Constant Kindness in my Inbox

On the eve of Albert Schweitzer's Birthday (January 14, 1875 - September 4,
1965), I found this article in my Inbox, from the director of the local Greater Philadelphia Albert Schweitzer Fellowship program - my friend and colleague, Nikki. I loved the story - true! - of a very comfortable couple and their huge decision - inspired by the life of Albert Schweitzer - to live for others.

At the bottom of the same email I found these words:

"Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate."
- Albert Schweitzer.

I don't know much about Albert Schweitzer, except that his life has been an inspiration to many, and what I have read here. From my participation in the fellowship program, I have absorbed a bit: Schweitzer established and served in a desperately needed hospital in Lambaréné, in what was then French Equatorial Africa; he was known for his commitment to living with Reverence for Life. There is much much more to his life (see link above!), but with just this - just the words above - I find fresh and nourishing values to consider in these fearful, survival-oriented times.

Misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility - all are in the air, these days. We are tempted to "wait it out" - hoping for problems to go away, for the market to bounce back, for the ice to melt - not always the worst thing to do... But consider the claim: "Constant kindness can accomplish much...". It rings so true to me - I have been the surprised recipient of undeserved kindness many times, and have found that a soft word really can quiet a storm...but (I admit with great shame) I tend to think of a focus on kindness as a detour from accomplishing much. :(

So, it is amazing to consider instead an attitude of constant kindness, and what it might do!

Yet, it is not all that simple to contemplate the practice! Kindness...in the face of hostility? Is this wise, even? But the image of sun melting ice, of coldness 'evaporating', of hard feelings softening, hearts opening - this is the image to which we must cling...that these difficult realities might be transformed.

Into what, I ask (with you)? Real differences do not evaporate, nor is truth, simple truth, at odds with a heart of kindness. So, then one must consider this power of "constant kindness" - bold and true - with care, in the face of its enemies, in the reality of truth obscured, positions in conflict, a focus on gain and loss. Constant kindness is creative, it is reverence for life, all of life. And what is possible when we approach all of life, your life as well as mine, with this reverence? I have no easy answers, but I sure hope I get to find out.

Out Stealing Horses

I was about to embark on a three-hour train ride when I picked up Per Peterson's "Out Stealing Horses" in the bookstore at the station. Set in Norway, the book traces the life of Trond Sander just after he moves into a remote riverside cabin, alone, at sixty seven years of age - only to have "all the turbulence, grief, and overwhelming beauty of his youth come back to him". Norway is a far off land ...I have been only as far as Denmark, so I was curious enough, then saw a claim that the book was "...a gripping account of such originality as to expand the reader's own experience of life". Who could resist a claim like that? And from the New York Times Review of Books, at that?

"Out Stealing Horses" is a trip into nature and story, interwoven; into the life of a man who has loved and grieved, who still has an achingly intense longing for his father and for understanding pieces of his own story, the mystery of his father and his past. When Trond was young, during the time of the second World War, when Norway was occupied by the Nazis, his father would disappear for months at a time. Yet Trond enjoyed a deep and trusting connection with him that was based on the depth and truth of moments lived together - beautiful moments, captured with the eye and heart. The intrusion of the bigger picture into the personal life and relationships is only understood many years later when Trond has a chance to talk with friend of his father's. I felt as hungry as Trond to know more about what was going on in his father's life, the village, and the country.

By chance, I picked up the October 20 issue of the New Yorker which also has a review of a book by Per Peterson: his newer novel "To Siberia". This reviewer also mentioned the "astonishing" earlier novel "Out Stealing Horses". He picked up perfectly what Peterson is about: "Peterson's real interest, though, is in the physical and emotional distances that separate his characters from each other and from their former selves". That may be true - but to me, the separation is always conveyed through longing for connection and understanding, and it is endured with meticulous attention to past and present - and with trust, always.

Every time I pick up this book I want to read it again. Maybe I will.

Here is the NY Times review

The first chapter is available, too.