“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."

—Simone Weil

WHAT’S GOOD

Sprouts Pasta Party Fundraiser This Month

The Sprouts Pasta Party Fundraiser is happening at the end of the month on our campus. This festive evening will include dinner and a silent auction, with proceeds benefiting the Sprouts School Scholarship Fund. You can support the event by attending the dinner or donating an item or service to the silent auction. It’s a meaningful way to invest in local families and help expand access to the Sprouts program.

The Power of Small Things

Jess Lowry, Executive Director, Sunset Ridge Collective

She ran up to me like I was exactly the person she had been hoping to see. This darling little girl in shiny red sandals barely knows me, yet her greeting makes me feel like family, like a favorite friend.

It felt as if on cue.

My dad was in town for a business trip. He passes through every so often, and we were having coffee in Charis Park. Sitting in the teal Adirondack chairs, he shared his concern about the state of humanity, the way people are treating each other, the despair that seems to multiply daily.

He spoke longingly of his grandparents’ small corner of Maine, where multiple generations lived close together, where they knew the name of the shop owner down the street, the person who delivered the mail, and especially their neighbors. He wondered out loud about who we are becoming.

I told him I feel it too. Some days the heartache overwhelms me and I am paralyzed. Some days my thoughts are consumed by it, or the anxiety that rises up grabs me by the throat. It steals my breath before I even realize what is happening.

But I looked at my dad and told him I carry a hope that feels unreasonable some days. The kind that sounds unrealistic until you look closely and realize it is grounded in what is happening right in front of us.

I told him I believe what we do in the small becomes the large. That the meaningful ways we tend to our corner of the world ripple outward. I am learning to pay attention to my attention, what I let in, what I allow my heart and mind to dwell on, because it shapes who I am becoming and how I move through my days.

And then, right on cue, Juliette appeared with her enthusiastic hello.

As we stood to leave, she was tossing leaves into the air, turning an ordinary patch of grass into a party. “Oh no, you can’t go,” she said. “We’re having a party. See?” Then she pointed across the grass. “And my mom is over there. Make sure you say goodbye to her!”

Juliette made our little corner of the world better simply by showing up with undistracted, radiant presence. She was fully there. Fully alive to the moment. Fully available to joy.

And maybe that is where change begins.

In the way we look up.

In the way we call someone by name.

In the way we pause long enough to notice the light through the trees, the child throwing leaves into the air and declaring a party.

What we attend to, we become. What we give our presence to, we strengthen. Attention is not passive; it is creative. It forms us, and then it flows outward from us.

We cannot single-handedly mend the whole of humanity. But we can tend our small corner with care. We can choose what shapes our inner life. We can practice a kind of steady, hopeful attention that ripples beyond what we see.

And sometimes, it looks as simple as shiny red sandals running toward you like you are exactly who they were hoping to find.