The Extreme Kindness Virus

Lately I've been working on my listening skills and contemplative prayer seems to help. That's why I wind up at the lake so often. I hear God's voice in the waves. Well, not exactly a voice, but you know, that still small voice that only comes when we get really centered.

The other day someone suggested that instead of extreme sports we should all practice extreme kindness. The idea took hold in my brain and wouldn't let go. I figured that I'd work on it daily.

I started by putting at the top of my prayer list anyone who may have hurt me, or who I don't like. That turned out to be harder than I thought, but it seems transformative for me as well.

Next, I decided to try extreme kindness to the earth. To cut down on greenhouse gases, I'm walking most places and only driving when it's absolutely necessary. That gives me time to stop and talk to my neighbors, and for some reason walking seems to make the day last longer. I feel less stressed than when I jump in the car for every single errand.

The best part about practicing extreme kindness is this. For some reason it helps me to notice the kindness of others. For example, when I arrived at the lake the other morning, I couldn't do any kind of centering prayer because I kept getting irritated by the fact that someone had partied there the night before and left beer bottles, cans, and trash all over the beach.

Because I had committed myself to extreme kindness I couldn't complain about why the city hadn't cleaned it up. I simply began to pick up the stuff. After a couple of trips to the trash, a very kind man who had been sitting on his beach chair reading the paper, began to help me. He introduced himself. We discovered that we both like to swim in the lake and we worked together on picking up the trash. Pretty soon a really kind couple came walking along. They thanked us for picking up the trash and began to help as well. They could have just walked on by, but they caught the extreme kindness virus. In about 20 minutes the beach was clean and we could enjoy it again.

On the way home, I passed the extreme kindness virus on to 2 more people. A woman waiting for the "walk" sign at an intersection with me saw me picking up trash. We began to talk and walk side by side.

"You're making me feel guilty," she confessed. Immediately she started picking up papers and putting them in the closest trash can.

The man who hangs out on Main street and always asks for a dollar approached. I gave him a dollar on the condition that he help pick up the trash. He did, and kindly promised to keep doing it everyday.

Don't get the wrong idea. My neighborhood is not really bad, but sometimes people do litter and sometimes it just seems like too much hassle to bend down and pick it up. But now that I've caught the extreme kindness bug, I have no choice. I must be kind to the earth.

I must also admit that I have a long way to go to become a really major extreme kindness hero.

I just received an e-mail about two extremely kind Jewish doctors. Dr. Rick Hodes who performs free surgeries in Ethiopia and is a single father who has adopted many of those he helped, and Dr. Eric Nussbaum who teamed up to remove a disfiguring facial cyst on a young Muslim woman for free.

Now that's extreme kindness. I guess I'll keep practicing.

"If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain."
-- Emily Dickinson