The Deepest Thing
On Kindness and Sorrow
Dear Friends and Family,
In the days since the US election, the words of Naomi Shihab Nye on kindness have been resounding. I come to you today with her poem.
The image is taken two days before Helene while on an early evening walk along the French Broad River. I recall now pausing for a long while, the light inside the gathering dark seeming biblical.
With love,
Renée
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 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.
~Naomi Shihab Nye, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (in public domain)
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You helped me understand a why in my life with this post.
In the past week, I posted about two profoundly formative events I experienced early in my career:
https://switters.substack.com/p/its-a-small-world-dbe
https://switters.substack.com/p/on-the-road-to-antelope-mine-122
I have posted other stories in the past where my humanitarian ideals came face to face with the reality of hatred, violence and suffering. Each time, I questioned why I should stay the course instead of retreating to a gentler, safer, more comfortable life at home, but I always came around to a firmer resolve. Once, in a hellish refugee camp, I held an infant as she died. My reaction was outrage that people, and the Almighty, allowed that child and other children to die because of our wicked ambitions. Inexplicably, as my grief and rage ebbed with time, I renewed my commitment to push back. For evil, strike back with kindness.
It didn’t occur to me that the sorrow and grief I experienced were catalysts for militant kindness. I never consciously made that connection. Now I understand.
Thank you.
Renée this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye is exquisite. As I sink into the depth of both sorrow and kindness that is painted in this poem, I feel their interdependence as a sacred dance. The magnetic pull they both generate, an entering into the liminal.
For me sorrow tends to go two ways. One is anger which can be productive if grounded or destructive if reactive. And the other is kindness. Sorrow calls for me to be gentle with myself and those around me. This has been strong lately. With the election for sure. And nine days ago my father-in-law passed. Who happened to be more a father to me then mine was. He was 94, and the passing was the most beautiful one I have ever witnessed. And...I am grieving. Letting tenderness filter out the unnecessary and misdirected. As it finds a comfortable spot, I too relax. Kindness is a natural response.