blessing Christmas compassion family Hanukkah interfaith respect tolerance unity

Season of Light – This Is Our Family

This is our family every year in December. We’re the Hanukkah-Christmas celebrators. My brother and his family are observant Jews, and we celebrate Solstice and Christmas. And we get together and meld our holidays in love. This particular difficult year, it’s nice that Hanukkah and Christmas Eve are one day. Someone in the interfaith community said this coinciding of the two sacred holidays should be taken as a sign that tolerance and brotherhood are what…

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#fiction compassion novel

Reading Fiction Breeds Compassion — and I Hope Writing It Does Too

Scientific studies have confirmed what avid readers know: reading novels makes you a more warm-hearted person, more likely to understand your fellow human beings, and quicker to empathize with them. And not just ONE study, but several scientific studies, have identified activity in the brain that leads to this result. And not only fiction, but specifically literary fiction, was determined to have this salubrious effect on the human heart-mind. As a reader of novels, and…

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