Denise Rushing

As our nation enters into another season of political campaigning, cultivating compassion is as important as ever.   We need to ask ourselves in our deeds and in our language: What are we teaching our children about what it means to be human?    

Compassion is not weakness—rather, it is a decision to connect deeply with our fellow sojourners, both human and non-human, and in the process  engage in the positive transformation of ourselves and our world.  Compassion may be one of the more powerful ways we transform our world for the better: it allows us to see things from another point of view and it is one means by which we can live our positive intentions. 

Cultivating compassion starts with self-compassion: connecting with the deepest part of ourselves.  In doing so we seek to understand what motivates us, we suspend self-judgment and negative self-talk, and allow ourselves to be present to whatever we are experiencing in the moment.   The act of noticing, of paying attention and of…

In the midst of the California drought, I admit, I think about frogs. 

I think about them a lot.

So last summer, I hatched a plan.

I decided to hand dig a miniature garden pond.  My intention was to create a tiny oasis for creatures who might need water—and attract beneficial insects to the garden.  Plus, I thought—what better workout?  

So each morning, I dug for about an hour.  Fueled only by my imagination of the future oasis, I dug.  This was real work!  After a month of chipping away at the hard ground, I had successfully created a six foot long, four foot deep dry pit.

It looked more like a shallow grave than a future pond.

This is where my imagination helped.  If I squinted I could imagine what it might be like filled with water and teeming with life.  A masterpiece.

I carefully placed sand in the bottom of the pit to prevent rocks from puncturing a pod liner, and then installed the liner, surrounding it with stones I scrounged from elsewhere on the farm.  This was just i…