It's Really "About" YouThis initiative is yours. Your initiative -- that's really what it boils down to. Your willingness. You’re ingenuity, brilliance and skills. It’s about your adaptability in the face of change and obstacles. Most of all, it’s about your vision and imagination.
Accordingly, this thing is yours to shape however you like. You can call it whatever you want. You can make your own logo or take this whole idea in any direction you like. On a pragmatic level, that’s probably a requirement. Invent a new way. Decide how you personally want to shape participation by participating. If there’s any unifying principle, it’s probably a shared understanding of the necessity of sharing for a rich and beautiful life. |
A Story |
While I was growing up my mother would sometimes tell a story from her childhood during the Great Depression. Sometimes she'd come home from school to find a strange man sitting at the kitchen table, eating.
My mother’s family always had enough food because my grandfather never lost his job. So, the story went, her mother, (my grandmother),“being a Christian woman,” would, when someone asked for food, feed that person. After a while, the family started to wonder: How come all these people seem to be showing up at our back door? This was in the era when service alleys were common behind houses in residential neighborhoods, places where ash cans were kept. They heated with anthracite coal. At length, the family discovered the answer: Someone had drawn an arrow on a utility pole, pointing to their back door, indicating that this was a place where a hungry person, a person out of work and possibly even homeless, could get a meal. And from the stories I was told, there was never a problem. None of the guests pressed the family’s kindness, caused any trouble or even, once fed, returned. It’s hard to imagine today how a woman alone in a house, with her children at school and her husband at work, would let a hungry stranger in. One might be tempted to criticize that decision, point out the risks, call it foolish. Let’s not. We’re not going to get to a world worth living in without courage, my friends. Or without kindness and compassion. We have to be the solution. This story is a big piece of what motivated Green Hand Reskilling. There are many entry points to participation in sharing what you know to build community and make the world a better place. Still, I find inspiration in the story. |
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