Here’s something nice to look at when things aren’t so nice.
I love this artist (Tor-Arne Moen)
And I love Cathy Cullis, too…
I’m finding it very difficult to write because, well, there was this election and it’s left most of us completely devastated. It’s a bit of a freak show, one which I dip in and out of but I can’t stay long in the news stream.
I found this poem. I’ll leave it with you on this Friday morning…
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then 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.
—Naomi Shihab Nye
Dragonlane Artisan Jewellery 
“Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore ” …. Most appropriate poem . Thank you.
xoxo… I actually just don’t know what to do or say these days. Are you struggling too?
Oh, yes. Sometimes I tell myself I will only give this 15 minutes of the day, just to keep my sanity. Sometimes I repeat the mantra ‘One foot in front of the other’… I have been wondering, though, how this compares to feelings there about the Brexit vote.
I am already memorizing this poem in my heart. Just what we need when words fail.
I know I know I know.
It hurts and it angers me and I’m very afraid.
This was not an election. I don’t even know what
to call it. What has happened to us?
What will happen to us?
Thank you, thank you, Kim. I don’t know what I would do without you. I value your sharing of what you find.
I discovered the kindness poem the other day on fb and things like it are why I can’t sign off fb altogether. I hope the poem travels far and wide
Don’t know if you saw this, but Nye’s telling of how the poem came to be is beautiful in itself. Very moving.
http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/articles/incomparable-naomi-shihab-nye-kindness
Nice way to start my Monday. Thanks for the art and poetry!