Kate Walter
Easter Column

Photo: courtesy of Kate Walter

The Kindness of Strangers
April 13, 2020
BY KATE WALTER
Talk about the kindness of strangers. On Saturday, April 11, I posted on the bulletin board app Nextdoor that I was looking to buy computer paper locally. Of course, I can order from Amazon but delivery takes a while. Staples is a long walk and I stopped taking the bus. This woman answered that she had paper in her apartment and she’d be happy to give it to me. So I walked over to a building on Bleecker Street, and this woman I never met came downstairs and dropped two reams of high-quality printer paper into my tote bag. I felt so grateful. I was down to my last 10 sheets of paper. Now I had 1,000. She said she was glad it would go to good use. The next day, Sunday, April 12, I left my apartment in Westbeth and walked to D’Ag’s on the corner to buy The New York Times. The masked cashier was really friendly. She wished me Happy Easter. I wished her the same, thanked her and left. Last year, I took the bus across town to the East Village for an incredible service at Middle Collegiate Church on Second Avenue. The altar was filled with lilies. The pews were packed, everyone clapping and swaying as the choirs blasted out a rocking version of the Hallelujah chorus of Handel’s “Messiah.” This year, I watched the service live-streamed. The digital team did a great job, pulling up music from the archive and creating new music by patching in singers and organists performing in their apartments. We wished each other Happy Easter in the chat box. Reverend Jacqui Lewis, the pastor, read the gospel and preached about “the time between the now and the not yet.”

Read the entire article in The Village Sun Here