95 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
95 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
F.U.C.K. Sermon 001
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(FUCK_001.TXT or FUCK_001.ZIP)
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Practice Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty
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by Deufreuddwyd
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It's a crisp winter day in San Francisco. A woman in a red
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Honda, Christmas presents piled in the back, drives up to
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the Bay Bridge tollbooth. "I'm paying for myself, and for
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the six cars behind me," she says with a smile, handing over
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seven commuter tickets.
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One after another, the next six drivers arrive at the
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tollbooth, dollars in hand, only to be told, "Some lady up
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ahead already paid your fare. Have a nice day."
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The woman in the Honda, it turned out, had read something on
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an index card taped to a friend's refrigerator: "Practice
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random kindness and senseless acts of beauty." The phrase
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seemed to leap out at her, and she copied it down.
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Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase spray-painted on a
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warehouse wall a hundred miles from her home. When it
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stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the
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way back to copy it down. "I thought it was incredibly
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beautiful," she said, explaining why she's taken to writing
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it at the bottom of all her letters, "like a message from
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above."
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Her husband, Frank, liked the phrase so much that he put it
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up on the wall for his seventh graders, one of whom was the
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daughter of a local columnist. The columnist put it in the
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paper, admitting that though she liked it, she didn't know
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where it came from or what it really meant.
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Two days later, she heard from Anne Herbert. Tall, blonde,
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and forty, Herbert lives in Marin, one of the country's ten
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richest counties, where she house-sits, takes odd jobs, and
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gets by. It was in a Sausalito restaurant that Herbert
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jotted the phrase down on a paper place mat, after turning
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it around in her mind for days.
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"That's wonderful!" a man sitting nearby said, and copied it
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down carefully on his own placemat.
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"Here's the idea," Herbert says. "Anything you think there
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should be more of, do it randomly."
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Her own fantasies include: (1) breaking into
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depressing-looking schools to paint the classrooms, (2)
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leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in the poor parts of
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town, (3) slipping money into a proud old woman's purse.
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Says Herbert, "Kindness can build on itself as much as
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violence can." Now the phrase is spreading, on bumper
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stickers, on walls, at the bottom of letters and business
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cards. And as it spreads, so does a vision of guerrilla
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goodness.
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In Portland, Oregon, a man might plunk a coin into a
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stranger's meter just in time. In Patterson, New Jersey, a
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dozen people with pails and mops and tulip bulbs might
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descend on a rundown house and clean it from top to bottom
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while the frail elderly owners look on, dazed and smiling.
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In Chicago, a teenage boy may be shoveling off the driveway
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when the impulse strikes. What the hell, nobody's looking,
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he thinks, and shovels the neighbor's driveway too.
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It's positive anarchy, disorder, a sweet disturbance. A
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woman in Boston writes "Merry Christmas!" to the tellers on
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the back of her checks. A man in St. Louis, whose car has
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just been rear-ended by a young woman, waves her away,
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saying, "It's a scratch. Don't worry."
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Senseless acts of beauty spread: A man plants daffodils
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along the roadway, his shirt billowing in the breeze from
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passing cars. In Seattle, a man appoints himself a one man
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vigilante sanitation service and roams the concrete hills
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collecting litter in a supermarket cart. In Atlanta, a man
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scrubs graffiti from a green park bench.
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They say you can't smile without cheering yourself up a
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little -- likewise, you can't commit a random act of
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kindness without feeling as if your own troubles have been
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lightened if only because the world has become a slightly
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better place.
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And you can't be a recipient without feeling a shock, a
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pleasant jolt. If you were one of those rush-hour drivers
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who found your bridge fare paid, who knows what you might
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have been inspired to do for someone else later? Wave
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someone on in the intersection? Smile at a tired clerk? Or
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something larger, greater? Like all revolutions, guerrilla
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goodness begins slowly, with a single act. Let it be yours.
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