The Cure for Compassion Overload

I'm wondering if I'm suffering from compassion overload. Sometimes I want to jump on a plane to China, find parents who lost children in the earthquake, wrap my arms around them and absorb their grief. I can't believe that officials wouldn't let parents into their children's school until two days after the earthquake. They just wanted to rescue their children or find their bodies. 

Why did they have to wait?

Why did the victims of the cyclone in Myanmar have to wait until their government got good and ready to allow overseas aid in to their country? 

And why, nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina, are many residents of New Orleans still waiting?

Yes, New Orleans still needs help. The French Quarter is back to normal, but people in the lower Ninth Ward, St. Bernard's Parish, and Lakeview continue to suffer. I recently received an e-mail describing the vast number of abandoned buildings still bearing the spray painted X left by the rescuers, and the large numbers of people still living in trailers waiting for help rebuilding their homes. The e-mail came from Morton of Dallas who describes meeting a resilient group of people.

"I found the people to be exhausted and yet there was a sparkle in their eyes," he writes. 

He visited with a Jewish couple, not wealthy at all, "working 80 hours a week, unpaid to run a Women's shelter."

He visited with a Christian pastor who chooses to live in a trailer himself while finding houses for others. When Morton asked about whether he needed financial assistance, Pastor Davenport is quoted as saying, "if the admission price for heaven was $2, we'd have to have a lay-away plan to get in."

We really don't have to fly to China or Myanmar to help out. There are people who do that, and we can donate to them. 

And we also can support the ordinary Americans who "have seen a problem, identified the challenge, stepped forth without the resources and made something happen."

 The e-mail from Morton of Dallas may offer an antidote for compassion overload. 

1. Read about the Women's Shelter and its wish list here.
   
2. Read about Pastor Davenport here.
   
3. Donate money or items through their websites.
   
4. Plan a vacation in New Orleans. Tourism dollars also help rebuild the city.
   

The resilient spirit of the New Orleans residents is alive and well. 

The spirit of the self-gift is alive and well in people like the pastor, the couple, and Morton of Dallas.

The cure for compassion overload is love in action.

We can do no great things; only small things with great love. 

Mother Theresa

Choices

I buy a cup of coffee, a sandwich, and a magazine, and then give a couple of dollars to some street vendors. I blow $20 in a matter of minutes without giving it a thought. Except that I am giving it a thought. I keep thinking about a New York Times article that I read a couple of days ago about children who ate only two spoonfuls of rice in two days; about an entrepreneur in Haiti who is selling patties made of mud, oil, and sugar. People are buying mud patties to eat! They are that hungry! The story came back to haunt me as I watched the news on PBS as well.

Is it too big of a problem? I'm only one person. I should be saving for retirement. I should pay down my mortgage. What about college tuition?  

Here's why it's an emergency.  Draught, biofuels, and high oil prices all linked up together to create the perfect storm that they're calling the "Silent Tsunami."

Food prices have risen 83% in the last three years. Many people in developing countries spend more than three quarters of their income on food. And in places like Haiti, where they live on a dollar or two a day, many can no longer afford to eat.

You know what, I have enough. Just $15 of that $20 could feed 10 school children. I'm going to help out right now, until the world leaders find a long term solution. It's the least I can do. Can you do it too?

 

Below are a couple of the organizations that are doing the work.

World Food Program

Oxfam America

A friend of mine prefers to donate to small non profits with around 10% or less in administrative costs so that most of his money goes to the people in need. 

Below are organizations that monitor how much money charities spend on administrative costs versus programs for people.

charitynavigator.org

guidestar.org

charitywatch.org

All it Takes is One Person..and Another... and Another

I'm still coming down off a giddy high from an event I attended a couple of nights ago. You would have thought it was a rock concert the way everyone was lined up outside the door of the armory building.  The 

tattooed and purple-haired mingled easily with the gray-haired reading glasses crowd. Inside it looked like a huge science fair. Only instead of words and pictures that explained black holes and quarks, these posters called on us to  "Feed My Hungry Children," "Educate the Women of the World"  or "Break the Cycle of Poverty." 

Nearly 70 groups manned tables to tell how they made lemonade with the lemons life gave them. Maasi Dancers from East Africa, dressed in traditional warrior garb, taught us how to dance; and they told us how it feels to live without food for days at a time, to be forced to marry at 13, and to walk 13 kilometers a day to get milk for the children. 

Everyone was interested. Everyone seemed to want to get involved. It was so crowded that it was nearly impossible to get close to some of the tables just to sign up for e-mails at the Global Activism Expo.

I did get to talk privately for a few minutes with Margaret Fleming, who learned a lot about HIV when her only sibling was diagnosed with it. When she realized how many countries ostracized children with HIV she began to adopt them. She adopted one child with HIV and founded Adoption-link with one volunteer to help her find homes for others. 16 years later she still finds homes for children from all over the world. Her own home is too full to take anymore. Margaret's 3 biological children are grown and gone, but her adopted children keep it lively.  There are 9 at home. The oldest is 26 and the youngest is 3. By the way, Margaret herself is 72 years old!  

"Remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power. Never forget that you can still do your share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and frustrations and disappointments."

 

"All it takes is one person… and another… and another… and another… to start a movement"  

Rabbi Abraham Heschel