Acts of Kindness

During college I fell in love with William Wordsworth, especially his beautiful, meditative poem "Tintern Abbey." Page 155 of my Norton Anthology is filled with an 18-year-old's passionate marginalia: triple underlines, exclamation points, arrows and stars. The marks are tipped in with such excitement that they bleed through to the next pages.

I thought of Tintern Abbey yesterday, when I heard how many people have made their way to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to bake and package cookies for hours and hours at a time. I had no idea. You are all giving Toby and hundreds of other children a chance at life. We cannot even begin to thank you.

Be assured that your acts of kindness and love will be remembered.

But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:--feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love.

love, mooki + stephen