ISSUE No. 61 | SEPTEMBER 2025
WELCOME
If you’re new to CULTIVARE we welcome you! CULTIVARE is a monthly field guide for life and faith, brought to you by TEND. Each month we explore a specific “field” – a topic or theme through which we seek to cultivate contemplation, engagement, and deeper understanding. Our guiding questions are:
What are you cultivating in your life?
What fruit do you want your life to bear?
Each issue of CULTIVARE is structured into three parts:
Cultivate: Examines a specific “Field” or facet of life and offers questions to unearth and challenge our held perspective; along with concise kernels of truth which we call “Seeds.”
Irrigate: Explores the ways we nurture our understanding, which varies from individual to individual. We offer six means of irrigation: Art, Poetry, Profile, Film, Essay, and Books.
Germinate: Encourages practical ways to engage in becoming more fruitful and free in our lives.
Our name, CULTIVARE, in Spanish means “I will cultivate.” We hope each issue of our field guide will encourage you to do just that – cultivate new thoughts, actions, faith, hope, and fruitful living. We invite you to dig in and DIG DEEP!
FIELD
For we are partners working together for God, and you are God's field.
(I Corinthians 3:9)
Our theme this month is KINDNESS. This is the eighth in our nine-part series on the Fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law (ESV).
Author and pastor Tim Keller once defined kindness as: “Practical kindness with vulnerability out of deep inner security.” It is that deep understanding and inner security of God’s ongoing kindness to us that enables and empowers us to be vulnerable, empathetic, and compassionate to others. Exercising kindness helps us know how to act in a way that reflects God and blesses other people. Keller further explains that the opposite of kindness is envy and the inability to rejoice in another’s joy. He offers the insight that kindness never involves manipulative good deeds. It’s not for congratulating ourselves or impressing others, including God.
Embodying kindness is more than being nice. While being nice is part of being kind, true kindness goes deeper. Kindness tests our character because it isn't always easy. Many of us are kind when we feel like it, or when other people are nice to us. But the biblical understanding of kindness calls us to be kind to all, whether they are nice to us or not. In fact, scripture repeatedly tells us to be kind even to our enemies (see Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:35, and Romans 12:20-21).
In this issue we feature another original essay by Andrew DeCort entitled “Kindness: Courage to Tell a New Story.” Our artist of the month is a 2025 high school graduate who exercised her artistic gifts in an extraordinary way to express kindness to her classmates. Our Profile is on Judge Frank Caprio who died last month but who leaves a merciful legacy for extending kindness and compassion to the countless individuals he faced in court.
Think of a time when you were aware of God’s kindness to you. How did it make you feel? What was your response? Now, think of a time when someone extended kindness to you. How did you feel? How did you react? Kindness is both purposeful and powerful. It serves to alleviate suffering and hardship. Plato once remarked, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” Let’s keep that in mind this month as we contemplate and exercise God’s call to be kind. Let’s bear the Fruit of the Spirit of kindness and in so doing, embody the old adage: “Kindness is putting love in action.” (DG)
***
He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty.
(Job 6:14 NIV)
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8 ESV)
Or did you think that because he’s such a nice God, he’d let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he’s not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change. (Romans 2:4 MSG)
Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, and forgive one another,
as God has forgiven you through Christ. (Eph 4:32 GNT)
***
TEND CAN HELP! If you would like to take tangible steps working toward a new chapter in your life TEND can help. Explore our offerings by clicking here:
SEEDS
A handful of quotes to contemplate and cultivate into your life
Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end. (Scott Adams)
One of the toughest things for leaders to master is kindness. Kindness shares credit and offers enthusiastic praise for others’ work. It’s a balancing act between being genuinely kind and not looking weak. (Travis Bradberry)
In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit. (Anne Frank)
Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution. (Kahlil Gibran)
When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people. (Abraham Joshua Heschel)
Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind. (Henry James)
Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot by force. (Publilius Syrus)
Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. (J.R.R Tolkien)
Love, we hear, is patient and kind (1 Corinthians 13:4). Then we mistakenly try to be loving by acting patiently and kindly—and quickly fail. We should always do the best we can in action, of course; but little progress is to be made in that arena until we advance in love itself—the genuine inner readiness and longing to secure the good of others. Until we make significant progress there, our patience and kindness will be shallow and short-lived at best. (Dallas Willard)
ART
Artist of the Month
Molly Shafer
2025 High School Graduate
Molly Schafer was a socially engaged and relationally connected student through junior high school. Once she became a high school student at Waunakee Community High School in Wisconsin, she began to suffer from crippling social anxiety which resulted in isolation and loneliness. Instead of becoming shut-down in self-pity and blame, Molly decided to take the initiative to reach out by creating and bestowing kind gifts to many of her long-lost connections. She began painting pictures of her old friends and gifted the paintings to the friends their senior year. She painted 44 portraits in all, each taking about 13 hours with a total of 600 hours of painting! She said to herself, "[Your isolation] is all in your head. You just have to try."
Reporter Chris Stanford interviewed Schafer's art teacher, Beth Crook De Valdez, who watched the project unfold with admiration.
"Watching her go through that process and seeing her internal reflection about this project she came up with really fills your heart," De Valdez said.
The portraits weren't created out of resentment or bitterness toward classmates who might not have included her in their social circles. Instead, Schafer drew inspiration from small moments of kindness and genuine gratitude for her peers.
"If people were to see me in 10 years as the person that painted that painting on their mom's wall, something simple like that, it doesn't have to be a lot," Schafer said about her hopes for how she'll be remembered.
Learn more about Schafer’s story by watching Steve Hartman's On the Road CBS News account here
POETRY
The Lift
By Janis Freegard
(For Anna Jackson)
it had been one of those days
that was part of one of those weeks, months
where people seemed angry
& I felt like the last runner in the relay race
taking the blame for not getting the baton
over the finish line fast enough
everyone scolding
I was worn down by it, diminished
& to top it off, the bus sailed past without seeing me
and I was late for the reading, another failure
so when Anna offered me a lift home
I could have cried
because it was the first nice thing
that had happened that day
so much bigger than a ride in a car
it was all about standing alone
in a big grey city
and somebody suddenly
handing you marigolds
PROFILE
Frank Caprio
(1936-2025
This month we honor the life and legacy of Judge Frank Caprio who died August 20 this year. Judge Caprio served as a Chief Judge in the Municipal Court of Rhode Island for nearly 40 years. He became known throughout the US when his local access TV show Caught in Providence became nationally syndicated in 2018. Clips of the show went viral, spotlighting a judge who consistently ruled with empathy and compassion and frequently seasoned with humor. Caprio once commented that he strove to make sure that “My courtroom is where people and cases are met with kindness and compassion.”
Caprio was born to Italian immigrants Antonio and Filomena who lived in the Italian-American neighborhood of Federal Hill, Providence. His father worked as a fruit peddler and milkman and was a major influence on his life. His father taught his three sons to study hard and to always be compassionate to the poor. He predicted that his son Frank would be a lawyer someday.
Frank Caprio earned a bachelor’s degree from Providence College in 1958. After graduating, he taught American Government at Hope High School in Providence, attending night school at Suffolk University School of Law, where he graduated with his law degree in 1965.
When handing down judgments for low-level offenses like parking and speeding tickets, Caprio commented that he always kept in mind something his father, a hardworking immigrant with a fifth-grade education, had impressed upon him: “What might seem like a small fine to some was something that many couldn’t afford.”
“That’s why I would always inquire: ‘Tell me a little bit about what’s going on in your life,’” Caprio said.
“Your case is dismissed” became Caprio’s signature phrase.
When other judges asked him why he would be so lenient, he said: “I would just place myself in the shoes of the person before me.”
Caprio dismissed the case of a 96-year-old man, Victor, who had an outstanding unpaid speeding ticket, the first one in his life, which he received while taking his disabled son to a doctor’s appointment. Four years later, Caprio celebrated the man’s 100th birthday with him.
“Watching my father, I learned how to treat all people with respect and dignity,” Caprio said. At Cultivare, we think that’s a wonderful summation of kindness—treating people with respect and dignity. May we each follow Caprio’s example. (DG)
Learn more about Judge Caprio and his kindness by viewing these clips from his TV show Caught in Providence.
I’m Not Going to Waste Your Time, I’m Guilty: View Now
The Divorce Day Ticket: View Now
An Honest Boy: View Now
Yes, Dear & Broken Gavel: View Now
Read the New York Times Obituary for Frank Caprio here:
FILM
Each month we recommend films focused on our theme
Feature Film
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
(2019)
Tom Hanks portrays Mister Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a timely story of kindness triumphing over cynicism, based on the true story of a real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod. After a jaded magazine writer is assigned a profile of Fred Rogers, he overcomes his skepticism, learning kindness, love and forgiveness from America’s most beloved neighbor. Available on various streaming services. Watch the trailer here:
Documentary Film
Batkid Begins:
The Wish Heard Round the World
(2015)
On one day, in one city, the world came together
to grant one five-year-old cancer patient his wish.
The documentary Batkid Begins looks at the why of this flash phenomenon. Why did the intense outpouring of spontaneous support for a child reverberate around the world and become one of the biggest good news stories ever? The film explores what happens when an event goes viral, and reveals surprising truths about what happens when a nerve is touched in our digital society. Will the Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation fulfill its mission to help Miles reclaim his childhood after battling disease for more than half his short life? In the end, the film leaves audiences to decide: did Miles need the world for inspiration? Or did the world need Miles? Available on various streaming services. Watch the trailer here:
Short Film
Dining with a Widow
(3 minutes)
For barbecue lovers, Brad’s Bar-B-Que in Oxford, Alabama, is heaven on Earth. But 80-year-old Eleanor Baker said her visit there one day was especially divine due to the kindness of strangers. Steve Hartman of CBS Sunday Morning captures Baker’s story.
Ted Talk
How the Magic of Kindness
Helped me Survive the Holocaust
Werner Reich
(11 minutes)
Holocaust survivor Werner Reich recounts his harrowing adolescence as a prisoner transported between concentration camps—and shares how a small, kind act can inspire a lifetime of compassion. "If you ever know somebody who needs help, if you know somebody who is scared, be kind to them," he says. "If you do it at the right time, it will enter their heart, and it will be with them wherever they go, forever." Watch Reich’s Ted Talk here:
ESSAY
Kindness:
Courage to Tell a New Story
By Andrew DeCort
The highest wisdom is kindness.
(Yiddish proverb)
Human minds easily slip into the ruts of transactional and tribal thinking. We calculate who deserves our kindness and who gets something colder. Some we see as part of ourselves, others as apart from ourselves and unworthy of care. Maybe it’s the way “they” behave, look, sound, or worship. Perhaps it’s where they’re from, the documentation they have (or don’t), or the stories we’ve told about one another.
This is an old pattern in our humanity. We see it at work in Jesus’ closest students. One day, they observed a man helping others experience freedom from oppression. But Jesus’ disciples didn’t encourage or even affirm his kindness. They reported to Jesus, “we tried to stop him because he is not one of us” (Luke 9:49).
The implications of this “not one of us” mindset are illustrated in the next episode of Jesus’ journey. Strangely, Jesus was traveling through Samaria toward Jerusalem. Jews and Samaritans typically despised one another and tried to avoid each other. Religious and political grievances had become so severe that Samaritans had been banned from the Jerusalem temple. (We can insert here our own religious, ethno-cultural, and political polarizations today.)
Unsurprisingly, then, when night fell and Jesus asked for shelter in a Samaritan village, he wasn’t welcomed in. The village leaders told him to get out. They knew that Jesus was Jewish and journeying toward Jerusalem. He wasn’t one of their kind and didn’t qualify for their kindness.
Jesus’ disciples reacted by doubling down in this “not one of us” mentality. They went from trying to stop a stranger from practicing kindness to wanting to destroy their Samaritan neighbors. They asked Jesus if they could burn this village to the ground. In fact, they alluded to scripture and assumed that “heaven” itself would be on their side in this violence (Luke 9:54; see 2 Kings 1). Their conditional kindness was canceled, and it was time to get even.
Jesus didn’t follow this transactional, tribal track. He “rebuked” his disciples for thinking this way. He then led them onward to seek shelter in another Samaritan village. Jesus refused the trap of writing “them” off as all the same (Luke 9:55-56).
But in the next chapter, Jesus extends a more astonishing kindness. A Jewish religious leader asks Jesus an ultimate question: how to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds by telling a story about a traveler and a Samaritan. It’s not surprising that this scenario was on Jesus’ mind. He had recently been thrown out of a Samaritan village and exposed to the danger of traveling at night in “enemy territory.” What’s surprising is the story Jesus tells (Luke 10:25-37).
Jesus describes a traveler who had been mugged and left for dead on the roadside. Perhaps Jesus was imagining what could have happened to himself. But Jesus doesn’t represent Samaritans as heartless thugs who brutalized the vulnerable. He also doesn’t lionize his own Jewish community as righteous heroes who come to the rescue. Instead, Jesus describes a Samaritan who responds with kindness to the victim of violence. This person, he says, is a model of the love that opens eternity. The Samaritan’s action wasn’t predicated on payback or the victim being “one of us.” He simply responded to the other person’s pain with mercy. Jesus tells the religious leader, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).
After his own students wanted to reduce a Samaritan village to rubble, why would Jesus defy this bitter communal conflict and spotlight a Samaritan as a model of eternal life?
Jesus’ vision of God offers a key. The way we perceive God becomes the lens for how we see “others.”
Jesus had a non-transactional and non-tribal view of God. For Jesus, God’s kindness isn’t contingent on what we deserve or which group we’re part of. In one of the rare definitions Jesus ever gave of God, he said, “God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked” (Luke 6:35). God is kind, regardless of who we are or what we’ve done. God is like the sun, which shines upon all alike. It’s here that Jesus taught, “Love your enemies.” (Paul echoed Jesus when he wrote that kindness grows in us when God is alive in us (Galatians 5:22).)
And so, Jesus responds to a life-endangering offense with a life-dignifying kindness. The story he told about “them” interrupted retaliation with reverence, communal conflict with a shocking respect. In this way, Jesus transformed “Samaritan” from being an epithet for an enemy into an exemplar of moral character.
Divine kindness is far more than random niceness within the status quo of us and them. It’s the courage to tell and live into a new story about one another that transcends transaction and tribe for unconditional dignity and mutual flourishing.
***
Andrew DeCort is the author of Blessed Are the Others: Jesus’ Way in a Violent World (BitterSweet Collective, 2024) and Reviving the Golden Rule: How the Ancient Ethic of Neighbor Love Can Heal the World (IVP Academic, forthcoming). He founded the Institute for Faith and Flourishing, co-leads Prophetic: The Public Theology Fellowship, and writes the newsletter Stop & Think.
BOOKS
Each month we recommend a book (or two) focused on our theme
NON-FICTION
Good and Beautiful and Kind
by Rich Villodas
We long for a good life, a beautiful life, a kind life. But clearly that’s not the world we live in. We carry the stress of our fractured world in our bodies and relationships. Families that once gathered around tables have converted those tables into walls. Hostility, rage, and offense is the language of our culture.
How did we lose goodness, kindness, and beauty? And more important, how do we get them back into our lives? These are the two questions crying out in our streets, homes, churches, and from deep within our souls.
Pastor and author Rich Villodas is convinced that only Jesus offers a way of being human that is both strong and tender enough to tear down the walls of hostility we experience daily.
FICTION
A Terrible Kindness
By Jo Browning Wroe
When we go through something impossible, someone, or something, will help us, if we let them.
It is October 1966 and William Lavery is having the night of his life at his first black-tie do. But, as the evening unfolds, news hits of a landslide at a coal mine. It has buried a school: Aberfan.
William decides he must act, so he stands and volunteers to attend. It will be his first job as an embalmer, and it will be one he never forgets.
His work that night will force him to think about the little boy he was, and the losses he has worked so hard to forget. But compassion can have surprising consequences, because—as William discovers—giving so much to others can sometimes help us heal ourselves.
CHILDRENS
If You Plant a Seed
By Kadir Nelson
The bestselling book about the power of one kind act from Caldecott Medal and
Coretta Scott King Award winner Kadir Nelson.
If you plant a carrot seed . . . a carrot will grow.
If you plant a cabbage seed . . . cabbage will grow.
But what happens if you plant a seed of kindness . . . or selfishness?
With spare text and breathtaking oil paintings, If You Plant a Seed demonstrates not only the process of planting and growing for young children but also how a seed of kindness can bear sweet fruit.
DIG DEEPER
Practical suggestions to help you go deeper into our theme
1. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
In what ways do you need to grow in embodying kindness? Devote some time and thought to these reflective questions that encourage you to dig deeper into our theme:
a. Are you happy for others when they succeed?
b. How do you treat people who can do nothing for you in return?
c. How do you treat others in times of crisis?
d. Are you able to maintain respectful dialogue with someone who strongly disagrees with you?
e. When you make a mistake or act poorly, do you take full ownership? Do you apologize immediately and sincerely?
f. Do you have positive beliefs about others? Do you look for the best in them? Do you believe the best about their intentions?
g. Are you able to forgive others for their mistakes? Are you able to forgive even if they don’t apologize or admit their mistake?
h. What new expression of kindness is God inviting you to embody?
2. THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT: KINDNESS
In this article from Heidelblog, author Shane Rems offers insight into the Fruit of the Spirit kindness. He reminds us that: “If the Spirit is working in you, you will bear fruit—including the fruit of kindness. This is a wonderful reality. When you display the fruit of kindness, it is pleasing in God’s sight. Furthermore, when you show kindness to others, it is a great blessing to them, and it makes their lives more pleasant. . .When you show kindness, you are keeping in step with the Spirit and doing what the Lord has called you to do. That is fulfilling! In other words, being kind to others is not just a duty. It is a delight!” Read the full article here: View Now
3. MODERN DAY GOOD SAMARITAN
Prison guard lost job for taking in inmate’s baby: ‘It was the right thing to do’
Corrections officer Roberta Bell said she has no regrets. ‘I sensed that Katie was a good person who had just made some bad choices in her life,’ Bell said. Read the full story here: View Now
4. MUSIC VIDEO: KIND by CORY ASBURY
“Kind” is a powerful song that reflects seriously on the pain and doubt that are part of the human experience. Some may find the blunt and sometimes harsh descriptions of our doubts and pains uncomfortable. But if the author of Psalm 88 can express his feelings of loss and abandonment and doubt before God, then maybe we should too. This song honors the suffering and doubt that all Christians experience in a way that few other songs do and reminds us of God’s abiding kindness. View Now
5. PRAYER FOR KINDNESS TO A DIFFICULT NEIGHBOR
O Lord,
you who send rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous,
help me, I pray,
to extend your kindness not only to my family and friends
but also to my difficult neighbor,
and grace me to resist the temptation to “teach them a lesson”
or to “put them in their place”
and instead to bless and to do good to them,
so that I might be worthy to be called a child of my Father in heaven.
I pray this in the name of the One who purifies all human loves.
Amen.
By W. David O. Taylor from Prayers for the Pilgrimage: A Book of Collects for All of Life.
ROOTED
But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.
(Jeremiah 17:7-8 NIV)
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FIELD NOTES
Images used in order of appearance:
1. FIELD: Jack Hamilton Bush, The Good Samaritan, May 1951, Estate of the Artist, 1974, Private Collection, Ontario, Canada
2. SEEDS: Free electricity: https://www.boredpanda.com/random-acts-of-kindness/
3. ART: Owen Ziliak, State Journal, Molly Schafer poses for a portrait in her art studio at her home on July 3, 2025 in Waunakee, Wis.
4. POETRY: Man in Wheelchair Crowd Surfing: https://kindnessblog.com/2016/08/11/75-photos-showing-the-brighter-side-of-humanity/
5. PROFILE: Smith, Michelle R. “Providence Municipal Court Judge Frank Caprio sits on the bench in Providence, R.I.” 10 Aug. 2017, Associated Press
6. FILM: Batkid and Batman: https://toofab.com/2023/11/15/batkid-10-years-later-cancer-free/
7. ESSAY: Vincent Van Gogh, The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix) (1890) Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands. https://krollermuller.nl/en/vincent-van-gogh-the-good-samaritan-after-delacroix
8. BOOKS: Runners: https://www.boredpanda.com/random-acts-of-kindness/
9. DIG DEEPER: Free dry cleaning: https://www.boredpanda.com/random-acts-of-kindness/
10. ROOTED: Harold Copping, Woman with the Box of Ointment, illustration from Women of the Bible, published by the Religious Tract Society, 1927. https://www.meisterdrucke.us/fine-art-prints/Harold-Copping/323437/The-Woman-with-the-Box-of-Ointment,-Illustration-from-'Women-of-the-Bible',-Published-by-The-Religious-Tract-Society,-1927.html
TEAM CULTIVARE: Duane Grobman (Editor), Greg Ehlert, Bonnie Fearer, Lisa Hertzog, Shinook Kang, Eugene Kim, Olivia Mather, Andrew Massey, Rita McIntosh Jason Pearson (Design: Pearpod.com)
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