Wow! I logged on to write this post and discovered that I had a comment on my last post. I helped someone find their way back to Science of Mind magazine. That made my day, to know that I helped another human being in some small way! What a blessing!
And last night, I was at a dinner held at the Left Coast Crime 2012 writers' conference I attended this weekend, sitting with people I did not know from Adam prior to that evening, and a woman shared with me her experience of helping people and learning about things in her community that she had never known before.
This woman, who I will call Marie for the purpose of this blog (I truly am horrible with names), lives in North Carolina, in a county with a large wooded area. A wooded area where a large constituency of homeless live. Now Marie had a box spring from an old bed set she was trying to get rid of, and an agency in her county that helps the homeless and down at their luck out accepted this old box spring donation from Marie. In doing so, the agency shared with Marie that many people in her county are homeless and live in this large wooded area, many of them sleeping in mere blankets on the ground, and they are thankful for any help given to them. Marie, being middle to affluent in income level, had never even come close to experiencing what these people lived with in a daily basis. And she felt so blessed to have been able to help in some small way and that she now knows about these people in her community.
Our conversation came about when she asked me what I wrote about, and I was telling her about Papacita, my short story inspired by a newspaper story about an older Hispanic man found dead near one of the homeless encampments along our river parkway here, complete with cowboy hat, button down shirt, blue jeans, and brand new boots. Somehow this led to me telling her about a particular homeless man who I had seen many times over the spring and summer of last year, when I was outside at lunch time enjoying the sun. He was quite polite when he asked for money and I turned him down, as I don't carry cash. One day, I noticed how thin he had gotten, and then I did not see him again until I was at a nearby Starbucks a month or so ago. He had made himself persona non grata at that establishment, so he could not enter. However, I was just so glad to see that he had survived the winter that I went back inside and bought him a sandwich and a pastry.
I might add that Marie also said she rescues cats, and she blessed me for helping out my fellow human being in such a personal manner.
Those of you who know me, know that I believe we are all human beings first and all else comes second to that. And you may or may not know, I have been on that razor's edge of being homeless in my life - with three children - so I understand the despair that the homeless and down on their luck feel.
I also know that you can turn your life around, you can pull yourself up to something better. And that is why this blog exists - to help each of us by helping all of us.
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