Why Kindness?

“Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things…”

These words open Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, Kindness. It’s these precious and devastating words that gave me a foothold as I flailed about in inarticulate grief. I read them while trying to find a solid expression of the inexpressible, how to make something I felt into something I could describe, maybe even understand. Or maybe they found me.

Her words, which connect so deeply with my experience, allowed me to imagine a way, however narrow, to move with purpose towards something, rather than just away from the terrifying pain. They weren’t the only ones, of course, but they were the right ones, at the right time.

They still are.

It’s not like the pain has stopped,

or the questions, or the deep sense of loss that in some aspects, grows - not diminishes, over time. It’s a weird paradox, paying attention to loss and grief both intensifies and assuages, grows but also gives perspective.

There’s no resolution, at least not for now. But there is a way to hold the tension that allows us to not be totally overwhelmed. Granted, this is incredibly difficult. As a whole, we’ve not been taught how to do this. We’ve even been indoctrinated to believe it’s a bad thing. We’ve idolized certainty, made a paragon of being in absolute control. We demand short, simple, cheap answers and champion those who offer them.

But life defies such calculus. Regardless of what we might’ve been taught about faith, faith allows us to let go of certainty, to hold the tension of grief and hope, loss and kindness together. Not in some disconnected intellectual assent, but in embodied practices and holy imaginations.

I invite you to consider letting go of certainty to hold space for this tension; kindness and loss, sorrow and hope.

We’ve had a few new people sign up for this conversation lately, and to them I want to extend a warm but cautious welcome, maybe best summed up in the closing lines of Shihab Nye’s poem;

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing..”

Grace and peace y’all,

John