September is the month that loses the most daylight as the cool and shortened days of Autumn lie just beyond the horizon. The theme for September is Empathy.

“Empathy: -the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person’s feelings -identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings and motives.”

In a weaponized world, mortar shells of judgmental verbal, social media, political, figurative, and sometimes literal firepower are launched across the boundaries and racial and ethnic social constructs our society has erected. Through all this, so often, America has supplanted the art of Empathy for the dark arts of division and hostility. Empathy does not mean compromise on one’s personal or group beliefs. It simply means understanding what walking in another person’s shoes is. As the temperatures cool in these shortening days, let’s take a collective breath through Empathy to focus on finding ways not to curse the darkness of an ever more challenging and divisive world but light a candle.