There’s a line I used in this episode: every superhero wears a disguise — some just look like ordinary neighbours. I had two of them virtually sitting across from me this week, and by the end of our conversation I was reminded, again, of just how much strength can hide behind a face.

My guests were Ros Ben-Moshe, author of the bestselling The Laughter Effect (published in nine languages) and Laughing at Cancer, and Sally Pymer, founder of Empowered with Sally, whose tagline could be a mission statement for this whole podcast: rebuilding trust, belonging and connection — one smile at a time.

Both women have lived through health challenges most of us would find terrifying. Ros was diagnosed with bowel cancer fifteen years ago — a diagnosis that came, cruelly, just as she’d spent years teaching others about the health benefits of laughter. Surgery meant she physically couldn’t laugh for weeks. Sally was told at nineteen that she had a permanent, incurable lung condition, was later warned she’d likely have emphysema by forty, and went on to become a triathlete and ultra-marathon runner anyway — running long and steady rather than fast, because that’s what her body could do.

What struck me most wasn’t the diagnoses. It was what they each did with them.

Ros talks about “the laughter effect” — not waiting to feel like laughing, but intentionally triggering the feeling through smiling, gratitude, and small daily choices. Her says: she let the doctors take charge of her illness, but she took charge of her wellness. Great advice.

Sally’s throughline was different but just as powerful — the cost of not being listened to, and the almost physical relief people feel when someone finally does listen. She told a story about sitting for twenty minutes with a stranger on a park bench, a woman everyone else had written off as “grumpy,” who turned out to be in pain and unheard. By the end of that conversation, the woman was smiling.

Ros had her own version of that moment — a man named Richard, wheeled unexpectedly into one of her laughter yoga sessions in aged care, who hadn’t been able to smile or laugh since a back operation months earlier. I won’t spoil how that story ends, but it’s one of those moments that stays with you long after you’ve stopped listening.

We also went somewhere bigger: can kindness actually change the world, or is that naive? I brought in the story I first heard from Hugh Mackay, of the Jewish cantor in Nebraska who befriended the Klan leader threatening him, and nursed him until he died.

Both Ros and Sally pushed back gently on my optimism — not to dismiss it, but to locate it properly. Change, they argued, doesn’t come from the top down, from the narcissists and the power-hungry who don’t value kindness in the first place. It comes from the bottom up — person to person, smile to smile, the “ripple effect” Ros describes, and the simple discipline of asking why someone is behaving the way they are, which Sally says opens the door to empathy every time.

There’s also another line in this episode I quoted that is so powerful,“Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it”.

Both women reflected on how their hardest chapters shaped the people they’ve become — not in a tidy, everything-happens-for-a-reason way, but honestly, with all the grappling and grief that involves.

There’s plenty of laughter in this episode. Including me using my best/worst Irish accent to tell a doctor joke. Ros and Sally laughed, but I’m not sure whether they were just being kind. I’ll take it anyway.

But underneath it all the warmth is something I think matters right now: a reminder that kindness isn’t abstract. It’s a smile at a stranger. It’s twenty minutes on a park bench. It’s noticing the ordinary neighbour who might, quietly, be a superhero.

🎧 Watch or listen to the full conversation with Ros Ben-Moshe and Sally Pymer here:

Love, Laughter and Kindness is produced in association with Zorzles.

Craig Foster traced his own path from the Soccer pitch to public advocacy and back to the culture of team sport itself. Being part of a high-functioning team, he explains, means caring for teammates and for the rules that let everyone compete on equal footing.

That instinct to protect the players with the least leverage — the youngest, the most vulnerable — was, he believes, the same instinct that later pulled him toward advocacy for refugees and other marginalised groups. As he puts it, a fellow Australian is a teammate in a broader sense — and so, eventually, is a refugee on the other side of the world.

Sport as a mirror for fairness

The debacle with the FIFA 2026 World Cup where powerful actors who don’t need to be named, demanded and were given special attention resulted in the game and FIFA being devalued. So good to note Belgium defeating the USA despite the Trump administration’s interference in fair play.

Craig spoke of how changing the rules to favour a powerful country undermined the very idea of a level playing field. For athletes who have spent their careers competing under clear, consistent rules, he said, this kind of inconsistency feels like a personal affront.

He extended that same logic to global politics: powerful nations, he argued, are rarely held accountable in the way smaller or weaker nations are. He notes a pointed contrast between the international prosecution of a leader like the Philippines’ Duterte and the near-total lack of accountability faced by more powerful governments accused of similar conduct.

Referencing Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent remarks on the so-called “rules-based order,” Foster argued that the underlying legal frameworks — human rights law, international law — are sound, but their application is wildly uneven depending on who is accused.

Refugees, conflict, and the dots we don’t connect

I raised with Craig the issue of refugees and questioned our responses to them and world situations that caused people to flee for safety. Craig spoke candidly about his 2024 documentary work in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh, home to over a million Rohingya refugees. His central argument: media and public discourse rarely connect the dots between the conflicts wealthy nations participate in or support. In Australia when people argue against refugees arriving here, we are not reminded of the fact that our involvement in wars and conflicts that created the situation have produced the need for sanctuary for the people who then seek our help.

Craig spoke of how countries treat refugee crises as a border-control problem. An example being Australia’s involvement in the Iraq War and refugees from that. He extended the same critique to climate change, framing both as failures of nations to honour commitments — like the Paris Agreement — that they’ve already signed onto.

Call for a Kindness Summit

I asked Craig about my belief that we should have something like a Kindness Summit to examine how we perform as a nation in regards to government, sport, education and business. This idea is part of the podcast’s broader vision for a kindness movement led by children.

He spoke of kindness needing a framework, and the clearest one being the human rights framework: the right to housing, education, enough food to eat, freedom from discrimination and racism. Kindness, in his view, isn’t just warmth — it’s also about holding people and countries accountable, because peace itself depends on rules being upheld rather than power being imposed.

He was careful to note that no religion, ideology or nation has a monopoly on either kindness or extremism — citing the atrocities committed against the Rohingya, perpetrated by people of Buddhist faith, as a reminder that extremism can emerge from any tradition.

Proximity as the antidote to hatred

One of the episode’s most resonant ideas was Foster’s belief that proximity is the most powerful disinfectant to hatred and racism. Drawing on his own experience in football dressing rooms — sitting alongside teammates of every faith, background and political view — he argued that dehumanisation thrives on distance, and collapses once people actually get to know one another. He cited the Biloela community in Queensland, who rallied around a Sri Lankan refugee family, as a real-world example of a community that chose proximity and connection over fear.

Peter Norman: a quiet act of courage

Without pre warning, I asked him to name an act of kindness in sport that had stayed with him. Craig chose Peter Norman — the Australian sprinter who stood on the podium at the 1968 Mexico Olympics alongside Tommie Smith and John Carlos during their Black Power salute. Norman wore a human rights badge in solidarity, and paid for it: there were mixed feelings when he arrived back in Australia and he was not celebrated as the hero that many felt he was.

The podcast finishes with a tribute to Peter Norman and references his funeral in Melbourne where Tommie Smith and John Carlos carried his coffin and spoke eloquently of their friend.

The takeaway

Across the conversation, Foster’s throughline was consistent: kindness isn’t simply a feeling — it’s a discipline, built on fair rules, consistently applied, and on the willingness to get close enough to people different from us to recognise our shared humanity. It’s a fitting theme for Love, Laughter and Kindness, a podcast built on the idea that kindness, examined closely enough, turns out to be one of the most demanding values there is.

This episode follows on from the first with another great Australia Hugh Mackay, author of 25 books including “The Kindness Revolution” - researcher turned advocate. The second features Guy Dauncey, Canadian resident, Futurist, Environmentalist and author. His new book “The Economy of Kindness” is being published soon.

Not only do they build a lasting friendship with Trapp, who gives up the KKK, and its hateful ideology, but they take him into their home and nurse him until his life’s end.

Truth sometimes is stranger, and more kinder, than fiction.

Larry Trapp, formerly a cruel and hate-filled man, died in September 1992 - less than 1 year after that first dinner with Michael and Julie. He died in their home, lovingly cared for by the Jewish family he had despised.

The Weissers move him into their home. All 3 of their children grow up sitting across the breakfast table from a man who once mailed their family death threats. They care for him. They stay with him.

Larry Trapp dies in September 1992 - less than 1 year after that first dinner. He dies in a Jewish home, tended to by a Jewish family, after spending his final months trying to undo 20 years of harm 1 conversation at a time.

Kathryn Watterson told the full story in her 1995 book “Not by the Sword”. It remains in print.

That is all it took. 1 phone call. A few weeks of messages. A pot of food. And the refusal - stubborn, patient, absolute - to become what hatred wanted him to become.

Share this with someone who needs a reminder that the most disruptive thing you can do in the face of hate is refuse to give it an enemy - because a cantor with a telephone and a casserole dish changed a man the whole world had written off.”

If only nations could respond in this way too!

THE POEM:

KINDNESS AND THE KLAN
The story of a man who refused to be afraid, 
and another who learned how to love.

If only Nations knew what Michael knew.
If only we knew too.

Threats of murder, death and destruction
so freely sent to the Jewish Cantor and his family.
A Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon consumed by hatred,
overpowered not by the sword, but love.

Oh, if only the war machines of our nations were silenced.
If only we could stop shouting abuse at each other, and respond as Michael did.
If only we saw cold threats and cruel can never truly terrorise,
when faced with the greater power of love, care, and compassion.

Kindness is such a dangerous power.

Michael’s miracle was to simply see what others couldn’t.
To see his mortal enemy was just a man, sick and alone 
with no family to kindly tend his needs.
So Michael’s family bravely became his.

Living in their home, dining at their table,
embracing their faith and enjoying their laughter and tears.
No longer a fiery Dragon, but human through and through,
he found a place to live and die in peace

If only nations….

Please share with your friends.

His new book “The Economics of Kindness” will be available later this year. It helps us understand how the world would be if instead of a playground for greedy billionaires, kindness and respect was what brought us together.

In the interview, Guy’s powerful comment on what troubles us is:

“The Power of our Vision must be so much stronger than the power of our Fear”.

He has built his life work around this concept as a futurist, a “practical utopian” (his term), an advocate for the environment, and author of 10 books.

His new book “The Economics of Kindness: A New Ecological Civilization” - available soon from Palgrave Macmillan - took him 10 years to research, when all the others only took three.

There were many things that motivated his research.

Put simply he saw our troubles had origins in the economy. So many issues all driven by how we monetize our world.

Issues like:

• the affordable housing crisis,

• the increase in the number of billionaires,

• ordinary people struggling to live and pay the rent,

• increasing housing and rent costs when private equity continue to buy up homes and look for greater and great returns,

• the climate crisis and assaults on nature.

In the interview, he frames kindness as a structural economic force rather than a personality trait. It’s powerful and not weak.

The founder of the BC Sustainable Energy Association, Guy is also co-founder of the Victoria (Canada) Car Share Cooperative and West Coast Climate Action Network, based in Yellow Point, BC and a Recipient of the King Charles III Coronation Medal (2025)

Kindness as Economics, not Sentiment

Dauncey contrasts“homo economicus” (self-interest as the engine of markets) and what he calls “homo amicus” — a model of humans as cooperative by nature. Visit rural Australia and you will often see that moreso than in our cities.

He is critizal of today’s economy that has become what he calls a “kindness-free zone” where benefits concentrate at the top while nature and people absorb the cost

I was really taken by what Guy had to say. It blended beautifully with Hugh Mackay’s interview (Episode 1) and Hugh’s published books, including “The Kindness Revolution”.

A clear question for all of us (please give me your comments, I’d love to hear).

What would an economy built on cooperation rather than competition actually look like where you live?”

OH DEAR, SHAKESPEARE IS DEAD

Aside from all of the above, Guy writes music, songs and poetry, and thanks to him I discovered, Surprise Surprise and with Deep Grief, that Bill Shakespeare is no longer with us.

However, he channels him very well with this poem, (the full version in the interview):

HAMLET’S ODE TO THE 21^st CENTURY

To grow, or not to grow: that is the question,

Whether ‘tis nobler on Earth to suffer

The filth and waste of outrageous production

Or to take arms against a toxic sea of troubles,

and by opposing, end them?

In this rich and wide-ranging conversation, David welcomes one of Australia’s most respected social researchers and authors, Hugh Mackay, Order of Australia recipient, for a deeply personal and thought-provoking discussion about the state of our society — and the transformative power of kindness.

Hugh traces his remarkable journey from callow 16-year-old researcher to passionate advocate, describing the pivotal moment when his publisher at Pan Macmillan challenged him to move beyond reporting what is and begin exploring what should be. That shift, beginning with his 2016 book The Good Life, marked a new phase: one grounded in decades of listening to Australians in their lounge rooms, but now pointing toward action.

The conversation takes in loneliness as Australia’s number one public health crisis, with a third of adults — and alarmingly, a third of 18–24-year-olds — reporting that they feel lonely most of the time. Hugh argues that digital connection is no substitute for the eye contact and physical presence that make us truly human.

Hugh offers a beautifully simple definition of kindness:

Anything we do that shows another person we take them seriously — that they belong, that they are not overlooked or marginalised.

He draws on archaeology, neuroscience, Samuel Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Marcus Aurelius and Michelle Obama to make a compelling case that kindness is not a soft option but a species survival skill — the very quality that allowed Homo sapiens to outlast four other human species 42,000 years ago.

Alan shares a deeply moving story about a young Canberra man who survived a suicide attempt, whose first words were:

“if someone had smiled at me, I couldn’t have jumped”

Alan adds this is a reminder of the life-changing weight of even the smallest act of kindness.

Together they explore what it would mean for governments and institutions to apply a kindness test to policy — asking not only “is this economically responsible?” but “is this kind? Is this inclusive? Does it respect our common humanity?” Hugh cites Jacinda Ardern’s leadership in New Zealand as a glimpse of what that could look like, and calls for the question to become routine in parliamentary debate.

The episode touches on the NDIS as kindness in policy form, the imaginative concept of “Caretopia” (a vision of a society that truly supports its carers), and the urgent need to address poverty — with 3.5 million Australians living below the poverty line.

David reads his original poem Kindness and the Klan — the true story of a Jewish cantor in Nebraska who responded to death threats from a Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon not with fear, but with love, ultimately transforming the man’s life entirely. Hugh reflects on this as a living example of the ancient wisdom: that bad behaviour met with kindness is more powerful than any sword.

The episode closes with a preview of the next guest: former Socceroo and human rights advocate Craig Foster, joining David in July.

Key Themes & Highlights

From researcher to advocate — Hugh describes his career shift: from rigorous social scientist committed to impartiality, to a man willing to say what the data demands of us.

Loneliness as a public health crisis — In 2026, a third of Australians report feeling lonely, with 18–24-year-olds the loneliest cohort despite being the most digitally connected generation in history.

Hugh’s definition of kindness — Kindness is anything we do that shows another person they belong, that they are seen, included and taken seriously. It is not about our emotions — it is about our shared humanity.

Kindness is not weakness — You can end a relationship kindly. You can have a passionate argument kindly. You can discipline a child kindly. It is a way of being in the world, not a feeling.

Survival of the kindest — European archaeologists studying why Homo sapiens survived a cataclysmic climate event 42,000 years ago concluded it was our capacity to form small, mutually supportive communities — powered by kindness and cooperation — that set us apart.

The power of listening — Hugh calls listening the most eloquent act of kindness: to truly listen is to say, “I take you seriously.”

A kindness test for policy — What if governments routinely asked “Is this kind?” alongside “Is this economical?” and “Is this fair?”

Kindness starts in your street — Hugh’s conviction that the state of the nation begins at the street level. Neighbourliness, not legislation, is where lasting change is built.

Inequality fuels division — 3.5 million Australians live below the poverty line. Hugh argues this is the root cause of rising anger, extremism, and the hardening of political rhetoric. The answer requires courage, not complexity.

The poem: Kindness and the Klan — David’s original poem about Michael Weisser, a Jewish cantor who disarmed a KKK leader through persistent acts of love and care. A story of radical kindness changing a life.

Quotes to Remember

“Kindness is in our power even when fondness is not.” — Samuel Johnson (cited by Hugh)

“It was our emotional vulnerability to each other that turned out to be our greatest strength.” — archaeologist (cited by Hugh)

“Survival of the kindest.” — archaeologist (cited by Hugh)

“If you dream of that kind of society, live in your own street as if it is that kind of society — and street by street we gradually change the character of our nation.” — Hugh Mackay

Hugh Mackay AO is one of Australia’s most respected social researchers, psychologist and author of more than twenty books, including The Kindness Revolution, The Good Life, Australia Reimagined and The Way We Are (2024). He was patron of the Asylum Seekers Centre in Sydney for ten years and remains a passionate voice for a more compassionate and inclusive Australia.

Thanks for reading Love, Laughter and Kindness! Subscription is currently free to receive new posts and join the kindness movement on www.zorzle.org.

When Kindness crowns the heart,
Our conversations will be songs.
When we talk in songs,
our feet will just have to dance.
And when our feet dance,
and everyone dances with us,
then we will know, really know,
that each of us are united as one.
When we are really one,
time will not control us,
but we will make time.
Time to sing, and dance and be.
Then, only then, will we be free.

Visit www.zorzle.org to find out more about our kindness movement and dreams of a better world.

In 1977, when former nun Val Edwards was arrested as one of the leaders of protests against the Bjelke-Peterson Government’s overreach in trying to ban ….. protests, a policeman referred to her as “the worst of them all”.

Her legal representative at the time was Wayne Goss, who became Premier from 1989 to 1996.

Val’s Priestly brother Don’d his white collar 
late one night to rescue her from the clink.
“The Worst of Them All” 
she was called of 418 naughties 
loaded into paddy wagons that Brisbane night.

It was 1977 when a religious Premier
who thought he was God,
ruled people couldn’t say “no” to him.
It was sweetly innocent Val, a former nun, 
who fiercely roused said a megaphone NO to Joh.

Despite his power, hers was a great kindness.
Strength and courage speaking up
for the voiceless against injustice meted out
by those who cared less for anything
but power and the rights of the privileged.

A kind world cares for the least,
the worst of them all.

What a privilege to count her my kind friend. Over time Queensland police were to arrest around 2,000 protesters. The Government’s plan failed.

Please Subscribe and Share.

Subscribe now

Toxic masculinity is a sad indictment on us all. This poem reflects a breakdown in relationship between Fathers and their sons. All relationships suffer when we are unable to be kind to ourselves and to those we love.

Some men cry in strange ways.
The young man spoke of a distant father.
Home every night, locked in his own head,
unable to be a part of a whole 
or share the joys or pains of life
of another.

Even his own son.

And then there’s Ubuntu. 
One African word as life can be. 
One word that books have tried to express.
A Golden Rule. 
Bringing cultures, families together.
One with kindness.
Treating others as you would treat yourself.

Perhaps, a father’s unseen tears,
inside the prison of his mind 
show the damaged self he can’t accept. 
Unable to hear his own story and empathise.
Unable to see his dreams in the story of his son.
To be to him what he needed someone to be for him.

Yet love.
We fail. 
We fall short.
We aren’t who we wanted to be.
But in our brokenness
we are still and as we try to live love,
Ubuntu can change us.

A seed needing tears of kindness can grow
into something beautiful.
Like a sweet smelling rose, 
its imperfect tree,
twisted gnarled branches,
harshly pruned, 
yet germinating life.

A chance to live and grow.

Her last movie, in her 70s, was an act of kindness. The story involved a young social worker who in an effort to understand the plight of homeless women living on the streets, befriends a homeless woman named Florabelle, played by Lucille. An exercise in survival on the streets of Manhattan.

“Well, I'm still here”, Florabelle says.

Gorgeous in her beauty, riches and fame,
the great actress made us laugh
and smile again and again.
For everyone, it seemed, knew her name.
Everyone loved Lucy.

At 73 she did something completely different.
Lucy embraced Florabelle, street weary old homeless woman,
her life of loss and pain and only a stone pillow for a home.
So Lucy, without makeup, laughter-jaded, faded by.
For no one loved Florabelle.

“Stone Pillow” no great classic, yet people watched,
moved in the telling of a story of someone from the other side.
And they saw it could happen to anyone,
for life is not always kind, and love is not always blind.
Some might say it was Lucy’s greatest act.

In telling of that story, she was kind to all 
the Florabelles we don’t want to see.
The ones we don’t want to embrace, or open doors.
Who we wish would all just go away.
But, “I’m still here”, they say.

Kindness waiting.

Please Subscribe and Share

Subscribe now

Kindness is a wonderful seed that grows and grows and grows.

Dr Christopher Culver is a Kindness Advocate in Oklahoma, USA. He inspires individuals and communities to embrace kindness as a leading strategy through the Science of Kindness! Chris posted this memory on his Linkedin page four years after the event this year.

It was nothing really.
Just a few words.
One note.
No party.
Not a million dollars.
No banquet.
No memorial thanksgiving.
A few words but one note.
If music were words 
This was a symphony.

When the toxicity of life steals your joy
and empties your soul,
it only takes a few simple words, a smile,
or an act of kindness 
to kindle a fire 
of warmth and love 
that you relive time and time again.

Enjoy the music, and never miss an opportunity
to heal yourself and others
with kindness.

Dr Christopher Culver is a Kindness Advocate in Oklahoma, USA. He inspires individuals and communities to embrace kindness as a leading strategy through the Science of Kindness! He posted this memory on his Linkedin page four years after the event this year.

The Nazis had already killed or deported their parents, so Marcel agreed to lead them across dangerous territory to neutral Switzerland, where they might have a chance to survive. Using mime and silence he kept them calm and and unnoticed during dangerous crossings. Some 70 or more children owed their lives to his great courage and kindness. The 2020 film Resistance is a biographical film directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz that tells this story. His wartime experience deeply shaped his later career, especially his belief that silence could protect life as well as express humanity.

Marcel.
Terrified children threatened by the enemies of 
human kind, stop crying as silently he performs.
There is so much love and kindness in his sad eyes,
yet he makes them laugh and forget the imminent danger -
the hatred of a world that condemns their innocence.

Marcel.
Made me people laugh and cry with the beauty of his talents
and his generosity as he poured out his soul for the crowd.
Not famous, when he led the children like a Pied Piper to safety,
to them, he was saviour, father, mother, brother, friend,
The complete all that gives life to the power of love.

Marcel.
There are others like him of all nationalities and other wars.
Silently making the invisible visible today.
Incarnating hope and faith you cannot see
into a living reality we children never forget.
Heroes of courage and kindness when the world forgets its heart..

A little First Nation's boy hearing his grandmother pray
recites her prayer for forgiveness for
what he has left undone,
that he ought to have done, and for
things he ought not to have done.

It seems silly.

He can’t have done or not done much. 
He’s just a little boy.

But somehow in repeating her words,
he seems to understand.
The journey of life is about 
always doing our best, 
recognising what we could have done better 
and trying to do just that.

Now, if only the great nations of the world
would learn from wise grandmothers and
think as that little boy.
Facing the truth of our failings 
never diminishes us
but strengthens who we are.

A nation celebrating embraces kindness in its memory,
as well as pain.
It remembers those it has failed and hurt
as well as those who have prospered.
It determines, like the little boy,
to try and do better.

Peoples of a Kind Nation are truly Great, and despite tears 
for wrongs of the past, have much to really celebrate.

Subscribe now

This is obviously inspired by the beautiful scene in the movie Patch Adams, where patch played by Robin Williams clowns for the first time in a children’s cancer ward.

There are millions of people who visit places like this and bring joy to suffering and often dying people. They are all heroes.

Thanks for the inspiratoin from the movie Patch Adams and Robin Williams who played Patch.

How we cried with joy at the funny man in the funny hat
as he made the hospital beds giggle with delight.
His audience captive, little hearts and faces brimming with joy,
and for a moment full of life and power.

Many since that time have gone.
So close to our hearts, yet remember
not the stillness of death but the shaking beds,                                                                                                        giggling so infectious that the little faces were 
not big enough for their smiles.

In that one moment the whole world was theirs to own.

So, where is the funny man in the funny hat now?
He’s in the virtual company of many others and only one
bringing a moment’s healing to precious children
young and old, and joyful tears to those watching 
unable to do more but love and care.

A little child shall lead them, especially 
when a funny man in a funny hat is our hero.

So this poem is dedicated to all who have suffered such horrendous losses in recent Victorian bushfires, but it includes all who suffer natural disasters everywhere. The man with the eggs, well, he was a farmer seen on a TV News broadcast about the devastation in Harcourt Victoria.

“I love a Sunburnt Country”, Dorothea wrote, 
her famous poem learned by many generations.
A Sunburnt country, but not a Fireburnt country, 
decimated by a monster that claims everything in its path.

Facing it, you can so easily feel the end of the world 
is more than nigh - we are in it.
Yet as terrible as it is, so many lives lost and so much destruction,
the human spirit can and will survive, and that is a human miracle.

An embattled man, sweat, grime, dirt and smoke on his face,
walks into the gathering of disaster veterans - young, old, 
men, women, children, dogs and even a cat, where
everyone has lost dearly, loved ones,
homes, cattle, pets, crops, memories.

He walks in where cups of tea and coffee, 
sandwiches and company are to be found.
Tears close to his eyes as he carries a box of eggs.
He’s lost his livelihood, the work of his lifetime,
but somehow salvaged his chicken coop and the chickens
true to form, laid eggs.

So each person who partakes of his gift will find a friendly egg,
a symbol of love and comfort. 
A friendly egg in a boxfull,
and he who brought them will savour something precious from his loss

Despite everything he can share 
from what little he has and as we does
he feels part of the whole, like one egg in a boxfull,
a valued gift to a community he loves and loves him.

Together, we can.

The busy-ness of life.
So much to do. So little time.
So much pressure.
So many loud voices, sometimes our own
telling how much we fall short.

How to cope?
How to survive our work-a-day world.
Bills to pay. Places to go.
People to see.
No time to smell the roses.
Oh dear…..

But then,
When Little People Whisper
Sometimes angels speak.
Simple words of love, caring, kindness
or just plain fun.
How much we need to learn from them.
In our workplaces and our homes.

Channel the little child within.
Whisper in your own ear,
and listen carefully as angels speak,
laugh, giggle and love.

And watch a  kind word transform your day.

Subscribe now

Sharing is caring they say, and despite the cliche,
it’s a truth we don’t always learn quickly as children.
Little people can’t be blamed for thinking the world is their oyster,
even though they may not know what an oyster is and,
added to their breakfast cereal,
probably wouldn’t like it.

To tell the truth, neither would I, served that way.

Still, they know instinctively the world revolves around them
and, totally dependent on those taller versions of themselves,
their every need must be met by others.
Food, hygiene, clothing, sweets, treats, and a safe place to sleep.
All expected. No thanks.
Just like with the air they breathe they have no
realisation that appreciation and gratitude
from time to time would be nice.

In good homes everywhere, however, loving nurture resides,
and little people see examples everyday
of what it is to be truly human.
In time, they may recognise that you can be human without
caring, sharing, loving, or even being, at the very least, kind.
But hopefully, they won’t want to just be ‘human’ and follow
the examples of those who demonstrate that there is more to living
than what you consume, and expel,
and the fun you find along the way.

The “more” is what parents have always done for their children.
Good parents, that is, not always connected by birth,
have always known that little people like plants
have needs they can’t meet themselves.
More than food and water they need –
love, laughter and kindness –
the real stuff of life that makes humans truly human.
Giving these three as a daily diet makes them not just ‘human’,
a poor second, but truly so.

Strange to note that all the great people history remembers were once
little people who couldn’t so much as wipe their own faces
or even … other places.
The greatest of them always learned to give back kindness in kind.

So, let’s be kind.

Subscribe now

Just A Cup Of Tea And A Listening Ear
Sometimes the best therapy
In Australian Country towns,
the legend of the “Cuppa” has dried many a tear,
generated sweet laughs,
and made a kitchen table
a place of healing.

Where are they now?
In our cities we often don’t know our neighbours.
We rarely see inside their homes.
We live as if there is a wall around our houses,
a wall to keep others out, but that keeps us in.

We humans, were not born for loneliness.
Children grow with love, and suffer without,
So do we.
In the toughest of times we thrive 
in the knowledge we are not alone.

So take time today to visit kindness once again.
Find ways to build caring community,
that benefits us all.
Put the kettle on. 
Make a Cuppa, and make time to listen.

With time and room for laughter,
We make another person’s life valuable,
and value our own lives too.

Subscribe now