At our Witnesses to Hope meeting this week, Sr. Dorcee spoke about the importance of seeing goodness and beauty in the other and gives tips about how to do that.  If you would like to see or hear the talk, you can go here.  A number of people asked her for this quote, so here it is:

To see that someone is good and to say so is a creative act–one of the great creative acts.  There may be some few individuals who are inescapably evil, but they are few.  Within almost all of us is something positive and unique, but which is all too easily injured, and which only grows when exposed to the sunlight of someone else’s recognition and praise.  To see the good in others and let them see themselves in the mirror of our regard is to help someone grow to become the best they can be.  ‘Greater,’ says the Talmud, ‘is one who causes others to do good than one who does good himself.’  To help others become what they can be is to give birth to creativity in someone else’s soul.  This is done not by criticism or negativity but by searching out the good in others, and helping them to see it, recognize it, own it, and live it.

‘And God saw that it was good’–this too is part of the work of creation, the subtlest and most beautiful of all.  When we recognize the goodness in someone, we do more than create it, we help it to become creative.  This is what God does for us, and what He calls us to do for others.    (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks)