The Book of the Lamp — Read free with Kindle Unlimited · Kindle eBook: $0.99 · Paperback: $5.75.
The EVERgreen Oath™: Love Made Visible Through Compassion and Service
🌲🤍 Our founding statement
✝️ Rooted in Christian compassion. 🤗 Welcoming every person.
Kitchen Monk™ exists to help people flourish in real life: through good food, companionship, rest, community, and care for the people who care for others. The EVERgreen Oath™ says why we do this work and how we hope to do it. You are welcome to read it, reflect on it, or simply use our resources. Nothing here requires a sign-up, your personal information, or any religious commitment.
🤲 Compassion in action. 🕊️ Dignity for every person. ❤️ Love expressed through care.
🌲🤍 The EVERgreen Oath™
❤️ Love Made Visible Through Compassion and Service
“Rooted in the love of Christ, we commit to making compassion visible through service.
We will seek to notice those who feel forgotten, welcome those who feel alone, and honor the dignity of every person.
We will offer nourishment where there is hunger, companionship where there is loneliness, comfort where there is suffering, and practical help where burdens have become too heavy to carry alone.
We will listen before assuming, ask before acting, and serve with humility.
We will care for patients, families, caregivers, communities, and the people who devote their lives to caring for others.
We will welcome people of every faith and of no faith, offering care without requiring belief, agreement, or participation in religious practice.
We will join compassion with knowledge, responsible action, and respect for each person’s choices.
We will support charitable service, seek opportunities to collaborate, and connect willing hearts with meaningful ways to help.
We will remember that those who serve also need nourishment, rest, protection, and care.
Inspired by Jesus’ teachings and honoring Mother Teresa’s example of service, we will begin where we are—with one person, one practical act of love, and one step toward a more compassionate world.
We will keep the Lamp lit and tend the Garden together.”
🌱 An invitation into flourishing rather than condemnation.
An original statement by Kitchen Monk™ and Flourishing Nursing™. It is not a quotation from Mother Teresa, not a historical nursing oath, and not a credential, certification, or membership.
🕊️ A voluntary expression of our mission
The EVERgreen Oath™ expresses our commitment to love made visible through compassion and service. Our guiding question—“What would Jesus do?”—invites us to live that commitment through the choices we make each day.
No one is asked to sign it, recite it, or agree with it. There is no public pledge, no list of names, and no badge. Every recipe, tool, and resource on Kitchen Monk™ is open to you whatever you believe.
🧭 How the oath shapes Kitchen Monk™
- 🍲 Nourishment: simple, affordable food ideas like the Seven-Minute Rescue Meal™ and Flourishing on a Budget, offered without shame.
- 🤝 Companionship: free community and Flourishing Pods, because loneliness is real and no one should flourish alone.
- 🤲 Care for caregivers: Who Cares for the Caregiver? remembers that those who serve also need rest and care.
- 🕊️ Dignity: Human Dignity Is Never Disposable describes how we hope everyone is treated.
- 🩺 Responsible care: health education that supports, and never replaces, each person’s own clinicians. See How We Review Health Information.
✝️ Our Christian philosophy · 🧭 Our strategy
🤲 Care for All: Love One Another
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
John 13:34–35, World English Bible (public domain)
🌍 Caring for all is both our Christian philosophy and the heart of our strategy. Kitchen Monk™ exists to serve everyone: free, public, and open to people of every faith and none. Every recipe, meal plan, and tool is one more way to love a neighbor.
🇸🇪 We commend Sweden. In one of the most secular nations on earth, young people are rising up and turning to Jesus, whose command is that we love and care for one another. 🌅 May we wake up like Sweden: Christians everywhere living out that love, one meal, one visit, and one neighbor at a time.
A statement of our founder’s faith. No belief is required to use anything on Kitchen Monk™. Rooted in faith and compassion, welcoming people of every faith and none.
🧭 Our guiding question
🧭 Our Guiding Question: The Heart Behind Our Work
“What would Jesus do?”
Founder Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM, carries this question as a compass for his life: “What would Jesus do?”
For Kitchen Monk™ and Flourishing Nursing™, that question invites us to pause, notice the person before us, and consider how compassion can become action. It calls us to listen, protect dignity, offer practical help, and remember that those who care for others also need care.
This question guides Kitchen Monk™ and Flourishing Nursing™ toward compassion, humility, dignity, and love expressed through practical service.
ℹ️ About the words: This question is not a verse of Scripture. It is a way of asking how Jesus’ teachings apply to the choice in front of us. The phrase became widely known through Charles M. Sheldon’s 1896 novel In His Steps. In health and nursing, the question guides our character and compassion; clinical decisions also follow evidence, each person’s own preferences, professional standards, and scope of practice.
✨ The Golden Rule: the care you would hope to receive
“Therefore whatever you desire for men to do to you, you shall also do to them; for this is the law and the prophets.”
Matthew 7:12, World English Bible (public domain)
“As you would like people to do to you, do exactly so to them.”
Luke 6:31, World English Bible (public domain)
Treat others with the care, dignity, and compassion you would hope to receive.
👂 Ask what care means to the other person. Listen to their needs, respect their choices, and offer help that is useful to them.
This matters because people have different preferences, cultures, beliefs, and needs. The meal you would love may not be the meal your neighbor can eat. The visit you would welcome may not be the one a grieving friend wants today. Compassion includes learning what the person receiving care actually wants.
👣 Put it into practice: Notice → Ask → Connect → Serve → Reflect
👀 Notice someone who may feel forgotten. 💬 Ask what would actually help. 🔗 Connect with the right people or services. 🤲 Serve within your abilities. 🌙 Reflect on what helped and what comes next. Examples and the full pathway are on Serve Together.
🪔 Keep the Lamp lit
The last line of the oath comes from our story-world, The EVERgreen Chronicles™. The Book of the Lamp: From Crimea to the Kitchen Monk, by Nathanael Elijah Smith, is a work of fiction about keeping the light of compassionate care burning. It is available on Amazon as a Kindle ebook and a paperback; check Amazon for the current price.
🖨️ To print this oath, use your browser’s Print option (on a phone, Share → Print). Printing is for your own reflection; no signature is needed.
ℹ️ About this page. Written by Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM, with artificial intelligence–assisted drafting · Scripture: World English Bible (public domain), checked against published World English Bible text · Last updated: October 1, 2026 · Questions or corrections: rfjeep@gmail.com
✝️ Nathanael’s Faith: Jesus, Our Anchor, and Our Hope
A personal faith invitation from Nathanael: Riverside Fellowship in Hammond, Oregon, is my anchor church. Its teaching points to repentance, faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection, confession of Him as Lord, and salvation as God’s gift of grace. Receiving Jesus into our hearts means personally trusting and following Him.
Riverside’s salvation teaching · Its Jesus Class
My mom, Nina Delores Smith—Momma Eagle—is a devout Jesus follower. During my visit home for our special Jesus-loving reunion, I returned to Riverside for two Sundays. I treasure that homecoming and the faith and love woven through our family’s story.
Read the full explanation: accepting Jesus, resurrection, the Rapture, Tribulation, Christ’s reign, and everlasting life → The guide distinguishes Pensacola Christian College’s published position from wider Christian interpretations and Riverside’s own salvation teaching. Read Momma Eagle’s faith and reunion feature →
Our faith reflections are shared as an invitation. People of every faith and none are welcome and deserve compassionate care.
With Momma Eagle—Nina Delores Smith—may we renew our strength in the Lord and “mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 40:31, King James Version): a poetic image of hope, not a promise of literal wings.
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” 
