Elizabeth Wood

Dear Friends,

I was very moved recently when I read this poem by Dinusha Laméris:

Small Kindnesses

I've been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say "bless you"
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. "Don't die," we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don't want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam
chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, "Here,
have my seat," "Go ahead—you first," "I like your hat."

I love the examples of “small kindnesses”—simple acts that make a difference. But I was particularly struck by the last three lines. The idea that in these acts lie the “true dwelling of the holy.”

In a few more days, we will be heading into Holy Week, where we will be confronted by the greatest act of love and sacrifice imaginable—but also with so many examples of small kindnesses: the washing of feet, a sponge to the lips, the wrapping of a body.

As we live together in the presence of a greater love than we can contemplate, may we always build “fleeting temples” through small kindnesses to those around us.

—Elizabeth