Keeping Our Center ~ Day 45

Play nice. That’s been another common sermon theme of my sermons. Seems pretty simple to me. Another way to put it is the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Why is this so hard?

Truth be told, I wasn’t a very good big sister. My brother, Gary, is three years younger than me and I’m afraid that once he got old enough to follow me around I didn’t want much to do with him. The fact that he turned out to be a pretty great guy didn’t have much to do with me. I put rocks in his diapers, unintentionally slammed his toe in a car door, was the (again, unintentional) cause of a few cases of stitches, rarely wanted to play games with him, and told him he couldn’t hang with me and my friends. I’m not proud of this, but there you have it.

I’m not entirely sure the reason for my poor behavior other than I was a fairly self-centered kid and I wanted what I wanted. I wanted to read books and play with my friends, alone. I grew up, have mended my self-centered ways, and have apologized multiple times (sorry again, Gar), but sometimes all of us get sucked back into a lower stage of growth where we don’t consider others. Lately, it feels like our society is getting sucked back into that stage and doesn’t give a hoot about what is best for the community or world as a whole.

Basically, I think, it is all about awareness and practice. Yes, this means it may take work on our part. We need to be aware of our knee-jerk reactions to others that judge them as stupid or annoying or bad, and practice being nice, cooperative and compassionate anyway. Our reaction and behavior is not someone else’s fault. We take responsibility for what we say and what we do and whether we play nice or not. And, it’s when we play nice that we allow the spark of the Divine in us to be seen.

Love & Light!

Kaye