LIKE ENORMOUS numbers of others, I watched The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse this Christmas.
Some have dismissed it as sentimental twaddle, but I thought there was deep wisdom in it.
One exchange in the film has stuck with me. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’, the mole asks the boy.
‘Kind’ replies the boy.
What a great ambition!
Is kindness underrated nowadays? It certainly shouldn’t be. Its roots go deep in our culture.
In the Old Testament, ‘loving kindness’ is perhaps the greatest virtue of all.
It became central to Christianity as the concrete expression of loving our neighbour.
Wordsworth’s wonderful poem Tintern Abbey says that the best part of a good person’s life is his or her ‘little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.’
I don’t believe there is any better way to be remembered than having been kind.
I come across lots of kind people and acts of kindness, but our society doesn’t always feel like a very kind one.
If we all undertook to be more kind as our New Year’s resolution, great things could be achieved.
Happy New Year!
Bishop John Inge
