I attend a spirituality group for an hour every week that holds loving kindness as its anchor.

During the hour, we read the poetry of such luminaries as Mary Oliver and John O'Donohue. We meditate, and we talk about the ways we find to extend loving kindness to ourselves and others.

The dozen or so gentle-spirited members of this group also talk about the difficulties of staying with love these days when so much of what we are seeing resonates hate.

As with all the times of our lives, we agreed in this moment of great upheaval and challenge that we need to go easy on ourselves for our failings wrought of confusion, chaos and despair.

“Your heartbreak is holy,” reminds spiritual teacher Mia Hetényi, founder of the Dreaming Awake Institute, which teaches grief tending and other healing practices.

Your heartbreak is also universal, reminds Buddhist leader Tara Brach who uses the acronym RAIN to help us guide our own forgiveness: Recognize what is going on. Allow the experience to be there, just as it is. Investigate with interest and care. Nurture with self-compassion.

At our meeting this past week we reminded ourselves of the challenges of staying with our hearts. We also reminded ourselves that actions don’t have to be big, that big love can be expressed in the smallest of gestures and in the briefest of moments.

One such moment, I told the group, came for me from a friend responding to a text I’d sent. In the text, I had asked for prayer and good energy as I headed for a CAT scan to look for changes in the chronic leukemia I’ve had for 15 years.

It would have been easy enough for my busy friend to acknowledge my text with a simple heart emoticon or a “thinking of you.” Instead, she took the time to engage back and forth, first asking who was taking me, and waiting for my answer, and then asking when is the appointment, and waiting, and then offering tender, careful words: “Sending love and care for this scan, that it is easy and clear and that it helps reveal your path to joy. Love you!!”

The interchange took all of three minutes, but in that short time I felt my friend’s intentional presence and in her presence, connection and care, which stayed with me, bringing me comfort later in the small, cold room where my spine was scanned.

In another moment recently, my daughter had come to my house to pick up something. I was in the kitchen, rummaging around the cupboards. She was on her way to the rest of her day.

We were both busy, but then the thought occurred to me: “Stop. Look at her.” I stopped what I was doing and lifted my eyes to look into hers as she spoke. There was nothing so profound about what she was saying. But when I set my eyes on her, I felt a profound connection and in that connection, the deep love of a mother attaching to a daughter, heart to soul to heart.

It is a feeling that traveled on with me the rest of the day, and I hope with her. It also echoed an eternal knowing, that love can be big even when the moment is small.

I think of these days, these times, that are leaving us struggling with which way to turn, how to be engaged without losing our souls. And I recall the words I read on social media recently. They are attributed to Ernest Hemingway, and while there is no proof he said them, somebody did:

“In our darkest moments, we don’t need solutions or advice. What we yearn for is simply human connection—a quiet presence, a gentle touch. These small gestures are the anchors that hold us steady when life feels like too much.

“My pain is mine to carry, my battles mine to face. But your presence reminds me I’m not alone in this vast, sometimes frightening world. It’s a quiet reminder that I am worthy of love, even when I feel broken.”

In these broken times, as we worry with all we need to do to change the world, we can look into the eyes of another.

We may not change the world without, not just in that moment. But with awareness, intention and a heart that is willing, in but a small moment or two, we can change our worlds within.

As our meditation leader said last week: “It doesn’t take much.”

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