What would happen if people cared - really cared?

What if people saw, the way the world around them really was?

The world in which we now live...would be changed overnight.  

Back in 1996, a woman came up to me in a slum of Kampala, she was crying, sobbing, weeping...saying "no one cares, no one cares!"  I stopped and asked her as to the meaning of her statements "no one care."  She told me her story, a story of a husband who she loved and died of AIDS, the same disease she was dying of.  She had two children and no relatives around her, no one to take care of her children.  She had been to churches, the government, non-profit agencies, but everywhere it was the same story...."Sorry, we cannot help."

She was crying out for compassion...she did not want pity, but compassion that did something about her present circumstances, about her two children's future...

Norma Cousins wrote in "Human Options."  Compassion is not quantitative.  Certainly it is true that behind every human being who cries out for help there may be a million or more equally entitled to attention.  But this is the poorest of all reasons for not helping the person whose cries you hear.  Where, then, does one begin or stop?  How to choose?  How to determine which one of million sounds surrounding you is more deserving than the rest?  Do not concern yourself in such speculations.  You will never know; you will never need to know.  Reach out and take hold of the one who happens to be nearest.  If you are never able to help or save another, at least you will have saved one.  To help put meaning into a single life may not produce universal generation, but it happens to represent the basic form of energy in a society.  It is also the test of individual responsibility. 

The woman's story, the story of he children is one I have told in places around the world, she is no longer with us, but her children are and because of someone seeing them near to them, they are well provided for....

When I used to train young people in cross-cultural ways in Africa, there was always the pity factor...a factor that keeps one frozen and unable to reach out long term...because the present emotions of pity are overwhelming and hold one back...My question used to be simply this, "What is on your plate?"  Meaning - what is in front of you?  Pay attention to it...

Impacting our world, is not some far fetched thing, but a wonderful possibility.  A possibility that meets us anew each and every day, not just giving a handout to those who are brought into our path, but equipping them to live, teaching them how to fish, how to sow, how to harvest and how to store up and how to share...

I have been involved with people with deep need, involved with the voiceless of the world for over 40 years; a most enriching time for me....People often ask me "What can I do?"  What is on your plate?  The world in the 21st century is brought to our doorstep daily.  Uganda where I work for much of the year, is not some far and distant place away, but just next door...

I invite you to join me for 10 days to two weeks of your life...your life will never be the same...if you are just beginning in life, or like me ... catching a second wind...there is place of discovery for you...how to impact the world in which we live...and we can go to the children of that woman who cried "no one care," and prove her wrong...there are people that deeply care....feel free to write to me...jon