Regions of Kindness
In the early 1980s, a member of our congregation, Dr. David Stewart, got some awful news. He had heart disease. Forced to retire his medical practice at a young age and literally take to his bed for several years - David found his spirits sinking as he struggled with the difficult reality of not knowing whether or not he would live. During this time, David reached out to his minister here, the Rev. Dick Gilbert, and the church's caring community sprang into action. Weekly visits at his home boosted David's spirits and kept up his morale as church members stopped by to chat and to listen. For a year and a half, the visitors from church kept coming - each time sharing news and keeping him in touch until years later, successful surgery brought a new pacemaker and David recovered. Over twenty years later, David saw an opportunity to give back - and this summer a pin oak tree was planted in our church's garden along the parking lot's exit road - donated by David and dedicated to the caring community of this church.
As you know, David has not been alone in his desire to give back to this church community. Many of you have seen the opportunity to give back in ways large and small and you have stepped forward as well - offering your time, your money, and your talents to the caring ministry of this church. So many of you have reached out to help, and all of you, I trust, have known times in your own lives and in the lives of your family and friends, when you have needed to ask for help as well.
We all face troubles at some point in our lives - we all know that there are moments that surely come when we simply cannot survive solely on our own resources - it's a statement so obvious that it even feels a bit silly to stand up here and proclaim out loud. Suffering is inevitable - the Buddhists say. The question is, what will we do with our suffering and the suffering of others? Will we learn from it, allowing the pain to crack open our hearts and expand our capacity for empathy and kindness? Will we do everything in our power to lock our pain away in a box hidden in the back of our closet, denying its power to shape our lives - or will we, instead, turn our energy to the spiritual work of alchemy, making of our own and of one another's suffering our own strength and usefulness?
Several weeks ago, I had the privilege of seeing His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the University of Buffalo. While his discourse spanned many subjects on that cold and sunny day, one small piece of the Dalai Lama's talk stuck with me more than all the others. In a person's life, he explained, we all experience two different kinds of comfort and discomfort. Physical and mental. Physically, we may feel hot or cold, hungry or full, pain or pleasure. Mentally, we may feel happy or sad, jealous or calm, peaceful or angry.
Naturally, as we go about our daily lives we find ourselves trying to increase our feelings of comfort and decrease our feelings of discomfort. But we often get into trouble, the Dalai Lama said, when we make the mistake of trying to ease our emotional discomfort through physical means. When we feel angry or sad and we turn to food or expensive trinkets or some other means of numbing ourselves - we often come out feeling frustrated. Not only are we still emotionally uncomfortable, but often we're out of money and self-respect too!
The trick of the matter, he said, is that while we can ease our physical discomfort through mental experiences of comfort, we cannot ease our mental discomfort through physical experiences of comfort. It seems like a simple concept, I know, but we often get it backwards - trying to ease our emotional pain through physical means rather than focusing on what he describes as the more powerful emotional experiences of comfort and peace.
While I was not there when David Stewart learned about his heart disease and spent the next months and ultimately years in bed before recovering - I can only imagine that the weekly visitors that came from this church offered a comfort like no other - easing his physical discomfort simply by their presence. We learn through experience over the course of our lives that our pain can be eased by the hand of a stranger or a friend, by the memory of a loved one, through meditation, music, prayer or a caring quilt wrapped around our shoulders.
And this, my friends, is the good news. While we cannot always eliminate our physical pain or control our circumstances - while we cannot always protect our loved ones from danger or discomfort - while we cannot always change the course of world events - we do carry within ourselves amazingly powerful resources - our chaste touch, the blessing of our voice, peonies cut fresh from our garden or a chocolate cake we baked ourselves as the poet told us - we do, simply by our presence carry within ourselves the power to ease one another's pain, and this is very good news indeed.
One of the best true stories I've ever heard about giving comes from Anne Lammot's book, Bird by Bird, in which she retells a story she heard from Jack Kornfield of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre. Once upon a time, the story goes, "An eight-year-old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, and he was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatible with hers, and if so, he could be the blood donor. They asked him if they could test his blood. He said sure. So they did and it was a good match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of blood, that it could be her only chance of living. He said he would have to think about it overnight.
The next day he went to his parents and said he was willing to donate the blood. So they took him to the hospital where he was put on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both of them were hooked up to IVs. A nurse withdrew a pint of blood from the boy, which was then put in the girl's IV. The boy lay on his gurney in silence while the blood dripped into his sister, until the doctor came over to see how he was doing. Then the boy opened his eyes and asked, 'How soon until I start to die?"[1]
How soon until I start to die? Most of us will never be asked to give at the level that this boy perceived he was giving, most of the time putting our values of kindness and compassion into action will require a much smaller sacrifice on our part - the gift of our time on a Saturday afternoon or a weekday evening to cook a meal or deliver some cookies, the gift of our resources as we drive someone to church on a Sunday morning, the simple but daring gift of our presence at a hospital bedside or pouring coffee after a memorial service. While luckily for most of us the gifts we will offer one another cost us less than our lives - to those who receive them - we do indeed offer the life giving gift of connection.
For what is more important, really, in our times of need than knowing that we are seen and loved and cared for? What is more important, really, when we are suffering than the knowledge that when we are at our most vulnerable someone will be there to help us stand again?
Last week in his sermon, Scott quoted the maverick theologian Frederick Buechner - who writes that "The central paradox of our condition - is that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else."[2] We long to be seen and known and understood, and yet we fear that if anyone really knew us, they would walk away. We fear being known in our full humanness, I believe, not just because we might be ignored or rejected, I think, but even more so, because we might really be seen, and if we are really seen and known, then we too, must recognize ourselves as whole and valuable people.
When Jackie Parks stood up earlier this morning and shared the experience of her son, Malcolm's accident, she talked a bit about the challenge she faced in asking for help. It wasn't that she feared we would not respond or that help would not arrive when she needed it - that wasn't the obstacle that Jackie faced. Her struggle was deeper than that. It was a spiritual struggle. She believed, you see, in the inherent worth and dignity of each one of you - she had no problem with that - but asking for help meant that she would have to believe in her own.
And isn't that the hardest thing some times for so many of us - to believe that we are worth it, to trust that when we make ourselves vulnerable we create an opportunity for another person's usefulness - to believe that in time as we heal our own vulnerability will give rise to our greatest strength as our heart expands and we in turn reach out to others - sharing our own stories of survival and hope, spanning the distance between the regions of kindness with only a touch.
Between the regions of kindness lies much of our world, my friends. And while it may sound old-fashioned or overly simplistic - I believe that as we care for one another we care for this bruised and broken world - spanning the distance between the regions of kindness one person at a time - doing the work of the world that is common as mud - canning peaches and cooking soup, changing light bulbs and repairing tea kettles, standing side by side in times of grief. Let us begin here at home, friends. Let us begin with our own hearts as we come to trust, as the poet said, that "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."
May the shadow of kindness go everywhere with us like a friend - reminding us all of the power we hold simply by our presence to ease another's pain, walking with us as we do the work of a spiritual life - evermore striving to align our actions with our deepest values.
May it be so, and Amen.
October 8, 2006
- Anne Lamott. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. (Anchor Books: New York; 1994) 205.
- Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets: A Memoir. (Harper Collins: New York, 1991) 2-3.