Kindness is the language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see. –Mark Twain
Gentle Reader, as you know, I love stories. I embrace all stories as teaching stories. Yesterday I was reflecting up this season of giving and the following story emerged into my consciousness. As with many teaching stories this one is more than two thousand years old; closer to three thousand years old I think. Among other things this story is a story about kindness across the boundaries of faith traditions.
A young woman, not Jewish, married a Jewish man. This man and his family had left to find work in the Diaspora. The man’s brother died, his father died and then the man died. The two sisters-in-law and their Jewish mother-in-law survived, now alone. The elder woman decided to return to her home in Israel. Her two daughters-in-law offered to go with her. She refused their offer. Israel was her home, not theirs. If they went with her they would find themselves strangers in a strange land. Better for them if they remained where they were and remarried.
One daughter-in-law agreed. The other, however, persisted: ‘I will go with you and make Israel my home for you have become like a mother to me and I will not let you go alone.’
So they went together. The neighbors who had known the older woman years before could hardly recognize her. Time and grief had done their work. She was no longer the woman that they had known. The woman and her daughter-in-law experienced challenging times. They had no work, a bit of money, and meager possessions. There was a distant relative that opened his doors and heart to them.
He provided them food and gave the young woman a job. This young woman intrigued him. She was obviously not Jewish by birth but by adoption. She had also left all in a familiar land to be with her mother-in-law in a strange land. She was the embodiment of kindness and faithfulness.
The man came to love the young woman and finally asked her to marry him. She accepted. This is an old and wonder-full story.
The story found its way into the Hebrew Bible. The young woman was called Ruth. Her mother-in-law was called Naomi and the man was called Boaz.
Ruth gave her name to a biblical book and also added a word to the English language. The opposite is still in use – ‘Ruthless’. The word ‘Ruth’ means ‘Kindness.’
Ruth (Ruth 2:10) asks Boaz a crucial question: ‘Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you recognize me, a stranger?’
There are a few words that are called ‘contronyms.’ – two meanings; one the opposite of the other. For example, the English word ‘cleave’ means both ‘to split’ and ‘to join.’ In Hebrew the root n-k-r is a contronym. It means ‘to recognize’ and it also means ‘to be a stranger’ – someone who is not recognized.
Ruth uses it in both senses in the same sentence: ‘I am a stranger; why have you treated me like a friend?’ A single Hebrew word spans the continuum of human interaction between recognition and estrangement, compassion and indifference.
The question posed by the Book of Ruth is: ‘Do we, or do we not, recognize our common humanity across cultural and religious divides?’
Ruth’s story is about people whose kindness transcends difference. Perhaps the subtitle of the Book of Ruth would be ‘The Kindness of Strangers!’
The consequences were immense: The marriage – Ruth-Boaz – to which that kindness led, three generations later, to King David. For Jews, this will one day lead to the Messiah to come; for Christians this led to the Messiah who came.
Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in giving creates love. –Lao Tz
Searcher-Seeker 