Dear Friends,
Public health officials are all saying “Stay away from each other.” One of the feelings that can come up at a time of such strange isolation is helplessness – feeling like we don’t know what we can do to make things better.
One of the time-tested answers to helplessness is to help someone else. But if it makes things worse to go public, how do you help? One thing that comes to mind is to help the helpers who are set up for times like these to meet the needs of the neediest - like the St. Pete Free Clinic & Daystar Life Center.
With that thought, I googled the Free Clinic, read about its Food Bank, and designated a donation there. Helping the Free Clinic to help more people helped me feel not helpless.
I sat down and wrote a rather lengthy
To Do
list which is now my
Can Do
list, which feels much better than a
Can’t Do Anything
list.
Now I’ll go to the UUSP website (uustpete.org), find the Giving tab, and contribute to our Social Justice Committee’s UUs Helping People (UUHP), which manages our Friday evening meals for the homeless and hungry.
On somebody’s advice, I also went to the domestic abuse response agency CASA website and contributed there when I saw that Steward Butterfield, co-founder of Slack, promised to match over donation five times over. Now I’ve just read that CASA raised $25,000 in the last 24 hours, which will mean $125,000 more, I believe. Congratulations, St. Petersburg.
Join me this weekend for our online “Weekend Service” (at
youtube.com/uustpete
). We are trying to make the Service both simple and meaningful to help minimize travel and maximize connection.
I hope you are doing the same.
Lots to do. Stay in touch. Appreciation for all,
Pastor Jack
