Gratitude overflows! The Spring Equinox ceremony was FANTASTIC. Cacao, music, movement … thank you, Emily Fell, for stepping into your leadership. It is my joy to collaborate and connect and co-create. What a community! Commune and Unity, indeed! The collective energy uplifts. Each heart buoys another. We feed each other.
“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one.” ~Mother Teresa
This past week has been woman-power week. We watched the film Cabrini, the story of the badass nun from Italy, the first to create a missionary project abroad. Mother Frances Cabrini and a tiny band of six nuns sailed to New York in 1889 to help the impoverished Italian immigrants. Against tremendous odds at every turn, they created orphanages, schools and hospitals, and over time created a worldwide charity organization. Without Mother Cabrini, there would be no Mother Teresa.
We also took in the local play Julie and Jane about the friendship and life accomplishments of Jane Addams (social reformer, activist, creator of Hull House, second female to win the Nobel Peace Prize) and Julia Lathrop (women’s rights, child welfare, advocate for immigrants and social reform). As director of the United States Children's Bureau from 1912 to 1922, Lathrop was the first woman ever to head a United States federal bureau. Both these women were graduates of what is now Rockford University and this play was written by local playwright Margaret Raether. Julie and Jane needs national attention.
"I expand in abundance, success, and love every day as I inspire those around me to do the same." ~Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap
Years ago, as a freelance writer, I interviewed a dermatologist who told me (I was in my 30s then) to use SPF sunscreen lotion on my hands every single day year-round. I didn’t do it. Now when I look in the mirror and see gray hair, I don’t see aging looking back at me, but when I look down at my hands, I sure do! I have old lady hands. I am not complaining, or feeling sorry for myself, or sad, or any of that. It’s simply awareness. Life on earth is fleeting. I have no guarantee how long this human experience will be. So I embrace today, and I hug my loveys -- with my old lady hands. I don’t think Jane or Julie or Mother Cabrini or Mother Teresa gave a second thought to their old lady hands. They just kept on loving on people.
“In the end nothing we do or say in this lifetime will matter as much as the way we have loved one another.” ~ Daphne Rose Kingma
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Keep on loving,
Kelly
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
~Aesop
