Every time I read “The Week,” I wonder if staying informed
is really so important. We dropped
our subscription to the Connecticut Post and stopped watching the news years
ago. So far, I can handle The Courier, but even local news has been discouraging lately. Still, it’s the bigger picture that is hard
to face, the atrocities by ISIS, the oppression of women, and racial and ethnic
hatreds unleashed. As I drove to Super
Stop and Shop on Saturday morning, I wondered, what is it with humans? What is our problem?
I swung into the parking lot, pulled into a space, picked up
a cart that had been left in the adjacent spot, and pushed it to the
entrance. Amidst the flats of annuals
and hanging baskets of pink petunias stood an attractive young woman, slender,
African-American, bright-eyed, and animated.
As I approached, she tore a sheet off the pad in her hand, gestured to a
white truck in the parking lot, and said, “We’re trying to stuff that truck
with food for the Bridgeport Rescue Mission (BRM). Would you be willing to contribute?”
Years ago, Casey and I volunteered at the Mission’s mobile
soup kitchen, handing out food and winter coats, and our friends, the
Tresslers, often collect donations for the organization during their annual
Christmas concerts. So I was familiar
with the Mission’s work and pleased to support it in a practical and easy way.
My own grocery list was short, so it was the perfect time to
fill the cart for BRM. I scanned the
shelves, selecting dry cereal, peanut butter, and a multitude of cans – canned beans,
tuna, and soup - as requested.
I was far from alone in the canned food aisle. Almost every person I passed held the BRM
list: a grizzled old man, stooped and slow moving; a heavy-set matron with a
beaming smile; a young couple, their heads close together, perusing the list
and reaching for some beans.
Good-hearted souls shopping on Saturday, given a chance to help, and happily doing so.
When I returned to the young woman outside the store, I felt
buoyant with light as I added my bags to a cart brimming with others’
donations. “Do you have any idea how
many people are shopping for you?” I asked. Grinning, she nodded, and I told her about my sad drive over. I didn’t want to get all religious on her,
but I had to tell her what felt so fully to be true. “This – you, the Mission, all of those
generous shoppers – are like an answer
to my question. An answer to my prayer.”
We didn’t hug each other, but that hug was alive in the air between us.
Robert Fulghum wrote in one of his essays that what makes
the news, by definition, is the exception, and so it is with the media barrage
of horrors. People doing good is not
news… and I have to remember that.
