What if you were walking down the street and you saw a sign in a store window that read, ‘KISMET Lessons. 18-Cents’. Would you stop in? I don’t mean to sound judgmental, but 18-Cents? What does that get you? And what’s a kismet?
Blogging is an important facet of my life. It plays an elemental role in maintaining my sanity in the face of death, police violence, rioting, inequality and all forms of hatred and intolerance – institutional and otherwise. Sometimes I wonder why I even turn on the morning news as I get ready for work each morning. Arrests, house fires, robbery and hit-and-runs…day after day.
So it isn’t all that surprising when there are weeks, as a writer, I see ten or fifteen topic tags scribbled across my blank page and staring back at me as I sit down to write you…sometimes they are little sentences or maybe a few words of short-hand. For one reason or another, I’m coming to understand they are all worthy or they wouldn’t have come to me in the first place – each one snap, crackle popping like firecrackers over a campfire. As I go through the week with all of them tumbling around in my imagination, I’m looking to hear THE one that speaks to me louder than the rest. When I do, then I write. Sometimes I know why. Sometimes I don’t. But I get there. Hit the PUBLISH button.
But every once in a great while, I run across some rare tidbit in need of not one addition or edit…it is already just right and I know it speaks the truth. So this week, permit me to demonstrate why I got a gold star in Kindergarten and share a story I found online this week…or did it find me?
Most life’s really valuable lessons can be expensive. This one cost 18-cents.
So this week, live fully, laugh deeply and learn from the Sources most hidden.
18-Cents. Change is good.
“Ann Huskey has helped organize what’s called the Muffin Ministry at First United Methodist church in Charlotte for years.
She and a handful of other volunteers feed 150 homeless people before church every Sunday morning and in the process she’s had a chance to get to know the regulars.
That’s why Huskey wasn’t surprised to hear that the homeless man who has touched the nation with his 18-cent donation and handwritten note wants to remain anonymous.
“He’s a very humble person he doesn’t want to be noticed or recognized,” Huskey, 70, tells PEOPLE exclusively.
Earlier this week church volunteers were going through Sunday’s collection plate and found the scribbled message on an envelope with a small donation inside.
“Please don’t be mad. I don’t have much. I’m homeless. God Bless,” it read.
Inside the envelope? A mere eighteen cents.
People across the country heard about the story – including the man who wrote the note.
“We had a voicemail from the individual and I called him back and when I reached him he was a nearby soup kitchen having lunch,” says Reverend Patrick Hamrick.
“I said, ‘There are people that are willing to help you financially. They are concerned about you,’ ” he says.
“He said ‘Nope, I want this gift to be between me, God and the church.’ ” he says. “And so he wishes to remain anonymous.”
Still, Hamrick is hoping to connect the homeless donor with a local businessman who wants to offer him a job.
Huskey is hoping the rest of us will also take something away from this.
“You can do anything – no matter how big or how little – as long as you’re helping somebody,” she says.
“Everybody can do something to help those less
fortunate than they are.“”
Store Window: The Library of Congress [Grand Grocery Co. in Lincoln, Neb. – 1942] – John Vachon, 1914-1975, photographer. Original Source for Excerpted Article: Michelle Boudin for People Magazine – Michelle Boudin @michelleboudin 05/01/2015 AT 04:00 PM EDT. Unattributed Photo of Envelope and Paster Hamrick with note. http://www.people.com/article/homeless-man-18-cents-church-remains-anonymous; KISMET LOVE (SHERYLDS: http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage_public_journal_individual.asp?blog_id=5304978
Kismet, A Definition: The word kismet comes from the Arabic word ḳismat, meaning “division, portion, lot.” You can think of kismet as your lot in life, or your fate. You’ll often hear the word used in relation to something significant that came about entirely by chance. If you met the love of your life when you spilled coffee on one another as you fell on the icy sidewalk of a street you never walked down before, all you can do is smile and shrug and say, “Kismet.”
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