Amazed Fall 2009

I used to say the only things that surprised me were extreme intelligence and extreme stupidity.
That was cynical and narrow-minded, spoken in haste.
All my life, in anger, disappointment, or rejection I've tried to convince myself I hated people-but I can't.  I've always needed to help them, to rescue them from horrible things and protect them from each other.  For reasons I cannot grasp I love them.  For purposes I cannot know.  Even among the most depraved, I've seen kindness that could make me cry.  I've seen acceptance that tore my heart apart.  Grace defying its setting, and unconditional love in people you'd think had no capacity for caring.
Every day of my life, there it was.  In people you'd have least expected to see it, there was God telling me that we are his in spite of ourselves.  I could never put my finger on it before, but there it is.
Like my family, half are business-people, (half are pirates,) but every one of them has given me a reason to go on believing, even if a moment later I wondered why.
Now what never ceases to amaze me is kindness.
It can be the hardest thing in the world.
I say mercy is the privilege and responsibility of the strong, but it's more than that and kindness is the hardest won virtue of them all.  Without it, intelligence and strength are just a show.  Mercy is just a bargaining tool, and acceptance is its messenger.  We are nothing without the capacity for love, and kindness is the extension of that most proud virtue.  How strange to conclude that love is everywhere when it would otherwise seem so distant.