April is usually the cruelest month in Rhode Island, but this week has taken everyone by surprise. Flowers are blooming, trees are greening up, you’d think it was spring.

I was driving on Mineral Spring Ave, sitting in a left turn lane waiting to pull into an elderly housing complex. Traffic was heavy, complicated by huge trucks and a man in a wheelchair in the breakdown lane coasting down the steep hill. He looked young, he was dressed like an office worker and he was not intimidated by the tons of deadly steel whizzing by him.

I got out of my car in the parking lot about the same time he whooshed in. “You’re fearless.” I said to him.

Up close he was not young, and he was a little out of breath pushing his chair up a slight incline. He told me he was widowed, had cerebral palsy all his life, but loved athletics and still played wheelchair basketball. I had to let him know how much I admired this. I told him he inspired me to take the stairs instead of the elevator.

Later I was eating lunch in my car, reading the Providence Journal…

WEST WARWICK — By all accounts, Rose Achabi is a shy person.

But as she sat through Easter service at the Full Life Christian Fellowship Church, she could no longer hold her tongue.

At the Islamic School of Rhode Island at 840 Providence St., where she is a teacher’s assistant, floodwaters had risen more than four feet, seeping into the pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade classrooms on the first floor, damaging students’ books, computers, desks, chairs and teachers’ lesson plans. Everything on that floor had to be thrown away.

When the service was over, she approached her pastor, Brian Regan, hesitating a little given it was Easter, but felt the church family she had known since she was a teenager would come through. She asked Regan if the Islamic School could use the church’s building, which had once served as a Catholic school that belonged to Our Lady of Good Counsel, for classes

“The pastor didn’t hesitate,” said Achabi, a Christian who is married to a Muslim and has three children attending the Islamic School. School members met with Regan Sunday night after he had Easter dinner. “I know they felt funny about meeting on Easter, but they were really worried about finding a place to have their school,” Regan said.

The rest of the story is here at ProJo.com. I love it when Christians do Christian stuff, I’m glad the Journal covered this.

By late afternoon I was in my office, trying to sort out issues with a patient. I called a nurse on the patient’s contact list– the nurse herself answered the phone, knew exactly what I was talking about and gave me the information I needed. Exceptional good luck.

Sometimes the sun just shines on you. It’s looking cloudy today, but I’m up in the pre-dawn hours blogging. May the traffic not jam and my phone calls be answered, amen.