I love me some Freddy Buechner, a Presbyterian pastor with a knack for turning a phrase.
The smallest acts of kindness, even circumscribed within our own families, can, as Buechner says, "set the whole thing trembling."
Kindness can change the world.
Listen to how Buechner puts it:
"Humanity is like an enormous spider web, so that if you touch it anywhere, you set the whole thing trembling. As we move around this world and as we act with kindness, perhaps, or with indifference, or with hostility, toward the people we meet, we too are setting the great spider web a-tremble.
The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked together. No one is an island."
The spider web of this world is a-tremble with war, hatred and hostility.
I wonder sometimes. If we each began to touch it with small acts of kindness, could we still the tremble of enmity? Could we set it trembling afresh with tenderheartedness?
Wanna' try?
