Most of us would like to live in a kinder country. The more difficult question is whether we are willing to take responsibility for becoming kinder people, especially when we believe the other side ought to go first.
I understand the temptation to wait. An apology would be welcome. A little humility from the person doing the shouting would help. But while we wait for someone else to improve, we can become comfortable with our own resentment.
Kyle Ogden
Religious communities have something important to offer here. We know the language of loving our neighbors. Our public life needs more evidence that we intend to practice it.
In the story of the Good Samaritan, the person who acts mercifully crosses a boundary others might have considered sufficient reason to keep walking. He allows another person’s suffering to interrupt his plans. His compassion costs him something.
That is a demanding understanding of neighborliness. It asks what we are prepared to do when another person’s dignity becomes our responsibility.
We encounter that question in ordinary places. Someone makes a cruel remark about a colleague. A newcomer is treated with suspicion. A public argument turns a whole group of people into a caricature. We have a choice about whether to join in, remain silent or intervene.
Kindness can require a clear objection. It can mean standing beside someone being mistreated, telling the truth when it would be easier to avoid trouble or giving a person a fair hearing when everyone around us already has decided.
“We can hold convictions firmly and still accept responsibility for how we express them.”
We can hold convictions firmly and still accept responsibility for how we express them. Indeed, the strength of our convictions should make us more attentive to their consequences for other people.
At Thanks-Giving Square in Dallas, we are trying to give that responsibility a practical expression. North Texas Kindness Week, Nov. 7–14, invites schools, workplaces, congregations and families to choose meaningful ways to practice kindness together.
Eight school districts and three private schools representing 213,390 students have committed to participating. With KERA public broadcasting as our Official Kindness Week Educational Partner, we have prepared curricula for elementary, junior high and high school students.
Consider what it means to make kindness part of a child’s education. Students can practice including someone who feels alone, speaking respectfully across a disagreement and noticing when another person needs help. Adults, of course, will need to provide some convincing examples.
I include myself in that assignment.
There is civic value in that kind of attention. It becomes harder to dismiss a person once we have heard something real about their life.
“It becomes harder to dismiss a person once we have heard something real about their life.”
For congregations anywhere, the invitation travels easily. Ask whose voices are missing from your conversations. Share a meal with neighbors beyond your membership. Recognize workers whose service makes your community possible. Choose an undertaking that requires a relationship, and return after the special week has ended.
Public kindness also asks us to consider the decisions our institutions make. Who receives a welcome? Whose concerns receive a hearing? How do we treat people with little power to object? Those questions belong in boardrooms and city halls as surely as they belong in houses of worship.
Thanks-Giving Square is a shared sacred space and a civic movement welcoming people of every belief and background. We believe respect, civility, kindness and gratitude can become habits that strengthen our common life.
That will take practice. It will take people willing to risk an unwelcome overture and leaders willing to model what they ask of others.
At KINDTX.org, our pledge offers a starting point: Treat people with dignity, use words that build, notice opportunities to help and practice gratitude.
The promise becomes meaningful when somebody acts on it.
Great cities are defined not only by what they build, but by how people live together. The same is true of a country.
We have an opportunity to begin with the person in front of us. Somebody has to go first.
Kyle Ogden serves as president of the Thanks-Giving Foundation, which owns and operates Thanks-Giving Square in downtown Dallas.