Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty
Categories: random
Tags: photo, bloggers, bereavement
Date: 01 December 2006 18:43:35
Nobody who's a regular reader of the wibsite community's blogs will have failed to notice that many of our number (the Swansea contingent) are mourning the loss of a dear friend. See tributes here from Alice, Lemly, Jacqui, Sarah, Bimble, and Lanark, amongst others. On the way home today I was thinking about Mike, whom I'd never met, but who because of the blogs here and the tributes and grief of people here I regard as friends had entered my consciousness over the last 24 hours. And when I logged on this evening to the wibsite something that Nessa said here summed up exactly what I'd been thinking: ". . . and so therefore we loved him too by the complete circle of meaning and importance that real friends create." I never met Mike, I never will now, but thanks to the tributes here and the testimonies of his life and character by people I know and love, my life is touched too, however peripherally.
While I was thinking about what I'd read yesterday and today about Mike, I remembered a picture I took a few weeks ago of some graffiti on some derelict land not too far from me here, which I think was done by a group who reclaim this sort of land. Here it is, it's a bit dark, but the writing says "Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty":
I was thinking about how it could be thought that Mike going to India could be seen as senseless in the eyes of the world, when there is so much pressure to strive for possessions, relationships, careers, money, here at home. And yet, the fact that he was not only prepared to go but acted on that desire turned that senseless desire into an act of beauty.
May Mike rest in peace and rise in glory, and may his friends and many loved ones know God's comfort in their great loss. +++