The Ultimate Virus of Compassion

Tara and Henry

Last month I heard a rattling coming down the alley outside the studio and peering out, saw a guy pushing a grocery cart, going through the dumpsters for aluminum cans. I hailed him and brought him round a box of cans I'd been saving. As we loaded the cans he told me his rather sweet story. He was a house painter but is on disability after an injury and lives in a apartment complex for disabled adults. There he met a mentally disabled woman named Tara, "like a five-year-old," wheelchair-bound, who lives in a nearby room. She seemed to have a pretty bleak life, with little furniture, only a small, simple TV and no pictures on her walls. By selling aluminum he was hoping to get a better TV and some pictures for her, he said cheerfully. As usual I was preoccupied, but I got his name, Henry, and thanked him for his story.

I was happy to hear the clattering again recently. I gave Henry another load of cans and asked after Tara. He not only said she was doing well, but later than day wheeled her the 1/2 mile to the studio to introduce me to her! I was touched to be so honored. I wish I'd had the presence of mind at the time to invite her in for a studio tour but I didn't want to overwhelm her. My intent is to fill her apartment with real original art that she might choose herself from among my work.

Truth is that we are so thoroughly surrounded by thousands of acts of love and kindness all the time that we grow blind to them. The reason why there is such bad stuff in the news is that it is so astonishingly unusual. It is not a cruel world but one so filled with love that when there is misfortune we are transfixed by it. Let us not forget the truth of an undying love that grows on and on, passed from one to another, often in the most unexpected ways!