The Regions of Kindness

". . . how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness." -Naomi Shihab Nye

Recently I finished reading a new book by a former parishioner of mine. Entitled Here If You Need Me, it is written by Kate Braestrup, now a Unitarian Universalist minister serving as Chaplain to the Maine Warden Service. Not only a book about Kate’s unusual work with the Warden Service, that branch of law enforcement tasked with enforcing fish and wildlife regulations and policing the vast Maine wilderness, it is also the story of Kate’s remarkable journey of faith on the path from grief to happiness following the accidental death of her husband, Drew Griffith.

I first met Kate Braestrup and her husband Drew when I served as interim minister to the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Rockland, Maine. They and their four young children were not unlike most young families who turn up at Unitarian Universalist churches. Neither Kate nor Drew came from particularly religious backgrounds--Kate’s non-religious family’s reaction to her religious vocation is one of the humorous background themes of her book--but they had somehow discovered Unitarian Universalism and found their way to the First Universalist Church of Rockland, and had made a religious home there. At the time I was serving in the early 1990s, Drew was even considering a second career as a Unitarian Universalist minister.

What was unusual, in my experience, at least, was that Drew was a Maine State Trooper. I have been a Unitarian Universalist minister for twenty-five years, and Drew is the only Unitarian Universalist State Trooper--or law enforcement officer of any kind--that I have ever known to regularly attend one of our churches. This actually makes me a little sad, for what it implies about our religious demographics, but at least I can say that I knew Drew.

Of course, Drew was not quite a typical State Trooper, either. As Kate writes, "Drew was considered an unusual specimen of state trooper because he had an earring, wrote poetry, and ate whole grains." He was a regular participant in local poetry slams, and a vocal supporter of gay rights. And he was truly interested in spirituality.

But don’t get the wrong impression; Drew was very good at his job. As Kate writes,

Once he became a state trooper, Drew’s professional life had an intimate physical aspect. He had to do brave and loving things to and with the bodies of others. Take, for example, those he arrested, particularly those who fought back, the ones he would have to wrestle with, the weight of his body pressing them into the ground, his mouth against an ear shouting instructions ("Give it up! Give it up!") as he groped beneath a sweaty belly for hands and weapons. Those bodies smelled of inadequate hygiene and, nearly always, of alcohol. When he had them safely handcuffed, he would help them up and cradle the back of their heads in his palm so they wouldn’t hurt themselves getting into his cruiser. Once he took the tiny hand of an abused four-year-old girl who led him out back, behind her house, to show him where her father chopped her puppy to pieces with an ax. Drew held the shape of that small hand in his palm for weeks. There were the bodies of those who, on receiving official state police notice of a loved one’s death, collapsed against his Kevlar-stiffened chest and wept. He would hold them gently and murmur, "That’s all right. That’s all right."

trained to the arcane demands of policing: the holds, takedowns, cuff ‘n’ stuff, and CPR. So he lifted weights, bicycled, and ran long distances--fast. His arms could press a lot of iron away from his chest. His heart was in superb condition: low blood pressure, cholesterol count in the peachy zone."

In April 1996, Trooper Drew Griffith was killed in the line of duty when his police cruiser was struck by a fully loaded box truck. He had been pulling out into the bright sun of a beautiful spring morning to make a routine traffic stop when the accident happened. (Some of you may remember that I preached about Drew’s death at the time.)

Kate Braestrup’s book is in part the story of her journey of accomodation with that terrible death. But it is also one of the strongest affirmations of the healing and sustaining power of our Unitarian Universalist faith that I have ever read, and that is one of the reasons I commend it to you this morning.

Kate’s theology is actually pretty simple when it comes down to it. It’s basically about the power of love and kindness and the significance of presence: just "being there." In a line of ministry where she is often confronted by scenes of violent and accidental death and sudden and unexpected loss, Kate brings her love and her presence and, of course, her own personal experience of suffering. But she brings no easy or simple answers. Asked by her young children, "Why did Dad die?" Kate answers,

I told them, "It was an accident. There are small accidents, like knocking over your milk at the dinner table. And there are large accidents, like the one your dad was in. No one meant it to happen. It just happened. And his body was too badly damaged in the accident for his soul to stay in it anymore, and so he died.

"God does not spill milk. God did not bash the truck into your father’s car. Nowhere in scripture does it say, ’God is car accident’ or ’God is death.’ God is justice and kindness, mercy, and always--always--love. So if you want to know where God is in this or in anything, look for love."

Once, in conversation with a very nice Baptist classmate at the seminary, I admitted that if Drew hadn’t died I probably would never have become a minister.

"You see!" she responded brightly. "God knew what he was doing!" This, Kate says, is the sort of remark that, however common, makes me despair of Christianity’s ability to respond in any helpful or sensible way to the reality of death.

"Surely, God was not so urgently in need of Unitarian Universalist ministers that he needed to kill a father of four in order to make one?" I retorted in what was probably an unnecessarily icy voice.

Kate’s book, indeed Kate’s story, is a poignant reminder of the immeasurable importance of those regions. I am reminded as always of Amiel’s little saying, one of my favorites, that "Life is short, and we never have too much time to gladden the hearts of those traveling the dark journey with us. O, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!"

For what can be greater than kindness, those "little, unremembered acts of kindness" which, the poet Wordsworth reminds us, will ultimately be our only and true and lasting memorial?

In her time of grief for her beloved husband, Kate Braestrup found herself surrounded and upheld by such small acts: the casseroles brought to her door in the early hours and days of her grief, the presence of her friends, the loyalty and love of Drew’s fellow state troopers, the gratitude in large and small ways of a grateful community for a dedicated public servant.

When you come down to it, and ultimately all of us will, it is kindness that sustains any community, even a community such as this church. I cannot say it often enough. There is so much in our world to discourage and dishearten; but then we hear of or experience a simple act of kindness and our spirits are buoyed and our hearts are filled with hope. If there were only one prescription I could give you for how to create a community, it would simply be to be kind to one another. Be kind, because as someone has said, everybody carries a secret hurt. Be kind, because it costs nothing, and it means everything.

Naomi Shihab Nye writes that for one who has experienced sorrow,

. . .it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the
day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is you I have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Let us resolve, then, in the coming year, to be kind. Let us cultivate those desolate landscapes that lie between the regions of kindness until they bloom with the flowers of our care. Let us promise to be more loving and patient and more forgiving of our own and others’ shortcomings. Nothing is more important to building the beloved community of our dreams, I am convinced, than the simple act of being kind. For it is the true foundation of our faith, it is the sacred heart of our theology, it is the sure salvation of our souls’ despair. May we go forth in peace and love, and may kindness--not only the kindness we receive, but most importantly the kindness that we offer--make us whole again. So may it be.

Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock

Readings: "Kindness," by Naomi Shihab Nye; Kate Braestrup’s book is entitled Here If You Need Me: A True Story