kindness
In high school, I devoured E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End after seeing Merchant & Ivory’s film adaptation. What, you weren’t obsessed with British period dramas in high school? In part, Howard’s End deeply resonated with me because, in a world devoid of queer representation, Merchant, Ivory, and Forster delivered distinctly queer points of view and aesthetics. No character in the story is explicitly queer (though the peripheral younger brother, Tibby, was, in my humble gay opinion, definitely family), but the perspective, the angst, the desperate struggle to find harmony between mind and body and the world–that all felt familiar. It was a language I understood, though I’d never heard it before.
But the thing about Howard’s End that really grabbed me was its famous epigraph.
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
I found myself frequently returning to this passage. If our school yearbook had invited individual quotes to accompany our graduation photos, this would’ve been mine. While I couldn’t totally relate to the central story of people striving to connect across stiff boundaries of class and gender in early 20th century London, as a gay kid in the 1990s who was hungry for any morsel of queer representation, I was drawn into the deeper message that external peace and harmony flows from internal peace and harmony. Live in fragments no longer. To me, the connections that characters made (or missed) with each other allowed them to see (or avoid) the fragments within them that needed healing. Consciously or not, that insight seeped into my mind and for decades has informed my relationships with others.
I am hungry for connection. Always have been. I don’t mean interaction–that’s where I go hard-introvert. I crumble with overstimulation. I mean the kind of connection where you know you’re seeing each other as whole people, where you catch a glimpse of the fragments floating inside each other and don’t flee. Sometimes I find it in decades-long friendships, sometimes with a new acquaintance after five minutes at a party. My husband gently mocks me for this sometimes. More than once, our departure has been delayed from an event or a bar because I was rapt in conversation. “Sorry,” I’d explain, “we got to talking…” Jon only replies, “Of course you did.” One could even say that I’ve built my professional life around this hunger, too. This is the thread that runs through my work as a teacher and campus minister, as an administrator, and now as a ritual designer–I’m constantly and enthusiastically focused on making spaces that foster connection.
I moved to Seattle in 2019, and Jon and I married Thanksgiving weekend that year. I still had few social connections in the PNW, and my plan for 2020 included, you guessed it, making some new connections. I was ready to lay new roots and find my people, but then 2020 happened. Once “social distancing” entered our vocabulary and our capacity to connect was limited to careful pods or screens, my knee-jerk reaction was to maximize my ability to connect on Zoom. I organized virtual happy hour reunions with friends from various stages of life. I started weekly calls with my sprawling family and started offering guided meditations, and–I know this is a minority opinion–I found Zoom to be magical. Serving on a couple of boards at the time, our virtual meeting provided me a chance for the first time to see every colleague’s face and look them in the eye, and because of this I felt more connected to those groups than I had with previous in-person meetings. On family calls, I’d frequently be taken aback by commonalities like facial expressions or physical traits across the three generations on screen. I’d see my mom’s nose or my dad’s smile across the screen and wonder, “How can we all look so much alike and be so, so different?”
Of course, virtual interactions didn’t totally compensate for lost proximity, and, coupled with the general encouragement to fear each other, whether to avoid viral contagion or locking political horns, no matter how hard I tried, relationships suffered. Once quarantine rules started to thaw, I could almost see the frenzy for connection in the air. At the first post-quarantine performance of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, we, the assiduously masked audience, erupted in thunderous applause when the director appeared on stage to welcome us back. Looking around, I saw that I wasn’t the only one moved to tears by this reunion. Some more cautiously than others, we all crept back into our common spaces, but we were all scarred and disabled by our distance from each other. Don’t you just get the sense–in the aisle of a grocery store, in a parking lot, walking down a narrow sidewalk, navigating TSA at the airport–that people forgot how to people? Niceties like “hello” and “thank you” disappeared except in the back of an Uber (and that politeness was really aimed at maintaining a good passenger rating). Instincts like knowing who should turn first at an intersection or slowing down to avoid a crash on the sidewalk evaporated. And don’t get me started on our concomitant attachment to devices and lack of awareness of strangers listening to private conversations.
As I crept back into the world, I found certain skills had atrophied because of my isolation from the world, like how to make it through a trip to the grocery store without an anxious meltdown and how to talk to straight people. Looking for ways to connect to my neighborhood and maybe find some nice heteros, I stumbled into the Village, an intentional community that initially responded to the trauma of isolation during quarantine by offering a structure for folx to gather, have meaningful conversations, and experience community. Since then, Village has grown into VillageCo to support the establishment of Villages in different places, in different contexts. The vision: a locally connected world. I mean, that’s so Bill, right? Over the last few years, I’ve found a real anchor in the Village experience–some people are always there, others come and go, but when we gather we can just be ourselves and lean on the structure to open up space for an authentic moment. And, best of all, I’ve even met some lovely straight people.
Don’t worry–they’re not all straight.Whatever their sexual identities, I’ve admired Villagers’ striving to be inclusive and equitable, and even when we find ourselves on different ends of a spectrum, I’ve found folx to be consistently respectful and open to different perspectives. In our gathering this week, one of the questions that prompted conversation was, When have you experienced kindness? It didn’t take long for an experience to come to the surface–I think about this story perhaps twice a day. I shared about how, in the worst possible moment, three people demonstrated extraordinary kindness to me, and their actions inoculated me from pessimism about human nature.
While on a cruise to Alaska with friends to celebrate our close-on-the-calendar 40th birthdays, my sister, Jean, died. It wasn’t totally unexpected–a couple of weeks previous, she was diagnosed with glioblastoma after suddenly collapsing. A few days before we departed, two other siblings had encouraged me to do the trip, citing the doctor’s relatively-positive prognosis, but an abrupt change on the day we sailed from Seattle brought a quick decline. I got the text from my brother while at dinner, while cruising along the Alaskan coast, and I was filled with regret. Specifically, regret about getting on the damn ship in the first place. My friends provided just enough comfort and distraction, and after dinner I started to unravel the logistical challenges of getting to Cleveland. After making arrangements to leave the cruise and a long and spotty call with the airline to arrange a flight from Juneau to Seattle the next day and then to Cleveland the day after that, I rushed to pack up my cabin to get a few hours of sleep.
Before arriving in Juneau the next morning, our ship was scheduled to visit the Dawes Glacier around 5:00am. I didn’t sleep much, and when the first bit of light appeared, I bundled up, found some coffee, and went to see the glacier. When I made it to the deck, I was surrounded by a thousand other groggy cruisers. Unlike the previous couple of days on the ship, everyone was quiet. Sure, at 5:00am, I’m sure we were all a little sleepy, but I sensed an unspoken pact that we’d all shut up just long enough to be in awe of the glacier before us. My attention alternated between contemplating this massive and humbling natural phenomenon and the surprising and gentle quiet of a previously obnoxious crowd. I bumped into my friends but wanted to be alone, so I said farewell and found a spot along the rail. After I snapped a few photos, I stood silently at the rail and stared at the glacier. I watched as a tall, narrow block of ice seemed to slowly lean out from the glacier before abruptly sliding down the great wall, crumbling into a thousand bits along the way but still making an enormous splash. Waves rippled out for hundreds of feet, eventually calming and disappearing in the bay. Time to go, I muttered to myself before returning to my cabin and collecting my bags.
As I waited to disembark, I found myself surrounded by various staff who were wrapping up their time on the ship, including a comedian who had performed the previous two nights. The day before, my friends and I had been on a kayaking outing near Ketchikan with a large group of cruisers that included him and his girlfriend. Recognizing me from the kayaks, she introduced herself as Linda and wondered if I was working on the ship, too. Otherwise, why would I be leaving mid-cruise? “No,” I started to explain, “I have to leave early for…” Linda blinked and then seemed to look right into my core, and I dissolved into tears. Without another word, Linda wrapped her arms around me. I froze for a second, horrified by my composure and slightly bewildered by this suddenly intimate stranger, but quickly melted and found myself comfortable and calm with her. Once the weepy heaves and tears stopped, I could finally stand on my own and explain that my sister had died, and I had to get to Cleveland…
Mid-embrace, her boyfriend returned and spotted us–his initially furrowed brow at the sight of his girlfriend embracing a stranger softened with a look of recognition, like “oh, there she goes again.” He stood politely and patiently aside, pretending to look another direction. That eased my embarassment–clearly, she’d done this before, and I wasn’t the first asshole to fall apart in her presence. But it also suggested that she’d done this before and knew what I needed. Once I regained my composure, Linda introduced me to her boyfriend before discreetly explaining my situation, and we realized that we were all on the same flight to Seattle. As we moved through the disembarkation and customs process, they stuck with me like we had planned this trip together. When we reached the airport with six hours until our flight, I assured them that I was ok alone at the airport bar while they did a lap or two through Juneau before heading home. Six hours and five Bloody Marys later, I boarded the flight only to find Linda in the seat next to mine. Her boyfriend had a seat across the aisle, and, unaware that I was also ticketed in first class (it was the last seat available when I called), he was trying to find me with a gate agent, eager to give me his first class seat. There we were, three accidental friends flying together. Throughout the flight, Linda chatted with me, sometimes asking about my sister, sometimes telling me stories about her life. It was just enough connection to let me start processing my grief and just enough distraction to keep me from being devoured by it. Maybe it was just exhaustion, but I slept well that night and credited Linda, my accidental companion, for giving me a little bit of peace, a little bit of solace, and enough energy to keep going.
The next day, I woke to a call from my sister in Chicago who was reeling from Jean’s death. She asked if I could come to Chicago first, so as soon as my seatbelt clicked in the backseat of an Uber, I called the airline to try to change my itinerary–after my first flight to Denver, I needed a ticket to Chicago, but because I was already checked in, the agent instructed me to head to a counter agent in Denver to make the change. As I finished the call, I noticed the driver briefly study me in the rearview mirror, and with a gentle tone, he said, “I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but I just want to say…I’m so sorry. I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do, but if there’s anything I can do for you…” I eked out thank you before turning and looking out the window, trying to keep at bay the next surge of tears.
After landing in Denver, I made it to the United Lounge. “I am booked on a flight to Cleveland, but I need to get to Chicago.” Skeptical about her ability to make the change on such short notice, the agent asked if I could wait until the next day. “No, you see, my sister…” And with that, the tears started. As I tried to explain my predicament and nearly started convulsing with sobs, the agent furiously typed and whispered over the clack of her keyboard, “Oh, sir…I’m so sorry…oh, sir…oh…” After two minutes, she printed out a new boarding pass for my flight to Cleveland, stepped out from around the counter, and led me to a quiet corner of the lounge. “You just make yourself comfortable. No one ever comes to this little corner.” I nodded and wordlessly followed. “You just relax and I’ll come get you when it’s time to head to your gate. Do you want some coffee? Something else?” As she walked away to find me a cup of coffee, I sat and stared at the planes parked and taxiing on the tarmac, silent, stunned–stunned not, for the first time in about forty hours, because of the grief that surrounded me, but in awe of the sudden generosity and radical kindness of another stranger.
It’s easy to feel alone in grief, easy to give in to loneliness. Grief has a way of muffling our ears and blurring our eyes so we miss what’s in front of us. It numbs us from the warmth of otherwise tender and endearing hugs and caresses. But, luckily, humans are persistent. Whether it’s good or bad, if we have something to say, we will keep talking until it’s heard. When we recognize pain, we respond. Not always well, but we respond. If we have love to give, we keep loving until it’s accepted, until we know that the person wrapped in grief isn’t lost in it. I used to think of Linda as a kind of angel, a divine companion who appeared when I needed her most, but that would deprive Linda of the very thing that enabled her to recognize my pain and comfort me: her humanity. Linda, the driver, the United agent–they used language they knew and tools at their fingertips to respond to me, certainly not because it was their responsibility or duty. Somewhere along the way, they each had experiences that prepared them for that moment, and I was bolstered not just by three strangers but by the countless people who shaped each of them, who instilled in them the instinct to care, the instinct to be kind.
In Catholic-speak, I might quote my friend Kate who would declare, whenever things somehow went right, “that’s the work of the Holy Spirit.” Or I’d use the language of my favorite feminist theologian, Elizabeth Johnson, to recognize the communion of saints at work in the empathy and compassion of these strangers along the way. What, you don’t have a favorite feminist theologian?
Our solidarity with those who have died consists not only in a common history, origin, and goal, but in the same Spirit who flows through and enlivens all… Their status in our memory is that of a great cloud of witnesses whose efforts, defeats, and victories empower us for the struggle of our own lives to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. Their status in our hope is that of a great cloud of witnesses whose destiny encourages our hearts and charges us to care for the world and its flourishing.
In Friends of God and Prophets, Johnson looks to the communion of saints, the total community of the dead and the living united in our common sustenance by the Spirit, as “companions in hope,” and I’ve always found this compelling, particularly because hope has a way of clearing our view. It doesn’t change our painful and shitty reality, but it helps us see past it. It helps us to recognize and fall into the open arms of the saints in our midst. It helps us to process and not be consumed by our grief and to follow in the footsteps of the generations that preceded us, to learn from their lives how to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly, and to care for the world. Hope even inspires us–well, it inspires me to transform the grief I’ve known into empathy, and to respond when I recognize the pain I’ve known in others’ eyes.
I used to think about kindness as a trait, as an essential aspect of a person’s character. It was always there, but it was up to us to decide to use it, to give it life. Looking around at the world today, at the animus that is dividing us and sorting us into tribes, I’ve lost faith in the idea that kindness is just there inside people waiting to be activated. Instead, I recognize that kindness is a skill–a skill that is learned and unlearned, that flourishes when it is modeled and cultivated, that requires exercise and discipline. Among the myriad and devastating consequences of 2020, we lost the daily opportunities and the common spaces where we connected with each other, where we could exercise the skills of empathy, compassion, and kindness. But now we have an opportunity. Arundhati Roy warned that “nothing would be worse than a return to normality,” that, amidst the terrible suffering and devastation it brought, the pandemic also provides us an opportunity to let go of the practices and ideas that have dragged us down and to recreate the world. We can create spaces like Village that provide space to connect with each other. We can be intentional about who we want to be and the skills we need on that journey.
