The Little Things. . .
Friday, August 31, 2007
I closed yesterday's post with the idea that little things in life matter most. First thing this morning I checked my email and received this message from Charity Focus:
There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness, and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much. --Mother Teresa
Good News of the Day:
To talk. To be listened to. To unwind. When you are a low-income woman with cancer, it is often the little things -- a caring touch, a steaming cup of herbal tea -- that can make a difference. The Charlotte Maxwell Clinic addresses an invisible problem -- the economic and emotional fallout that cancer can have on low-income women already underserved by the health care system.
The clinic -- a volunteer network over some 275 massage therapists, acupuncturists, social workers and homeopathy specialists in the Bay Area -- provides free alternative medicine treatments and other services to women for whom even a massage is an unthinkable, unaffordable luxury. Founded in 1989 with $4,000, the clinic, is named after Charlotte Maxwell, a social worker who died of ovarian cancer and believed that alternative therapies enhanced her final months.
This message has particular meaning for me because it ties together two things that are close to my heart: persons of low income, and cancer. My friend's husband is suffering with a rare form of cancer that has metastasized to his bones. I've been following their blogs, and it seems that God's love for them shows up in the little things; little things that come from the hands and heart of another person.
I've experienced something of the same: We are truly God's hands and feet. If we aren't reaching out with little acts of love, kindness, and thoughtfulness, as Mother Theresa said, then we are truly an impoverished people, all of us.
The whole idea has me brewing about an idea that I'll blog on soon. It's a way for communities (churches, small groups, mom's groups, play groups, etc) to begin sharing more needs with each other, and to respond to those needs more creatively and consistently over time.
For more on the amazing alternative medicine clinic described above, click here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDB1030F93BA25752C1A9649C8B63&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=print
If you find it in your heart to pray for my friends, and follow their story, check out these blogs:
http://www.johnfawcett.blogspot.com/
http://www.margiefawcett.blogspot.com/
There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness, and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much. --Mother Teresa
Good News of the Day:
To talk. To be listened to. To unwind. When you are a low-income woman with cancer, it is often the little things -- a caring touch, a steaming cup of herbal tea -- that can make a difference. The Charlotte Maxwell Clinic addresses an invisible problem -- the economic and emotional fallout that cancer can have on low-income women already underserved by the health care system.
The clinic -- a volunteer network over some 275 massage therapists, acupuncturists, social workers and homeopathy specialists in the Bay Area -- provides free alternative medicine treatments and other services to women for whom even a massage is an unthinkable, unaffordable luxury. Founded in 1989 with $4,000, the clinic, is named after Charlotte Maxwell, a social worker who died of ovarian cancer and believed that alternative therapies enhanced her final months.
This message has particular meaning for me because it ties together two things that are close to my heart: persons of low income, and cancer. My friend's husband is suffering with a rare form of cancer that has metastasized to his bones. I've been following their blogs, and it seems that God's love for them shows up in the little things; little things that come from the hands and heart of another person.
I've experienced something of the same: We are truly God's hands and feet. If we aren't reaching out with little acts of love, kindness, and thoughtfulness, as Mother Theresa said, then we are truly an impoverished people, all of us.
The whole idea has me brewing about an idea that I'll blog on soon. It's a way for communities (churches, small groups, mom's groups, play groups, etc) to begin sharing more needs with each other, and to respond to those needs more creatively and consistently over time.
For more on the amazing alternative medicine clinic described above, click here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDB1030F93BA25752C1A9649C8B63&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=print
If you find it in your heart to pray for my friends, and follow their story, check out these blogs:
http://www.johnfawcett.blogspot.com/
http://www.margiefawcett.blogspot.com/
