The Kindness of Kindred
"Natural kindly human instincts, whose earth-born rudiments existing among animals and birds, have come to us from Nature herself.
___John Cowper Powys, "Obstinate Cymic"
The kindness imputed to nature by the write J.C. Powys might be disputed by those who find her 'red in tooth and claw' in a variety of ways, as she turns the seasons and the weather without warning and creates destruction. Yet nature is a mother who teaches all species to interrelate with each other. Kindness is nothing less than the recogniction and acknowledgement of our kinship with other beings, extending beyond humankind to embrace all that is. Kindness includes all and is cooperative. Kindness enables recognition of kinship in others.
Nature's real beneficence is found not in 'random acts of kindness' patronizingly meted out to the web of life but in an ordered dispensation wherein all things touch, meet and mingle. Kindness, for nature, does not mean the cozy preservation of one life at the expense of all; it is an instinctive cooperation with the larger web of life. Those beings who choose to live outside this law are no longer kindred with life - a fact that human beings would do well to remember if we wish to continue!
"Is there someone or something toward whom you find it hard to be kind? What is it that serves kinship between you? How can true kinship be restored?"
No comments:
Post a Comment