Give Until it Feels Good

And The King answers and says to them, 'Amen, I say to you, as much as you have done to one of these my little brothers, you have done that to me.' - Matthew 25:40

When I was a young girl and living in El Paso, Texas, some nights in the winter months  - even West Texas and the Southwest  - would turn unusually cold, a frostbitten mess on the other side of the border in Juarez, Mexico. I would have trouble sleeping, thinking about them, the families in cardboard houses just miles from my home. I wondered if they had blankets and if not, how could we get an army of warmth to them?

When I was in the first grade, living on two cleared acres of land outside Fairbanks, Alaska, I came home from school and told my mother about a boy in my class who I'd witnessed not eating lunch. She sent me with two hot dog sandwiches the next day. I wish I could remember how many more sandwiches I took to him, but I don't.

I'm reading an essay, "Our Tired, Our Poor, Our Kids," by Anna Quindlen in her 2004 publication of Loud and Clear, and upon finishing the essay, I feel those same pangs of wanting to help. I think now - in 2012 - of all the talk on the news about the disappearance of the middle class, and yet, I realize now, how we all are responsible for turning a blind eye to the beginnings of the madness, and now that it has hit the belly of America, the handkerchiefs are coming out.

Not that I am not worried for the middle class, too. I am. I want all to have a good life. Yet, way before the greed became cannibalistic on Wall Street, the thievery rampant, we, too, must take responsibility for our greed in wanting more, more, more and not stopping to consider how to help the least of us.

Quindlen wrote in 2001, "There are hundreds of thousands of little nomads in America, sleeping in the backs of cars, on floors in welfare offices, or in shelters five to a room. What would it mean to spend your childhood drifting from one strange bed to another, waking in the morning to try to figure out where you'd landed today, without those things that confer security and happiness: a familiar picture on the wall, a certain slant of light through a curtained window?"

So we've hit the bottom, America. I never will discount us, though. I hit the bottom in the Fall of 2007, and I found my way back up with the help of a handful of a few. But they were there and they helped me when everyone else turned their backs. So a handful becomes a bunch, and a bunch becomes a group, and a group becomes a mass, and a mass becomes a movement, and a movement becomes a way of life, a value, a hunger fed.

We begin by taking care of the least of us. We begin with a hotdog sandwich, a blanket, and a humble acceptance that no one needs anything until all have light coming from a curtained window. And don't bark "socialism" to me. It is not that. It is humanism. Be a human spirit. Take care of each other.

I am thankful for the few who did for me when I could not find my way; when the darkness was too strong, when the weariness sat on my head, yet I had a slant of light every morning. I was allowed to keep going. The spirit rose in me. "Don't stop," it said, and I didn't.

I'm sending a long overdue box of clothes to the Femap Foundation. It is a start. It is my start. I am going to donate to Children's Defense Fund this year and every year after. It is a start. I also bought two scarves from Deh Kwe Life and I will buy more. It is a start. And, in addition, I will applaud, sign petitions, march, protest, write letters, work for non-profits, write, sing, and praise anyone who is listening to his or her heart and working for the good of all.

Caroline Myss teaches about the power of invisibility. I've just told you what I am going to be doing to help "the least of these," but I am also going to be performing more acts of compassion I shall tell no one. It is this invisibility of kindness where I wish for my power to reside. And then I intend to rise to the middle class where I've seldom been before and higher. And I shall know I have given to the best of my ability, taking care of myself, righting wrongs, and asking for forgiveness as I prosper and grow, because I intend to grow to the height and width of my generosity and wisdom. And on the coldest of nights or hungriest of noons, I want to know there is warmth, room, and food for all.