Stories of Kindness from Around the World

I volunteer at a class twice a week.  The setting for the class is in a really beautiful big  playground which belongs to a school.  After the class, I was sitting with the other women who teach at the class, we were filling out some paperwork and talking away. 

I was looked around over the playground and noticed that there were some beautiful birds.  A few minutes later, I saw the caretaker cycle across the grounds on his way home.  He stopped to feed the birds. 

The caretaker himself is not at all a wealthy person, but he regularly leaves nuts and grains on all four corners of the playground for the birds, and a large bowl of water along with that. This is not part of his duties, he simply does it out of love on his way home; after all the school children have left the grounds.

Earlier during the class, a kind lady had given the entire class a tasty snack-in-a-bag. One of the elderly volunteers who had also seen the watchman feeding the birds was so moved that she called out to him and gave him her unopened snack-bag which he accepted gratefully :-)

Kindness sends such ripples across the universe!

On my way home, I was in a good mood from the kindness I had just witnessed.  I was sharing some delicious chocolate biscuits with a friend.  As happens frequently in India, we were approached by a beggar when we had stopped at the traffic lights.  We had plenty of biscuits and decided to share the rest with him. 

Still in a happy mood, as I got out of the car when I reached my home, I saw a little brown stray dog look at me with sad eyes. Now I’m usually pretty scared of dogs but I could not forget this one and made sure I gave it some food before I had my dinner. I have been feeding it every day since then.

The caretaker with the kind heart of St Francis of Assisi, who fed the birds with so much love, caused all these ripples of kindness to be sent out into the world.