Remember Vimy Ridge!
Remember friends . . .
Thinking of you, said the e-card, adding, a friend is someone who thinks you’re a good egg even tho’ you’re slightly cracked.
Remember kindness . . .
A touch of kindness is like the song of a favourite bird, it reaches a depth where only the heart can go.
A friend gave me a Friendship Book suggesting it melds well with tea, coffee or a wee dram … your choice, he wrote, continuing, add a fire on the hearth, and it’ll surely be far superior to today’s choices on the latest technological marvel with flat screen, LCD, high resolution and a lot more this ‘n that’s.
Ah ‘tis a marvel in itself of our age, is it not? As our technology improves, the content deteriorates?
Anyway, Old John, the 1956 Friendship Book tells us in one tale, in Scots lingo, “is a danger spot guardian. He wears a white coat and carries a ‘Children’s Crossing’ board.
“While he waits for ‘customers,’ he puffs away at his pipe. When they come running up his chubby face lights up with pleasure. They call him John … and him old enough to be their grandfather.
“Some put their hands in his as they cross the road.”
“That’s what gets me about this job,” he said. “Their soft little hands in my horny old paw somehow gets me thrilling right deep down inside.”
Then he gave a wink and said, “I don’t do so badly out of this job, either. I had a birthday not long ago, and one nipper gave me a little parcel and stood looking up at me eagerly while I opened it. Box of matches to light my pipe with, it was, and there was a note inside, ‘With love’ it said….”
John paused, and then he added, his eyes twinkling, “They were safety matches.”
A touch of kindness, a tiny gesture yet large in measure and memory.
Despite the neglect for such tales in our major media, there are still a lot of people out there running around committing random acts of kindness, and when we put them all together they become a good thing — a happy community.
Should you want more, may I recommend one of Sir Francis Gay’s Friendship Books. I think Mac’s still has them.
Remember peace . . .
Another e-card: “Working for God on earth doesn’t pay much, but the retirement plan is out of this world.”
Remember generosity . . .
In some parts of Mexico, it is told, there are to be found hot springs and cold springs side by side. The women often boil their clothes in the hot springs and rinse them in the cold springs. A tourist, watching with interest, commented to his Mexican host, “I guess they think old Mother Nature is pretty generous?”
“No senor,” his friend replied, “There is much grumbling because there is no soap.”
Remember freedom …
When I was a boy, recounted Archbishop Rutledge, I was cured forever of caging wild things. Not content with hearing mocking birds singing from the cedars, I decided to have one of my own.
On the second day in the cage I saw the mother bird fly to my captive with food to feed him. I was pleased since she knew better than I what, and how to feed him.
The next morning my bird was dead!
Recounting this to my friend the ornithologist, he told me, “A mother mocking bird, finding her young in a cage, will sometimes take it poison berries. She thinks it better for the one she loves to die rather than to live in captivity.”
Remember the veterans of Vimy Ridge; remember too the thousands of Canadian men and women who later followed them to other wars, all to secure the freedoms others had won in our past. Freedoms we take for granted at our peril.
A tip of the hat to spring! Isn’t it wonderful to see clothes hanging on the line to dry, children on bikes, driving with the windows open, shoveling almost all done, and able to remember those to whom we owe this spring, and every other we have reveled in?
Remember?