Kindness

I have a roof over my head and that of my family.
We have food on our table.
We live in relative safety.
I have some opportunities to work.
This is as good as it gets.
This is privilege.
I know that.
And yet I look out my window and I encounter people and stories
that tell me we are in very turbulent, unsettled and uncertain times.
Acceptable relations between men and women are being reset.
The nature of power dynamics are being reconsidered.
Fundamental questions like 'what does it mean to be human?' are being asked.
This is what transformation looks like, feels like, tastes like, smells like and sounds like.
Maybe every generation from the beginning of time goes through this experience,
believing their moment in time is the one, the turning point.
And yet I think there is something tangibly different going on here.
The reason being is their is a collective mystery being confronted.
And what is our stance in these times?
Do we become reactionary?
Do we retract ourselves back into known territory?
Or can we offer kindness to a stranger?
Can we turn and face the  unknown and step forward?
These are questions and gestures we are going to become more intimate with.
Might I suggest more kindness.
More kindness to ourselves and more kindness to others,
especially the outsiders, the homeless and the unwanted.


KINDNESS* by Naomi Shihab Nye

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 gaze at 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.

*From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Laniakea: Home in Perspective

I have my issues with Facebook, but it is not all doom and gloom and negative on the news page. Last night I came across a link that took me to a short video showing our latest understanding of the map of the universe. Not only does it give me a greater perspective to place my tiny steps. It also described a larger scale occurrence of the allurement phenomenon.

I have been told by an astro-physicist friend that the images we often see of outer space are visual presentations given to mathematical and other data. It may or may not actual look like this. Nevertheless there is to me real beauty in the dimensions and architecture of our universe. And I love that there are real open questions about its purpose and size. It could be finite. It could be infinite. Either way the quantities we are dealing with are so huge it is questionable to what extent we can actual process the numbers. We can place values next to the data but really what meaning does this have?

However, there are also qualities present. There is movement and intentions at play and this maybe something we can more readily connect with for these same dynamics are occurring in and around us all the time. Allurement, repulsion and the push and pull of tides are something we can see and feel.

If the matrix of the universe is a fractal one. If this is one consciousness expressing itself. Then we are a microcosm of the macrocosm. Coming home is a constant process of return. Maybe it is in the design (dance) of the universe to move away and to come home like a pendulum swinging. Maybe nothing is meant to be static or a absolute constant. Even rock moves, just very very slowly most of the time. This would suggest coming home is a dance too. We must keep moving, conversing, dancing, interacting, participating to be in relationship with everything, including ourselves and what we call home or a sense of belonging.

Even when we sleep, our physical bodies may seem still, but our minds are active. Our dreams take us to untold places. There are some peoples who believe that our dreaming life is the more real world and our waking life is the more unreal.

In Lak'ech Ala K'in

In Mayan tradition, there is a greeting that goes, 'In Lak'ech Ala K'in'. It's traditional meaning has been translated as 'I am another yourself' or' I am you, and you are me'.

This reminds me of Satish Kumar's book titled 'You are therefore I am', which is a modern day response or reworking of the well known quote of Descarte from the 17th century which stated, 'Cogito ergo sum' (I think therefore I am). This quote by Rene Descarte is attributed to be a symbolic representation of the rationale scientific project separating human kind from everything else living and non-living.

What Satish in his modern idiom and the Mayan's in their traditional ways are doing is reminding us that we are inseparable for one another, from everything. Fundamentally we are part of a web of life and deeply and intrinsically interconnected. What we do to one we do to all. What we do to someone else we are doing to ourselves. Inherent within this notion is held a perennial appreciation of bonding, connectivity and oneness. With this subtlety of knowing every intention, thought, action and deed might more likely be cooperative and regenerative rather than carry any notion of competition, lack or harm.

In Lak'ech Ala K'in

Mitakuye Oyasin

Namaste