Loving kindness is a liberating, nonjudgmental state of clarity that accesses the heart and calms the mind. It inhabits thoughts with grace and actions with mercy. It softens the deeply imprinted hurtful compulsions of our ordinary mind and offers other options. It lessens hard judgments and affirms a whole new level of responsibility. It is recognizing that responsibility is the ability to respond instead of the necessity to react.

Stephen Levine, Unattended Sorrow