Hello friends! As Eowyn discussed, this thread can be a place for our class to stay in touch and to continue our discussion of MBSR.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is that what is written here is not private.
Yours,
Deb
Hi Deb,
Thanks for setting this up for everyone! Yes, it’s a public space here, and perhaps our conversations will be inspiring to others in the forum. We could make a private room if you all feel that’s important. Let me know, as that is the bit I would have to help with, as I mentioned last evening…
And, here below is the poem I offered last evening.
Cheers,
Eowyn
“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, Eighth Mountain Press, 1995
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.