Good morning…
I puppy-sat briefly while my friend ran to the store. On the counter I noticed a pile of pink napkins. “In a world where you can be anything…” they read. “Be kind.” The word “kind” drew me back to a page from the book I met face to face yesterday.
Then the word “kind” brought me back to the memory of a visit with another dear friend at the start of the pandemic, before “shelter-in-place” quickly became a thing. At the time, we sat out on her back porch drinking tea, and she read aloud to me the following poem.
******
“Kindness” Written and read by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
******
At my request, she forwarded to me the link, but my friend warned, “Please do not post this poem now because our hearts are not yet ready. Wait until it feels like we are starting to learn that kindness is our only path forward.” Somehow I sense that time is now.
Over the last several months, we have all lost a lot things. Collectively, we have felt our future certainty dissolve in a moment. What we held in our hands, what we counted and carefully saved, much of that is gone, and we are learning how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. We are learning the tender gravity of kindness as we travel where people of color lie dead by the side of the road. Are we learning to see how they could be us? Do we see how each of these people were someone who journeyed through the night with plans, whose lungs were kept alive by God’s simple breath?
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,” whispers the poem, “you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.” Are we finally catching the thread of all the sorrows on earth as we begin to sense the immense size of our shared cloth?
Right now it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties our shoes and sends us out into the day, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say, “It is I you have been looking for.” Will “Be kind.” go with us everywhere like a silent shadow or a forever friend?
So clean house! Make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy and hurtful talk. You’ve had a taste of God. Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God (1 Peter 2:1-3, MSG).
…Sue…
P.S. To experience the poet reading her words, touch on the poem title above and press “Listen.”
