At the deepest level of reality

some intimate kindness holds sway

Our son, Graham, thirty years ago. Graham and Whitney are expecting their first child in a matter of weeks.

I find myself regularly returning to the reflections of John O’Donohue, the late Irish poet and priest, for insights that both reassure me and ring true at the deepest level. The following seems especially healing for our time:

“There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitably reveals itself. ... Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway.” 

John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

“Deep down in things.” As if there is some essential goodness or inherent divinity at the core all of creation, even in you and in me, something permanent and abiding. We frequently do not recognize or turn our hearts to this enduring, “intimate kindness” that “holds sway” at the center of life. But it’s there, the poet seems to say: an indelible presence and persistent influence that we cannot eradicate or harm.

It reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “God’s Grandeur,” in which the poet laments that human beings have trampled and abused creation:

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

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It’s a reminder of how we’ve not only abused creation but also lost touch with its generous, life-giving spirit. Yet, the poet continues:

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And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

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“The dearest freshness deep down things.” So beautiful, pointing to an ineffable reality that strikes a ring of truth in the soul. There is in us an inviolable spirit, an incorruptible essence; and for all of our misguided ways, it keeps coming back for us, even emerging within us.

Thomas Merton speaks of this untouchable, unbreakable, and eternally persistent life and light, a diamond at the center of everyone. No matter what we do, we cannot damage or deface it:

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will.”

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

During this time in which American politics, culture, and society sometimes seem so rife with violence, brutality, chaos, and corruption, I am drawn again to this gentle but powerful truth that is beyond words, a truth that only poets and mystics seem able to express — that “at the deepest level of reality,” at the deepest level of our being, “some intimate kindness holds sway” — that something as seemingly fragile as kindness is actually the most powerful and inviolable force of all.

We might yet destroy ourselves and our world, but something beautiful will remain, something that is within us now, something to which we can yet return, even today.

Hopkins’ poem concludes with a kind of sigh of ecstasy, joy, and relief. And reading it now, we might feel its promise and reality deep down in ourselves:

And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

The unspeakable revelation is that this generous spirit of kindness is not only deep down within us, it is also brooding over us, feeding and nurturing us, while it shields us with joyous, bright wings. If only we could open ourselves more fully to this reality, to this, our true life.

As John O’Donohue says in the opening quotation, “The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitably reveals itself” at the deepest levels of reality.

Although the daily news sometimes suggests otherwise, I’m going out into my life today, trusting in what my soul says is true: that there is an inherent kindness deep down in things (even in me), it “holds sway,” it presides everywhere, and it is eternal.

Religious or spiritual musings like these can feel hopelessly abstract and esoteric, which is why the Dalai Lama offers a refreshing simplification, when he says,

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

H. H. the 14^th Dalai Lama

Something beautiful, deep down in all of us.