Reflections on Kindness, Prayer, and the Radical Act of Remembering Each Other’s Humanity
Dear Friends, Fellow Rascals, Makers of Good Trouble & Humans of Conscience & Consciousness … The Old Farmers Almanac says that if March comes in like a lion, it will most likely go out like a lamb, while the Ides of March reminds us that the assassination of Julius Caesar marks the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. This March has indeed come in like a lion … I feel like I need to not say more about that. Who knows what will have changed by the time this post goes to press? And as for the lamb, I am picturing in my mind the millions of us in the streets of America on March 28th declaring loud and clear … NO KINGS! NO HATE! NO FEAR!
With so much going on, what direction will today’s Light Waves take? The last time we connected, we focused on Love, which Dionne Warwick told us 60 years ago, the world has just too little of. But maybe that’s not true. Maybe we are surrounded by more Love than we think. Maybe we’ve just been looking for it in the wrong places. Maybe we’ve been expecting it to show itself in big ways, the same way we overlook heroism when it happens quietly. Maybe sometimes Love is so quiet, so subtle we don’t recognize it in the smile of a stranger on the bus or in the grocery store, in the kindness of the volunteer at the food pantry, or the neighbor who brought soup when they heard you had the flu.
So how about we focus today on the presence of Kindness in a world that keeps trying to convince us it has no place in this time of harsh and hateful … and on Prayer, whatever that might mean to you. Remember Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Summer Day”, where she says … I don’t know exactly what a prayer is / I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass / how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed … and I love Joy Harjo’s “Eagle Prayer”, especially the opening lines where she says … To pray you open your whole self / To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon / To one whole voice that is you / And know there is more / That you can’t see, can’t hear. Indeed. There is more that we can’t see, can’t hear. I invite you to read “Eagle Poem” in its fullness here.
I had never heard of Dr. Joel Ying, or his blog titled “Living The Present Moment”, until I followed up on Oliver’s question, “What is Prayer?” Dr. Ying’s post from January 19, 2022 has this to say and more … “What I do know is that when we pray, we invoke something greater than our current selves; we drop into a deep sense of gratitude for all that we already have; and we ask for the support that we need for something more in our lives …” Going on to write ‘today’s prayer’, he ends with the words, “Help me to live my best life with courage and grace.” Courage & Grace. Yes, please & thank you.
Next I invite you to gift yourself a few minutes to be idle and blessed and to pay attention to Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of WIRED magazine, a prophet of the digital frontier, who tells us that his most luminous insights started not from a screen, but by sticking his thumb out on Route 22 in New Jersey. The Daily Good offers “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Kindness” and contains a link to Kevin’s full story titled “How Will the Miracle Happen Today?” There are two paragraphs I found to be particularly provocative.
The first: “Kindness is like a breath. It can be squeezed out, or drawn in. You can wait for it, or you can summon it. To solicit a gift from a stranger takes a certain state of openness. If you are lost or ill, this is easy, but most days you are neither, so embracing extreme generosity takes some preparation. I learned from hitchhiking to think of this as an exchange … One might even call the art of accepting generosity a type of compassion. The compassion of being kinded.”
The second is longer: “I’ve slowly changed my mind about spiritual faith. I once thought it was chiefly about believing in an unseen reality; that it had a lot in common with hope. But after many years of examining the lives of the people whose spiritual character I most respect, I’ve come to see that their faith rests on gratitude, rather than hope. The beings I admire exude a sense of knowing they are indebted, of resting upon a state of thankfulness. They recognize they are at the receiving end of an ongoing lucky ticket called being alive. When the truly faithful worry, it’s not about doubt (which they have); it’s about how they might not maximize the tremendous gift given them. How they might be ungrateful by squandering their ride. The faithful I admire are not certain about much except this: that this state of being embodied, inflated with life, brimming with possibilities, is so over-the-top unlikely, so extravagant, so unconditional, so far out beyond physical entropy, that is it indistinguishable from love. And most amazing of all, like my hitchhiking rides, this love gift is an extravagant gesture you can count on. This is the meta-miracle: that the miracle of gifts is so dependable. No matter how bad the weather, soiled the past, broken the heart, hellish the war – all that is behind the universe is conspiring to help you – if you will let it.”
On February 26th I had the privilege of attending a Zoom call hosted by SAND titled “Block by Block, Heart by Heart: Sacred Care Amid Uncertainty”. It was an interactive, deeply thoughtful and heartfelt presentation by Dr. Lyla June, Kaira Jewel Lingo, and Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, none of whom were familiar to me. While all the speakers offered profound and meaningful insights, it was this Love Letter to an ICE Agent, posted on Kaira Jewel’s Substack of January 13th, that embedded itself in my heart. Here are some lines from her letter that I hope will encourage you to click on and read the whole thing. She writes,
Dear ICE agent … You and I are made of the same elements of life. We are part of the same human family, and so I begin by extending my regard and respect for your humanity … Perhaps you heard the call – from Trump, DHS, or the MAGA movement – to join ICE. Perhaps you believed it would give you purpose, belonging, and a way to respond to the distress you saw in your country. Perhaps you believed you were protecting law and order, and keeping your country safe. And perhaps the employment, with its sign-on bonuses, promised the stability you sought. None of that makes you evil. It makes you human … Then, in a rush to expand ICE, you received only eight weeks of training instead of five months. You were sent into immigrant neighborhoods, to raid workplaces, processing plants, and farms – affecting people of every race, ethnicity, and language. You were asked to take people into custody, even U.S. citizens, and to question them later, even when they could prove their status. You learned to humiliate and dominate, to zip-tie children, break down doors in the dead of night – like a secret police or paramilitary force untethered from normal laws or protocols. And you were permitted to use lethal force when you felt threatened, against your fellow citizens … This is not what you joined ICE to do. You know it. We know it … We are living in a time when politics tells us to choose sides instead of choosing care. But our deepest values are not so far apart. Many of us want safety, dignity, fairness, and a country where people do not have to live in terror of one another … If any part of you is uneasy, conflicted, or quietly grieving what this work has become, you are not alone. You are not broken for feeling that way. You are human. And if you ever choose to step differently, to speak differently, to act differently, you will not be abandoned. People will walk with you. Communities will welcome you. A future exists that does not require you to betray your deepest values to survive … I am not asking you to abandon your identity. I am asking you to remember your humanity.
Let us end our time together with these words from the poet, Joy Harjo. Bless the poets, the workers for justice, the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh meaning … We will all make it through, despite politic and wars, despite failures and misunderstandings. There is only Love
Until next time, Be Kind, Love Much, & remember that we are on the receiving end of a lucky ticket called Being Alive.
Sulima
Buying me an occasional coffee helps me keep these stories coming … and gives me one less reason to cross my fingers when my Social Security payment is due!
