Special Delivery: Share Your Love

 

I am in love with 2D collage, and when the scrapbooking craze started, it had me at hello. When I ran across Etsy's call for Valentine's Day cards to be delivered with Meals on          Wheels, my neglected piles of paper, pens, and punches cried out to be used. So here are some of my offerings, being mailed to Brooklyn today.

I wanted to do something that used my pottery, and I work hard to stage my photos for every season, so I printed out small pics of my bowls with the M&M hearts for each card, using the pithy phrase 'you "bowl" me over.' Then with punched hearts and circles, torn edge strips and mats, I created individual little collaged  cards.   I also used hand writing and doodles so that they look handmade and one of a kind. I love knowing that they will brighten someone's day.  

I once visited a large nursing home on Christmas with the Holiday Project, which was organized around knowing that suicide is high on holidays when those who feel left out of the merriment  experience depression. We were singing a rendition of Silent Night that would no doubt give Simon Cowell nightmares, when an older gentleman said, in a croaking voice, "Merry Christmas." The staff dropped jaws, and one nurse cried. The man hadn't uttered a word in 20 years. 

Acts of kindness are powerful. More than we might think.                                                                                     

stray cat

There was a stray cat living in a barn behind our house all summer. He watched us from a distance. He was luxurious fur stretched on a skeleton, with eyes of fire. I left food around for 2 months, and he finally allowed me to approach and pet him. He was wild, unpredictable, and would hiss and scratch unexpectedly, so I was as wary as he was, but still, I kept approaching. My husband has allergies, and we already have 2 cats, so he did not want another housecat, and I knew I couldn't keep him. Yesterday he showed up with a collar! So my "Boots" found a home!

Kindness is a mysterious force that gets inside us all and changes us and makes us easier to be around. The family I was born into was not kind; we were nice. It is not the same. Nice things are said and done with an implied contract in mind. Some reward is expected for being nice, whereas kindness shines like the sun with no agenda.

A teacher once said to me, "Opening your windows does not guarantee that the wind will blow through your house, but keeping them shut guarantees that it will not. Love is like the wind. You have to be open, or it can't come in."

Kindness is a call to open.

Kindness

Since my world came crashing in late last October, as my husband lost his job, I've been privileged to see a quality of humankind that I hadn't noticed as poignantly before. Many, many, many people are kind. I don't mean nice, which here in the south can mean having the grace not to say what you really think. I mean having a thoughtful, sensitive nature that offers whatever this world has given to you freely to others.

As Naomi Shahib Nye wrote, in her poem, Kindness (excerpts):

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
...........................................
Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

I posted on a thread yesterday, entitled 'Out of work? I'll buy something', started by VintageCarolina, whose alphabets are posted above. It was a generous offer, and what particularly prompted me to post was the expressed sentiments of some that "you've just opened up the door to more sob stories than any human should have to endure." and " I thought Etsy was some sort of loser magnet." I thought I'd stand up for myself and the other millions of families who are dealing with unemployment. So I posted:

'For Bruce, and any others who feel like they are reading sob stories from losers, read this:

http://thebeautyyoulove.blogspot.com/2009/04/spring-snow.html

We did not become losers or pathetic people when my husband lost his job, in my opinion. That you see it that way says everything about you and nothing about me.'

------Then left the computer. Hours later, having forgotten about this altogether, I had 3 sales in my shop! They were all from lovely Etsy sellers who had read the thread. My other two customers are hwinfield, an amazing abstract painter with beautiful triptichs, and jetflair, a jeweler working with high quality gemstones set in silver.

Thanks to these people for making a difference in my life- and to eachbeautiful soul out there who shines the light of kindness. May you all get back whatever you give through kindness tenfold! As well as the really sweet pieces of pottery that you will soon be recieving!