Respond With Your Heart
There is no greater gift you can give to another human being than your response: to his tears, to his words, to his touch; to her hopes, to her dreams, to her prayers.
Response is joining; response is heartfelt participation. Response - with your words, with your tears, with your heart, with your arms - of whatever kind is a standing inside the pain and the joy and the hope and the fear and the imagined isolation of another person’s experience.
“I’m sorry to hear that”; “That sounds awful”; “How wonderful; I’m so happy for you”; “You must be scared”; “I bet you’re excited”; “I can’t imagine you that must feel”.
Respond. Respond with your heart. Respond as much a you can. Respond no matter how inadequate you feel. Response is the cradle in which, very gently, we rock one another’s vulnerable souls.
Daphne Rose Kingma: “A Garland of Love”
This is one of the quotes where I feel I have nothing to add. Is there anything more important in our relationships than responding to the other with our heart...?
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