By Clyde Noel
Community Services Agency (CSA) held its annual recognition fund-raising breakfast for “Hometown Heroes” last Friday with a record 260 people attending the affair at the Palo Alto Hyatt.
“We appreciate your attendance. It couldn’t come at a better time,” said Tom Myers, executive director of CSA. “With the economic downturn, our donations are decreasing and our client base increasing.”
Myers related that more and more people need support. Last June, 2,300 clients visited the Food and Nutrition Center; this June, it has increased to 2,700.
Keynote speaker Dr. Fred Luskin kept the breakfast crowd alert by asking, “What is forgiveness?”
“We as a nation, we as a culture, clearly suffer from too much anger, hostility, discord, divorce: all indications of conflicts that aren’t resolved,” Luskin said. “Forgiveness is an open heart to hurt. Forgiveness makes you healthier. It is very important to mental health.”
Luskin is a practicing psychologist, co-founder of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project, and author of the book “Forgive for Good.”
Luskin described a place of peace and calm inside everyone. Forgiveness is the constant return to a peaceful center inside us. The way you think about things makes you upset. We hold a grudge, thinking that eventually we’ll gain control, but it’s only hurting us. Why do we allow someone who has hurt us to rent so much space in our minds?
Letting go of anger and negative feelings is thought to be the key to true forgiveness. While it makes sense to him that some individuals have difficulty forgiving others and moving on with their lives, it puzzles him why anyone would not want to make the effort.
“The world is filled with unkindness and we are part of the problem or part of the solution,” Luskin said. “There is no one who gets out of life unscathed.”
Luskin used the game of Monopoly as a metaphor for life. We are all on the board and we learn what winning and losing is. We may go to jail or win all the properties; but at the end of the game, everything goes back in the box. That is what happens to us. In the end, we all go back in the box.
“There is no alternative to this, so along the way be kind, because kindness is facilitated by forgiveness,” Luskin said. “It is natural for a human being to be kind as well as hateful. The choice is powerful. So pick someone you love and think, what can I do to show them kindness?”
Past CSA president Curtis Church honored Jean Taylor as the outstanding volunteer for her work at the Alpha Omega Shelter.
“Although the shelter started 12 years ago on a temporary basis, we all know the terrible cost of housing and unemployment; the shelter is still needed today,” Taylor said.
