Celebrating 40 with 40 Acts of Kindness

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40 Years, 40 Acts of Kindness
I owe great thanks to my dear friend, the wonderful Julie Hoplamazian for the idea of celebrating 40 with 40 Acts of Kindness and for the bulk of this list.

Dearest Family and Friends,

In January, I will turn 40, and I want to celebrate by sending a little more hope and joy out into the world. Below is a list of 40 different acts of kindness. I am inviting you to do one (or more!) and then share with me which one(s) you did with a few sentences of reflection.

If you are willing, I will share all the stories I receive at my local celebration in CT, as well as on this blog. Good news and heart-warming stories are meant to be shared!

I consider it a great privilege to reach this milestone age. Thank you for joining me in celebration of all the blessings of our lives.

with so much gratitude,

Molly

(mollyfjames@gmail.com or you can just comment below)

Some possibilities . . .

1. Write a letter - not an email - to someone who needs a pick-me-up

2. Leave a generous tip

3. Ask someone how they’re doing, and listen to the answer

4. Take out your neighbor’s trash

5. Donate to a school lunch program or The Locker Project

6. Donate to a teacher’s need page

7. Send someone flowers for no reason

8. Send someone a card just to say hello

9. Volunteer at a local soup kitchen

10. Volunteer at a local homeless shelter

11. Accompany an immigrant to their ICE check-in (visit newsanctuarynyc.org for more information)

12. Pay for the person behind you in line

13. Call that person you’ve been meaning to call

14. Send something to troops, either for the holidays or otherwise

15. Send a college kid you know a care package

16. Babysit a friend’s kids and give them the night off

17. Spend one whole day only giving compliments to everyone you see

18. That person you can’t stand? Find one nice thing about them and tell them directly.

19. For one week, only share uplifting, inspiring posts on social media

20. For one week, only like/comment on uplifting, inspiring posts on social media

21. Give/ read a book to a child

22. Bring a meal to friends who are strung out and could use a hand

23. Every time you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts about a person, pray for them instead. Prayer changes things, usually us

24. Donate to one of the following organizations in my honor:

Make-A-Wish of Maine

Maine Children's Cancer Program

The Jimmy Fund

25. With their consent, give someone a hug who really needs it

26. Bring a treat to work for everyone to share

27. Leave a positive sticky note on someone’s desk

28. Let the person behind you in line go in front of you

29. Write a card to hospitalized child through Cards for Hospitalized Kids

30. Offer to help someone who needs it

31. Write a note of encouragement to your religious leader

32. Pick up your neighborhood litter

33. Give a stranger a compliment

34. Give a meal to the homeless person asking for help

35. Support a local small business

36. Donate gently used clothes you no longer wear

37. Give up your seat on the subway/bus/train

38. Take the time to write or give a positive review

39. Say hello to the person on the elevator, on the sidewalk, or other place you’d usually just keep quiet.

40. Think of your own act of kindness! And while you’re at it… be kind to yourself too!

Remembering what matters . . .

Photo from our son's school where they honored Sandy Hook with Kindness Day.

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
Chapel of our Lord, Episcopal Church Center
December 17, 2019
Dorothy Sayers

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word, who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.


“I preferred her to sceptres and thrones, and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her. Neither did I liken to her any priceless gem, because all gold is but a little sand in her sight, and silver will be accounted as clay before her. I loved her more than health and beauty, and I chose to have her rather than light, because her radiance never ceases.”

I kind of wish I could make a Christmas ad out of this passage. It would be such a nice contrast to all the messages about what we need this time of year is some new furniture, jewelry, gift card, or gadget. Our passage from wisdom offers us such a valuable opportunity to reset and realign our priorities. Maybe you all are really good at keeping them in line, but I know I certainly have my moments of get sidetracked and losing my focus.

It is one of the things I value about worship and reading Scripture. Somehow God always finds a way to nudge me, and say, “Remember?” Remember to slow down. Remember to take a deep breath. Remember what matters. Remember that relationship, love, laughter, the intangible blessings of life are what matter. Remember that if we focus on what really matters the other stuff really does sort itself out.


This past weekend, we marked the seventh anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school. I was on our bishop’s staff in CT when that happened. I spent that terrible afternoon with our bishops, helping our parish of Trinity, Newtown to host hundreds of people for a vigil service that evening. And I returned to Trinity the following week to help at the funeral service for one of the victims.

As I am sure you all have experienced, there is nothing like the tragic death of a child to make you sit up and pay attention. It highlights the stark reality of just how precious and fragile life really is. There are no guarantees.

Now when something like that happens, we have a choice. We can be overwhelmed by our own fear and sadness. We can feel as though the darkness is all consuming. Or we can choose to have the experience be talisman we carry with us to remind us what really matters. Of course, this does not mean we don’t still feel pain and sadness we do. Every time I go to visit my children’s elementary school, I have to ring a buzzer and stand in front of a camera before the door is unlocked. Before Sandy Hook I could have walked right in. I think of those kids every time I push that button. The pain is there. The fear is there. But I can’t let them overwhelm me.
They need to be a galvanizing force. A motivating force. They help me to keep my focus and my priorities.
Of course, I also fail at this on a regular basis. I lose my patience. I get sidetracked or frustrated. I get to thinking that my To Do List is the most important thing today. But blessedly God doesn’t seem to let me stray too far. Someone or something will help me remember where my priorities ought to be.

So, I hope that today you can hear the profound and beautiful truth at the heart of our readings today. The most important things in life are not things. Life is beautiful, fragile, and precious. We are meant to cherish it and to make the most of whatever time we have. So I hope that in this Advent season, I hope you will find lots of ways to cherish all that is beautiful in your life. AMEN.

A little bit of light, a little bit of hope

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Grace Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT 

Advent 1A, December 1, 2019

Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44; Psalm 122

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word, who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Beginning when I was in third grade, my mom and I started a tradition we called “People Trips.” I loved to read biographies. We would spend the winter reading biographies about someone and then plan a trip to where they lived and worked. We did trips on John F. Kennedy, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lucy Maud Montgomery (author of Anne of Green Gables), Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, and Eleanor Roosevelt. That last one being  was probably my favorite and the most memorable. In addition to visiting Hyde Park and Valkill, we spent one afternoon riding in a cab around New York City. My mom had dutifully made a list of all the places Franklin and Eleanor had lived in the city. And then we ended with a stop to her memorial on Riverside Drive at the United Nations. Emblazoned on that memorial is a quote from Adalai Stevenson about Eleanor. He said, “She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness.” Indeed. 

As I read our readings for today, I could not help but think of this quote. Paul, in our letter from Romans, and our Collect invite us to “put on the armor of light.” I don’t know about you all, but I really appreciate that our readings this time of year focus on increasing the light. Of course, for those of us in the Northern Hempisphere, this fits exactly with what we are experiencing. We are only a few short weeks away from the longest night of the year. We are quite literally aware of the increasing darkness, and I would guess that most of us are craving more light. 

There can be a certain coziness to this time of year. More time spent inside, reading, cooking, playing board games. More sleep! But I would imagine that for most of us, it isn’t just the literal daylight that we crave. We crave a world that more deeply reflects the light of the Gospel. There are acrimonious divisions among our politicians, we are country deeply affected by the sin of racism, there is so much violence in our headlines, natural disasters seem to be an almost weekly occurrence. If we want to point to things that make the world feel dark and scary, there is no shortage. And it would be easy to just keep up the litany of complaints, to keep pointing out what is wrong with the world. It is the pastime of humanity from the dawn of time, complaining about the state of the world (see Genesis 3 and Adam and Eve’s first conversation with God, see the Israelites grumbling in the wilderness, etc.) You get the idea. Complaining is easy. 

Signing up to be a part of the solution? Take the initiative to choose a different path? Those are more challenging. Sin and evil are real. The devil likes nothing more than to paralyze with fear or to  get us to think that we are powerless to change something. We are not powerless. Not by any means. And we are going to be held accountable for our actions. That is what our Gospel reminds us of today. What we say and do matters. How we live our lives matters. We have power. We have a choice. We can give in to complaining or we can choose to live lives that light up the world. We can choose to live lives that share the light of Christ, share the Good News of God’s love with the world. We don’t have to do everything or fix everything. We do not bear this light alone. We just need to do our part. 

Think about the image of a candle. Think of how one small flame pushes back the darkness. Think about what happens when you use that single flame to light other candles. Pretty soon the whole room is full of light. All it takes is a little bit of light, a little bit of hope. 

So, my invitation to you today is to reflect on how you can put on your armor of light, of how you can stay focused on light and hope, even when we feel profoundly aware of the darkness that surrounds us. I invite you to think about, and keep at the forefront of your mind, whatever it is that fills you with hope. Maybe it is time spent with children? Maybe it is witnessing or doing small, simple acts of  kindness? Maybe it is knowing what a difference the feeding ministry and Christmas giving programs make here at Grace? Maybe it is a conversation with a good friend whose presence and voice just lift your spirits? Maybe it is the beauty of creation? Maybe it is time spent in prayer or reading Scripture? Whatever it is in your life that brings you joy and fills you with hope, I invite you to do more of it. To help you have a tangible reminder to have more light in your life and to be God’s light to the world, I have baskets of candles in the Narthex and here on the front pew. It is just a small battery operated tealight (so you can use it anywhere), and I hope that it will be easy to place on a windowsill or bedside table. Somewhere you see it often. May it be a reminder of the power of a single flame to push back the darkness. May it be a reminder that there is always a reason to hope. AMEN.