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.
I have just read your posts about these two formative experiences. Your writing gives a profound sense. I can almost smell the burning in the hut. My heart breaks. I recall your countless kindnesses in the early days after Helene. I better understand the depths from which it comes. Thank you.
You have given me (and surely all your readers) an understanding of the "militant kindness," unflinching, that comes with letting the pain and depths of sorrow reach us. Rage as a thru fare at times to the searing pain. Thank you for sharing the links to these stories in the comments section here. Thank you for the work you have devoted your life to.
I just recalled a sentence on the last page of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath: “If you're in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help—the only ones.” And among the poor people, I’ll now include the “poor in spirit,” those who have felt grief and have had their hearts broken. Kindness must reside inside some of us like the meat inside a black walnut. It takes a hard blow to free it.
I am again, touched by your words. I read you about the ones who will help, the poor people and poor in spirit, and what comes to me are reflections on the true essence of poverty, that of being emptied. This is an inner emptiness. We come with nothing and no expectation. In this way, we are our most open.
Grief empties us. Brokenheartedness empties us. In the poverty of the world as we once understood or believed it to be, we come to that "meat inside the black walnut" no longer walled off by a walled off heart. "Kindness must reside inside some of us" there. "It takes a hard blow to free it." Your words give us faith in the hard blow.
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.
Thank you for sharing. I'm terribly sorry for your loss. May the peace of his passing and the beauty and the memories that remain, and your love, bring comfort and tenderness as you grieve.
I appreciate what you offer of the liminality between the depths of sorrow and the kindness that comes.
You write "Kindness is a natural response." And it occurs to me that when we meet someone who touches us with kindness, we are at the same time meeting and being touched by their sorrow touching our own . . . "the thread of all sorrows."
Oh, how I adore Naomi Shihab-Nye. Thank you for sharing this poem and that beautiful sky.
I've come here after Tara generously connected our weekend posts in her notes. And I'm honored to find the connection and to be on a similar wave as you.
Thank you for sharing the thread you followed from Tara over here and then, further, the reflections in comments. With thanks to you, I headed over to Tara and learned the story that gave the poem. (For anyone reading comments, Tara Penry's post is here: https://substack.com/@tarapenry/p-151675450)
I returned to Mark's reflections above, and something stood out anew:
He writes:
"However, my wife and her two friends moved forward." They did not give up.
In my comment to Mark, I referenced William Stafford's poem, "The Way It Is," which begins:
"There is a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn't change."
It finishes:
"You don't ever let go of the thread."
Sorrow is like that, it seems. I can only imagine what gathered here this week are our collective hearts on the thread of all sorrows, which is stirring in its beauty.
Thank you for reading these letters nearly every week. 🙏 Thank you for pressing the little heart button as a show of hand. "I'm present," it says to me. ❤️ Thank you for commenting in whatever manner speaks through you, anytime or not at all. Sometimes, words won't do. I often read and go, "hmmmmmm," in response to an echo of resonance with the writer's words, a quickening, a new understanding, a sorrow . . . a kindness. As is so often the case with what you bring to Substack, you have given us permission. Thank you.
Hi Rene, I have not written you in a while. Reading your post, and Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem ‘Kindness’, re-kindled memories of my relationship with my wife and later the journey along my trail of grief. Of course, there is a story in how this poem became a thread that wove together enduring love and loss and lastly the immutable embrace of suffering and kindness. The story: Around 2016, my wife spearheaded, along with two other friends in our community, a weekly support group that had ties to our Cummington’s Council on Aging. Barbara’s desire was driven by what she saw as a need in our growing community of elders. Yet this was also an action in response to what she perceived as a Council that was mired in traditional attitudes and offerings for seniors. An archaic tradition that in many ways was in denial and resistant to conversations about death and dying. As was to be expected, there was push back from several of the long standing members of this group. However, my wife and her two friends moved forward. They collaborated on creating a format, on collecting resources, and obtaining legitimation through the Massachusetts Council on Aging. And then they came up with a title, “Living Fully, Aging Gracefully, and Befriending Death”. The three would meet every week to discuss the upcoming meeting. Each would contribute poetry that would match best with the three rotating topics from week to week. So Barbara would always be bringing home copies of poems. She would share these with me. At the same time, I had started a new job working with adults in a residential treatment program for alcohol and drug addiction. I would regularly bring poetry into the groups I led. Eventually I had a collection of my own and one of my favorites was ‘Kindness’.
Looking back, when reading poems to my clients, when reading this poem, I recognized the depth and meaning of these lines in the context of who my clients were — how their lived experiences with addiction and trauma, family heartache and tragedy, lost dreams and lost selves shaped and molded them. And I was often moved, my heart softened. Whereas Barbara kept her flow of poems coming. Sometimes the ones she discovered would be written in cursive and given to me. I would discover poems at work, make copies, and bring them home to her. In those months before she became ill, one of the great blessings in our marriage was this continual flow, this exchange and reading of poetry to each other. This shared act made sacred by the poetry and the poets, by the sit at the bedside, by the aroma of coffee and the sleepy, waking eyes in the early dawn light.
In the weeks following Barbara’s death, I became a broken creature feeding on a daily grief vigil — solemn witness to the sorrow, steadily present in whatever form Barbara would be taking (as a snowy owl in a prayer or a dream, as a vapor trail in the sky, as the bending sweep of the crown of a white pine). But the pitch and resin that held the fracturing all together was the daily flow of poetry I offered myself. New and newly discovered poems — about absence and loneliness and discovery and transformation and beauty and expansion and blessing.
When I pulled Naomi Shahib Nye’s poem out of a folder one morning I read it and wept and wept. I was no longer the committed counselor searching for words to help guide and illuminate the internal chaos of my ‘charges’ who had become lost, who had become self-disgraced. For now, it had become I who was crawling along this trail of suffering, confused and disoriented, my lone capacity only this unquestionable allegiance to a broken heart. And in these lines: ‘Before you know what kindness is…’ I felt the ‘future dissolve’ the instant Barbara died. ‘You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows….’ ‘Then it is only kindness that makes sense any more…’. ‘…It is I you have been looking for.’ Sitting with this poem on that morning years ago, it was as if all the intensity of my sorrow had been firmly encapsulated in an aura of ever expanding compassion. In a flash realizing that the broken heart can hold, will hold, is holding all sorrow. And is holding all compassion. I am holding the copy of ‘Kindness’ that Barbara first gave me. There is a sticky note on it saying, “from Betti Boop. August 2, 20016”
Thank you, Renee. I will join you at noon on this brilliant late fall day with the waning image of the Beaver moon left me from last night and early this morning.
Please forgive me my slow response to your immensely touching share. I have read your words several times until the "thread of all sorrows" touched my own heart. Your voice, your tone and tenor and truth to love and sorrow, catches this thread. There is such tenderness in yours and Barbara's "shared act made sacred." It is as though you became the act; became the poetry; the poetry an enfleshment. Reading you, I am hushed with tenderness. This tenderness is brokenheartedness itself, the thread of all sorrows. You have given us this thread . . . to follow (William Stafford, as you know).
It is so very heartening to see that others have read and been so touched by your words.
Mark, I'm profoundly moved by the depth of your revelations, the courage of your vulnerability, and the wonderful writing. It's one thing to live thru things like you experienced, another altogether to write about them. I can feel your kindness. I wish you all the comfort and peace that can come from sharing your story. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this response, Mark. Reading it, I felt this ebb and flow of Naomi Shahib Nye's words touching your life and those you shared them with again and again--the power of words once shaped into something like "Kindness" to transform and evolve through new ears and through time. And I felt the profound beauty of your relationship with your wife. I'm grateful to this tribute to poetry and to love and to Renee for inspiring you to it.
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.
Switter,
I have just read your posts about these two formative experiences. Your writing gives a profound sense. I can almost smell the burning in the hut. My heart breaks. I recall your countless kindnesses in the early days after Helene. I better understand the depths from which it comes. Thank you.
You have given me (and surely all your readers) an understanding of the "militant kindness," unflinching, that comes with letting the pain and depths of sorrow reach us. Rage as a thru fare at times to the searing pain. Thank you for sharing the links to these stories in the comments section here. Thank you for the work you have devoted your life to.
And thank you for helping me understand why.
I just recalled a sentence on the last page of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath: “If you're in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help—the only ones.” And among the poor people, I’ll now include the “poor in spirit,” those who have felt grief and have had their hearts broken. Kindness must reside inside some of us like the meat inside a black walnut. It takes a hard blow to free it.
Switter,
I am again, touched by your words. I read you about the ones who will help, the poor people and poor in spirit, and what comes to me are reflections on the true essence of poverty, that of being emptied. This is an inner emptiness. We come with nothing and no expectation. In this way, we are our most open.
Grief empties us. Brokenheartedness empties us. In the poverty of the world as we once understood or believed it to be, we come to that "meat inside the black walnut" no longer walled off by a walled off heart. "Kindness must reside inside some of us" there. "It takes a hard blow to free it." Your words give us faith in the hard blow.
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.
Julie,
Thank you for sharing. I'm terribly sorry for your loss. May the peace of his passing and the beauty and the memories that remain, and your love, bring comfort and tenderness as you grieve.
I appreciate what you offer of the liminality between the depths of sorrow and the kindness that comes.
You write "Kindness is a natural response." And it occurs to me that when we meet someone who touches us with kindness, we are at the same time meeting and being touched by their sorrow touching our own . . . "the thread of all sorrows."
Holding you and your loved ones with kindness.
Oh, how I adore Naomi Shihab-Nye. Thank you for sharing this poem and that beautiful sky.
I've come here after Tara generously connected our weekend posts in her notes. And I'm honored to find the connection and to be on a similar wave as you.
Holly,
Thank you for sharing the thread you followed from Tara over here and then, further, the reflections in comments. With thanks to you, I headed over to Tara and learned the story that gave the poem. (For anyone reading comments, Tara Penry's post is here: https://substack.com/@tarapenry/p-151675450)
I then headed over to your post:
(https://substack.com/home/post/p-151764928)
I returned to Mark's reflections above, and something stood out anew:
He writes:
"However, my wife and her two friends moved forward." They did not give up.
In my comment to Mark, I referenced William Stafford's poem, "The Way It Is," which begins:
"There is a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn't change."
It finishes:
"You don't ever let go of the thread."
Sorrow is like that, it seems. I can only imagine what gathered here this week are our collective hearts on the thread of all sorrows, which is stirring in its beauty.
Long response to both of your comments. . .
I know emojis are not a proper comment and yet - ❤️❤️❤️.
Donna,
Thank you for reading these letters nearly every week. 🙏 Thank you for pressing the little heart button as a show of hand. "I'm present," it says to me. ❤️ Thank you for commenting in whatever manner speaks through you, anytime or not at all. Sometimes, words won't do. I often read and go, "hmmmmmm," in response to an echo of resonance with the writer's words, a quickening, a new understanding, a sorrow . . . a kindness. As is so often the case with what you bring to Substack, you have given us permission. Thank you.
Hi Rene, I have not written you in a while. Reading your post, and Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem ‘Kindness’, re-kindled memories of my relationship with my wife and later the journey along my trail of grief. Of course, there is a story in how this poem became a thread that wove together enduring love and loss and lastly the immutable embrace of suffering and kindness. The story: Around 2016, my wife spearheaded, along with two other friends in our community, a weekly support group that had ties to our Cummington’s Council on Aging. Barbara’s desire was driven by what she saw as a need in our growing community of elders. Yet this was also an action in response to what she perceived as a Council that was mired in traditional attitudes and offerings for seniors. An archaic tradition that in many ways was in denial and resistant to conversations about death and dying. As was to be expected, there was push back from several of the long standing members of this group. However, my wife and her two friends moved forward. They collaborated on creating a format, on collecting resources, and obtaining legitimation through the Massachusetts Council on Aging. And then they came up with a title, “Living Fully, Aging Gracefully, and Befriending Death”. The three would meet every week to discuss the upcoming meeting. Each would contribute poetry that would match best with the three rotating topics from week to week. So Barbara would always be bringing home copies of poems. She would share these with me. At the same time, I had started a new job working with adults in a residential treatment program for alcohol and drug addiction. I would regularly bring poetry into the groups I led. Eventually I had a collection of my own and one of my favorites was ‘Kindness’.
Looking back, when reading poems to my clients, when reading this poem, I recognized the depth and meaning of these lines in the context of who my clients were — how their lived experiences with addiction and trauma, family heartache and tragedy, lost dreams and lost selves shaped and molded them. And I was often moved, my heart softened. Whereas Barbara kept her flow of poems coming. Sometimes the ones she discovered would be written in cursive and given to me. I would discover poems at work, make copies, and bring them home to her. In those months before she became ill, one of the great blessings in our marriage was this continual flow, this exchange and reading of poetry to each other. This shared act made sacred by the poetry and the poets, by the sit at the bedside, by the aroma of coffee and the sleepy, waking eyes in the early dawn light.
In the weeks following Barbara’s death, I became a broken creature feeding on a daily grief vigil — solemn witness to the sorrow, steadily present in whatever form Barbara would be taking (as a snowy owl in a prayer or a dream, as a vapor trail in the sky, as the bending sweep of the crown of a white pine). But the pitch and resin that held the fracturing all together was the daily flow of poetry I offered myself. New and newly discovered poems — about absence and loneliness and discovery and transformation and beauty and expansion and blessing.
When I pulled Naomi Shahib Nye’s poem out of a folder one morning I read it and wept and wept. I was no longer the committed counselor searching for words to help guide and illuminate the internal chaos of my ‘charges’ who had become lost, who had become self-disgraced. For now, it had become I who was crawling along this trail of suffering, confused and disoriented, my lone capacity only this unquestionable allegiance to a broken heart. And in these lines: ‘Before you know what kindness is…’ I felt the ‘future dissolve’ the instant Barbara died. ‘You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows….’ ‘Then it is only kindness that makes sense any more…’. ‘…It is I you have been looking for.’ Sitting with this poem on that morning years ago, it was as if all the intensity of my sorrow had been firmly encapsulated in an aura of ever expanding compassion. In a flash realizing that the broken heart can hold, will hold, is holding all sorrow. And is holding all compassion. I am holding the copy of ‘Kindness’ that Barbara first gave me. There is a sticky note on it saying, “from Betti Boop. August 2, 20016”
Thank you, Renee. I will join you at noon on this brilliant late fall day with the waning image of the Beaver moon left me from last night and early this morning.
Dear Mark,
Please forgive me my slow response to your immensely touching share. I have read your words several times until the "thread of all sorrows" touched my own heart. Your voice, your tone and tenor and truth to love and sorrow, catches this thread. There is such tenderness in yours and Barbara's "shared act made sacred." It is as though you became the act; became the poetry; the poetry an enfleshment. Reading you, I am hushed with tenderness. This tenderness is brokenheartedness itself, the thread of all sorrows. You have given us this thread . . . to follow (William Stafford, as you know).
It is so very heartening to see that others have read and been so touched by your words.
Thank you for joining on Sunday, Mark. Deep bow.
Mark, I'm profoundly moved by the depth of your revelations, the courage of your vulnerability, and the wonderful writing. It's one thing to live thru things like you experienced, another altogether to write about them. I can feel your kindness. I wish you all the comfort and peace that can come from sharing your story. Thank you.
Becky,
Thank you for sharing how much Mark's reflections touched you. It is so heartening when these comments become a heart-felt conversation.
Thank you, Becky. You are generous and thoughtful in your feedback to me.
Thank you for sharing this response, Mark. Reading it, I felt this ebb and flow of Naomi Shahib Nye's words touching your life and those you shared them with again and again--the power of words once shaped into something like "Kindness" to transform and evolve through new ears and through time. And I felt the profound beauty of your relationship with your wife. I'm grateful to this tribute to poetry and to love and to Renee for inspiring you to it.
I echo your gratitude to Mark's tribute to poetry and to love, Holly.