Words of Kindness and Joy

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9MWiVMYhqA&ab_channel=SBettinaBrand   

Yes, I shared this picture last week, but when I was thinking about kindness this morning I thought about how kind my cousin was to take me here recently. He knows I love to take pictures of nature. Without even asking me, he drove me here and suggested I get out of the car and snap some pictures. It's these little thoughtful acts that surround us with an emotional quilt of comfort.
 

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye 

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.

 

And then this past Saturday a friend made reservations, picking me and a couple other friends up for tea time. As I sat there I realized people don't do that normally for me. I am the one doing the organizing. I told the friend that and she said "I know, that is why I wanted to do it for you". It touched my heart.

 

As the poem says, it is kindness I have been looking for this year. It is kindness we need in the world around us and in our world. I hope and pray each of you reading this find kindness in your days.

 

Sending love,

Marilyn