Today’s Prayer to Passage will be from the book “The Mindful Path to Self-compassion” by Christopher K. Germer.

Today I pray, “Dear God, Self-compassion happens in small actions.  There are so many, many ways that I may be compassionate to myself, and in so doing, I feel a healing I did not know would have been all along.  It is in these simple, kind, and loving attendances I offfer to myself that I feel whole — as I gently remind myself that wholeness is something that has always been my own, that I am never seperated from being whole in the gradual contributions of authentic generosity I acquire for myself.  Thank You for this.  Amen.”

Following my prayer, I held the closed book in my hands and opened it to reveal this passage:

“Self-compassion has the ‘gleam of particulars,’ as poet Naomi Shahib Nye might say.  The details of our lives are necessary to contact the deeper meaning of our daily experience.”
—CHRISTOPHER K. GERMER

Managing self-compassion is where I have now arrived in my late thirties.  It took a few decades of details to get the hang of it.  Effective management of self-compassion can take decades of details… or not.  Children are masters at self-compassion, and this is one of the countless actions-without-effort that children show me.  There may be a time between childhood and pre-midlife when self-compassion is replaced by something we call sacrifice.  Yes, sacrifice is beautiful to behold, yet not necessary.  Surrender.  Surrender self.  Surrender self for compassion, and the details of life are right there, gently whispering a reminder that the surrendering of self is that which is to be surrendered for self-compassion.  And we may experience all of those aspects of “self” that are not — or were not — really self at all.  Surrendering self we no longer know as self, so that self-compassion may arise in the surrendering.  A depth of wholeness that has been here all along.