Kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye - 1952-
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.
From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
The Great Web
Patricia Adams Farmer
The world is like a great spider web—minus the spider. Or rather, including the spider, as even the tiniest of creatures are card-carrying members of our silky, web-like world. This lacy, cosmic extravagance in which we all find ourselves can be explained with elaborate cosmological or scientific models, but the spider web is all we really need to stir our imagination.
As a theologian, I believe the spider web is the perfect image for understanding process theology, a spiritual path built on the idea of a web-like universe where every small gesture of kindness sets the whole world atremble. The silken threads that connect us are awash with possibility after possibility for tremors of love and beauty to ripple across the universe.
In this great web—so delicate and sensitive and made of divine materials—we find our meaning and purpose. Bathed in such a vast belonging, we move about with care, not only for ourselves, but for every filigreed corner of our intricately woven existence. This precious web, both beautiful and treacherous, needs our attention and our nurture. Most of all, it needs small gestures of kindness.
- from "K" is for Kindness
As a theologian, I believe the spider web is the perfect image for understanding process theology, a spiritual path built on the idea of a web-like universe where every small gesture of kindness sets the whole world atremble. The silken threads that connect us are awash with possibility after possibility for tremors of love and beauty to ripple across the universe.
In this great web—so delicate and sensitive and made of divine materials—we find our meaning and purpose. Bathed in such a vast belonging, we move about with care, not only for ourselves, but for every filigreed corner of our intricately woven existence. This precious web, both beautiful and treacherous, needs our attention and our nurture. Most of all, it needs small gestures of kindness.
- from "K" is for Kindness
The Religion of Kindness and Beauty Jay McDaniel (P&F Twin Cities Presentation) by Jared Morningstar
Kindness
Jay McDaniel
In a time marked by authoritarianism, hatred, and the politics of wall-building, one of the most revolutionary acts available to us is a commitment to kindness: not the building of walls, but the quiet work of extending the table of care. Such kindness unsettles those for whom vengeance has become normative, opening space for a gentler, more creative way of living together.
It takes great strength to make a commitment to kindness. The commitment is best animated by a deeper kindness that underlies the universe—one that acts quietly through love. This deeper kindness is God, and its spirit is persuasive, not coercive. As Alfred North Whitehead writes: “It does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless moralist, or the unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world.” It is in the world, to be sure, but not of this world of hatred and wall-building.
It conquers nothing—yet it outlasts everything.
It takes great strength to make a commitment to kindness. The commitment is best animated by a deeper kindness that underlies the universe—one that acts quietly through love. This deeper kindness is God, and its spirit is persuasive, not coercive. As Alfred North Whitehead writes: “It does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless moralist, or the unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world.” It is in the world, to be sure, but not of this world of hatred and wall-building.
It conquers nothing—yet it outlasts everything.