Personas of the imagination 4 — kindness — Abbot John

It was my prayer partner Margery who alerted me to the emerging theme of kindness in The Hawk and the Dove books, thirty years ago when the first volumes in the series were written. She read the first two volumes, in which Brother John came onto the stage as the infirmary assistant, and said of him, thoughtfully, "John was kind, wasn't he?" And I realised that, yes, I supposed he was. That set me off thinking about it, and sowed the seed for articulating the gospel imperative of kindness in the character of John Hazell, who became abbot of St Alcuins after the death of Father Peregrine.

The unfolding narrative proposes that kindness expresses the heart of God, and is transformative in the path of discipleship. Kindness is what enables people to get up and start again, allows them to feel heard and understood and develop moral strength. Kindness more than severity shapes and grows disciples. It needs boundaries and backbone, of course. John, both as infirmarian and abbot, challenges and rebukes his brethren when necessary; his natural and firm exercise of authority forms the framework within which kindness is lived out. Particularly in The Long Fall, when he has to manage the care of his sick and disabled abbot, John has to counter the turmoil and chaos into which Peregrine is thrown, by requiring something of him as well as supporting him. But though he is honest and direct, he is always kind.

The novels where William's story takes centre stage explore the cost of kindness, and the difficulty of espousing kindness as a principle within the unyielding structures of church discipline. Sometimes a man has to choose between ecclesiastical regulation and the practise of kindness, and where the road forks John always chooses kindness. The novels propose that this is the risk and the cost of love, and you can see it in the life of Jesus in his encounters with the Pharisees and Temple authorities:

This is what life and responsibility do to you, he thought; this is the terrible power of human love. It dissolves all certainty. You make adjustments and modifications. Love and religion are uneasy bedfellows, over time. It’s hard to forget the screams of the man you burn at the stake. The act may have been accomplished in all righteousness, but you still lie awake at night, remembering the livid agony. So here he stood, the guilty accomplice of kindness.

In the eighth book of the series The Beautiful Thread (from which the above quotation is also taken), Abbot John offers his brethren a Chapter address about kindness:

There was this nook out of the wind’s way, tucked between the bellying out of the octagonal chapter house and the buttressed wall of the main body of the church. Here William sat on the tufting grass, smelling the fragrance of lavender, sage and rosemary growing there. Herbs were planted everywhere at St Alcuins – because they were useful and beautiful, healing and fragrant, low maintenance and extremely easy to grow. Absently, he stretched out his hand and rubbed the leaves of the lavender . . . the rosemary . . . breathing in the clean, wholesome scent. 

Screened from view in this discreet cleft, he listened to Father Gilbert reading the chapter of the Rule set for today, his voice carrying out through the small door that this morning stood wide open, propped back with a rock. 

‘“Behold, here I am”,’ Benedict quoted Psalm thirty-three. And Father Gilbert concluded the portion set: ‘“Behold, in His loving kindness the Lord shows us the way of life.”’

William was by now familiar with the effect the place had on him, and experienced without surprise the curious reaching forth, the yearning hunger that called from the very depths of his viscera to the unknown blue mystery of the infinite. Amen, his soul in silence saluted the words.

And then, what he wanted to hear: Abbot John addressed the sons of his house.

‘In loving kindness, the Lord shows us the way of life. My brothers, opposing contrasts are often used to guide us. One such is perfecta caritas foras mittit timorem – perfect love casts out fear. What an interesting opposition. At first thought we incline to perceive hatred as opposed to love. Yet often hatred turns out to be wounded or distorted love, the result of abuse and rejection. It’s a steep task, turning hatred to love, certainly – but the true opposition is fear.  You cannot love where you fear – you cannot. Fear is inherently self-concerned, where love of its nature looks outwards, self-forgetful. Fear wants to get away where love wants to connect. 

‘Thinking of kindness, then, of loving kindness – I asked myself, for our guidance, the deepening of our wisdom – what is the opposite of kindness. The first thing that springs to mind is cruelty, naturally enough. Or meanness – mean-spiritedness, maybe. But cruelty . . . well . . . it is, you might say, a secondary thing. A fruit, not a root. The same with meanness. They are what we see. They are the behaviour, not the attitude.

‘Tentatively, I want to propose to you, the root attitude in opposition to loving kindness is scorn – contempt.

‘Kindness sees vulnerability, sees someone at a loss or disadvantage, and reaches out to shelter, to help. Kindness sees where someone is hurt or angry, and wants to listen, to understand; if it may be, to heal.

‘Scorn sees the same things and sneers. Scorn turns away where kindness turns towards. Contempt sees someone struggling or out of their depth, and blames them. Contempt sees someone angry, smarting under an injustice perhaps, and punishes them. Above all, kindness draws people together into community, where scornful contempt isolates and divides them, keeps them forever apart.

‘Christ was of no account, once. He was the child of a poor woman, born in shame, homeless. He was a prisoner brought to stand and answer for his words – he who had said “Tear down this temple and in three days I will build it again.” He, the healer, nailed to the cross, attracted derision – “Messiah? Save yourself!”  

‘He died. But when he rose again, he didn’t come back with a list drawn up of his enemies. Even in dying, what he said was “Father, forgive them – they don’t know what they’re doing.” He understood, you see. Even then.

There’s a fair amount about scorn in the gospels. I’m thinking of the older brother of the prodigal, of the Pharisee and the republican, of Simon the Pharisee and the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus, among others. We identify hypocrisy as the sin Jesus spoke out against – but just like cruelty, hypocrisy is a secondary thing. Hypocrisy, like cruelty, proceeds from contempt. The Pharisee held the publican in absolute contempt – as so did the older brother regard the returning prodigal. He scorned him. And Simon the Pharisee looked down on the woman of ill repute; she was beneath him. Or so he thought. He made the mistake of expecting Jesus would look at her in the same way. Contempt belittles people, sees them as nothing, as insignificant, where kindness restores dignity, helps people grow.

‘There’s something going on here about the predilection for always being right that afflicts religious people. Wanting to be right and feeling guilty and ashamed when we get things wrong. Anxious to be in the right, we hold in utter contempt those who fail, who fall below the standards we have set. We make them into a ladder we climb, thinking to elevate ourselves. But, in heaven’s name – doesn’t everybody make mistakes? Isn’t that how we learn? Should we not shelter our fallen brothers with kindness? Should we not overlook their follies and lift them up gently when they stumble? Guilt, shame, contempt – this becomes a morass of rancour feeding off itself. It’s a knot you can untangle only with kindness.

‘Kindness. Such a homely, ordinary thing at first glance. But so majestic, so spacious; the thumbprint of a generous God. “In loving kindness, the Lord shows us the way of life.”’ 


Later in the same book, John gets into deep water himself, and again has to address his community in Chapter:

Tom raised his head and looked across the room at his abbot, concern in his face. This didn’t sound too good. But John, his hands held loosely in his lap within the big sleeves of his habit, sitting quietly straight, did not meet anyone’s gaze. His eyes seemed to see nothing.

‘And I prayed, “Help me, Jesus,” as I so often do. It’s never let me down, you see, that prayer; never once. “Oh, help me, Jesus.”

‘And what came to mind was two thoughts that have threaded through the last few weeks, for one reason and another. I’m sorry; I’m not putting this well, am I? Anyway: the first is, that whatever’s going on in my own life – whether my faith is soaring and I’m overflowing with inspiration, or whether I’m in despair; whether others look up to me or I am disregarded, of no account – whatever – I have the option to be kind. It’s a small thing, you would think, would you not, to be kind? Well, it is in the sense that you don’t have to be rich or important, or very bright, to be kind. Even a little child can be kind. Even a dog. But it’s no small thing to be on the receiving end of kindness. And the withholding of simple kindness is a root of bitterness and the seed of war; it causes the most terrible suffering. To look without compassion on another’s life; to be unkind. Making the choice to be kind prays “Thy kingdom come,” even when you feel past praying and past caring. 

‘Kindness, I have found, for all it is small and ordinary, has a way of leading me out of safe territory. There’s nothing like kindness for compromising righteousness and getting my religion and propriety all in a muddled knot. Kindness makes hay of many plans. But it is, I have come to believe, the currency of Christ’s kingdom, the stuff out of which new hope can be made. Where we push a sprig of it into the earth in whatever place we are, life springs anew. 

‘So when all light is gone and the horrible sense of pointlessness overwhelms me, showing me my own inadequacy, I can at least make the choice to be kind; and that’s my prayer, my creed, my way of anchoring myself to Christ. 

‘And the other thing – it caught my attention when someone said it to me a few days ago – is about offering the gift of happiness. That having the power to make someone happy might be seen almost as a charism. Like working miracles. Like healing. 

‘In once sense, of course, you cannot make anybody happy. Each of us is responsible for developing contentment and gratitude, appreciation, as a state of mind. Happiness – we all know this – is not a destination to be reached or a goal to be achieved; it’s the choice you make, the path you tread, the attitude you embrace. And that’s no small thing, either. Happy people make the world happy, are good to be around, lift others up. Cheerfulness; it’s a kingdom thing: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always.’

‘But a friendly word, reaching out to include someone, knowing their taste in food and offering a nibble of something they enjoy – even leaving them in peace, sometimes; there are so many ways to offer ordinary every gifts of happiness.

‘So I thought, between choosing kindness and offering happiness, I could find enough to be going on with, a ladder up out of inadequacy and despair. It didn’t matter what I’d been or done, or who I was or who cared, who saw or who knew. I could still do it. The thing is, when I feel really low, vision and inspiration are beyond me. But, you know, even when almost everything seems too much to manage, perhaps I can at least try to be kind. And I thought, that could give some meaning, something worthwhile, even to the most impoverished life. Even to mine. Sort of life compost, kindness and the giving of happiness could be; something in which faith and meaning could potentially thrive. It is only a small thing – I understand that. But sometimes I have to hope it will be enough.’

His friend sounded bleak and enduring, William thought, as he concluded with complete absence of élan: ‘There’s no big scholarship there, no expositions or dissertations or any of that. It just seemed useful to me; and so I thought it might be to you, as well. Anyway, let’s keep silence a moment.’

Abbot John also, in the same book, has to speak at a nuptial Mass:

‘Hannah, Gervase, this mass is celebrated in honour of your nuptials, and really these words are not for everyone else but for you.

‘Not long ago, a friend commented to me that the idea of love baffled him at times. There were days when he felt an upwelling of affection towards his wife – delight in her – and others when, frankly, he wished she’d leave him in peace and he found her profoundly irritating. Here and there he came across fellow human beings whom he esteemed and with whom he felt a sense of fellowship, harmony. But not many. Mostly he preferred to go his own way and let everyone else go theirs. And guilt stirred in his soul, because he loved little, loved few – sometimes stopped loving even the one he had vowed and pledged to love, to have and to hold. And yet, he took seriously the command of Christ – to love and go on loving, to make that the mark of his discipleship and the work of his life.

‘And my friend – humbly, neither cocksure nor evading the issue – put it to me that though he could not always find it within himself to love, he thought he could try to be kind. He said, in the course of his life he had been loved but rarely; and because of this, he valued with real gratitude those who had treated him with kindness. He said, sometimes he found it hard to tell whether someone actually loved him – cared for him with genuine friendship – and when they were merely being kind to him. So, knowing himself to be a shrewd judge of men, he concluded love and kindness must be so extremely similar that the division between them is porous – where one ends and the other begins cannot readily be detected. He said this gave him hope; since, though love felt so often remote and mysterious, he knew how to be kind. Because, he said, everyone knows what kindness is. It means giving the other person the benefit of the doubt; including them, not cold-shouldering them; offering a smile and a cheerful greeting; making them a hot drink when they’re tired and cold at the day’s end; overlooking their shortcomings and their harmless – but intensely annoying – little mannerisms. It means giving them another chance. My friend also mentioned that it means trying not to swear at them too often, and forbearing from actually hitting them, however much you want to. He doesn’t always find it easy to get on with his fellow man, or his wife – as you can tell.

‘I thought – Gervase, Hannah – you might find it useful to hear about that conversation I had with my friend. Though today I hope you feel you are head over heels in love and will never be anything else, well, these vows are for a lifetime. I sincerely hope that means a substantial number of years for both of you. And maybe even today, you may be tired, you may feel somewhat strained; this is a big occasion, and family events always carry many resonances. Not all of them are easy.

‘So I thought I’d put my companion’s musings before you – that even when he runs out of love, forgets what love is, finds love impossibly difficult, he knows what kindness is; love’s humble, less exalted, identical twin.

‘God bless you in your life together. May you be happy, may you know bliss, may you be fruitful and content. And may you always at least try to be kind to one another – remembering that one of the most everyday habits of kindness is the willingness to try to understand, to forgive and begin again.’

In The Beautiful Thread in particular, kindness is explored as a spiritual path, along with the difficulties of its inevitable choices to compromise, as well as the casual cruelty and equally destructive unbending severity with which it contrasts. The story ends with William praying for Abbot John:

‘He asked me if I had a rosary,’ said her husband: ‘and I said no. Well – there’s yours, but I no longer have one of my own. So he took his off and gave it to me, asking me to pray for him; that Our Lady’s faithfulness to the call of God on her life would pass into his heart forever. That the steadfast perseverance of the Lord Jesus would keep his feet in the path of salvation. That the practical soul of St Benedict would keep watch over him. That his fingers would find the thread of life and loving kindness, and never let go. So that’s what I was doing.’