Sophia Bonnie Wodin

I was raised in a household in which Kindness was not a value. I had to learn it as an adult. That is not to say that there weren’t  other noble values in my childhood home, but Kindness wasn ' t prime among them.   It was when I found the poem  Kindness  by Naomi Shihab Nye that my journey towards Kindness actually began.   I don ’ t remember how or when I found the poem or who pointed it out to me. What I do know is that it stuck. It was similar to the time in the late 1970 ’ s when I was sitting regularly at Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts. At the end of my 10 minutes meeting with the teacher, I made the statement,  “ This word  compassion , you use it a lot. I don ’ t think I know what it means.” The teacher just smiled. Although I didn’t recognize it at the time, finding the poem Kindness was a step along the path towards finding out.   When I found that poem, or when it found me, I was living in a ramshackle owner-built house on a gentle hilltop in a commun