Make no mistake: loss is not a gift. What was lost was a gift, sometimes one that wasn’t appreciated fully until it was lost, which only adds to the anguish.

Every loss is unique to the mourner, and yet the experience of loss is an inevitable part of life in this world.

Lent is a season to acknowledge it as real, to allow grief and regret to wrack us and ultimately, hopefully, to grow in appreciation for all we have been given, whether we still possess it or not. Loss leads easily to fear and defensiveness, but the recognition of the universality of loss can soften our hearts and make healers of the healed.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept
him alive.

Before you know kindness as
the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as
the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that
makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you
everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

 — Naomi Shihab Nye