kindness of strangers
he who comes for us all
Walking under the devastated trees the afternoon after a huge storm, their fresh scattered blossoms and leaves all over the pavement and all over the road as though some glorious festival has been by, I passed an elderly man walking with a stick, painfully it seemed, his upper body listing forward. As we drew near each other I wondered how bitter it might feel to be passed, without effort, by a member of what he perhaps thinks of as the fairer or even the weaker sex. He turned his turtle head and I said, Hi. On the instant a warm gleaming coal awoke deep in his eye, he had beautiful, unusually large, well-spaced brown eyes, and as I passed him I noticed his posture had changed. He was walking almost upright and seemed struck by pride in himself, joy in life, something of that sort I could see it in his gait. I thought: it’s crushing the way we treat our own elders. I thought: The meaning of life is love, what else can it be. I don’t understand why people keep asking. And as I flung the gorgeously aged garden tools someone had left in a pile of trash beside the road into the back of my ute, disturbing the spider who lives there on her quivering and much-travelled web, and slung myself behind the steering wheel and roared off I was crying out in my heart: I say this every day of my life, I will keep saying it til I die: we need to be kinder to one another.
13 comments on “he who comes for us all”
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Beautifully expressed.
So beautifully expressed. Thanks for your continued sharing.
like, duh
Absolutely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xuFYWprXCQ
Yes, yes and yes. Also, you’ve reminded me of the well-travelled spider under the bonnet of my car, who was ignominiously stomped on by a car yard salesman after it had crawled on to his hand and he’d shaken it to the ground. I lamented him squishing it in no uncertain terms. He apologised more than once. People can be so thoughtless. I hope the trees will recover after the storm. xox
They will. Cos we’ll keep sending it. Evolution surely will out.
Think Scott Morrison julie bishop and Abbott didn’t get that memo!
Thank you so much for reading, Gary.
Cathoel – you are a treasure! So often you speak out what is deep in my heart and in my murmurings to others. I have been to two funerals this week and at each the message was the same… they embodied kindness and love and we are all the richer for having known them. This is what matters. Like you say, how can it be anything else xx
Oh, Janet. That is so hard. Two funerals in one week. It is I imagine what must be one of the hardest among so many hard things in what invasion & dispossession & continuing disrespect inflicts on our Indigenous populations. Least that is what leaps into my mind, gnashing its hands.
Beautiful sentiments and words!
Thank you, Mark.