I recall being in fifth or sixth grade at Saint Gerard’s Catholic School, studying US history with Sister Mary Owen. Everyone loved her. She wasn’t an easy teacher and had high expectations for us all. She was kind and fair. She was talented. I remember sitting in the second seat in the second row from…
I have feared homelessness and have experienced it. I have feared hunger and have experienced it. I have feared abandonment and have experienced it. I have feared unemployment and have experienced it. I have feared poverty and have experienced it. I have feared gay oppression and have experienced it. I have feared age oppression and…
After years of empathizing, I have generally found that the feelings come before the story. Someone will communicate disappointment, sadness, fear. I see it and, if I stand as witness, a story will follow. I can generally trust those feelings when they show up. I have also noticed that I cannot always trust the story.…
Is someone out there teaching empathy? Some days it seems like there is. They are even doing a good job in my opinion. Over the past few months I have been feeling grief to a degree that shocks me at times. It has actually reminded me of a heart attack I had four years ago.…
One of the truly annoying factors associated with age discrimination is the amount of sympathy one gets for growing older. People, young and old alike, seem to fall into a range of responses from deniers (“Oh, you can’t be over 60!”) and pacifiers (“Well, you certainly don’t look 65 years old!”) to the sympathizers (“I…
Empathy has been defined as a multi-factor construct that results in an individual’s capacity to understand what another person is experiencing from within the other person’s frame of reference. In common expression, empathy allows us to walk a mile in another’s shoes. Empathy has been studied from many perspectives, including among others: positive psychology, neuropsychology, sociology,…
As I have read, reflected, and written about work this week, I have found both implied and explicit references to work having a prescribed outcome. I agree readily that work produces something; I have said that this gives me a sense of satisfaction. But I still find myself feeling a bit jarred by the notion…
Work is not a curse, but drudgery is. — Henry Ward Beecher The hard, tedious, menial, monotonous work of the rat race – drudgery. Work done by someone in an unimaginative way. Just yesterday I had the opportunity to listen to someone talk about their work. They described a circular ritual of seeing the need…
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. — Albert Einstein For me there is something particularly freeing about work that is not a job. When Paul and I bought our house we did so with an eye to having dogs in a fenced yard that…
I work because I like to work. Work produces something and leaves me with a sense of accomplishment. When I was a boy, my mother had my brother, sisters, and me clean the house every Saturday. We washed baseboards, scrubbed the tub and sinks, polished furniture, dusted and vacuumed. Usually one room a month would…
Creating Community for Everyone 