Just where is the isn’t the sacred, or at least, what you call it?  Whatever you find holy, wherever you find sacred, whatever feeds your soul and gives meaning to you, don’t let any label like the sacred or the holy or the religious or the spiritual or the essence or the energy take you away from it.         .           .
WHEN YOU FIND THE SACRED
you feel Peace
WHEN THE SACRED FINDS YOU
you become Peace

THE THING ABOUT KINDNESS

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Simple Acts of Kindness can change the people we become. When we take the time to support other’s needs, we create habits of change and here’s the real clincher,
WE BECOME BETTER

Here’s a thing about kindness: It’s only a word!  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a really nice word but words don’t do much these days and they don’t get us too far down the road; they kind of leave us in an alleyway, don’t they? Dark.  Dingy.  Not always a comforting place to be at midnight with a few streetlights missing.

I mean come on, they’re just words, but when a word like KINDNESS becomes a verb that’s right, verb is just a word too. But when our KINDNESS puts on tennis shoes and workout clothes it all of the sudden becomes kindness is an action. though, When KINDNESS becomes something we do, it really defines who we are.  And then PRESTO:  We just don’t become different but everyone who’s shore our ripple hits and crashes down upon becomes different and a little bit better, too.

IF they become more than just words.          .          .

DEEP PEACE

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While in office one Christmas, President Reagan was asked what he wanted for Christmas and he stated without pause, “PEACE!”  The reporter followed up with the question, what would you like for Christmas that comes in a box and again, without pause, President Reagan said, “If you can wrap it up in a box, I’ll take it!”

AND YOU.         .          .

What would you like, not so much for Christmas, but NOW.       .       .wrapped in a box of unbundantly untethered?  WHAT DO YOU WANT?

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you can hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides”

Barbara Kingsolver
Photography B. Berenika
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Whatever brings you
P  E  A  C  E
DO
I  T

And then
let the warm rays of your
DEEP
P E A C E
shine about to others
T               H                  I                 S.       .        .

 

 

EVEN HORIZONS HAVE HORIZONS

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Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Even our HORIZONS have HORIZONS
and that is the
GOOD NEWS
Now even though we shouldn’t have an eye to the
F    U    T    U    R    E
what we often focus on in the
W            H            E            N
a  n  d
T             H            E            N
fuzzies  up our
N   O   W ‘ S
making it much more tougher than it should
to not only reach our HORIZON
but all the ones that follow.            .             .
Glance behind

anonymous person with binoculars looking through stacked books

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

LOOK AHEAD


But focus on your precious NOW
and just the very next step

and above all
R   E   M   E   M   B   E   R
just because your
H O R I Z O N
may be hazy
doesn’t mean it isn’t
T H E R E.          .          .

 

TRYING MY BEST

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A            N            D

A            N            D

A            N            D

A            N            D
A            N            D
A            N             D
M O S T L Y

JUST A MOMENT–THREE WORDS

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H   E    Y.            .            .
Wait a Moment
DID YOU.           .           .          ?
Actually about 6 minutes of moments
with a severely powerful, undeniable
TRUTH:
1 out of 1 of us will die;
though we know this brutal truth,
few ACT
as if this is a bonafide truth
and we live, well,
like we’ll live forever.           .          .
THE SECRET:
Life gets Lived best
when every moment is lived
as if it might be the last
or better
as if it’ll never be lived again.          .          .
WAIT A MOMENT:
ONE OUT OF ONE OF US DIES
.             .          .and.            .              .
LIFE
GOES
ON
R            E            A            L            L            Y
(uhhhhhhhh.   .   .that’s a STATEMENT not a QUESTION)

COMING HOME

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Holidays always have a way of spelling
H-O -M- E
in all of the ways we not only know but experience it best.         .         .

Pssssssssssssssssssst:
The best Holidays are the ones that
A     R     E     N  ‘  T
but we MAKE
(often on the spot)
without any specific date on a calendar
H            O            M            E
KEEP BRINGING IT
KEEP BEING IT
KEEP GIFTING IT

ANGRY SILENCE

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I have blogged this video at least a couple of times before and I love how it pops up for me willy-nilly out of nowhere to remind me about SILENCE.  When Paul Simon wrote this in 1965 it was a song that had a different but very much the same meaning as it does now YES, some nearly 60 years later: NOBODY LISTENS and even fewer actually HEAR which THEN and NOW make for an ANGRY SILENCE


ANGRY SILENCE

Have you heard
what I didn’t say

It’s a silence
that uses no words
needs no catch phrases
or lengthy paragraphs
and often gets misunderstood as
Angry Silence

Harsh as it seems
it delivers a soft message
with a strong meaning
of not to be well known
but to be worth knowing
always not in a way
to be served
but to serve
without angrily being denied
Wordlessly

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man