Thursday 18 June 2009

Knitting with kindness and compassion

Yesterday evening at while knitting with several other ladies, I was struck by a small comment made by one of the knitters. I'm not even really sure exactly what it was that was said anymore, and I don't really remember exactly what we had been talking about. The details aren't really important.

What is important, what stayed with me, what quite took my breath away is perhaps best described by this quote:

"What is the difference between kindness and compassion?
Kindness gives to another.
Compassion knows no "other"."


Kindness is like giving a man a fish and feeding him. Kindness is easy, though we don't see it often enough. We take a moment of our time, of energy of money and share it with those who need these things.
These are important things to be sure, and our world could use much much more, but for most of us, kindness is relatively easy.

Compassion, real compassion, is so much more. Compassion is taking the time to understand a man enough to know he needs to learn how to fish, and then sees that he learns how to.

I knit among people like that.

1 comment:

Sigrun said...

Good food for thought. Lord, they gave me a hard security "word" today.