the end of things

A friend of mine is dying and there’s nothing I can do. It’s not as if there’s a disaster or an organized cause that I could get behind. You know, like in those shows where they pull support from hundreds of volunteers and a few novelty celebrities and take someone’s dreadful house or wardrobe or... (I guess now…face) and transform them. I see the need. I think “ok. Here’s the problem. Let’s all get behind this and knock it out.” But, as much as something in all of us longs to be a part of God’s making right of all things, my friend will die. I will watch her and talk to her and listen to her every word. Then the words will stop and I will know her in a different way. Learning to love differently is hard.

My friend has always had this wise peace about her. She has known me all of my life (she was there the day I was born) and I remember her as the person I always wanted to be. There’s a specific demeanor… or outlook… or whatever you want to call it, that certain people possess that lead me to believe they understand something I don’t. It’s as if they know everything we cherish will pass out of our lives, and that we, too, shall pass away. And when they come to know this truth as a lived experience, it’s as if they also know a deep love and kindness for everyone else who must take the same road. This seems to be prevalent in friends and family I’ve had with terminal illnesses or a terribly hard road for whatever reason. It’s funny that what joins us to the human race is often our pain and suffering. When we no longer shield ourselves from the vulnerability of our condition, when we feel the basic fragility of our existence, then we feel our essential identity with all living things. Then compassion (literally, “to suffer with”) arises naturally for ourselves and for all others. It seems if this is true, we could figure out some formula to remedy the lack of desire to “suffer with” each other in the world. But, as for this, I fear the worst. But still, there’s something about the “diving in” to that deluge so that you might surface - more closely resembling who you were meant to be. This is the downward, rather than the upward, I suppose, of spiritual paths. You go down into a sorrow or suffering. Not indulgently, not milking your pain to consolidate yet another identity, but with a gesture of moment-by-moment openness to the reality of your condition – the condition of all of us. The “tender gravity of kindness” that emerges in this descent gives rise to a love that cannot die. For such a love is given freely and can never be taken away. No power of hell. No scheme of man. There will come a time when we do not need to commit conscious acts of loving kindness because we will recognize that everything we do is cut from that cloth.

But as for now, I remember (or more accurately, am reminded) and forget. I remember then forget. Then I remember. then forget. My friend is going home. Hallelujah. Someday I’ll say that and mean it more than I ever could on this side of things. But for now, with all that I can muster…hallelujah.

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 for forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity 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 any sense anymore,
Only kindness that ties your shoes
And sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase 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.