Human Kind

Last week I mentioned JMBarrie and Peter Pan. I hadn't realised till yesterday that PP first appeared in 1902 in a book called "The Little White Bird". There's an intriguing quote therein...

...always try to be a little kinder than is necessary
Which was when I remembered that many people had marked Sunday 17th February as "Random Acts Of Kindness Day" - and I had completely missed it. Ooops!
In my defence, I am not sure any of the blogs I follow mentioned it either, and you're all very kind people, I'm sure.

I was pottering in the kitchen, listening to Radio 4 Extra, as I'm wont to do. And I heard about  the most bizarre RAK.
It involves "Cake Circles"
You take a map and draw a circle on it. The centre of the circle must be somewhere where you are able to bake a cake [eg your own kitchen, or your granny's house] You then bake 40 cakes,  load up your car, and drive out to the point where you reach the edge of the circle. Now you travel round the circle, stopping at random points. You then give a cake to someone who lives or works at that point of the circle. 

This seems an interesting way to spend a weekend. The artist* who came up with the idea maintains this is an art installation rather than a humanitarian act. Furthermore he says than in Birmingham the recipients were cheerfully accepting - but in Liverpool and London he encountered cynicism and unwillingness to accept his offerings.
I'm not at all sure about this one.

We've recently started a new course on Sunday evenings at church, called Fruitfulness on the Frontline [it's brilliant- expect more on this later] and we were talking about the fruits of the Spirit including kindness. Surely we shouldn't need to mark out one day of the year for kindness? ...just seek to make it part of life.

*In case you are wondering, the artist in question is Bill Drummond- formerly of 'Echo and the Bunnymen' and 'KLF'. He's also the guy who [he says] burnt one millon quid of KLF's profits, as a 'piece of artwork' on the Isle of Islay in 1994. I'm rapidly concluding that [a] I do not understand modern art, and [b] it would have been better to have spent that money on ingredients for giveaway spongecakes - or maybe just given it straight to Oxfam. What a waste!