Lying awake in the middle of the night, my mind racing, I realized that I was starting to build a mountain of words, and putting words ahead of deeds, the exact opposite of what I want to practice and promote! I've been trying to organize my ideas about how to practice and promote loving people, and fellowship, across ideological divides; and freedom from backbiting; to write about them to some friends, and post on my blog.

Now I want to try to practice first, then write about my experience.

- Part of the foundation I want to practice and promote is praying and making efforts to learn to love God more. I'm trying to memorize, and learn to say and write, a prayer and a passage in Chinese. The prayer is "From the sweet-scented streams ..." and the passage is "Let the flame of the love of God ..."

- I have a long list of ideas I compiled, some of my own, and some from friends, about learning to love God more. One is to spend more time in communion with nature, as part of my communion with God. I've been spending more time with some trees and shrubs near our home.

- Part of what I want to practice is an idea I got from Abdu'l-Baha, praising people. Some people I want to practice praising, for these initiatives, are people with ideologies opposed to mine. Who, what, where, when, how? Here, in this blog? Privately, to friends I'm writing to about these initiatives? On Facebook? In the forum where I've been posting? The names of some of the first people who came to mind, were notorious in some religious feuding on the Internet, and I'm not sure of the wisdom of singing praises of them here, now.

I just thought of one of the hardest people for me to love right now, and I tried to find something to love in him. I've always loved his avatar, and I still do!

I decided to practice praising people by writing to some of the people themselves, to express my appreciation for some things they're doing, so I just now wrote to three of them.