Only Kindness Makes Sense Anymore

“The measure of true kindness — which is different from nicety, different from politeness — is often revealed in those challenging instances when we must rise above the impulse toward its opposite, ignited by fear and anger and despair.” Naomi Shihab Nye

The above quote inspired Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem Kindness. I have been struck by the manifestations of this impulse recently and kindness, like the poem, is saving me. Fear, anger and despair indeed have threatened but acts of kindness even at a distance transcend the tragic gap and weave love and mercy into the frightening fabric of our lives. I invite you to ponder “the tender gravity” of kindness, offered and received today:

KINDNESS

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 mail letters and

    purchase 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 every where

like a shadow or a friend.

--Naomi Shihab Nye, from The Words Under the Words