Small Kindnesses by Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Small Kindnesses

I often think about small kindnesses, the simplicity and ease of them. How they are not as rare as they may seem when you stop to notice. But to put them together in a poem, now that’s a kindness in itself. My thanks to my lovely friend Margaret who first alerted me to this treasure.

The poet gives us such ordinary examples that I think we can all relate to: people pulling in their legs to let you by, saying ‘bless you’, picking up spilled lemons (or anything that rolls across the floor when dropped!). Mostly we don’t want to harm each other. It’s true, despite apparent evidence to the contrary in the news, we do not wish harm.

To say thank you for the cup of hot coffee, smile and be smiled at. To be called honey at the diner, for the driver to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far / from tribe and fire. The news, what we mainly hear, is divisive, separating us from one another, our tribe, our humanity. These gestures draw us together around the fire, small daily communities of connection.

Only these brief moments of exchange – these small kindnesses are available to us in every moment when we pay attention to our words and actions, to those of others around us. She tells us we make these fleeting temples together when we act and speak with kindness and it is their everydayness, their simplicity that draw us together, tiny prayers for living life well.

Go ahead – you first.

Blessing for the Brokenhearted – Jan Richardson

There is no remedy for love but to love more.
—Henry David Thoreau

Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.

Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.

Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—

as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,

as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,

as if it trusts
that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.

http://paintedprayerbook.com/2014/02/10/a-blessing-for-the-brokenhearted/

Grief, as I have so often said, is a natural part of our lives, an expression of the love we have for those who have died and of what we feel for the loss of everything that changes, that ends.

Poetry is what can give us language and voice for the grief that life offers us and which we must accept whether we want to or no.

To read, or better yet, hear spoken, a poem that captures some essence of your own experience is to feel the relief of being known, if only for a moment, a moment that can be returned to time and again.

This poet has written many blessing poems (The Cure for Sorrow); this remains one of my favourites. Written after the sudden death of her young husband, it is eloquent in its expression of brokenheartedness without drowning in despair or sentimentality.

I so appreciate the opening lines of the first two stanzas, Let us agree, and Let us promise. She invites the reader into her world which may also be one’s own. She turns away from the conventional tropes of pain making us stronger or that time will heal. Have you ever been offered such inadequate, even offensive, advice?

Perhaps for now – just in this moment, we can marvel / at the mystery /  of how a heart /  so broken /  can go on beating. Is it not a mystery that this is so when it does not seem possible? More than that, she suggests that it is as if the heart knows the only cure for love  / is more of it. For truly, we do not stop loving someone just because they have died.

She offers the possibility that the heart’s sole remedy /  for breaking is to love  / still, that it is as if the heart trusts /  that its own /  persistent pulse /  is the rhythm /  of a blessing /  we cannot /  begin to fathom /  but will save us /  nonetheless. Note she is offering a remedy, a healing not a cure; this is the medicine of poetry.

If you are or have been brokenhearted, I invite you to speak this graceful poem aloud to yourself. Notice how your heart goes on beating, how you go on loving because you cannot do otherwise even in your grief.