...the other deepest thing

Coming home to tragic news. Remembering that not everything is lost with Naomi Shihab Nye's poems "Gate A-4" and "Kindness"

I will publish my intended post on Friday, but in the meantime I felt compelled to share some news with you now. Upon returning from my Dostoyevsky retreat, a few hours after I landed in Logan, I received an email from our mayor saying that there was an active murder investigation in our city. Three elderly individuals were found murdered in their home. The next day I found out that the victims were members of my church collaborative. They were discovered by a family member after the couple failed to show up at a Mass to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. 

Last fall, I remember seeing Bruno flipping burgers at our parish picnic. Jill, his wife, was known for spending hours beautifying the church. Her mother Lucia, well into her 90’s, walked in the procession of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Festa. Jill and Lucia were the cousin and aunt to our long-serving choir director who sent out a message to our community the morning after the horrific discovery.

To have such a wonderful, previous week marred immediately by this is incredibly jarring. And all words seem inadequate. 

When I left Boston on my plane flight I had the poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye in my head. Her poem “Gate A-4” describes the act of providing kindness to a non-English speaking elderly woman who is in distress at the airport gate. After the woman is consoled by the late and weary passengers around her the speaker says, “This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.”

The poem ends,

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

And now I remember one of Naomi Shihab Nye’s best known poems, “Kindness.”

It begins… ¹

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.

Notice the intimacy of the speaker addressing the reader as “you” all throughout the poem—telling you what you must do. 

You must lose things. You must travel. You must see how this could be you—the man who lies dead by the side of the road.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, 
You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

When we find that there are those in the world who would kill innocent, elderly people in such a violent and painful manner it is hard to remember that there is kindness in the world. But there is. There must be.

We are called to be what we want to see in the world. We must be kind.

If you are so inclined, please keep Lucia Arpino, Gilda “Jill” D'Amore, and Bruno D'Amore in your prayers. 

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

1. Interestingly enough, in Nye’s original published version of this poem the first line was “you must lose everything.”