Radical kindness

Breathing in and breathing out

knowing I am

breathing in and breathing out

remembering:

This blog is a place to cultivate conversations that matter and to re-imagine work, together.

Radical kindness,

as a possibility,

took up residence in my mind and heart

after reading and

hearing the story of

this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

from her collection of poetry, Words Under The Words: Selected Poems.

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.

Now

those words

have taken root in my heart

reminding me,

again,

this being human

is a complicated affair

here

on the beautiful blue spinning planet earth.

This being human--

a song stuck in my head,

a favorite song, 13 (There is a Light)

from U2, Songs of Experience

lodged in my mind for weeks.

Finally listening

leads me here, now

to these questions

as if radical kindness

is  asking:

Are you tough enough to be kind?

Do you know your heart has its own mind?

U2: 13 (There is a Light ) from Songs of Experience

Questions worth pondering,

slowing down for a moment

coming home to yourself.

Be well,

Thea