I am a father and I work as a chaplain, as a spiritual caregiver, and regularly I spend my days considering ways to care. Here are some ways and I’d love to keep building this list. I’m using words with more than one meaning, intending nuance.

1. Enact a ritual and keep it – like a hug or a whispered greeting when you first see yourself or another person.
2. Look at your own face carefully.
3. Spend time with the person who you’ll expose others to.
4. Chew your food slowly, filling yourself with the nourishment there.
5. If you’re not in a place for feedback, say something like, “Let me move so I can try to hear you. Give me 10 minutes.”
6. With their explicit permission and openness, touch someone today.
7. Touch every body with kindness.
8. Stretch.
9. Before you speak, count to ten.
10. Learn what cleansing breath is and employ many of them.
11. In a conversation with a person, try asking “Is this what you’re saying…”
12. Wrestle.
13. Stretch beyond what you decided you’d do.
14. Do something someone asked you to do without argument.
15. Make an exception.
16. Drink a cup of tea alone.
17. Drink a cup of tea with someone.
18. Let it play out.
19. Smile.
20. Walk.
21. Smile while you walk.
22. Help someone carry something.
23. Listen to Nina Simone and Sam Cooke.
24. Be gentle when you fail.
25. Ask and listen to the response to, “What’s important right now?”
26. When they yell, observe the pain there.
27. Use “I” when talking about yourself.
28. Cook and take a meal to someone else.
29. Make it a goal to ask one good question daily.
30. Sleep the number of hours you worked.
31. Fart when you have to because “there’s more room out than there is in.”
32. Invite someone to tell you their story today.
33. Listen to the child’s joke.
34. Ask for it.
35. Watch someone you love do something they love.
36. Play a little bit or in the words of one of my teachers, “You, play more.”
37. Take an entire day off from the thing you experience as hard, if you can, and if you can’t, pray with words.
38. Attend to your skin as it covers all of your beautiful self.
39. Sit without saying anything next to a person who can’t say anything.
40. Experiment with saying versions of “Peace to you.”
41. Say goodbye in a unique way.
42. Treat goodbyes as benedictions, times to say something about what just happened.