This past Sunday, we continued our Spiritual Maturity series with something a little different – a hands-on exercise focusing on kindness, courtesy of the Anishinaabe Sweetgrass teaching.

Sweetgrass, we learned, is sometimes called kindness medicine. It’s a plant used in ceremony and teaching, a gift from the Creator that helps people remember how to live with grace for one another. As braids of sweetgrass were passed through the congregation, the community touched it, smelled its sweet vanilla-like fragrance and noted its two-sided nature – rough and smooth.

Scott Baker invited us to listen to this Indigenous teaching alongside the first chapter of Genesis, where God calls creation “good” (tov) — light, land, plants, creatures, and finally humankind, described as very good (tov tov). That phrase — very good — became a kind of heartbeat for the morning. Scott reminded us that our goodness is not something we earn or lose; it’s something God spoke into being at creation.

As Scott noted, most of us spend a lot of time thinking about our rough sides: the traits we wish we could hide or fix. To bring that reality home a bit more, everyone took part in an exercise using “Sweetgrass Cards.” On one side of a card was a harsh or judgmental word — lazy, bossy, disorganized, controlling. On the other side was a gentler truth: relaxed, leader, spontaneous, consistent.

We stood on the word that felt familiar and then flipped the card to read its opposite aloud:

“Sometimes I think I’m careless, but really I’m brave.”
“Sometimes I think I’m stubborn, but really I’m confident.”
“Sometimes I think I’m lazy, but really I’m relaxed.”

And then we did it again — this time thinking of someone else. It was a quiet, transformative moment: a chance to shift from judgment to compassion, from criticism to curiosity.

The heart of the message was simple enough: we all have rough sides and shiny sides and to be mature in kindness means to actively choose to see — and name — the shiny side, both in ourselves and in others.

This doesn’t mean we ignore our flaws or are justified in our rough sided-ness. We can’t just gloss over those hard parts. Instead, it’s a challenge to look through the lens of tov, of original goodness, and asking what gift or strength might be hiding beneath a behaviour we find frustrating and doing the hard work of cultivating that smooth side of our person – such that we begin to reflect kindness and grace both toward others and toward ourselves.

Because honestly, there’s already enough self-flagellation in the church. I’m not suggesting we all lean into some Joel-Osteen-esque brand of positivity that pretends everything is fine or denies the reality of sin and struggle. But somewhere in our theology and our self-understanding, we need to make space for the truth that goodness is still very much a part of us — that the image of God has not been erased, only sometimes marred and obscured.

If all we’re after is behaviour modification, then I think focusing on how sinful, selfish, or “decrepit” we are might be sufficient. Fear and shame can motivate short-term change. But if what we actually long for is transformation — to be shaped into the likeness of Jesus himself — then I think the Anishnaabe challenge on kindness is bang on – we have to begin from belovedness.

The work of kindness, toward ourselves and others, begins with the conviction that God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. When we start from that truth, we can live into it — letting grace smooth the rough sides, and letting kindness become the medicine that helps us remember who we already are.

So thanks to Scott, and the Anishnaabe for the teaching, as difficult as it may have be for us to implement it moving forward and if you carry one thing from this week, let it be this:

God saw all that He had made — and it was very good.
See that goodness in yourself.
See it in others.
And let kindness be the medicine that helps you remember and return to this truth over and over again.