"I want to thank the Worship Committee for asking me to speak today, and I want to thank you for being here—in person or “virtually”—to help me figure some things out.
For me, the topic of “kindness” is
so…well…all-encompassing…and yet important to consider, to reflect upon…for the
very survival of human beings (I think I have some experts to back me up on
that!).
Let’s start with a
definition. I liked this definition of kindness from The Urban Dictionary: “Kindness
is doing something and not expecting anything in return. Kindness is respect
and helping others without waiting for someone to help one back. It implies
kindness no matter what.”
I
have a confession. I chose the topic, “the quandary of kindness”, because I
struggle with kindness…being kind…more than almost anything. I understand what
it means to be kind, I understand the importance of kindness, but to BE KIND?
I’m not.
Oh,
I WANT to be kind. Some days, I say, over and over, “BE KIND. BE KIND.” And
then….I’m not. In fact, I find myself being (From
WordHippo): the opposite of “the
quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate”—I am:
Callous,
heartless, resentful, mean, unfeeling, unkind, intolerant, apathetic, bitter,
harsh, hostile, indifferent, and/or selfish and thoughtless!
Do
you ever feel like that? Do you ever find that kindness is preach-able, but not
always practice-able? If so, you’re in the right place this morning!
I
work in a public, serve-others job. Sometimes, it just takes one thoughtless
patron to ruin my whole day—and every other patron will pay the price, and will
justifiably go away thinking I was just a rude so and so. At least, that’s what
I tell myself when I pay unkindness forward with unkindness. In doing that, I
realize, much too late, that I may have ruined someone else’s day. And my
greatest fear? My greatest fear is that someone will think I’m rude because I’m
racially prejudice, or have some ethnic bias toward them, when really I just
hate everyone at that moment.
At
the moment of my failure to be kind, I am horrified that I have escalated, that
I have enabled unkindness to permeate my neighborhood, my community, our world.
I feel like a failure because I know I cannot get that moment back. I can only
pledge to do better next time.
But HOW do I do
better “next time”???
When doing
research for this sermon, I came across something by Dr. Karyn Hall that made a
lot of sense. She writes,
“Kindness starts with yourself. Kindness starts at home. It…means
treating yourself as you would anyone else you care about. We usually talk
about and hear about kindness in relation other people, but kindness towards
yourself is just as important. You might have heard the sentiment you can’t
love other people until you can love yourself. While I don’t believe this is
100% true, I think how you treat and talk to yourself becomes the foundation
from which you approach your other relationships. So kindness isn’t just
about how you treat other people, it’s about extending the same intentions and
behaviors to ourselves too.
After treating yourself with
kindness, I’ve learned it’s important to force yourself to take a step back and
really look at the other person; see them. I know our lives are rushed, but
most of the time it’s worth taking that moment. As Dr. Hall goes on to say,
“Empathy
is the ability to understand someone else’s situation, experience, feelings,
and behaviors, and it’s the foundation of this concern. If you want to be
generous towards or help someone, first you need to understand where they are
and what they’re dealing with—the good and the bad. Even if you don’t agree
with someone’s choices or behaviors and you decide not to enable them going
forward, you can still empathize with them.”
So, recognize someone
else is having a bad day. When my kids were younger, and another kid was mean
or hateful toward them (a kid who was otherwise a friend), I would ask them if
there might be something going on in that other kid’s life, that might make
them react that way? Even though I did that with them, I find it so hard to do
in my own life.
One expert I consulted when preparing for today was
His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His thoughts?
“In order to achieve peace,
tranquility, and real friendship, we must minimize anger and cultivate kindness
and a warm heart. As we become nicer human beings, our neighbors, friends,
parents, spouses, and children will experience less anger, prompting them to
become more warm-hearted, compassionate, and harmonious…This is the way to
change the world.”
Remember when I said I was so worried that my
unkindness, my thoughtlessness might be misconstrued as racism or xenophobia
when really at that moment I hated everyone? It’s a real concern of mine. I
don’t want to be in a situation where another person thinks I am being unkind
because I have pre-judged them and automatically hate them. Sadly, that’s often
how and why humans are unkind to each other. Please don’t be that person. If
you feel unkind toward another, force yourself to ask, “why?”. Constantly hold
yourself to a higher standard—educate yourself about “the other” and what their
existence on this planet must be like. Stop unkindness before it multiples into
hatred. It’s a constant, on-going struggle that takes time and awareness to
constantly question your interactions with others. I fear that most people take
the easy way out, and persist in their unchecked prejudices and micro
aggressions.
And while
you’re at it, take a moment to think about how you RECEIVE the kindness of
others. Have we become so cynical that we question the motives of kindness? Of
generosity? Do you
pre-judge motives? If you are being honest, truly honest with yourself, you
answer “yes” to that question. Think about how you felt when Faith Church announced
it was building a community center in the North End—did you question their
motives? How about when you hear this recent story about Jewish worshipers
approaching their synagogue and seeing several strangers standing at the
entrance. When questioned, the strangers indicated they were Muslims and wanted
to stand guard to protect the Jews as they prayed. Did you pre-judge that
act of kindness? Why or why not?
Fortunately, there is help as you attempt to look
at yourself with a critical eye. Author Sally Kohn, in her book The Opposite
of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity wrote about the IAT survey
you can take at Project Implicit:
Implicit Association Test. This on-line test was developed by
psychologists Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji in 1998. As Malcolm
Gladwell explains, “The idea at the core of the IAT is that the speed with
which we make these unconscious associations can be measured, and then
compared, to determine relative bias. The IAT is more than just an abstract
measure of attitudes. It’s a powerful predicator of how we act in certain kinds
of spontaneous situations.”
So, to repeat: go to: implicit.harvard.edu
You can take as many or as few tests as you want,
no charge. The results are eye-opening! I found that I have a bias against
people of the Christian faith. Which is odd, since I know many, many good
people who are Christians, but I guess, for me, a few bad apples have made me
pre-judge the motives of Christians. And, since not all Christians are the
same, I was a little chagrined by the results of the test, because I have been
personally treated better by the one of the most “conservative” Christian pastors
in our community…by far…than I have been by one of the most liberal Episcopal
priests in our community. But that’s a story best left for another time.
At this point, you may be wondering why…WHY I am taking the time to talk about the importance of kindness? Isn’t it just a “duh”? As in, duh, of course we should be kind. I mean, Kurt Vonnegut covered it quite succinctly in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater when he wrote: “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies--"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
Well, I think I began thinking about this when I saw the cover of Sally Kohn’s book The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity”. I was intrigued by the basic question, “What IS the opposite of hate?” I thought, it could be love…it could be kindness…it could be something else. So, I read the book. And I did some more thinking; thinking about how we got to where we are in 2019; a place that feels to me that it’s a very short step from unkindness to incivility to hatred to our loss of humanity. Maybe we are already there? As Kohn writes, “We think we’re good people, but we don’t see how that sphere of moral concern is constricted by hate, by the history and habits and culture of who matters and who doesn’t in our society, which we have all bought into, whether we mean to or not. So we shake our heads about excessive corporate greed and we shake our fists against neo-Nazis marching in the streets, but not enough of us admit that they’re reflections of the society we’ve all created, let alone acknowledge that they’re reflections of ourselves.”
I might add to this statement: why is it so easy to
be outraged, to the point of demanding immediate boycott of a dairy, demanding
it’s closed down right away because we watched a video of calves being abused,
and yet we cannot even muster a tenth of that compassion, anger, indignity, and
action for the immigrants coming into our country, only to be separated from
their children, who are then warehoused, abused, neglected? How is that
possible? As a society, we are so quick to be kind to animals, and so moved by
their suffering, and at the same time, turn away from a fellow human being?
It’s easy when you have stopped looking at the human being in front of you, and
allowed yourself to fall into the easy group-think of a group you admire and
are proud to be a part of—your “tribe”. As Kohn states, “Remember that while
tribalism may be inherent in human beings, the way those “tribes” are
shaped—and how they are set against other groups—often stems from the
purposeful, political manipulation of tribalism.”
Tribalism at its’ ugliest
can be seen over and over in history, in:
·
Nazi Germany
·
Korea
·
Rwanda
·
Ironically, Israel—when dealing with
Palestinians
·
Bosnia and Herzegovina
·
America, in our treatment of Native Americans
·
Myanmar
To prevent history from repeating itself, we have
to learn, to understand how it happened and why it happened. We have to hold
ourselves accountable, and to hold each other accountable. As Kohn writes, “We must foster group bonds
not by imposing a homogenous identity on everyone but by building a sense of
shared humanity that not only respects but actively appreciates everyone’s
differences, especially because those differences help us resist dangerous
group-think banisters.”
Being kind? That’s the first step to that much
greater human connection. Hold open that door, pick up the item they dropped,
let them go ahead of you in line with their two items, pay for that car behind
you at Culvers, call and write your representatives about an issue that does
not immediately affect your family, protest. VOTE. All are acts of kindness.
Kindness opens that door for us. We have to talk to
each other, we have to listen to each other. We have to see each other. We have
to connect. Kohn writes: “Rather, the
question is how we as people and as societies help make habits out of
independent thinking—how we can use the spaces in which we come together, from
schools to churches to nations, to simultaneously understand how we’re all
connected to each other and at the same time learn how to think independently.
That’s a tall order.” Remember the book from Time for All Ages? One person took
a “situation” and turned it into a parade. Because a neighbor was kind and not
defensive, the whole world found, ultimately, a way to connect. Who knows?
Maybe someday you too can connect with that kindness kazoo of yours!
I understand we are busy. We are overwhelmed by the
pace of life, and sometimes it’s easier to choose to be unkind, indifferent,
and apathetic. But I want to share one last thing from Sally Kohn’s book. It’s
a chapter that has really stuck with ME, and helped me re-focus on those days I
am unkind. To give some context, Sally Kohn is a columnist and CNN political
contributor. Before going to CNN, she worked at Fox. She’s also a lesbian, a
mom, and someone I met at a political protest in Washington D.C.
[Here I read from the chapter titled, "Why We Hate: The Trolls"]
Sally Kohn reached out to her TROLLS. Not for
spite, but to understand. How did she do it? She started with basic human
kindness as a way to connect. My acts of kindness, my ways to connect will take
far less effort and courage than Kohn’s did.
Our time here on earth is limited. We need to leave this world a better
place.
So, take time to notice that, as Thich Nhat Hanh
reminds us, “We too are full of so many things and yet empty of a separate
self. Like the flower, we contain earth, water, air, and sunlight, and warmth.
We contain space and consciousness. We contain our ancestors, our parents and
grandparents, education, food, and culture. The whole cosmos has come together
to create the wonderful manifestation that we are. If we remove any of these
“non-us” elements, we will find there is no “us” left.”
We…each of us…are separate and unique HUMANS;
different now than we were a moment ago. Be kind. To yourself, and then to
others.
Thank you."
