The Charter for Compassion: Inspiring Video

Last week, I got a link from TED, to the following Charter for Compassion video.



The Charter for Compassion is an inspiring global endeavor to celebrate compassion and to promote a new collaboration between the world's religions.

When Karen Armstrong won the TED Prize, her wish was that the Charter for Compassion be written. People of all nations, all faiths, all backgrounds, are invited to contribute.

The Charter for Compassion incorporates the following eight core elements of compassion:
> Compassion as empathy, not pity
> Compassion as concrete action
> Compassion as a lens for scripture
> Compassion's role as a spiritual tool and its relation to belief
> Compassion as fundamental to all faiths
> Compassion as an urgent global need
> Compassion as concern for everybody
> Compassion and the golden rule

Everyone is invited to help write the Charter for Compassion. At the projects web page, there is an elaborate timeline with status reports and details of all the components of the Charter for Compassion.

I do urge you to visit the Charter for Compassion web site and contribute to this noble initiative.

Let us all learn and share.

The Power of Forgiveness - Wonderful Week

Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves.

- Sidney and Suzanne Simon (WisdomQuotes.com)

Forgiveness is typically defined as the process of ceasing to feel resentment, indignation or anger for a perceived offense, difference or mistake, and ceasing to demand punishment or restitution. But who gets to forgive who?

The Wikipedia article on forgiveness offers more...

In some contexts, forgiveness may be granted without any expectation of compensation, and without any response on the part of the offender. In practical terms however, it may be necessary for the offender to offer some form of acknowledgment, apology, and/or restitution, or even just ask for forgiveness, in order for the wronged person to believe they are able to forgive.

To better understand forgiveness, consider the following:

> Forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself. It is not something you do FOR someone else. It is not complicated. It is simple.

> Choice is always present in forgiveness. You do not have to forgive AND there are consequences. Refusing to forgive by holding on to the anger, resentment and a sense of betrayal can make your own life miserable. A vindictive mind-set creates bitterness and lets the betrayer claim one more victim.

> The greatest misconception about forgiveness is the belief that forgiving the offense, such as an affair, means that you condone it. Not true. In fact, we can only forgive what we know to be wrong. Forgiveness does not mean that you have to reconcile with someone who badly treated you.

> Forgiveness is an act of the imagination. It dares you to imagine a better future, one that is based on the blessed possibility that your hurt will not be the final word on the matter. It challenges you to give up your destructive thoughts about the situation and to believe in the possibility of a better future. It builds confidence that you can survive the pain and grow from it.

> When you forgive you do it for you, not for the other. The person you have never forgiven. . . owns you!

> Forgiving someone else is to agree within yourself to overlook the wrong they have committed against you and to move on with your life. It's the only way. It means cutting them some slack.

> Forgiveness is a creative act that changes us from prisoners of the past to liberated people at peace with our memories. It is not forgetfulness, but it involves accepting the promise that the future can be more than dwelling on memories of past injury. Finally, consider the following:

FORGIVENESS
by Reinhold Neibuhr

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

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Has anyone wronged you lately? This is the time to free yourself by forgiving them.

This week, be reminded of what Confucius said. "The more you know yourself, the more you forgive yourself."

Have a Wonderful Week.

What if We Ran Out of Oil?

I just got these funny pics from a friend.

They are however not funny at all. If we do not contain our fossil fuel use, and engage renewable energy sources, we shall one day run out of oil.
The following may then be the way we shall operate.


> Aeroplanes on real wings















> Battery powered trucks
















> Wind powered vehicles





















> Horse drawn SUVs















> And how about this kind of motorbike racing?















See more pics at Green Kenya.

Let us all learn and share.