The universal language of kindness

The scratching post

“Kindness is a language we all understand
Even the blind can see it

and the deaf can hear it.” Mother Theresa

And animals understand it.

Kindness is so needed, and sometimes seems so understocked in the world’s inventory. Yet each of us has the ability to multiply the supply!

I hope this simple example doesn’t sound too trivial.

I recently took my cat to have his claws clipped. Although he tries to cooperate and uses his scratching post regularly, sometimes when his claws grow out, he forgets and stretches them on the carpet. After this happens a couple of times, he goes to Victoria for a clipping.

The grooming room at the back of her house can be a cacophony – clippers buzzing, a small pooch yipping for attention, her shop vac inhaling clippings from the floor.

Buster clung to the sides of his carrier defying gravity as I tried to pour him onto the grooming table. So I released the knobs that allow you to separate the top from the bottom of the carrier and picked him up.

We stepped back as Victoria vacuumed poodle fur from the floor. Clinging to me like Velcro, Buster wasn’t about to let go of his one security in that room.

"Oh, you don't have to put him down," she said. Victoria finished her vacuuming, came right over to the frightened feline, gently lifted each paw from my jacket and clipped his nails. In 30 seconds he was done, and back inside what he considered the safety of his carrier.

Afterwards I thought a lot about her kindness to an infrequent cat client. Kindness comes from the heart. In giving kindness, we don’t lose anything; we increase the world’s inventory and improve our own.

I believe God put kindness into each of us as an essential ingredient of our character.

Yet for some of us, acting on our caring seems to come more naturally than to others. Sometimes harsh circumstances bury individual goodness for awhile, maybe for years. But it is God’s design for mankind to express goodness and caring. And being the recipient of thoughtfulness serves to remind us that that’s our nature too.

This, I think, is the secret of kindness:

We see eye to eye and know as we are known,
reciprocate kindness and work wisely,
in proportion as we love.
Mary Baker Eddy

Not in proportion as we are loved, but in proportion as we give love to our world. When we need help, a loving God shows us how to discover this love and share it.