If Kindness Were a River.

“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.” ~ George Sand

If kindness were a river, how might it truly flow?

Gently, over even the sharpest of rocks and until they are worn nearly smooth?

Would it yield its course to those greatest in need, forging new paths where previously there were none...?

Could it then give comfort to even the most insatiable of thirsts, offering sustenance to all those nearest its shores?

And, if kindness were a river?

Might its waters one day blanket this great earth ~ giving rise for blossoms of humanity to bloom?

Namaste, my most beautiful friends ~ and may we always remember, that this river of kindness flows through us all.

And, my dears ~ today, I wish to leave you with these most wonderful words, from poet, Naomi Shihab Nye.

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, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems