The Work of Kindness

The Cultivating Poetry column will explore both the writing and reading of poetry, and the practical ways this intersects with how our souls are formed. We will consider a range of poets, both contemporary and historical, looking for their invitation to us to see differently, to inhabit the world, together finding courage to live as a poeima in this beautiful, terrible world we have been given.

In the spring of 2011, while my husband and I were exploring northern New Mexico, I woke in the middle of the night to a stab of pain, right in my core. I lay in the darkness in the casita we had secured for two nights, gasping. Maybe it is food poisoning, I told myself, struggling to draw a full breath. Then, Maybe I can sleep it off. I dozed, but each time I woke the pain was sharper, more insistent. I finally woke my husband—not to ask for help, but because I was moaning. In the retelling, I shake my head at my dishonesty with myself, my lack of kindness, my fear of speaking up, my inability to honor the pain I was in. It was only when I called a friend who practiced medicine that I could consider the reality that I needed medical help soon.

As early sunlight made patterns on the adobe walls, we gathered a few things and headed to the emergency room. A few hours later, I was wheeled into surgery for an appendectomy. I spent a couple of nights in Holy Cross hospital, mostly supine, mostly in pain, mostly waiting. After I was discharged, I reclined in the passenger seat as my husband drove the miles home, eyes closed to the piñon pine and ponderosa that covered the rolling hills we drove past. I felt every bump.

My surgeon told me my body needed six weeks of intentional rest for my core to heal. I was writing for hire half of the work week and working on a novel during the rest of my days, into the corners of my weekends. I was tired, and would have told you that I welcomed an unexpected season of rest. But when it arrived, I could not offer it hospitality. Instead of asking my husband to carry a load of laundry down the stairs, I tried to do it myself. One wily towel end escaped; I tripped and multiplied my pain again.

Even though my body was under doctor’s orders to not sit for long periods, to not exercise beyond walking, to not lift more than a gallon of milk, I kept bending the rules. I was restless. Who was I when I could not move, when I could not produce? I didn’t know how to answer that question, and was unsettled by the noise that rose when I got still. So I kept moving, to my great hurt.

A consistent refrain in my internal noise was my mother’s voice, echoing through the halls of time. When she would face the overwhelm and exhaustion that came from raising and homeschooling four children while keeping pace with my father’s public ministry expectations she would say, “Worthless. I feel completely worthless today.”  I didn’t know how deeply I had internalized this, because I was so good at proving that I was worthy. Until I couldn’t. Then I found how deeply this mantra was also my own.

Although it was rarely explicit, I received the message from the Evangelical Christian culture I was raised in that my membership in that club gave me a head start on my journey toward holiness, toward wholeness. This surgery sent me crashing into my particular limits, proving this to be a bald lie. This posture was formed by a religious spirit, not by the Spirit of Jesus. In my life, this spirit bore the fruit of anxiety, of striving, of performance, of hiddenness. I had so many right answers that I did not know how to inhabit, and therefore, did not believe. I thought so much depended upon me. And then I began to see how I didn’t know how to name my legitimate needs or receive when I was doubled over in pain. I saw how quickly I chose niceness. I chose to shape-shift, to shrink, to silence myself. I didn’t know then that kindness is expansive—I couldn’t see that in my life, kindness was a stranger.

Growing up, I received the implicit message that if I could just be nice enough, it would all be OK. And when it wasn’t OK, my childish extrapolation led me to the conclusion that I was the problem. “Kind” and “nice” were treated as synonyms, but I have grown to believe they are antonyms.

When I’m nice, I’m taking my cues from my external world, not listening to the kindness of the Spirit who has come to make my limited and vulnerable body a home. When I give my consent to be indwelt by this Spirit—the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead—my body becomes a temple. Holy. Expansive. Like how I began as a few cells multiplying in a pear-shaped womb that doubled and doubled in size as I grew. There is goodness in me that I was taught not to see, not to trust.

This religious spirit also multiplies, not like life, but like death. It is a cancer that multiplies drivenness, bringing disintegration, not wholeness or peace. It is fueled by shame and fear and says if I can just do what is expected of me, if I can just keep my head down, I will be OK. This niceness shrinks from uncertainty, from change, from the frown of whoever holds the power. My niceness recites lines from a script written by someone else, shouldering roles and responsibilities that were given to me with the expectation that I would faithfully fulfill their function, never mind my humanity, my limits. This niceness feeds systems of power, further fragmenting me from what makes me most myself. This niceness is rooted in betraying my design, in burying the parts of myself that make me most particular.

Augustine called sin homo incurvates in se, which translates as a human being curved in on themself. Not long ago, I would have argued that I wasn’t curved inward, and I would have had convincing arguments. But just because I am not aware of something doesn’t mean that it is not true. When I bury my heart, I lose sight of my true self as well as my neighbor as I turn inward in self-protection. True kindness has been given a burial. I cannot love my kindred or myself.

The day before my surgery, I was sitting in the Cathedral Basilica in Santa Fe, journaling. Because I was sitting near the back, I did not notice people filling the front pews until the Lenten service began. I looked at my watch; if I stayed small and inconspicuous, I would betray the plans my husband and I had made. But I was mortified to walk out and disrupt the service. I wrote down my complaint, then paused. I created you to be a joyful disruption, I heard an inaudible voice say. I felt exposed. This is not something I had said to myself. Ever. I was an expert in nice, had grown up contorting myself into the least disruptive person I could be (and I was still plenty disruptive, to my repeated mortification). But I knew that my Maker’s voice sounds different from my own, and that for me to walk toward freedom—toward my true self—was to get up from my seat and walk out of that church pew in front of God and everybody. This would be easy for some whose story does not include extra portions of shame and control in Jeezus’ name[1]; it was not easy for me. After waiting as long as I could, I got up and walked red-faced out the door, into the sunlight of mid-morning. Birds were singing. 

Paul’s words near the beginning of his letter to the Romans were lost on me for years. “Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that His kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?”[2] I suppose the text was reading me even more than I was reading it. If sin is a turning inward on myself, then I can stop and listen for a gentle voice that wants to meet me right where I am, that doesn’t need me to find words for my inarticulate grief. Instead, I find a Spirit who intercedes with groans on my behalf, in the presence of God.[3] This voice names me again, calling me to stop running from my restlessness, to turn because of Divine kindness and let my groaning heart—where I am most truly a poeima—be excavated. 

In the Basilica I was given a whisper of who I am created to be. Then hours later, I was plunged into a place where I had no choice but to begin to face the fear and shame and contempt I held for myself. No amount of niceness would hold. All of the ways I could think well about God did me no good. For me, niceness had been a narrow pew. But kindness waited for me in the middle of my pain like an expansive field. I needed the welcome of Another. In the midst of my brokenness, I was not cast out. Instead, I met one who groaned alongside me and was invited to receive my whole self with the kindness of my Maker. 

[1] With gratitude to K.J. Ramsey, who, in her recent writing on Substack, uses spelling to delineate a difference between the historical Jesus, and Jeezus the caricature who is used to support a lot of things the historical Jesus came to disrupt.

[2] Romans 2:4 NLT [Note: The New Living Translation does not capitalize pronouns referring to God; these have been added by Cultivating’s editors.]

[3] Romans 8:23, 26

The featured image, “Magpie In Snow,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.

Amy Malskeit

Amy Malskeit is a lover of words and stories and people. She holds an undergraduate degree in English and Spanish, a secondary English teaching credential, and an MA in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry from Lancaster University in Northwest England. Her years teaching middle and high school gave her a love for middle grade and young adult literature, and the awkward awesome that being a young adult means. She is a mother of two who plants her garden and makes her home in the foothills southwest of Denver with her best friend, Kevin. She loves the water, and feels most at home when she is near the Pacific Ocean. She reads broadly, and is passionate about exploring big questions and small moments through her poetry, essays, and stories.