Houston, we have liftoff

Comrades!

  What an incredible first day of The #KindnessExchange!  I woke up to enthusiastic emails about the project, and here I am, finishing off the day writing about it.  People all over are getting really excited about spreading kindness this holiday season.  A lady on Instagram told me that she's inspired, and is going to do one act of kindness each day till the New Year.  One of my guitar students brought me a can of Mountain Dew with a slip of paper reading "#KindnessExchange."  Confirmation rang in this afternoon for a songwriting workshop I'll be lucky enough to host for the homeless in Baltimore in a few weeks.  A kindergarten teacher in North Carolina is working on setting up a Skype call so her students can get involved in the project.  It is GOING CRAZY!

  And in between all the joyful emails and tweets and Facebook posting...I get quiet and remember her.  It was six years ago today.  The call came in, my mom sat down.  "What's wrong?" she asked, so concerned.  I stood by her chair as she crumbled and then staggered to sit up straight, gasping and gulping for air.  Her hand, so tightly clenched, scrawled out the news in the blackest ink you'd ever want to see...a darkness of cold that never ever really lets you go, chilling you to the bone with a sickening sort of bite.

  And so, I walked out into the physical cold and blackness this evening, stumbled around a bit in the garden by the outlet, and held the plug up so it was silhouetted against the moon blazing through the icy clouds.  "In her memory" I though.

  Coal from an ancient time under an ancient sun, transported by hardworking men covered in the dust, bored engineers and tired plant workers, was turned into electrons, running as fast as the light from the stars partially veiled overhead, blazed into a beacon of light, the photons returning to whence they came across the cosmos.

And the tree is lit.  And the tour starts.  And the light is shining in the darkness.

Keep on tagging those posts back to #KindnessExchange.  The world badly needs 'em.

- Josh