Seeker

An act of kindness can be something simple, like an act of courtesy. This morning I went on an adventure. Well, it felt adventurous. I entered a supermarket to do some shopping for the first time since December. It was a relief to find I'd not forgotten the behaviour protocols for Covid risk reduction. I'm grateful that other masked early morning shoppers were careful to observe the 2-metre apart distance rule. How strange that the kindess of courtesy now includes keeping physically distanced from other people. The highlight of today's supermarket trip was provided by the young man working the checkout till. The staff in that particular place are always courteous, but he seemed especially so, going the extra mile in what he said to me and how he looked at me. Even though he was masked, the smile on his face was obvious by his eyes. I give him full marks for courtesy, because today his courteous behaviour felt like a kindness, a lovely gift just for me. That young man's ...

Can dogs be kind? In my Lent series on the theme of kindness, I thought of entitling this post, 'Kindness of Dogs'. I decided that might be an anthropomorphic step too far. My experience of dogs is that they seem to be kinder than cats. If you are a cat lover you may disagree. I think that in a sense dogs can be kind. There are so many examples of loyal dogs doing good things for their owners, being faithful companions. I called this post 'Kindness through dogs' because people can find kindness through dogs, even if that was not the dogs altruistic intention. Going back to my childhood, when I felt miserable there was always comfort to be found in stroking the family dog. Like most dogs our mongrel was sensitive to human moods or sickness. When our children were growing up, our pet labrador was there for any of us not feeling our best. Kindness can be spread through posting images of dogs on social media. During lockdown I have enjoyed seeing photos and videos of the do...

  During Lent, I've decided to post as often as I can about kindness. (See my post of yesterday, Ash Wednesday 2021 .) So today I'm starting with an early memory of how someone was kind to me. It involved plums and plum stones. I was about 4 years old and attending a kindergarten school. Usually I went home for lunch. The day of my plum stone memory was, I believe, the first day that I had lunch at school. It was a hot meal cooked in the school kitchen. The dessert that day was stewed plums. I ate one. It tasted good, but it contained the plum seed, hard as stone. What was I supposed to do with the plum stone? At home I'd been taught to spit the plum stone into my spoon and place the stone on the rim of the pudding bowl. My immediate problem on that 1st day of staying for school lunch was that the school bowls had no rims. My longer term problem was that I was then a rather shy little girl. I didn't dare ask what I should do with the stone. I knew I shouldn't put it...

  Ash Wednesday feels very different this year. In the UK we are several weeks into another lockdown due to Covid and expect several weeks more. Last year, just before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, someone asked me if I planned to give anything up for Lent. My answer was that I hadn't yet decided, but had a feeling that "something would emerge". I didn't in 2020 make any decision about giving something up. In the end, at the start of the 4th week of Lent our 1st lockdown began and that included closing all public worship where people physically gathered together. So what I eventually gave up was 'going to church' for the rest of Lent and many weeks afterwards. I  didn't give up church, just the regular habit of going to a church building to worship with others - at least temporarily. Church is a community of Christian believers. Those local communities have continued to worship, pray and care for others throughout the pandemic in all sorts of cr...

I am not a cat lover, partly because of a slight allergy to them, especially the long-haired variety. That doesn't stop me admiring their beauty or their easy ability to completely relax. Many years ago, I heard a Christian speaker refer to a 'pussy cat experience' as a way to describe relaxing into the sabbath rest of God. Jesus said, "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11: 28) The cat in the photo at the head of this post, seems truly at rest. I love D.H. Lawrence's poem called 'Pax' which uses the analogy of a sleeping cat in relation to the experience of being at home with 'the living God'. PAX All that matters is to be at one with the living God to be a creature in the house of the God of Life. Like a cat asleep on a chair at peace, in peace and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress, at home, at home in the house of the living, sleeping on the hearth, and ...

I really don't like cold weather and today is bitterly cold. Cold suits some people, but not others, certainly not me. Some flowering plants can be at their best in winter. One example of this is the humble snowdrop.   To see snowdrops gives me hope that spring is coming. In the words of the late Captain Sir Tom Moore , they inspire me in lockdown to keep putting one foot in front of another, to keep going, in the hope that “tomorrow will be a good day”. Snowdrops are also called ‘Candlemas Bells’ because they often flower at the feast of ‘Candlemas’ (2 February). If you don’t know what that feast is about take a look at the post Candlemas 2018 . In our garden the earliest green shoots of snowdrops appeared just after Christmas. They were at their best on 2 February, but are still flowering now. Towards the end of the dark cold winter, snowdrops are a sign of more new life to come when spring really gets going. For many months, they hide under the earth, beneath the dead leaves in...