“The nearer we draw to God,” Abba Mateos said, “the more we see ourselves as sinners.” We see
ourselves as we really are, and knowing ourselves we cannot condemn the other. We remember with a
blush the public sin that made us mortal. We recognize with dismay the private sin that curls within us
in fear of exposure. Then the whole world changes when we know ourselves. We gentle it. The fruit of
self-knowledge is kindness. Broken ourselves, we bind tenderly the wounds of others.
The most telling measure of the meaning of kindness in life is memories of unkindness in our own:
scenes from a childhood marked by the cruelty of other children, recollections of disdain that scarred
the heart, moments of scorn or rejection that leave a person feeling marginalized in the human
community. In those moments of isolation we remember the impact of the fracturing of hope. We feel
again the pain that comes with the assault of that sliver of dignity that refuses to die in us, however
much the degradation of the moment. It is then that we come to understand that kindness,
compassion, understanding, acceptance is the irrefutable mark of holiness because we ourselves have
known — or perhaps have never known — the balm of kindness for which we so desperately thirsted in
those situations. Kindness is an act of God that makes the dry dust of rejection digestible in the human
psyche.
Cruelty is not the fruit of contemplation. Those who have touched the God who lives within
themselves, with all their struggles, all their lack, see God everywhere and, most of all, in the helpless,
fragile, pleading, frightened other. Contemplatives do not judge the heart of another by a scale on
which they themselves could not be vindicated.
— from Illuminated Life by Joan Chittister (Orbis)
ourselves as we really are, and knowing ourselves we cannot condemn the other. We remember with a
blush the public sin that made us mortal. We recognize with dismay the private sin that curls within us
in fear of exposure. Then the whole world changes when we know ourselves. We gentle it. The fruit of
self-knowledge is kindness. Broken ourselves, we bind tenderly the wounds of others.
The most telling measure of the meaning of kindness in life is memories of unkindness in our own:
scenes from a childhood marked by the cruelty of other children, recollections of disdain that scarred
the heart, moments of scorn or rejection that leave a person feeling marginalized in the human
community. In those moments of isolation we remember the impact of the fracturing of hope. We feel
again the pain that comes with the assault of that sliver of dignity that refuses to die in us, however
much the degradation of the moment. It is then that we come to understand that kindness,
compassion, understanding, acceptance is the irrefutable mark of holiness because we ourselves have
known — or perhaps have never known — the balm of kindness for which we so desperately thirsted in
those situations. Kindness is an act of God that makes the dry dust of rejection digestible in the human
psyche.
Cruelty is not the fruit of contemplation. Those who have touched the God who lives within
themselves, with all their struggles, all their lack, see God everywhere and, most of all, in the helpless,
fragile, pleading, frightened other. Contemplatives do not judge the heart of another by a scale on
which they themselves could not be vindicated.
— from Illuminated Life by Joan Chittister (Orbis)
The Balm of Kindness
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