Sunday 22nd March - Lent 5 - Tiny Changes

 BE KIND, TO OTHERS AND TO YOURSELF

I never really did like 'The Water Babies' by Charles Kingsley. I read it when I went to stay with my grandmother as there weren't many children's books on her shelves, and the ones she had were all from her  own youth (She was born in the 1890s and educated by her much older sisters at home). 

So I read Hilaire Bellocc's 'Cautionary Tales', Rudyard Kipling's 'Jungle Book,', 'The Just-so Stories, 'Stalky and Co', and the dreadful, terrifying 'Strewelpater' which still gives me nightmares.And Charles Kingley's 'Water Babies'. a deeply moral story about Tom who became a waterbaby.

I've always remembered the two ladies, Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby who is loving and kind, and the opposite of the rather frightening Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid who teaches Tom to be good.

This is, of course, Charles Kingsley's rephrasing of the second part of Jesus's summary of the Ten Commandments;

.... to love God with all your mind, body and soul

... to love your neighbour as yourself.

I think in years gone by, people tended to focus too much on 'loving your neighbour', and that denying yourself was good for you.

Now, perhaps, things might have swung too much the other way, 'love yourself' and you should let yourself have anything you want.

Oh the 'Happy Medium'; so difficult to manage in real life! 

I tripped across this poem which makes it all so simple;

 

Small Kindnesses

• 
• 
• 
• 

Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

St Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians Chapter 6 verse 19 says

You surely know that your body is a temple where the Holy Spirit lives. The Spirit is in you and is a gift from God. You are no longer your own.

The last verse of this poem are surely a reference to this?

So, my tiny change this week is to be sure that I make an effort to do the small kindnesses to the people that I meet.