When the Downtrodden Reach Out to Help You

I do my best to take on the same practices I recommend to my life coaching clients. Do as I do seems to resonate with folks more than Do as I say. Go figure.

One of those practices is a morning “meditation” of some sort where I might write my gratitude list or read something inspirational or uplifting.

Recently I was reading passages from a book … Recipes for a Sacred Life by Rivvy Neshama.

She relates a story told to her by her friend, Julia Dean. It made me cry when I read it and it still grips me days later.

“Julia teaches photography around the world, but the story happened when she was a struggling artist in New York. It was a snowy winter day with a biting wind. Julia still remembers it because she walked home forty blocks in the cold, not having enough money for a bus.

‘I was ten blocks from my apartment,’ she says, ‘when a man huddled in a doorway held out a can filled with change and said, ‘Lady, you got any money?’ It hit me that I didn’t. I didn’t have any money and I started to cry.

He looked at me, held out the can again and said, ‘Lady, you need some money?”

~~~~~

Just shows you the capacity for caring that exists in all of us, even those who have the least to give.

May we all respond to need with the same kind of generous heart.

Love,