Each of us has the power to nurture Loving cultures in all of the settings we inhabit – whether they involve a short encounter in a store or the extended encounters of family or work setting.

If we choose caregiving only because we see it as a pathway to our personal salvation, have we destroyed our goal? Does selfish intention defeat salvation even if good to others results?

[This meditation is an expression of thanksgiving begun by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.] Norman Rockwell gave voice to four freedoms through his painting. One (see below) is titled "Freedom from Fear"and seems an appropriate beginning to a remembering of that for which we may feel thankful. All who visit these…

The way we live gratitude gives a gift to all around us. Children watch for signs of gratitude from parents. Caregivers watch for the same signs from each other. We can all learn richer ways to live gratitude by watching the world with an open heart.

Responding to fear by picking the third choice of Love is the hardest thing humans can ever do. It calls us to rise about our most primitive instincts. When we make the third choice our first choice, we are, of course, choosing God.

Fear is toxic, Love is healing.

"Community offers the promise of belonging and calls for us to acknowledge our interdependence. To belong is to act as an investor, owner, and creator of this place. To be welcome, even if we are strangers. As if we came to the right place and are affirmed for that choice." – Peter Block Today's meditation…

Perhaps the answer is that all souls are beautiful because the soul is Love. Love knows only beauty. The meanness that flows from many people is not arising from their souls. Instead, it comes from some other place, probably from a distortion in the ego that interferes with the soul’s expression the way noise can…

The following meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust. Work\ n: an opportunity for discovering and shaping; the place where the self meets the world." (From David Whyte's Crossing the Unknown Sea. Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity.      We have given thought this week about watching –…

Take a look at yourself. You are a poem. You are work of art. You are a human drama. And you are a gift from God.