Table of Contents
THE FIVE STRATEGIES OF THE VIRTUES PROJECT
These strategies help us to live more reverent, purposeful lives, raise morally conscious children, create a culture of character in our schools, and enhance integrity in the workplace. They are being used worldwide to build safe and caring communities.
Strategy 1: Speak the Language of Virtues
Strategy 2: Recognize Teachable Moments
Strategy 3: Set Clear Boundaries
Strategy 4: Honor the Spirit
Strategy 5: Offer Spiritual Companioning
Great spiritual nuggets for a healthy spiritual pathway.
Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D., author of Love Is Letting Go of Fear
Linda Kavelin Popov is the author of The Family Virtues Guide, and is one of the founders and directors of The Virtues Project International. She travels around the world in support of the projects initiatives, speaking to communities, businesses, and governmental organizations. The United Nations Secretariat has honored The Virtues Project as a model for global reform for people of all cultures. She lives in the Gulf Islands near Victoria, British Columbia.
Other books by Linda Kavelin Popov
The Family Virtues Guide
Sacred Moments
The Virtues Project Educators Guide
To my beloved Dan, who walks beside me with true grace.
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to Horace Holley and Dr. Helen Schuchman, who served as my inspiring muses; my longtime agent and cherished friend, Theresa Park of Sanford J. Greenburger, for her discernment about the nature of this book and her tireless encouragement to go deeper; Gary Brozek, my articulate, persevering editor at Plume, for honoring the true spirit of the book and helping me to separate the wheat from the chaff; to Penguin for keeping it in the family; to Kate Marsh for her excellent research assistance; to my husband, Dan, whose constant support and cheerleading helped me to persevere; to Jean Forrest for encouraging me to complete the book as she completed her earthly journey; and to the individuals from the global Virtues Project community, patients, families, and staff from Hospice Victoria, and my friends and loved ones, whose stories illuminate A Pace of Grace.
Introduction
Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live unreflectively and begins to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to raise it to its true value.
Albert Schweitzer
Until life caught up with me, I was a dedicated member of the Stress Generation. I didnt mean to be. It just happened. A few weeks before September 11, 2001, I struck up a conversation with an East Indian cabdriver in Vancouver as he drove me from the airport to a downtown hotel where I would be speaking at a conference the next day. We chatted about how he felt, living so far from most of his family. He told me he longed to have them here but that his relatives had no wish to come to North America. When I asked about it, he said, When I go home to India, it is pure peace, no worries. People still have bills, they still pay the bills, but they are not busyoverdoneas people are here. Overdone. I blushed in recognition. What an apt description of the typical stress-filled North American lifestyle, I thought, and the perfect word to describe what had led to my own collapse several years before in 1997.
After a lifetime in the healing professions, I lapsed. I had no idea how far I had been swept into the swift current of stress until a life-threatening health crisis literally knocked me off my feet. Like so many others in this era of excess, the demands of my life had outgrown my capacity to sustain it. I had drifted from a gentle path of reflection, reverence, and service to a fast-paced life of constant international travel and an attempt to manage a growing global project, which had become an all-consuming passion. I felt like the goddess Kali, all of her arms busy juggling, but without her steady knowing gaze of serenity and grace.
It all began with a simple desire to be of service, yet there I was careening toward a vortex of exhaustion. I know full well Im not alone. Too many of us are constantly overdoing because we have overextended our lives, our financial resources, and our personal energy supply. Most days, we dont even stop to breathe. And now, watching the nightly news has become a health hazard. The turmoil in the world seems worse than ever, the economy is uncertain and unpredictable.
You see things and you say, Why?
But I dream things that never were;
and I say, Why not?
George Bernard Shaw
The deepening world conflict set in motion after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 has cast an unsettling shadow of anxiety and insecurity over an already overwhelming way of life. We are engulfed in an epidemic of stress in a culture of chaos.
I have always been privileged to pursue the work of my dreamsfulfilling a passionate prayer I uttered while circumambulating our backyard garden at age five: God, please let me help people when I grow up. I worked for decades in community mental health, consulted to government leaders in the halls of Washington, companioned the dying at a hospice, conducted healing retreats with indigenous and inner-city communities, yet even the best of intentions didnt protect me from burnout.
In 1990, my husband, Dan Popov, my brother John Kavelin, and I founded The Virtues Project. It began one April morning in 1988, over brunch at the stately, ivy-covered Empress Hotel overlooking the inner harbor in Victoria, British Columbia. John was enjoying the final day of his week of respite from his frantic career as a show producer for Walt Disney Imagineering in Los Angeles. He began to talk about wanting to be of more direct service to the world. The three of us experienced a crystalline, life-changing moment as we feasted on scones and salmon. We were discussing the state of the worldthe rising tide of violence, the school shootings, the growing hole in the moral ozoneand one of us (I dont recall who) said, Someone should do something about it. Suddenly we looked up from our plates, gazed deep into each others eyes, and in that moment the dream of serving together was born.
John moved up to Victoria, and we began working together. It occurred to us that violence was a symptom, and meaninglessness was the disease, therefore the cure would have something to do with the meaning of life. So we set off to find it. For years, Dan had studied the worlds sacred texts. He pointed us toward the six thousand years of spiritual guidance contained in the Jewish, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, and Moslem texts. He researched those and more. We were startled by the luminous simplicity of the answer that emerged.
Running through the great spiritual teachings of all cultures, like a silver thread of unity, are the virtues, described as the qualities of the Creator and the attributes of the human soul. Love, justice, kindness, courage, joy, and peace are the essence of who we are.
The virtues are Gods grace to us, a gift in our lives. What we do with them is our gift to God. They are both our spiritual legacy and our destiny. Many sacred traditions also describe the virtues as a very high order of angels, pure expressions of the Divine nature, higher than the archangels.
