Contains free gift! Scatter wherever you like and Cultivate with care.

This morning I had quite a shock to discover the number of people who have been looking at this blog page over the past 24 hours. Although it is tempting to go on at this point about how totally amazing it is for me to communicate in this way, I think it would be more appropriate to just concentrate on using the right currency. Otherwise all that I write here will be like looking at my own reflection (which tends to get less pretty the longer I have to look!) and of very little use to you. With all these potential hazzards in mind, I would rather not be dealing in "amazing" or even being known. Instead, lets forget the lesser options, that wish to feel important, a desire to win or the reassuring feeling you get from believing it is possible to get it absolutely right sometimes.

Despite our obvious diversity, it does seem to me this morning that we have an option of moving one step closer together. We might feel a little silly doing this sometimes. Washing the feet of a stranger can be a very uncomfortable business which usually requires getting down on your knees to do. Perhaps like me, you also wonder if it would ever be possible to stand up again afterwards with so many feet to wash, and yet we usually do. Without wishing to put any readers off their breakfast, perhaps I should also mention that feet have an unfortunate tendency to develop certain physical characteristics that could not be described as beautiful (even by your own mother!) and very often smell. There is no guarantee a message of love and respect for another human being will be appreciated, understood or form part of a reciprocal arrangement. Instead there is only an opportunity to do something for this troubled broken world, to put ourselves at a lower level to another human being, to go where we are needed.

Whether or not it feels right, comfortable or seems to be successful, I do not think any of us should allow ourselves to be misled. To love is the most powerful thing we do. Even though we may not be able to imagine, believe in God or feel entitled to use his name, the things we do in love for another human being last forever. There are rewards described in the Scriptures as "the Kingdom of God" we can neither imagine or see. Love entitles us to work for nothing else, because the presence of love is enough. Whatever our starting point in life might be, whatever we believe and wherever we might be, just one single act of love can bring us together.

Instead of even trying to write something sensible this morning, or trying to impress anyone, I am now going to do something reckless. Please go back to your families, your families, your faith groups, your community, wherever they might be. Tell them that someone very scared, very silly, who does not know quite what she has taken on with this blog, and calls herself a "Secret Quaker," is sending you and them her love. Whatever you think, whatever you believe, wherever you are right now, there can be no exceptions because we are already loved. There is more than enough to go around and we are also human.