Acts of Kindness

In light of the all of the discord and violence that has happened in the past few months, I have decided to dedicate the next month to doing small things to build community, friendship, and trust in each other.  I recognise that this is a drop in the bucket in terms of dealing with the “big” and “important” problems.  However, trusting each other and building community is important too.  As the topic of the blog is ritual, I would like to think about a ritual of giving - the Advent Calendar.  And we can all think a little more about giving.

 

 

I have tried to put quite a few items that don’t take a lot of time and money, because that can exclude people from participating.  Daily reminders will be here on the blog and on my twitter @dkkorzow for things to do.  Please link to the blog and retweet because I would love nothing more than to make acts of kindness in whatever way fill social media over the next month while we all think about how to work on the “big” issues in the New Year.  This is also not just for Christians - we can all use a little kindness.  Also please share pictures and ideas about doing these acts of kindness.

 

Finally, as most of the these things are very local and community based, I will also be posting each day a charity that is more National or Global in scope.  If you are one of the people who follows this who has extra money each month, consider the charities I am posting about.  Also, if you don’t know what to get someone from Christmas, please think about a donation in their name instead of a random cluttering gift that you don’t know that the person needs or wants.

Privilege not Salvation

I have worked in a number of different education environments often tutoring or teaching minority or economically disadvantaged students.  Frequently in these situations I am one of only a few non-minority individuals and often I am one of, if not the most, traditionally educated individual in the room.  These are facts.  Another fact, the number of times I have been mistaken by teachers and assistants as a student without proper ID and in the “wrong” location is actually quite amusing.  I’ve lost count of the number of times I have been asked to fill out my name and student ID on the detention sign-in form when I walked into a room (the detention students walked through the same entrance as the tutoring students for the after school sign in in several of the schools I have worked in).  Pretty much every time I walk into a school they ask to see my student ID or directed me to the late for school sign in desk if I walked in during school hours.  I was even threatened once with a detention while walking down a hallway because the individual thought I was clearly ditching class.  This says something about how young I must look to people and potentially how I dress.  Although dress apparently doesn’t matter because I have had these assumptions made when I was in a tailored suit and when I was in dirty jeans and T-shirt.  I think it also says something about my attitude toward the world.