Kindness

Text: John 3:14-21

They were never late, and today, they were late. The three girls always came to the Saturday drama club I was running – in fact, they were usually early. Today, they were late. Should I start the session? Phone their parents? Take the other kids and go looking? Then they arrived, and their hands were dirty. On the way, they saw a dead dog. They didn’t know for sure, but thought it was run over by a car. What they did after seeing the poor dog really moved me, and I can’t forget what they told me. The girls held it in their arms, and walked to find the closest ground, and buried it with their bare hands. I can imagine those who were passing by the dead dog. Perhaps some of them noticed the terrible spot but didn’t have the time or courage to do what the nine-year-old kids could not fail to do: doing acts of kindness. Not only did the three girls pay attention to that creature, but also responded to the pain they themselves experienced.

I like this story, and like any good stories do, it continues to inspire me. This story keeps opening my heart. I believe there is a natural tendency in most of us to avoid pain as much as possible – whether that’s ours or someone else’s. Our death denying culture wasn’t created overnight. There is a widespread and deep-seated climate in our culture which says, “only look at the bright side, the glass is half full, other people have it worse.” 

I was once in a room where a group of church people debated over some important issues. Although our differences were almost irreconcilable, the debate was a much needed and necessary process for us to understand each other better. The discussion was interrupted when someone who was new to the group shouted, “I’m tired of the debate. Let’s move on.” She said that not because she cared about the issues but because she could not bear the pain. 

In our attempt to comfort those who grieve or who are fearful, we might say things like ‘it’s time to move on” or “you need closure” or “it is what it is” only to show our own inability to hold the space for the person. I remember visiting my patients during my pastoral clinical education training. I found myself breaking the silence or changing the subject when I was at the end of my rope. I said this or that not because those comments were helpful to the suffering person, but because the comments were helpful to me to shut myself off from the overwhelming pain. 

I understand our desire to return to the pre-pandemic life as soon as possible. I worry, however, by rushing through life we can’t embrace the fullness of life with its pain as well as joy. I’ve seldom heard anyone talking about the Covid-19 pandemic as something positive, as the potential to change our lives and our communities. It’s no doubt that the virus has created a global crisis. But those of us who have experienced a trauma and been able to integrate it into our lives know how it can be the great source of compassion for others. So, thanks to the pandemic, we now have ample opportunities to build a more compassionate and caring global community like never before.

Pain can be turned into the source of healing and compassion. This is the good news of God. To declare it John brings back the old memory of collective trauma – how people died in the wilderness because of poisonous serpents. God told Moses to make a serpent of bronze and put it on a pole. Whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. The serpent, the source of fear became a symbol of healing not because it was responsible for their cure, but because it reminded the people to lift up their hearts to God, the true source of saving. There is something about facing our fear that gives us power.   

And that’s what the Gospel of John is also telling us; remember the cross and see how the symbol of shame, condemnation and hopelessness became the reminder of God’s unconditional love and saving grace for everyone. This is God’s doing: turning a source of pain into a healing reminder.

I’d like to share the following poem written by Naomi Shihab Nye. As much as I like the poem, I also like how this poem came about. Naomi said, it was given to her after she and her husband were robbed of everything in South America at the beginning of their 3 months honeymoon trip. They lost everything. They didn’t have anything: no passports or money in the middle of the city they knew no one. Her husband was going to hitchhike off to a larger city to see about getting traveler’s checks reinstated. And she was alone in a panic, night coming on, trying to figure out what she was going to do next, and this voice came. And she wrote it down. 

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.
……

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.