Everyone up on the peace train

Hi!

It's been awhile, eh?

First meeting (loved this moment)

So, I read this in the October visiting teaching message and it stuck with me.

Charity is having patience with someone who has let us down. It is resisting the impulse to become offended easily. It is accepting weaknesses and shortcomings. It is accepting people as they truly are. It is looking beyond physical appearances to attributes that will not dim through time. It is resisting the impulse to categorize others.

-Thomas S. Monson

I love that. I want so much to be like that. Some days I come a little closer to it, other days a little further away... Lack of sleep tends to lead to lack of perspective for me. Trying to keep that wider vision open.

For some reason it reminded me of this quote from the book The Survivors Club, which I read a few years ago and really enjoyed. (despite the fact that I'm pretty sure it contributed to a panic attack I had a few months after I read it...) It deserves its own post someday. In the meantime, this thought from a woman profiled in the book.

Above all, her near-death experience and countless scrapes around the world have given her an affinity with people who are suffering. "The wonderful thing about being a member of this [survivors] club," she says, "is that we've had the opportunity to touch our own mortality. Once you've had that opportunity, you don't take it for granted and you have to use it as a touchstone, you have to go back to it, because it matters what you do with it." ...Now she feels deeply attached to everyone around her, and she finds even the most mundane moments moving and meaningful. When she goes shopping at the vast Safeway supermarket in her neighborhood or watches a tourist bus roll by on the Golden Gate Bridge, she says, "My heart just feels so open towards these people....I just feel immense love for them and wish them peace, safety, and a good day." (332)

Peace, safety, and a good day to you too, my friends.