I don't know what your politics are. I don't even know what politics are. Sniffing out your kindness is what's important.
What do dog noses have that humans don't? They possess up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses, compared to about six million in us. And the part of a dog's brain that is devoted to analyzing smells is about 40 times greater than ours. -from The Phoenix Veterinary Center.
I can smell kindness even when it's buried deep inside of you.
When my family takes me for an exotic walk (a new trail discovered on Google Maps or, Dad's favorite, paper maps) I have a lot of energy for a fourteen year old dog because I'm discovering an avalanche of new smells and the stories they tell.
We all had a good time on last Saturday's exotic walk in Richmond, VT. However, ticks were discovered on the way home. After my family spent time checking, washing and worrying we all settled in for a cozy evening at home. I can still smell compassion even through dark periods of disease threats.
Here's a poem written by Yitzi Gittelsohn relevant to the theme of compassion:
Each curse is a blessing waiting to be transformed
Take the peach tree
Cursed by blight
Producing but a few wrinkled hard fruit
Year after year
But somehow, in spite of its curse
It persists
Year after year
Managing a few beautiful blossoms
A few fruits all the more sweet
For the fact they came from darkness, from dis-ease
Take the words
Cursed by ill-will
That came from my mouth last night
Like the fruit of my inner photosynthesis
Yet the light must have sat too long inside me
Fermenting into something foul and musty
So when they came forth into the world as the fruit of speech
They tasted stale on my tongue, made my mouth dry, parched for some water to cleanse it
Spit those cursed words out, man
Find a clean spring, though all you see is mud
Let the harsh cold liquid burn your poisoned throat
And drip down into your blackened heart
Feel the agent of pure sight, of clarity
Painfully transform your stewing soul into a vessel for love
Bit by bit
Season by season
Year after year
Persist like the cursed peach tree
And wrestle out a few beautiful blossoms
A few wrinkled fruits
For the whole admiring world to see
Yes, indeed each curse is a blessing waiting to be transformed
Like a fallen angel who flaps its wings and sings, “I was holy, I was high!”
And in doing so causes earthquakes, causes tidal waves
Like a fallen angel who is tired, scared, and in a strange land
Who has nothing left to do but to curl up like a baby and ask the great earth it has fallen on to hold it, comfort it, love it
Like a fallen angel who, in its sweet repose after a long hard night, dreams not that it is lifted back to its lofty heights
But that God Herself bends down
To kiss that sleeping fallen angel goodnight
And now, upon waking, remembering that all is one, the angel sees the most brilliant sunrise
And though it has not moved, not budged one inch
Like the cursed peach tree
Like me and you in our stewing
It now sees the blessing of this strange land it has fallen to
It now sees it’s still an angel and it’s in a new sort of heaven:
A peculiar heaven where every curse, like a fallen angel,
Is a blessing waiting to be transformed