"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom." - Theodore Isaac Rubin, M.D.
"My religion is kindness." -The Dalai Lama
This month our fourteen Soul Matters groups and three writers' groups explored love, our monthly worship theme, by looking at the less celebrated love we call kindness. Of all the comments shared in these groups, one has stuck with me most: "During my darkest time, learning that there was kindness was what kept me going on."
I wonder this morning if the significance of that line sinks in for most of us.
Because in our culture, kindness is quaint, right? Cute. Not really "significant." Fodder for sentimental stories told to children, not the serious business of serious adults. And more than that: at its worst, our culture considers kindness a weakness. Ruthlessness is what gets one ahead, even keeps one safe.
Nevertheless here it is, in this simple and beautiful line, proof that no matter how mocked and laughed at, kindness is something more, something far more, than cute.
And I wonder this morning how often we really, really get that?
This month we're experimenting with a wonderful addition to our worship services, asking members to share their "This I Believe" statements. In that spirit, let me share a bit of what I believe about kindness.
I believe that nothing works and nobody survives unless there is kindness.
I believe that despite the great pain and deep wounds in each of our lives, the vast majority of us stay afloat, not miraculously but naturally, due to the dozens of tiny kindnesses that we are gifted with each day.
I believe that the kindness we offer others makes the difference between life and death in ways we the givers will never know.
And I believe that all this is very easy to forget.
At least I know it's something I all too easily forget.
And it's not, I tell myself, because I'm cruel or callous or inherently sinful; it's just that like most of humanity I'm more fragile and easily-wounded than I'd like to admit. Life's disappointments and setbacks overwhelm all of us sometimes, making it all too easy to wallow in self-pity, convincing ourselves that we are unique victims of generosity withheld. And when we feel that life and others are not generous to us, then why, we ask ourselves, should we be kind and generous with others. Out of our hurt, we become stingy. Because of our pain, we withhold tenderness.
And then, of course, there's the swirl-the flurry of life's demands and responsibilities that leaves us so dizzy and disoriented, so tired and tugged in a thousand directions, that we no longer seem able to notice the need for kindness even when it is right in front of us. When your nose is buried in a things-to-do list, you in effect become blind. When you've got to pick up the kids in 15 minutes and still have four more stops to make, well... there's simply not a lot of room on your schedule left for kindness.
And frankly, none of this would really matter much-this forgetting, this emotional stinginess-if it weren't for the pain that is omnipresent but so rarely talked about. In his last sermon to this congregation, our Minister Emeritus Dick Gilbert made a point of saying this:
People are precious and in more pain than you can see - so be gentle with them. Our lives are like fragile eggs - so handle them with care, handle them with exceeding care, for there are human beings within - human beings who feel as we feel, who hurt as we hurt, who hunger for joy as much as do we. Therefore, since we know how it is to be hurt by others, since we know how important it is to be respected and loved, we all need to be a little kinder than necessary.
I want us all to think about this for a moment. It's amazing, really. After 30 years serving this congregation, after about a thousand sermons preached containing at least three times that many ideas and insights, what Dick chose to highlight, what he decided to leave us with was a reminder about pain, about the pervasive hurt and fragility that's woven through all our lives.
That, I hope you realize, is huge!
Here is a man whose life's work has been to wrestle with what it means to be a church, with what it means to be human, with what it means to be close to the holy....and at the end of it all, he answers those questions by calling us to pay attention to and let our actions be guided by each other's pain!
This is not a vision that depicts kindness as cute and quaint, as some nice little bonus in the midst of our day. It is the farthest thing from cute and quaint one could imagine. This is a vision that is trying to wake us to the fact that our acts of kindness involve us in the most sacred of all dramas, the drama that enables life to go on. Or, as Naomi Nye puts it so wonderfully in the poem we read earlier, we are being asked to wake up and realize that kindness is what "ties your shoes each morning and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread."
And if that doesn't make sense or sound like a big deal to you, then center yourself and think about it again. Do what Naomi Nye suggests and think of a time in your life when you lost things, when the future, as she puts it,"dissolved in a moment like salt." Think about a time in your life when the precious thing you held in your hand or the precious person that held you was suddenly gone. Think about how hard it was then even to imagine wanting to tie your shoes, mail a letter or buy bread ever again.
And yet we do! Despite the hurts and wounds, betrayals and losses, we get up every day, tie our shoes and go on. And why? Why are we able to do this? Well because, as Dick, Naomi Nye and Stephan Dunn are trying to tell us, on some deep and fundamental level we trust in the kindness of strangers and friends!
I will never forget how alone, judged and scared I felt after telling my family and church that I was getting a divorce. Some were angry. Some confused. Some threatened. Many were unsure how to act so they turned away. Friends felt torn. Family members were confused and sad. Everyone wished it hadn't occurred. No one felt they really understood. Regardless of whether you are the one left or the one doing the leaving, you go through divorce mostly alone...and hurting, not at all sure what will come next. Statistics say that 85% of all ministers end up having to leave their churches within a year of announcing a divorce.
And it was into this mix that, early one Monday morning, Dwayne Hardy knocked on my office door. A gentle, quiet man who had just turned 80, possessed of great wisdom but also great humility. Dwayne was respected by everyone for his devotion to and many accomplishments with social justice causes. With injustice, he could get very angry, but with people he was tender. He said he needed just a moment. Slowly he pulled up a chair in front of me. He reached out and took my hand, cradling it between both of his. Looking me in the eye, he said, "There are many of us that want you to know we love you no matter what."
I keep coming back to that line in Stephan Dunn's poem, the one that says, "...often a sweetness has come and changed nothing in the world except the way I stumble through it." Dwayne Hardy's act of kindness didn't change the world around me, but it most certainly altered the way I stumbled through it. His simple act affected more than just my relationship with him, it altered my relationship with life itself. It made the world feel like a safe place to stumble through, even if the potholes and blurry paths remained exactly the same as before.
The whole thing reminds me, as I hope it reminds all of you, that our ability to be kind gives us not simply the ability to brighten each other's days, but the ability to restore each other's faith that the universe is a generous and trustworthy place, which in turn enables us to get up and keep stumbling through it.
We must admit at this point that this is a fairly foreign idea when it comes to our Unitarian Universalist faith. Especially because of the dominance of the Unitarian side of our tradition, we have for most of the last hundred years looked not to kindness but to reason to get us through life. Our battle cry for decades has been that we are guided not by revelation but by reason. Our members have historically said they come to church for intellectual stimulation. The goal of our worship has been not so much character development or moral realignment as the cultivation of ever more discriminating minds. It is this cultivated mind we've most often put our faith in and trusted to help us negotiate the challenges and complexities of life.
And yet part of the reason I am giving this sermon today is that I believe we all, to some degree or another, have reached a point where we feel that this discriminating mind is simply not enough. And that's not to say that we don't value our brains. No, none of us wants to be part of a religion that asks us to leave our questioning intellect at the door. But what makes being a Unitarian Universalist in this time and place so exciting is that I think we've become wise enough to realize that in addition to having impressive brains, there is so much more we want and need to be.
A few years ago I came across a wonderful movie that dramatically captures this realization. "Wit," - originally a play on Broadway, it was made into a movie after receiving the Pulitzer Prize.
Its central character is Vivian Bearing, a renowned scholar and professor of philosophy and English literature. Her specialty: the metaphysical love sonnets of John Donne, considered the most complex and intellectually challenging poems in all of the English canon. She is considered by colleagues and students alike a master of the life of the mind.
The play begins with her being diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. From the start, both we and she know she will die. But because she is tough and a scholar, she agrees to undergo a radical experimental chemotherapy, for research's sake, a chance to make--as she puts it--one last contribution to knowledge. It will be difficult, the doctor cautions, emotionally as well as physically. "That's okay," says Vivian. "I know all about life and death. After all, I am a scholar."
As the play progresses, Vivian's toughness and sure-footedness slowly dissipate as she is treated by the medical staff as little more than a lab rat. This sterile treatment and her growing need for comfort precipitate an epiphany about both her doctors and herself. She realizes suddenly, "Ahhh, the doctors are like me: they prefer research to humanity."
This pivotal moment sets off a chain of flashbacks in which she revisits moments during her distinguished career when her love of abstract debate and intellectual precision caused her to ignore real human pain.
So far it sounds pretty depressing, right?
And yet, what Vivian does with this tragic realization ironically causes the play to end not with our watching a teacher die, but with our being taught something very valuable by a teacher as she dies.
After one final flashback, we see her all alone, thinking. Then a tear. And slowly she reaches over to call in the one nurse who has been tender with her from the start.
The nurse comes in.
Vivian looks up. "I'm scared," she says, "I'm really scared."
Immediately taking her hand, the nurse replies. "Oh honey, of course you are."
"I don't feel sure of myself anymore," says Vivian in an almost childlike voice.
"And you're used to feeling sure, aren't you?" says the nurse.
"Oh yes," says Vivian, "I used to feel so sure." Tears finally flow freely as Vivian doesn't just accept the touch of the nurse, but reaches for it.
The nurse caresses her hair until Vivian is calm again, then hands her a tissue and says, "Hey, I'll be right back."
She re-enters the room holding a Popsicle. Grape. The kind with two sticks that you split in half.
She breaks it, gives half to Vivian, sits down and shares a story about how when she was a kid, the sound of the ice cream truck and going to get Popsicles with her friends always made everything seem okay. She turns to Vivian and says she's sorry she's scared. They then sit in silence holding hands, sharing that Popsicle.
The scene ends as Vivian looks up and addresses the audience:
"Well, that certainly was a maudlin display. Popsicles? For heaven's sake. I can't believe my life has become so corny. But it can't be helped. I don't see any other way. We are discussing life and death, and not in the abstract, either; we are discussing my life and my death...and I can't conceive of any other tone. Now is not the time for verbal swordplay, for unlikely flights of the imagination, and widely shifting perspectives, for metaphysical conceit, for wit. And nothing would be worse than a detailed scholarly analysis. Erudition. Interpretation. Complication. Now is the time for simplicity. Now is the time for, dare I say it, kindness. I thought being extremely smart would take care of it. But, ohh, I see that I have been found out."
There's an old joke about the Unitarian that dies and finds himself standing on a cloud with two paths in front of him. One of the paths has a sign that says, "This way to heaven." The other sign reads, "This way to a discussion of heaven." Without missing a step, the Unitarian heads toward the discussion.
Smarts and discussions, no doubt, are an essential and sacred part of being human. But it seems to me that what makes us most human is the wisdom to know when to choose the discussion and when to choose the real thing, knowing when is the time for wit and when is the time for kindness. And remembering through all of it that famous old piece of wisdom from which the title to this sermon comes:
"The best portion of a good person's life is her little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love."
So be it. Amen.
return to main page