THE CUP OF KINDNESS

One of my earliest memories was the day of the week we heard the whistle of the CPR train which signaled the day of the week Canada Post would drop the mail off at our small country town. My father would have his team of horses ready for the ten mile drive to Orion. After stopping at the post office for the mail he would go to the small store and present a list of items mother had handed him which might include a tin of baking powder, oil for the coal oil lamp or perhaps a spool of thread. Most food items for our household were grown in Mother’s large garden. Neighbours exchanged local news at the store or while waiting in line at the post office to pick up the mail. My oldest brother hooked together the wire on the fences and the barbed wire telephone came into being. Each household was given a code of short and long ring sounds and were asked not to pick up unless it was their signal. If too many picked up just to listen the voices grew dim.

Our mail included the weekly Free Press Prairie Farmer, and once a month the Reader Digest. After the milking chores the coal oil lamp was lit and my father read the Digest throughout the night. The closest library was 65 miles away in Medicine Hat. Now we can subscribe to many magazines and books that are delivered right to our door by Canada Post. One of the magazines I enjoy is “The Open Road” from Bracebridge, Ontario. Among its inspirational items in one by Harvey Green who lives in Kailua, Hawaii, with his wife and family and writes and lectures on spiritual healing. In all walks of life he asks his readers to seize every opportunity to “Just be kind, one to another. So simple is this perspective that it may seem unworthy of the place of importance given. If it were more complex it would fail in its inherent ability to be so basic to all things. From compassion will inevitably flow the Christ life. We would often prefer life would be more complicated than this so we could justify our own neglect. This however, is not the case and in His infinite mercy, God has placed the meaning of life in the earth within easy reach of us all. In all things, above all things, just be kind, one to another. From us ‘rivers of living water’ will flow from each of us.” Wars would certainly cease and compassion be our way of life. Thanks Harvey for a small but relevant sermon. Website: http://www.spiritjournalhawaii.com/.