A Theology of Kindness
John O’Donohue, in his book, To Bless the Space Between Us, says this about kindness: “There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitably reveals itself. Something deep in the human soul seems to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it, we can trust and open ourselves.”
What is it about kindness, especially an act of kindness that attracts us at such a deep level?
*Is it because it seems so unusual in our world that it stands out?
*Does it remind us of a certain person or event in our lives?
*Is it who or what we desire to be ourselves?
*Does it remind us to notice the kindness already present in our lives?
It’s good for our hearts to remember everyday acts of kindness and to show appreciation for them. Things like remembering a birthday, offering a ride, listening well. And then there are the unusual acts of kindness, a kindness that has a lasting effect on you? Do you remember one of those unexpected acts of kindness? Or do you remember a time when you extended unexpected kindness to someone else?
I remember one such act of kindness extended to me in a bleak time of my life. It was the night my ex-husband moved his belongings from our home. I was going to a concert with friends and would be returning to a half-empty house. I was already sad and grieved yet this visual reminder of emptiness would be another shock. I was relieved to be going to a high school musical in which my friend’s daughter had a singing part. Once the concert was over and I was about to head home, my friend turned to me and said, “I don’t want you to go home to an empty house alone. I’ll go with you, and we can do this together.”
I was deeply moved that a friend would come to my home twenty minutes away at 10:00 at night. When we arrived, we walked through each room, noting my key memories about that room. We ended up in my bedroom at the top of the house and there we happened upon a box of forty-year-old hats I had inherited from my aunt. As we tried them on, we started laughing and hugging. When she left, I knew I would be all right.
An example of my extending a surprising act of kindness was complicated since I thought the kindness might not fall gently on the person I was reaching out to: yet it seemed essential to do, nonetheless. It was at a time when my brother and I were estranged for some difficult reasons. I was pretty sure my act of kindness would not resolve our issues, as I had tried to bring healing over time with no results. But this time something stirred deep within me, and I decided to approach our relationship in a new way. I made a scrapbook of the first twenty-five years of my brother’s life using family stories, photos and a unique design. I worked on the scrapbook for six months and then contacted him around his birthday to see if I could drop it off at his home. He said yes. I drove three hours to get there, knowing in my heart that I needed to do it—perhaps as a love gift since I expected this to be the last time I would see him. When I gave him the scrapbook, he took it to the other side of the room and paged through it. He stopped a bit longer at one page (a list of the twenty-two cars he had driven, a fact he had forgotten he told me), yet his only response was that I had put a lot of work into this gift. I left, not really sure how he felt, but I knew in my heart that I had changed because of this gesture. I extended mercy without expectation of any return. Later I learned that he had shared the book with friends. I appreciated knowing that, but that was by then, beside the point. Kindness was the point.
What does kindness invite us to do or be?
My story of the scrapbook for my brother brings up an interesting question. What does kindness invite us to consider within ourselves? I think it asks us to be intentional, whether that is in a casual way, like saying hello to strangers as we stand in line, or as we reach out to others in acts of gratitude or help in times of trouble.
There is also another request that kindness sometimes makes of us and that is what I call costly mercy, like with my brother. Kindness invites us, at times, to do a harder thing than just reach out. It invites us to reach out to frenemies, or to offer a kind word to a stuck friend, or to give up something we need or love for the sake of a friendship. Sometimes, on the other hand, kindness requests that we do a hard thing that may make kindness look harsh or unfeeling. This is sometimes called tough love. Or tough kindness! It may involve developing clear boundaries with the very people we love, to offer a deeper level of kindness to us both.
There is a mysterious side to intentional kindness that could feel like an invitation too. We could use kindness to bless the larger society. For instance, years ago, a group of meditators surrounded the city of Washington DC and intentionally sent loving kindness its way continually for a number of days. During that time the crime and violence rate remarkably and significantly decreased.
Kind or Nice?
I think it is helpful, although tender, to think about the difference between kind and nice. I overheard a casual conversation once that got me thinking about this. For instance, being nice, at least in this culture, is doing what we are expected to do and say, and it is a role imposed from the outside that we take on. It can be exhausting because it has so many rules and expectations. These rules are usually determined by the external environment which may include church, family, work environment, or the culture’s expected gender roles. It can sap our energy and our souls, leaving us exhausted in our niceness. And it can be a way of avoiding conflict or an excuse for being codependent (taking too much responsibility for another person’s life.)
Kindness on the other hand, seems to invite us to be more vulnerable, available, and real. It asks us to be more present to ourselves first, and then to the other person. It invites us to reflect and pause to ask what we desire as well as what we are capable of. It also asks what the greater good is in a situation, and whether we are willing to sacrifice something of ourselves if need be, to gain access to the greater good. It may even become a way of life if practiced over time.
In a novel by Louise Penny, a psychologist is explaining the idea of “near enemies,” behaviors that can look alike but have vastly different motivations or intentions. One example she sites is pity and compassion, saying that pity is feeling superior to someone or looking down on them, whereas compassion is to think of us all as equals who just happen to be having a hard time. I think that could be true about nice and kind, that although looking a lot alike in practice, niceness involves more compulsive behaviors coming from roles, while kindness involves intentional behavior coming from the heart. A friend gave me a simple way to depict the difference. Nice is doing for. Kindness is being with. Of the two, kindness, it seems, has the greater impact.
A few stories of remarkable kindness
*A friend was celebrating her birthday in a distant city where family and old friends lived. She had hoped to see a lifelong friend while she was there, but for her friend to visit her, it would be a long trip, involving two ferry boat rides and a car commute. Consequently, she doubted that it would happen. Yet her friend commuted the whole morning to be with her for lunch and then spent the whole afternoon going back home. The impact from this act of kindness lingered long after the visit.
*A chaplain at a public facility for elders during the pandemic, collapsed one day, from overexertion and stress. A staff member of the facility rushed to his aid, found out who he could call to get help for this man, and at the same time called an ambulance. When the plans were in place the chaplain thanked him and then slouched against the wall. The staff member saw his condition and said he would not leave the chaplain until he was safely on his way and his brother was present. The chaplain was astounded that someone he hardly knew was so willing to stay so present to him in this time of stress.
*A middle school student had a best friend who suddenly decided to ditch her for some other girls. She was really hurt and sad but eventually she found other friends. After a few months, her old friend came back and wanted to be friends again. The young girl who had been left wanted to be kind yet to take care of herself and glean what she’d learned from the rift. So, she thought about it and then told her friend that she would be friends again but that it would be different. That’s kindness with a healthy dose of self-care!
*A sixty-something man who had just gotten interested in roller skating arrived at a neighborhood skating rink and found himself out of his element, both age-wise and race-wise. He was soon introduced to the group that skated there every day and he quickly saw that there was a lot to learn about skating. The younger skaters were twirling and twisting, sailing to the music. A young man, about thirty years his junior, took him under his wing, showed him some skating moves and encouraged him to get better skates so skating would be easier. This kindness allowed them to become friends and for the older man to take some lessons to feel nimbler on skates.
*A grocery store clerk made it her mission to do kind things in the community and in the store. For instance, she knit bright little star-like pieces and tied them onto fences on public overpasses, adding joy to the pedestrian path. She also made a point of doing extra and non-expected things for customers. It added a side benefit to her job. Some customers came to call her Kind Melanie.
* A group of five gay men (called the Fab Five), depicted on a popular tv show, focus their creative energy on a person who is nominated by a friend or family member to receive “more than a makeover.” In fact, the Fab Five do more of a transformation, bringing out the often hidden or discarded parts of the person. Each of the Fab Five focuses on a different aspect of the person, like clothes, grooming, interior redesign of their living space, food, and their internal issues. There is truth telling, decluttering, deep cleaning, new challenges, and risk taking involved. But at the core of these encounters is KINDNESS. The Fab Five are there to open the person to their deepest and truest selves and to do it without shaming or judging. The people who are made over are genuinely moved and grateful. Even those who may never have met a gay person are routinely grateful and astonished at what has happened because of this time with the Fab Five.
*Teachers anywhere who stand at the door to the classroom and greet each student by name when they enter, saying they are happy to see them, engender more than a twenty percent higher level of academic engagement and a lower disruption rate than those classrooms that are impersonal! And I have watched a master teacher embrace the most disruptive students by asking them to be his active assistants, thus showing that the child really matters. It is like a miracle to see how quickly those children relax and engage.
*An artist made a beautiful quilt and sent it to a friend in a distant city just to let her see it up-close and personal. The friend immediately showed it not only to her friends but contacted the curator of a local museum to show him the quilt. Since this was during the pandemic, she had to meet the curator in the parking lot of the museum. The curator liked the quilt so much he contacted the artist to get his consent for it to appear in the museum. “Of course,” the artist said. That’s where it hung for weeks-- and people came with their masks on to see it.
Why a theology of Kindness?
Theology is a study of God, a way to think about God. It usually results in a statement of principles and a list of beliefs about God. I would suggest that the principles behind a Theology of Kindness are that we believe in and experience a God of kindness, and that we seek a way of life that follows that path. It means underneath our belief in a God of kindness, we desire intimacy with that loving and kind God. This is the God that I’ve come to know in the last several decades of my life. There are many other theologies that would counter this one, like theologies of judgment, retribution, salvation, suffering, sin/redemption. Each one can be supported by scripture and by one’s life experience. It seems, as Frederick Buechner aptly suggests, that all theology may be autobiographical in the end.
Kindness, as a theology, is not naïve or avoidant of difficulty, it just chooses to see difficulties through a different lens. It involves truth telling and honest differences, yet it allows for all people to be treated with kindness, even if it is challenging. No one is excluded, judged or unwelcome, although this makes Kindness Theology significantly more complicated😊 Kindness Theology ultimately depends on intimacy with God and wise discernment.
Why does the way we live out Kindness Theology matter? Simply because most of the alternative theologies, in my experience, seem to be shaming, judgmental, or demanding and have a habit of pitting people against one another. At least over the last several centuries, it has appeared that way. Kindness, on the other hand, is universal, does not demand an allegiance or a hierarchy, is not shaming, does not require big buildings, or fundraising drives. What it does engender seems to be invitation, engagement, friendship, connection, endurance, healthy boundaries, complexity, community, and reconciliation. It asks us to develop emotionally and internally just like we expect to develop physically and mentally.
Desmond Tutu, at a talk at Duke University, gives a wise answer as to why the way we live out our kindness matters. He cited the often-quoted scripture from Micah 6:8 which we often use to plot our outward lives in response to God’s decree, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” Tutu recommended that we change the order and start with the third directive, to walk humbly with our God first. He reflected on how our kindness and justice might change if we started with God and humility. A delicious thought.
What might it take to say yes to being kind?
First, as I reflect on the kind people I know and what I know of kindness myself, it seems to ask me first and foremost to be kind to myself. If I am not able to be kind to myself, it will be much harder, perhaps impossible to sustain kindness toward my neighbor or to a family member. This kind of self-love comes mainly from the source of pure love which is our unconditionally loving God.
Second, kindness also invites me to process a lot of life internally and choose not to project my restlessness or discontent onto others. Spiritually, as in a Theology of Kindness, it asks me to take my issues and hurts and woes directly to God and/or to another safe person who will help me sort them out and deal with them kindly.
For instance, if I can process my modest hurts or slights internally and spiritually, I seem to have enough energy left to treat others with the mercy or kindness that I would like to have returned to me. On my good days!
Third, the harder parts of kindness emerge when it is necessary to deal directly with things that come up between people, like with friends, family members or frenemies. I would call this clearing the air between us. If I can speak my necessary truths gently but with mercy and courage, I clear the air for a deeper season of kindness between me and another person; but that takes a level of emotional maturity on the part of both of us and therefore may not always be attainable.
At an even deeper level, if I can heal my deepest hurts from within, like my relationship with my brother, I can develop compassion for myself and for others, which goes a long way towards what kindness looks like and what love is. Then I can heal and act with wise discernment on the difficult issues in my life. I can learn to say a sacred yes as well as a sacred no to those I love. I usually need both God and wise professional help to obtain this healing. Sometimes, when it is not safe or expedient to meet with another person, I just invite my angel to share my merciful intent with their angel, so it somehow still lands on the person.
Fourth, is supreme kindness. If we can, in whatever situation, lovingly detach from another person’s life, including their anger and fear, and yet be fully present to them, we can invite and allow them to live the highs and lows of their life without our active involvement and with more of our kind presence. This experience I would describe as a divine paradox, to be fully present and yet lovingly detached.
How kindness has embraced me
I have received so much kindness in my life. I have been harvesting memories of those acts of kindness in the last few years, and it is astonishing how much it matters to my soul. Examples are people who stood up for me, people who encouraged me when they didn’t need to, people who challenged me to take myself more seriously, people who loved me when I felt unlovable, people who made a bold healing statement they knew would take me by surprise. I have pages of these stories that I’ve collected and remembered with deep gratitude.
What all this collecting has encouraged me to do is to develop my own Theology of Kindness and to walk forward doing my best to live it out in the world (on my good days). My overall philosophy of how I live this out with God’s intent, is to intentionally seek a four-fold Theology of Kindness.
My four-fold Kindness Theology is this: First to be fully present, as much as possible on any given day, to myself and then to the people and events that are around me. This would include being kind first, expecting that anything else that needs to be said or done will follow. Second, to lovingly detach, which means to turn all the outcomes of each interaction over to God to process as needed. And third, to invite a glimpse from God, of the bigger picture so I am aware of what my presence may mean or what the larger issues are in each case. Fourth, to practice a daily examen (suggested by St. Ignatius), a general reflection of the day, citing what was most life-giving and least life-living about that day, including what is mine to learn and be grateful for.
Why be kind?
One of my favorite writers, Frederick Buechner, gives an image that I’ve used before but bears repeating. He describes the image of setting a great spider web a-tremble. I call it wiggling the web. But either way he is saying that “we all have a common destiny as human beings; to be born, to live, to struggle a while, and finally to die. We are all in this together.” So, as we move around in the world and we act with kindness (or other less heartening intentions) towards people we meet, we are setting that great web a-tremble. He concludes “The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked together.”
Wiggling the web, for me, is one of the best reasons to be intentionally kind, not only to bless our own hearts but the hearts of others around the world who we may never meet or know. In this troubling world where so many feel powerless to impact the growing darkness, kindness is a high impact choice that is available to us all.
Janet Hagberg, 2024. Please pass along!
What is it about kindness, especially an act of kindness that attracts us at such a deep level?
*Is it because it seems so unusual in our world that it stands out?
*Does it remind us of a certain person or event in our lives?
*Is it who or what we desire to be ourselves?
*Does it remind us to notice the kindness already present in our lives?
It’s good for our hearts to remember everyday acts of kindness and to show appreciation for them. Things like remembering a birthday, offering a ride, listening well. And then there are the unusual acts of kindness, a kindness that has a lasting effect on you? Do you remember one of those unexpected acts of kindness? Or do you remember a time when you extended unexpected kindness to someone else?
I remember one such act of kindness extended to me in a bleak time of my life. It was the night my ex-husband moved his belongings from our home. I was going to a concert with friends and would be returning to a half-empty house. I was already sad and grieved yet this visual reminder of emptiness would be another shock. I was relieved to be going to a high school musical in which my friend’s daughter had a singing part. Once the concert was over and I was about to head home, my friend turned to me and said, “I don’t want you to go home to an empty house alone. I’ll go with you, and we can do this together.”
I was deeply moved that a friend would come to my home twenty minutes away at 10:00 at night. When we arrived, we walked through each room, noting my key memories about that room. We ended up in my bedroom at the top of the house and there we happened upon a box of forty-year-old hats I had inherited from my aunt. As we tried them on, we started laughing and hugging. When she left, I knew I would be all right.
An example of my extending a surprising act of kindness was complicated since I thought the kindness might not fall gently on the person I was reaching out to: yet it seemed essential to do, nonetheless. It was at a time when my brother and I were estranged for some difficult reasons. I was pretty sure my act of kindness would not resolve our issues, as I had tried to bring healing over time with no results. But this time something stirred deep within me, and I decided to approach our relationship in a new way. I made a scrapbook of the first twenty-five years of my brother’s life using family stories, photos and a unique design. I worked on the scrapbook for six months and then contacted him around his birthday to see if I could drop it off at his home. He said yes. I drove three hours to get there, knowing in my heart that I needed to do it—perhaps as a love gift since I expected this to be the last time I would see him. When I gave him the scrapbook, he took it to the other side of the room and paged through it. He stopped a bit longer at one page (a list of the twenty-two cars he had driven, a fact he had forgotten he told me), yet his only response was that I had put a lot of work into this gift. I left, not really sure how he felt, but I knew in my heart that I had changed because of this gesture. I extended mercy without expectation of any return. Later I learned that he had shared the book with friends. I appreciated knowing that, but that was by then, beside the point. Kindness was the point.
What does kindness invite us to do or be?
My story of the scrapbook for my brother brings up an interesting question. What does kindness invite us to consider within ourselves? I think it asks us to be intentional, whether that is in a casual way, like saying hello to strangers as we stand in line, or as we reach out to others in acts of gratitude or help in times of trouble.
There is also another request that kindness sometimes makes of us and that is what I call costly mercy, like with my brother. Kindness invites us, at times, to do a harder thing than just reach out. It invites us to reach out to frenemies, or to offer a kind word to a stuck friend, or to give up something we need or love for the sake of a friendship. Sometimes, on the other hand, kindness requests that we do a hard thing that may make kindness look harsh or unfeeling. This is sometimes called tough love. Or tough kindness! It may involve developing clear boundaries with the very people we love, to offer a deeper level of kindness to us both.
There is a mysterious side to intentional kindness that could feel like an invitation too. We could use kindness to bless the larger society. For instance, years ago, a group of meditators surrounded the city of Washington DC and intentionally sent loving kindness its way continually for a number of days. During that time the crime and violence rate remarkably and significantly decreased.
Kind or Nice?
I think it is helpful, although tender, to think about the difference between kind and nice. I overheard a casual conversation once that got me thinking about this. For instance, being nice, at least in this culture, is doing what we are expected to do and say, and it is a role imposed from the outside that we take on. It can be exhausting because it has so many rules and expectations. These rules are usually determined by the external environment which may include church, family, work environment, or the culture’s expected gender roles. It can sap our energy and our souls, leaving us exhausted in our niceness. And it can be a way of avoiding conflict or an excuse for being codependent (taking too much responsibility for another person’s life.)
Kindness on the other hand, seems to invite us to be more vulnerable, available, and real. It asks us to be more present to ourselves first, and then to the other person. It invites us to reflect and pause to ask what we desire as well as what we are capable of. It also asks what the greater good is in a situation, and whether we are willing to sacrifice something of ourselves if need be, to gain access to the greater good. It may even become a way of life if practiced over time.
In a novel by Louise Penny, a psychologist is explaining the idea of “near enemies,” behaviors that can look alike but have vastly different motivations or intentions. One example she sites is pity and compassion, saying that pity is feeling superior to someone or looking down on them, whereas compassion is to think of us all as equals who just happen to be having a hard time. I think that could be true about nice and kind, that although looking a lot alike in practice, niceness involves more compulsive behaviors coming from roles, while kindness involves intentional behavior coming from the heart. A friend gave me a simple way to depict the difference. Nice is doing for. Kindness is being with. Of the two, kindness, it seems, has the greater impact.
A few stories of remarkable kindness
*A friend was celebrating her birthday in a distant city where family and old friends lived. She had hoped to see a lifelong friend while she was there, but for her friend to visit her, it would be a long trip, involving two ferry boat rides and a car commute. Consequently, she doubted that it would happen. Yet her friend commuted the whole morning to be with her for lunch and then spent the whole afternoon going back home. The impact from this act of kindness lingered long after the visit.
*A chaplain at a public facility for elders during the pandemic, collapsed one day, from overexertion and stress. A staff member of the facility rushed to his aid, found out who he could call to get help for this man, and at the same time called an ambulance. When the plans were in place the chaplain thanked him and then slouched against the wall. The staff member saw his condition and said he would not leave the chaplain until he was safely on his way and his brother was present. The chaplain was astounded that someone he hardly knew was so willing to stay so present to him in this time of stress.
*A middle school student had a best friend who suddenly decided to ditch her for some other girls. She was really hurt and sad but eventually she found other friends. After a few months, her old friend came back and wanted to be friends again. The young girl who had been left wanted to be kind yet to take care of herself and glean what she’d learned from the rift. So, she thought about it and then told her friend that she would be friends again but that it would be different. That’s kindness with a healthy dose of self-care!
*A sixty-something man who had just gotten interested in roller skating arrived at a neighborhood skating rink and found himself out of his element, both age-wise and race-wise. He was soon introduced to the group that skated there every day and he quickly saw that there was a lot to learn about skating. The younger skaters were twirling and twisting, sailing to the music. A young man, about thirty years his junior, took him under his wing, showed him some skating moves and encouraged him to get better skates so skating would be easier. This kindness allowed them to become friends and for the older man to take some lessons to feel nimbler on skates.
*A grocery store clerk made it her mission to do kind things in the community and in the store. For instance, she knit bright little star-like pieces and tied them onto fences on public overpasses, adding joy to the pedestrian path. She also made a point of doing extra and non-expected things for customers. It added a side benefit to her job. Some customers came to call her Kind Melanie.
* A group of five gay men (called the Fab Five), depicted on a popular tv show, focus their creative energy on a person who is nominated by a friend or family member to receive “more than a makeover.” In fact, the Fab Five do more of a transformation, bringing out the often hidden or discarded parts of the person. Each of the Fab Five focuses on a different aspect of the person, like clothes, grooming, interior redesign of their living space, food, and their internal issues. There is truth telling, decluttering, deep cleaning, new challenges, and risk taking involved. But at the core of these encounters is KINDNESS. The Fab Five are there to open the person to their deepest and truest selves and to do it without shaming or judging. The people who are made over are genuinely moved and grateful. Even those who may never have met a gay person are routinely grateful and astonished at what has happened because of this time with the Fab Five.
*Teachers anywhere who stand at the door to the classroom and greet each student by name when they enter, saying they are happy to see them, engender more than a twenty percent higher level of academic engagement and a lower disruption rate than those classrooms that are impersonal! And I have watched a master teacher embrace the most disruptive students by asking them to be his active assistants, thus showing that the child really matters. It is like a miracle to see how quickly those children relax and engage.
*An artist made a beautiful quilt and sent it to a friend in a distant city just to let her see it up-close and personal. The friend immediately showed it not only to her friends but contacted the curator of a local museum to show him the quilt. Since this was during the pandemic, she had to meet the curator in the parking lot of the museum. The curator liked the quilt so much he contacted the artist to get his consent for it to appear in the museum. “Of course,” the artist said. That’s where it hung for weeks-- and people came with their masks on to see it.
Why a theology of Kindness?
Theology is a study of God, a way to think about God. It usually results in a statement of principles and a list of beliefs about God. I would suggest that the principles behind a Theology of Kindness are that we believe in and experience a God of kindness, and that we seek a way of life that follows that path. It means underneath our belief in a God of kindness, we desire intimacy with that loving and kind God. This is the God that I’ve come to know in the last several decades of my life. There are many other theologies that would counter this one, like theologies of judgment, retribution, salvation, suffering, sin/redemption. Each one can be supported by scripture and by one’s life experience. It seems, as Frederick Buechner aptly suggests, that all theology may be autobiographical in the end.
Kindness, as a theology, is not naïve or avoidant of difficulty, it just chooses to see difficulties through a different lens. It involves truth telling and honest differences, yet it allows for all people to be treated with kindness, even if it is challenging. No one is excluded, judged or unwelcome, although this makes Kindness Theology significantly more complicated😊 Kindness Theology ultimately depends on intimacy with God and wise discernment.
Why does the way we live out Kindness Theology matter? Simply because most of the alternative theologies, in my experience, seem to be shaming, judgmental, or demanding and have a habit of pitting people against one another. At least over the last several centuries, it has appeared that way. Kindness, on the other hand, is universal, does not demand an allegiance or a hierarchy, is not shaming, does not require big buildings, or fundraising drives. What it does engender seems to be invitation, engagement, friendship, connection, endurance, healthy boundaries, complexity, community, and reconciliation. It asks us to develop emotionally and internally just like we expect to develop physically and mentally.
Desmond Tutu, at a talk at Duke University, gives a wise answer as to why the way we live out our kindness matters. He cited the often-quoted scripture from Micah 6:8 which we often use to plot our outward lives in response to God’s decree, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” Tutu recommended that we change the order and start with the third directive, to walk humbly with our God first. He reflected on how our kindness and justice might change if we started with God and humility. A delicious thought.
What might it take to say yes to being kind?
First, as I reflect on the kind people I know and what I know of kindness myself, it seems to ask me first and foremost to be kind to myself. If I am not able to be kind to myself, it will be much harder, perhaps impossible to sustain kindness toward my neighbor or to a family member. This kind of self-love comes mainly from the source of pure love which is our unconditionally loving God.
Second, kindness also invites me to process a lot of life internally and choose not to project my restlessness or discontent onto others. Spiritually, as in a Theology of Kindness, it asks me to take my issues and hurts and woes directly to God and/or to another safe person who will help me sort them out and deal with them kindly.
For instance, if I can process my modest hurts or slights internally and spiritually, I seem to have enough energy left to treat others with the mercy or kindness that I would like to have returned to me. On my good days!
Third, the harder parts of kindness emerge when it is necessary to deal directly with things that come up between people, like with friends, family members or frenemies. I would call this clearing the air between us. If I can speak my necessary truths gently but with mercy and courage, I clear the air for a deeper season of kindness between me and another person; but that takes a level of emotional maturity on the part of both of us and therefore may not always be attainable.
At an even deeper level, if I can heal my deepest hurts from within, like my relationship with my brother, I can develop compassion for myself and for others, which goes a long way towards what kindness looks like and what love is. Then I can heal and act with wise discernment on the difficult issues in my life. I can learn to say a sacred yes as well as a sacred no to those I love. I usually need both God and wise professional help to obtain this healing. Sometimes, when it is not safe or expedient to meet with another person, I just invite my angel to share my merciful intent with their angel, so it somehow still lands on the person.
Fourth, is supreme kindness. If we can, in whatever situation, lovingly detach from another person’s life, including their anger and fear, and yet be fully present to them, we can invite and allow them to live the highs and lows of their life without our active involvement and with more of our kind presence. This experience I would describe as a divine paradox, to be fully present and yet lovingly detached.
How kindness has embraced me
I have received so much kindness in my life. I have been harvesting memories of those acts of kindness in the last few years, and it is astonishing how much it matters to my soul. Examples are people who stood up for me, people who encouraged me when they didn’t need to, people who challenged me to take myself more seriously, people who loved me when I felt unlovable, people who made a bold healing statement they knew would take me by surprise. I have pages of these stories that I’ve collected and remembered with deep gratitude.
What all this collecting has encouraged me to do is to develop my own Theology of Kindness and to walk forward doing my best to live it out in the world (on my good days). My overall philosophy of how I live this out with God’s intent, is to intentionally seek a four-fold Theology of Kindness.
My four-fold Kindness Theology is this: First to be fully present, as much as possible on any given day, to myself and then to the people and events that are around me. This would include being kind first, expecting that anything else that needs to be said or done will follow. Second, to lovingly detach, which means to turn all the outcomes of each interaction over to God to process as needed. And third, to invite a glimpse from God, of the bigger picture so I am aware of what my presence may mean or what the larger issues are in each case. Fourth, to practice a daily examen (suggested by St. Ignatius), a general reflection of the day, citing what was most life-giving and least life-living about that day, including what is mine to learn and be grateful for.
Why be kind?
One of my favorite writers, Frederick Buechner, gives an image that I’ve used before but bears repeating. He describes the image of setting a great spider web a-tremble. I call it wiggling the web. But either way he is saying that “we all have a common destiny as human beings; to be born, to live, to struggle a while, and finally to die. We are all in this together.” So, as we move around in the world and we act with kindness (or other less heartening intentions) towards people we meet, we are setting that great web a-tremble. He concludes “The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked together.”
Wiggling the web, for me, is one of the best reasons to be intentionally kind, not only to bless our own hearts but the hearts of others around the world who we may never meet or know. In this troubling world where so many feel powerless to impact the growing darkness, kindness is a high impact choice that is available to us all.
Janet Hagberg, 2024. Please pass along!