Day Twelve-- Stop and Smell the Roses

Most of us live with a beauty deficit these days. I don’t know what the actual statistics on this are, but I’m guessing that if you took the amount of time you spent staring at a screen and compared it to the amount of time you spent going to art museums, listening to music, or even just walking through a garden, the comparison would staggering. I’m sure someone, somewhere, has done this study. I’d be curious to know the results, but at the same time, I think the results would be pretty predictable. Most of us live with a beauty deficit these days; is what I predict the results would say. 

This deficit is a problem when it comes to the amount of kindness and compassion in our world. Because, as at least one notable psychologist argues, beauty makes us better people. In his book on kindness, Pierro Ferucci tells the story of an elderly woman begging for money on the street outside a symphony concert hall. She was mostly ignored as people walked past her on their way into the hall. But after the concert, many of the people streaming out of the hall stopped to smile at the old woman and gave generously from their pocketbooks (in case you’re wondering what the concert was, it was Bach, of course). Research also indicates that when we are exposed to beauty, we tend to feel less anxious, and therefore more likely to be open to engagement with other people.

Anyway, all of this is just a longwinded introduction to my own experience of beauty this past week, and how that translated into an act of kindness. This past Sunday, my lovely little church decided to forego worship in our sanctuary and have church and a picnic at the park instead. We gathered three picnic tables and some chairs into a circle, sang hymns, prayed and read scripture, and reflected together about how we meet God in creation. I played the guitar badly. Furry friends joined the circle with us. After sharing a meal, we blessed the communion bread and cup and shared in the sacrament of Holy Eucharist together. After finishing up the formal part of our morning, a few of us went on walks down to the beach or to the giant mansion that is part of the park. I stayed put, laying next to my dog, Maya, as we reveled together in the miracle of grass. I think it’s great to lay in. Maya thinks it’s delightful to roll around in. 

After a while folks wandered back and we cleaned up, but Barrett and I were not quite ready to go home because the weather was just. so. perfect. So we drove a little ways down the road to a beach that allowed dogs, and let Maya off her leash for her first ocean swim of the summer. Is there anything better than the pure joy of a dog running full speed into the ocean waves? 

By the time we got home it was late afternoon, and I was exhausted. We had not made any plans for dinner, and neither Barrett nor myself really felt like cooking. Really, I just wanted to continue to sit outside in the grass enjoying the perfect day. And that's when an idea came to me. While Barrett practiced and worked on oboe reeds I busied myself preparing anything we had in the refrigerator that could be eaten raw; cheese, dried fruit, fresh fruit, olives, some salami, crackers, and bread. I ran to the store to pick up some sparkling rose. When I got home, I pulled out a few blankets and spread them out on our lawn behind the house, which faces the woods. And Barrett, Maya, and I enjoyed a lovely picnic on the lawn. I guess I’m not really sure if this counts as an act of kindness, but I do know that all three of us felt relaxed and happy sitting out on the lawn, eating delicious food, enjoying one another’s company, and appreciating the beauty of a perfect summer’s day. Certainly no unkind words were uttered. No angry thoughts expressed. No cynical views entertained. Bottom line—if we all had days like this more often, I think we would be less anxious, less angry, and yes, more kind.

Day Nine-- Patience, Again

Yesterday morning was breakfast day again. It’s getting a little easier to get up at 4:30 in the morning, but some things about this gig are not getting easier. It’s not the service part. I enjoy getting to know the guests who come for breakfast. I’m starting to look forward to seeing some of them and getting to know a little more about them. While I don’t always have time for a lot of socializing, I usually have at least a few minutes to pop out of the kitchen and say hello. Every time I do, I learn something new. For instance, yesterday I learned that Larry, my new friend as of last week, works as a custodian at the coast guard academy, where my husband also works. Every week I hear a little more of someone’s story, and I love that. Even the people that refuse to smile back at me don’t bother me. I mean, come on, it’s early, they haven’t had any coffee yet, and they are in line for a meager free breakfast in a church basement that's exactly the same this week as it was last week. I wouldn’t necessarily be smiling if I was in that position. But I just try to show kindness in every small way that I can with every little opportunity that I get. 

What’s challenging about this gig, and please understand that I don’t mean this as an insult, is that the people I volunteer with express their faith in a way that is so very foreign to me. You see, I volunteer with a crew that is almost entirely made up of folks from the church that owns the building that my congregation worships in. They are very evangelical, and quite conservative. The conversation in the kitchen can at times veer in some very… interesting directions. At these times, I bite my tongue, and I keep my mouth shut, because I am the one who doesn’t really belong there. But some mornings, it’s hard. And it becomes especially hard when the kitchen volunteers engage in evangelism with breakfast patrons that don’t necessarily want to hear it. Don’t get me wrong—there are people who do want to hear it, and there are people for whom this particular church’s brand of theology is comforting. But it isn’t always. And sometimes, it can feel unwelcome and even aggressive. But it just isn’t my place to correct them. I am not their pastor. I am not even a member of their church. I’m just a random person who shows up in their kitchen every week to help with their work. I am a guest in their house. So I must practice patience. So far, no one has ever asked me what I think, or asked for my opinion. If they ever do, maybe then I’ll try and think of a kind way to express my disagreement. But for now. I’ll just patiently keep spooning out the grits with a smile and a warm greeting. I will patiently hold on to my own theological convictions without having to force them on other people, knowing that it’s okay that not everyone thinks the way I do. After all, we are all there together, feeding, serving, and caring. That’s really what counts, in the end.

Day Eight-- Patience

I’ve always been somewhat enamored by the idea of “holy impatience,” a concept I was first introduced to when reading a biography of the same name about William Sloane Coffin—great prophet of civil rights, social justice and the social gospel. I suppose that the idea of holy impatience can be summed up in a quote by Martin Luther King Jr., who said that “change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but rather through continuous struggle.” Essentially, holy impatience is what happens when our concept of the world as it is runs up against the world as it should be. It is the notion that God has equipped us, as disciples of Christ, to do the work of feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and welcoming the stranger—not just through acts of charity, but through our continuous advocacy for real social reform that pushes the world as it is just a little closer to the world as it should be. Holy impatience. Such an idea is certainly biblical—just look at Jesus turning over the tables in the temple. There are times when holy impatience is necessary, for we cannot stand by and do nothing in the face of immense suffering and injustice. There is work we are called to do. Christ has no body on earth now, but ours.

And yet, we must take care, for it is all too easy for our holy impatience to become less than holy, and more self-righteous and condescending. We get so caught up in our own notions of how things should be, that we start to become judgmental of everyone who may disagree with us, or even those who may agree in theory, but aren’t necessarily ready, for any number of reasons, to act in the radical ways we would prefer. And the bible is very clear about what happens when we judge others, right? 

Furthermore, as I’m sure every one of us knows very well, our impatience—holy or otherwise-- is so often what can lead us to be unkind towards others. We become impatient with our spouses and our children, and we speak to them unkindly. We become impatient with our leaders, and we berate them publically, rather than seeking conversation and dialogue with them. We become impatient with those we disagree with, and we condemn them as immoral villains, rather than people who simply hold a different view about how to make the world better. On the clergy side of things, we become impatient with our congregations and we complain that if only they would let us do what we wanted, that progress could occur. Or we become impatient with our institutional church structures for being too rigid and incapable of the kind of radical change we believe is needed. But if there is anything that is not biblical in that long list of impatient sins, it is most definitely the latter few. For it was the apostle Paul who said in his letter to the Corinthians that we must “wait for one another.” For Paul, this was said in the context of holy communion, and it is the same for us. We share holy communion with one another every week (for some of us, every month), and in that holy act, we are saying that we are together as one body, that we will wait for one another and walk together with one another, even if sometimes that means that the impatient ones among us most slow down a bit so that we can take others with us. And developing the patience to do that—well that is holy, and it is most certainly kind. 

And so on day eight of these 100 days of kindness, I pledge to be more patient with others—my husband, my fellow Christians, and perhaps most especially in this political climate—those with whom I disagree. I will be patient, as Psalm 27 says, and I will be strong and take heart, knowing that God is there in the waiting. God is there in the patient longing of our hearts for a better world. God is there in the space between the world as it is and the world as it should be. And perhaps, more than anything else, I can be kind to myself in my own efforts towards change, because it’s not up to me alone. It’s only up to me to love and serve others, and hopefully show them that there is a better way through kindness and compassion. In the meantime, I will wait for them. Let us all wait for one another in patience and in loving-kindness.

Day Seven-- Where the Heart Is

It’s been one week since I started this 100 days of kindness project, and so I thought I would take a moment to reflect on how the week went. As far as my individual acts of kindness are concerned, some days were clearly more successful and effective than others.  However, one thing that became all too clear to me this week is that while isolated acts of kindness are good, they don’t necessarily make you a kinder person. It’s all too easy, for example, to perform an act of kindness, check it off your list for the day, and then go home and get angry at your spouse, or join an argument on Facebook, or get angry and shout obscenities while watching the news (maybe that last one is something that only happens in my house, I don’t know).  Furthermore, when it comes to the sort of transformative power that I believe kindness and compassion can have in our world, I think it’s far more important to cultivate loving-kindness in your heart, and to adopt a posture of kindness throughout your day, than to simply do random nice things for people and then call it a day.  True kindness, therefore, is not necessarily about what we do (though of course our actions are important), but rather about the kind of person that we choose to be.

With this in mind, for the second week of this experiment, I am going to focus more on cultivating a kinder heart than on individual acts of kindness.  In his book on kindness, psychologist Piero Ferrucci talks about a number of qualities, or virtues, that can aid us in becoming kinder versions of ourselves.  One of those qualities is patience, a virtue I have always struggled with mightily.  And so tomorrow, my focus will be on patience.  I’ll start the morning with a meditation on patience and hold the word as a centering mantra throughout the day. We’ll see if I can make it through a whole day without becoming impatient.  Anyone who knows me well knows that this will be a challenge for me. J