Saturday, December 12, 1998

Acts of kindness should be practiced year round

By Lauren R. Stanley

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- The voice on the radio is nice, soft and sonorous. It's the holiday season, it says, when people are a little bit nicer, a little bit friendlier, a little more helpful.

The ad, trying to bring some holiday cheer to my life, is centered on how wonderful it is that everyone is so nice ... just because it's the holiday season.

I've been hearing this ad since Thanksgiving. I know it's supposed to make me feel good -- about the holidays, about other people and about myself.

But it doesn't make me feel good. It distresses me, actually, because I don't like the idea of people being nice to each other ONLY in the holiday season.

So every time I hear this ad, and all the others like it, I react adversely. (Somewhere, I know, the author of this ad is shaking his or her head. "She doesn't get it, does she?")

In addition to the radio ads, I've been seeing a certain bumper sticker of late that, rather than encouraging me, adds to my distress.

The sticker reads: PRACTICE RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS. It's quite popular these days because, I think, people like the idea of kind acts just "happening" to them. So, the thinking apparently goes, if you want some act of kindness to be done to and for you, do the same for others.

But I wonder: Who is it who really doesn't get it?

I wonder: Do the people who create those ads and the people who put that bumper sticker on their cars realize that we, who are created in the image of God, are not called to practice RANDOM acts of kindness? That we, God's beloved creatures, are not supposed to be nice simply because it is the holiday season?

Those of us who celebrate Christmas for what it is -- the day on which God became incarnate in our world -- are Christians, which means we are called to practice INTENTIONAL acts of kindness. Every single day. With every single person.

The voices of our culture tell us to be nice seasonally and randomly.

The voices of Christianity tell us to be intentional daily

Verna Dozier, that great Episcopal laywoman who hails from Washington, D.C., has a book called "The Dream of God." In that book, Dozier -- with a clear and ringing voice -- declares what she believes is God's wish for all of us.

The dream of God, she says, is "a good creation of a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky. ..."

It sounds so simplistic, but after all, didn't Jesus say, "I do not call you servants, any longer ... I have called you friends"?

And if we think about it, isn't being friendly to each other, and to all of God's creatures and creation, that to which we all are called?

We hear a lot of voices in our lives, voices that try to convince us to focus on ourselves and our own needs, voices that try to tell us being nice is something we should do only during the holiday season, voices that urge us to be random in our actions.

But those aren't the voices we who believe in God are called to hear. Instead, we are called to listen to those who tell us, loudly and clearly, to be intentional in our acts, every single day, with every single person.

Now wouldn't THAT be a wonderful way to spread some holiday cheer, all year round?

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(The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley is a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. Readers may write to her care of Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, 790 National Press Building, Washington, D.C., 20045.)

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(c) 1998, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.