Loving Kindness Meditation is an effective tool for building compassion and reducing stress. Whether you're navigating a climate disaster or a divisive election, we pray it meets you in your place of deepest need.
Ours is a perilous and polarizing time. That's why the Duke Clergy Health Initiative and Duke Religion and Social Change Lab created this timely resource for our ministry partners, in which we're sharing stories from clergy who are loving their neighbor through Loving Kindness Meditation. We're also offering brief scripts that can be used in prayer, worship, or community gatherings, or wherever an added dose of mercy is needed.
Loving Kindness Meditation might be a new practice for some of you. It is a therapeutic technique designed to help us meet the strong feelings we have about ourselves and others with compassion. By repeating specific words of loving kindness to ourselves, loved ones, strangers, and even enemies, we ground ourselves in the holy present and embrace "what is" without judgement.
Blessings not only bind us together but can help heal ourselves, and our world.
Although originally a Buddhist practice, Loving Kindness Meditation has resonance with the Hebrew practice of checed, which is used throughout Scripture to refer to our imitation of God's mercy, goodness, and faithfulness towards one another. Loving Kindness Meditation invokes both the Christian contemplative tradition and the broader religious tradition of offering blessings to others.
The cool thing about Loving Kindness Meditation is it's not just good religion; it's good science, too. In our Selah Stress Management trial with clergy, we found that Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (of which Loving Kindness Meditation is one practice) was the only intervention to increase spiritual well-being and Heart Rate Variability, i.e. the body's ability to recover well after a stressor. It turns out blessings not only bind us together but can help heal ourselves, and our world.
Learn more about Loving Kindness
Stories of Impact
Pastors live to care for others, often downplaying or even disbelieving the importance of caring for themselves. But the very real stresses of service can create serious physical and spiritual repercussions. A little mindfulness goes a long way in helping pastors embrace the importance of sacred self-care.
Scripts for Loving Kindness
Loving Kindness Meditation is the act of "paying prayerful attention in the present moment to God’s abundant life." By engaging in this mindfulness practice or blessing, we're better able to meet the thoughts we have about ourselves and others with gentleness and compassion, especially when under stress.