Charles P. Gibbs, having visited Hiroshima and attended conferences about the threat of nuclear war, felt depressed and powerless by the “human capacity to instantly destroy 80,000 lives,” and other unimaginable horrors. When he arrived home from a conference, he watched his toddler shuffle through a huge pile of leaves, and pick up one leaf and place it in a garbage can — leaf after leaf, one at a time. He thought of how futile and even foolish it was, comparing it to his felt powerlessness and sense of overwhelm. Upon reflection, however, his son inspired the realization that amid the sea of dead leaves representing “the shadow side of human life on this planet – leaves of violence, oppression, greed, poverty, injustice, inequality, environmental degradation, and on and on – we can be attentive to a particular leaf calling to us. We can pick up that leaf, take care of it, and then look for the next leaf calling our name.”
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Picking Up Leaves | DailyGood
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