I stared at him. He really meant it. He calmly picked up his tools and fixed the aching cavity.
From that day on, I saw him every week until my teeth were in good shape. And he kept them that way with regular checkups. After graduation, I got a job and settled his bill in a few months.
In the 40 years following, I've learned to call this man a "woodwork angel." These are strangers who appear out of nowhereout of the woodworkwhen I need help. They've lent and given me money, materials or equipment; they've taught me skills and helped me organize groups; sometimes they've rescued me from danger or making a big mistake. So, dentist dear, wherever you are, bless you and thank you again!
Varda One
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The 11th Box
It is more blessed to give than to receive.
Acts 20:35
What is your most memorable Thanksgiving? For me, it was on the eve of the day. The church had the names of 10 families scheduled to receive food baskets. A local merchant donated hams, and groceries were purchased from the food bank. As we packed the boxes in the fellowship hall, these families were excited over the food they were taking home. It would be the best meal many had enjoyed in months. As they were picking up their boxes, another family arrived. Father, mother and three children piled out of an old pickup truck and came inside the hall. This was a new family, not on our list. They had just heard there was food being distributed by a church.
I explained that we did not have enough for an extra family. And as I tried to assure them that I would do what I could, an amazing thing happened. With no prompting, a woman put down the box she was carrying and quickly found an empty box to place beside it. She
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began removing items from her box to share. Soon others followed her lead, and these poor people created an 11th box for the new family.
Pastor Bill Simpson
Submitted by M'Shel Bowen
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The Sandwich Man
The capacity to care is the thing that gives life its deepest meaning and significance.
Pablo Casals
What would you do if you wanted to make a difference in the world, leave a mark or put a deposit on a ticket into heaven? Would you think big and pick the flashiest or most grandiose of acts? Or would you quietly persevere every day, doing one personal deed at a time?
Michael Christiano, a New York City court officer, rises every morning at 4 A.M., in good and bad weather, workday or holiday, and walks into his sandwich shop. No, he doesn't own a deli, it's really his personal kitchen. In it are the fixings of his famous sandwiches, famous only to those who desperately need them to stave off hunger for the day. By 5:50 A.M., he's making the rounds of the makeshift homeless shelters on Centre and Lafayette Streets, near New York's City Hall. In a short time, he gives out 200 sandwiches to as many homeless people as he can, before beginning his work day in the courthouse.
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It started 20 years ago with a cup of coffee and a roll for a homeless man named John. Day after day, Michael brought John sandwiches, tea, clothes, and when it was really cold, a resting place in his car while he worked. In the beginning, Michael just wanted to do a good deed.
But one day a voice in his head compelled him to do more. On this cold, winter morning, he asked John if he would like to get cleaned up. It was an empty offer, because Michael was sure John would refuse. Unexpectedly, John said, "Are you gonna wash me?"
Michael heard an inner voice say, Put your money where your mouth is. Looking at this poor man, covered in ragged and smelly clothes, unkempt, hairy and wild-looking, Michael was afraid. But he also knew that he was looking at a big test of his commitment. So he helped John upstairs to the locker room of the courthouse to begin the work.
John's body was a mass of cuts and sores, the result of years of pain and neglect. His right hand had been amputated, and Michael pushed through his own fears and revulsion. He helped John wash, cut his hair, shaved him and shared breakfast with him. "It was at that moment," Michael remembers, "that I knew I had a calling, and I believed that I had it within me to do anything."
With the idea for his sandwiches born, Michael began his calling. He receives no corporate sponsorship, saying, "I'm not looking for an act of charity that goes in the record books or gets media attention. I just want to do good, day by day, in my small way. Sometimes it comes out of my pocket, sometimes I get help. But this is really something that I can do, one day and one person at a time.
"There are days when it's snowing," he says, "and I have a hard time leaving my warm bed and the comfort of my family to go downtown with sandwiches. But then that voice in me starts chattering, and I get to it."
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And get to it he does. Michael has made 200 sandwiches every day for the past 20 years. "When I give out sandwiches," Michael explains, "I don't simply lay them on a table for folks to pick up. I look everyone in the eye, shake their hands, and I offer them my wishes for a good and hopeful day. Each person is important to me. I don't see them as 'the homeless,' but as people who need food, an encouraging smile and some positive human contact.
"Once Mayor Koch turned up to make the rounds with me. He didn't invite the media, it was just: us," says Michael. But of all Michael's memories, working side by side with the Mayor was not as important as working next to someone else . . .
A man had disappeared from the ranks of the sandwich takers, and Michael thought about him from time to time. He hoped the man had moved on to more comfortable conditions. One day, the man Showed up, transformed, greeting Michael clean, warmly clothed, shaven and carrying sandwiches of his own to hand out. Michael's daily dose of fresh food, warm handshakes, eye contact and well wishes had given this man the hope and encouragement he so desperately needed. Being seen every day as a person, not as a category, had turned this man's life around.
The moment needed no dialogue. The two men worked silently, side by side, handing out their sandwiches. It was another day on the streets of New York, but a day with just a little more hope.
Meladee McCarty
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Don't Pass Me By
At different stages in our lives, the signs of love may vary: dependence, attraction, contentment, worry, loyalty, grief, but at heart, the source is always the same. Human beings have the rare capacity to connect with each other, against all odds.
Michael Dorris
He walked with eyes lowered, head to the ground.
When he saw me, he spoke, and I took in his sight.
He was scruffy and raggedy
in his eyes was no light. He said, "Ma'am, I'm hungry."
He was very polite.
I said to him softly, "No money have I,
but I'll buy you some food with these food stamps of mine."
We walked on in silence, this homeless old man,
and he said, "Give me your number
I'll pay you back when I can."
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I looked in his eyes, where hopelessness lay,
and I said, "Never mind. I don't want you to pay."
As we walked down the aisles of the grocery store,
like a child he picked something, then asked for some more.
I gladly told him to fill all his needs,
because in my lifetime, I've done some bad deeds.
I'll never forget him, as he went on his way,
because he gave me something I can never repay.
He gave me a chance to give what I could,
a chance to show love to the misunderstood
a chance to feed someone when no one else would
a chance to be special, a chance to be good.
I'll ever be grateful to the stranger in rags,
for showing me Love in a few grocery bags,
for letting me be the one who had more,
for letting me answer his knock at my door.
You see, I'm no angel, though I've wanted to be.
I've hurt m
any people by just being me,
and this man, this stranger, who did not pass me by,
set free for an instant an angel to fly.
Jude Revoli
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Bidding from the Heart
It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jayne Fisher watched anxiously as her 17-year-old daughter Katie pulled her unruly lamb into the arena of the Madison County Junior Livestock sale. With luck, Katie wouldn't collapse, as she had during a livestock show the day before.
Katie was battling cancer. This was her first chance in months to be outdoors having fun, away from hospitals and chemotherapy treatments, and she had come with high hopes for earning some sizable spending money. She had wavered a little on her decision to part with the lamb, but with lamb averaging two dollars a pound, Katie was looking forward to a lot more than pin money. So she centered the lamb for viewing, and the bidding began.
That's when Roger Wilson, the auctioneer, had a sudden inspiration that brought some unexpected results. "We sort of let folks know that Katie had a situation that
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wasn't too pleasant," is how he tells it. He hoped that his introduction would push the bidding up, at least a little bit.
Well the lamb sold for $11.50 a pound, but things didn't stop there. The buyer paid up, then decided to give the lamb back so that it could be sold again.
That started a chain reaction, with families buying the animal and giving it back, over and over again. When local businesses started buying and returning, the earnings really began to pile up. The first sale is the only one Katie's mom remembers. After that, she was crying too hard as the crowd kept shouting, "Resell! Resell!"
Katie's lamb was sold 36 times that day, and the last buyer gave it back for good. Katie ended up with more than $16,000 for a fund to pay her medical expensesand she still got to keep her famous lamb.
Rita Price
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Ask for the Moon and Get It
When you give of yourself, you receive more than you give.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
As I grew up and went into business, I always had a soft spot for kids without bikes. When I was in my 20s, I lived next door to a little boy that I liked. And, wouldn't you know, his parents couldn't afford to buy him a bike. So one Saturday, I went to the local hardware store and blew half a paycheck, $25.00 for a surprise. You should have seen that kid jump up and downhe was my friend for life. But this is not the end of the story.
Over the years, as I saved money and became affluent, I gave away bike after bikeabout 100 in all, up to the year 1977.
Then in 1977, I was looking for a way to brighten the lives of underprivileged children in Minneapolis. I decided to throw a Christmas party for thema gala get-together for more than 1,000 impoverished kids of all races who never owned a bike. I would serve them refreshments in a large auditorium, I would tell them they
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could succeed, as I had. I would give them silver dollars as symbols of a richer future. And I would give them bicyclesa shiny new bike for each and every kid.
My assistants and I hid the bikes behind a gigantic curtain. Then when the celebration reached a climax, the curtain went up. You should have heard the gasps, the shouts, the cheers, the gleeful screaming as those kids gazed upon 1,050 brand-spanking-new two-wheelers neatly parked in rows. Then they scrambled toward the bikes, touching them, sitting on them, riding them around joyfully.
Like Martin Luther King Jr., I, too, have a dream. I'd like to give another bicycle party before I diethis one somewhere in the Middle East. I'd invite children from Israel, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and other countries in that eye-for-an-eye region that breeds so much distrust and terrorism. There will be gifts, games and a bicycle for each child; but the biggest gift will be a demonstration of youthful brotherhood. The relationship between young Jews and young Arabs will determine the kind of Middle East that emerges in the next generation.
Such a party would involve sensitive negotiations and would be very difficult to stage without incident. I'll have to do a lot of pushing and a lot of asking to pull it off, but I'm more than willing. In fact, I'm determined.
Why? Because I know what it's like to grow up in a world of poverty, distrust, prejudice and pain.
One time I asked for a job shining shoes and was turned away. I was nine when the exclusive Miscowaubik Club was looking for a boy to shine shoes at a nickel a pair. My mother dressed me in my best clothes. I remember my dad even dressed up before taking me there. My father drove me in his horse-drawn junk wagon. I remember even now how nervous I was sitting beside him on the high, wooden seat. We didn't talk much and I've often wondered if he was quiet that day because he suspected
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what might happen when I knocked on the door of the club. Its members were the wealthiest families in town, the captains and lieutenants of the Calumet and Hecia Consolidated Copper Mining Company. Even the name of the company awed and intimidated me.
As I sat on the wooden seat beside my father, jostling up and down, I saw the Miscowaubik Club come into view. It was imposing and yet elegant. My father waited while I walked to the big front door; I remember the brass handle on it. With beating heart and high hopes, I knocked. The door opened, and a well-dressed man, probably the manager, peered down at me. He didn't invite me in. He just asked what I wanted. I said, ''My name is Percy Ross, and I've heard you need someone to shine shoes." He replied coolly, "We don't need boys like you."
The words hit me like a ton of bricks. Dazed, I walked back to the horse and wagon. My father was so quiet, so very quiet. I didn't know what to think at the time. Why was I turned away? Maybe it was because I was Jewish. Maybe it was because I was from the other side of the tracks: painted in large letters on the side of my father's wagon were the words WM. ROSSJUNK DEALER.
On the ride home, the horse's hooves hit the street like hammers on my soul. I asked my father, "Why didn't he let me in the door? What kind of boy am I?" My father didn't have any answers. I remember I cried all the way home.
I have gotten over many disappointments, rebuffs and injuries in my life, but the wound I received that day still hurts. It is this wound that sparked the dream of having a bicycle party in the Middle East.
I'm going to give that party for the hope, however faint, of a world without hate, fear, oppression or resignation. I think it can make a difference.
Percy Ross
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Passing on Small Change
I believe it is the nature of people to be heroes, given a chance.
James A. Autry
The pharmacist handed me my prescription, apologized for the wait, and explained that his register had already closed. He asked if I would mind using the register at the front of the store.
I told him not to worry and walked up front, where one person was in line ahead of me, a little girl no more than seven, with a bottle of Children's Motrin on the counter. She clenched a little green and white striped coin purse closely to her chest.
The purse reminded me of the days when, as a child, I played dress-up in my grandma's closet. I'd march around the house in oversized clothes, drenched in costume jewelry and hats and scarves, talking "grownup talk" to anyone who would listen. I remembered the thrill one day when I gave a pretend dollar to someone, and he handed back some real coins for me to put into my special purse. "Keep the change!" he told me with a wink.
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Now the clerk rang up the little girl's medicine, while she shakily pulled out a coupon, a dollar bill and some coins. I watched her blush as she tried to count her money, and I could see right away that she was about a dollar short. With a quick wink to the checker, I slipped a dollar bill onto the counter and signaled the clerk to ring up the sale. The child scooped her uncounted change into her coin purse, grabbed her packa
ge and scurried out the door.