Small Gesture 1

I am sitting at my desk in the late afternoon sunlight, working on a report I need to have ready for a client next week. Outside the window in front of my desk, I see a woman sitting in the shade of a tree across the street. Beside her, two dogs lay on the grass, panting.

I wonder if I can do anything, offer water perhap,s and go to my front step and call out to her. “Would you like some water for your dogs?”

She quickly accepts and leads both dogs across the street to the shade of my front yard. Ellie, who is standing inside the screen door watching all of this unfold is somewhat curious. “Why is my mother taking my water-dish outside and sharing it with strangers. Hello? Why can’t I come out too?”

The reason she’s inside is simple. Ellie has attitude around other dogs sometimes. She’s incredibly possessive of me and is not good at sharing. I know. I know. I’ve tried to train the trait out of her but it prevails. Plus, the woman thanks me for leaving Ellie inside. “This guy,” and she rubs the deep coat of her German Shepherd, “he doesn’t like other dogs very much. Especially large ones.”

I laugh. Ellie doesn’t like small dogs. She’s actually not all that bad with big ones but, why test her?

The woman and I chat for a while. I give her dogs a couple of treats and she continues on her way. She only has four or five blocks to go but her senior dog in particular was feeling the heat and needed the break.

She is grateful and my heart is joyful for our encounter.

Small Gesture 2

Yesterday morning, my cousins’s daughter, Elise, who is here visiting from France, came into the kitchen and offered me a white paper bag. “It’s from Zac’s mom,” she tells me. Zac is the 16-year-old son of my friend RS who, along with a friend, took Elise to the Stampede grounds for the day. What generosity of spirit. What graciousness. Elise had a blast. And truthfully, after a week with her cousins who are all older, she really enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with people her own age.

I open the white paper bag and inside is a beautiful heart rock. A gift from RS who on a trip to the States recently, saw the heart rock and thought of me.

In her gesture, my heart is touched, my spirit soars and I feel my wings expand.

Small Gesture 3

Recently, at a meeting with three very caring and enlightened people, one of the individuals talked about her feelings of hopelessness. How, in the instance of helping young men heal from a tragic accident, she felt like she could not do enough. Did not do enough. They were so despairing I don’t know if they even heard me, she said.

And I shared with her the story of the police officer who, while I was in the depths of that relationship that was sucking my life dry said to me something I never forgot, even though, at the time, I ignored him and went back to my abuser. “This isn’t love,” he said. “Love doesn’t hurt like this.”

At the time, I disregarded his words because I was too deep into the despair and sickness of that relationship. But when the abuser was arrested and I was set free, that police officer’s words sustained me. They carried me through those dark moments when I wanted to scream at the stars and moon and sky and ask “Why? Why? Why? If he loved me why would he do this?”

Because it wasn’t love.

I told my friend last week what I often share with police officers and victim assistance workers when they ask, ‘What can I do? Why can’t they hear me?”

“They do hear you. It’s just, at this moment in time, your words are blocked by the fear and anguish and tears and pain of where they’re at. We never know when or how what we say or do will affect another. We can’t. All we can do is continue to do our best. To share what we can, whenever we can, and know, it is enough. The rest is up to them, in their own time.”

My friend was touched and moved. My words resonated and in that moment, I felt our hearts sing together in hope, faith, love and joy.

We do not know when or how what we do will affect another.

All we can do is keep doing the best we can to create a world of beauty all around.

All we can do is listen, watch and respond in loving ways to the world around us so that our hearts can sing together as the world around us vibrates in love. Because no matter the size of our gesture, our impact is great when we share from loving hearts.