If you've been to an Awakin in the last year, you're likely to have spotted Ted. He usually sits in a corner spot by the speaker, and he unfailingly opens the circle by expressing gratitude for everyone present. In fact, every week, I send the standard email with directions -- and Ted is the one person who responds to that email every single week with a word of thanks. Every time. It just seems like he doesn't take any week for granted.

Last week, after the circle, Ted came up to me with a bag of LED bulbs. 19 of them, in fact. All different shapes and sizes. "I noticed that one of the bulbs in the bathroom was out, so I thought that perhaps I could upgrade all the bulbs in the house?" he asked me after the dinner hour. How can one say no to that? :)

In the process, he surveyed various light fixtures. With Jose's help, he climbed up to check the size of small bulbs in our chandeliar. It needed special dimmable LED bulbs, for which he had brought three different varieties and was going to research even more. "While we are up there, we should clean the glass on the chandeliers too," Ted added. By the end of the night, he had even changed the light bulbs in our backyard.



Light bulbs are kind of intimate. We don't think of going to someone's house and offering to change their light bulbs, unless we really felt like it was our home. Moreover, it's not only a small act of kindness, but it's a slow act -- it takes a keen eye of generosity to notice such details and repeated trips to the hardware store over multiple weeks to get it right. Yet, that's exactly what Ted did.

Thank you, Ted, for your kindness, for treating our home as your home, and for being an example for subtle acts of love. Thank you for shining your light onto all of us. :)