Welcome to our Kind Deed Community’s first blog post in 2017. I will be providing a weekly blog post on Wednesday going forward. Kindness, as we all know, is a basic premise of all relationships including sharing compassion and serving others. I invite you to join me on this journey to create more kindness in our families, our neighborhoods, our communities and ultimately our nation and world. I look forward to sharing this journey with you as together we will create a Kind Deed Community worldwide. May you be inspired to sow #SeedsOfKindness by sharing your light daily with others.
On March 9th I posted this on our Kind Deed Community Facebook page: Has your kindness been tested? Desmond Tutu stated ” We grow in kindness when our kindness is tested?” Think about this statement and think about a time your kindness has been tested? Action: sow #SeedsOfKindness even more when you are tested. My weekly blog began today, WED March 15th. Sign up on the Kind Deed Community Facebook page to receive words of kindness, weekly blog posts and monthly newsletters sharing stories of those who share kind deeds and do not tell anyone what they are doing, contests, prizes and more.
Below is my first blog which shares a story of two women who were tested beyond belief and shared kindness with each other anyway.
I am sure, if you think about it, your kindness has been tested at some time in your life? What was it that tested you? Here is the example I wrote about in my MAR 9th Facebook post. At our local Colorado State University I had the opportunity on March 6th to hear Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Distinguished Speaker share her life story. She talked about her honor to receive the shared Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her work that brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War. Gbowee shared the peace prize with fellow Liberian Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who was subsequently elected Africa’s first female head of state, and Yemen native Tawakkol Karman.
Shauna DeLuca, assistant director of the CSU Office of International programs stated: “She is an extraordinary and influential global thought leader and women’s rights advocate, with an important message of peace to share.”
2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, social worker and women’s rights advocate. She is Founder and President of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, based in Monrovia.
Leymah is best known for leading a nonviolent movement that brought together Christian and Muslim women to play a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s devastating, fourteen-year civil war in 2003. This historic achievement paved the way for the election of Africa’s first female head of state, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. It also marked the vanguard of a new wave of women emerging worldwide as essential and uniquely effective participants in brokering lasting peace and security.
Here is her story of kindness tested. I hope you are sitting down to read this. She shared that at one of her meetings where woman of different religious beliefs came together to pray for peace this situation unfolded. Everyone was sitting in a circle and was asked to hold hands, there were two women sitting side by side and looked distressed and were not offering to hold hands. Leymah asked the women to share what was holding them back and this is what they said below. ( I may not have it exactly correct, yet you will understand their kindness tested without my accuracy) When the one woman spoke, this is what she said: …Her ?nephew? killed my son in this war and then cut him into pieces and I had to buy back my son one piece at a time… If you think your kindness has been tested, think about this situation when you think you are experiencing a bad day. Leymah talked with them about the fact that they were all together for one reason, a reason that was much bigger than each of them and needed much more than any one persons situation. They were all together to create peace and harmony for all individuals regardless of background and/or differences. They did hold hands.
Leymah led the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace participants in public protests that forced Liberia’s ruthless then-President Charles Taylor to meet with them and agree to take part in formal peace talks in Accra, Ghana. She led a delegation of women to Accra, where they applied strategic pressure to ensure progress was made. At a crucial moment when the talks seemed stalled, Leymah and nearly 200 women formed a human barricade to prevent Taylor’s representatives and the rebel warlords from leaving the meeting hall for food or any other reason until, the women demanded, the men reached a peace agreement. When security forces attempted to arrest Leymah, she displayed tactical brilliance in threatening to disrobe – an act that according to traditional beliefs would have brought a curse of terrible misfortune upon the men. Leymah’s threat worked, and it proved to be a decisive turning point for the peace process. Within weeks, Taylor resigned the presidency and went into exile, and a peace treaty mandating a transitional government was signed.
You can read more about her biography here: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2011/gbowee-bio.html
Action: Sow #SeedsOfKindness by being kind to someone who has done something to harm you or your family or has hurt you in some way or has offended you in some way. Where would your strength come from to overcome the type of hurt these two women endured and they ended up sitting by one another. Her book title is: Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War.
In a time of death and terror, Leymah Gbowee brought Liberia’s women together—and together they led a nation to peace.
Serving Others Please post your kind deeds shared and/or comments on our Kind Deed Community Facebook page. I invite you to like our page and join our community through which we will change the world by sharing our light with others.
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