"It is only kindness that makes sense anymore."

Everyone talks about how rude the French are, or  “snooty Parisians.” I know that can be true -- and so can the accusation of Americans being loud and arrogant -- but when I heard again the story behind the poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, I remembered the kind Parisians we met when my friends and I visited France about 5 years ago.

You can hear Naomi Shihab Nye tell the story to Krista Tippett here. She and her husband were on their honeymoon in Columbia and were robbed of everything. Someone else on the bus they were on was killed (the Indian in her poem below). She said:

And a man came up to us on the street and was simply kind and just looked at us; I guess he could see our disarray in our faces and just asked us in Spanish, “What happened to you?” And we tried to tell him, and he listened to us, and he looked so sad. And he said, “I’m very sorry. I’m very, very sorry that happened,” in Spanish.

It reminded me of when we were in Paris. We did not have any kind of tragic experience like that, but our visit was quite shortly after a terrorist attack had happened. All of Paris seemed to bend over backward to show tourists how grateful they were for our being there. Each time we stopped to look at our map or figure out a sign, someone would stop to ask how they could help, like the man in Naomi’s story. Not only that, they would turn around and walk in the opposite direction in order to walk with us toward our destination, as I wrote about in my blog.

I’ve written before about Jane Goodall’s book, Reason for Hope, and other stories that give me hope. In Goodall’s book, she told a story of two households in a country torn apart by civil war. She said these households were members of the opposite side -- enemies according to the war. They could not be seen talking to each other without risking their lives. In one home, a woman had a baby. In the other, a man had a cow. Every night he would put a bottle of milk at the front door of the woman’s house -- milk for the baby. Acts of kindness like this give us a reason for hope even when all around us seems hopeless.

Recently I heard again Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. That, too, reminds us of the kindness of others. Kindness is a reflection of God’s love. In the kindness we see and give, we see God’s love. May you experience God’s love in your own and others’ kindness.

Kindness
by Naomi Shahib 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 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.

What about you? Have you experienced acts of kindness that made a difference for you? Or has your own act of kindness made a difference for someone else? I’d love to hear about it.