Making a Difference

 I often wonder how to make a difference in this beautiful yet struggling world. I also wonder if the world needs one more blog entry or if my words just add to the onslaught of minutiae that hits the world wide web every day. But on the off chance that it's really true that the pen is mightier than the sword and that one raindrop, be it ever so small and ordinary, does indeed raise the sea, I write.

In the stillness of a cloudy morning while the trees and birds and croaking frogs wait for rain, I feel guilty. Guilty that my little universe is currently at peace. Yes, I have my dilemmas, my concerns, my disappointments. But then there's Mozambique, where entire villages are flooded to the treetops and thousands of people are unaccounted for. I can give money, and I will, but I wish I could do more. Give more tangibly. See into the eyes of the people there and tell them that we who are safe really do care and desperately want them to be safe as well.

In some ways it feels as detached as when our mothers used to tell us to eat everything on our plates because kids were starving in China. Now as then, I'd gladly share my liver and onions with all takers! But really, how? And perhaps the brooding question below that layer is whether one unknown person going about her routine activities as best she can could add a big enough contribution to the collective need that it is actually felt? Because that's what most of us are: unknown. Lacking a huge footprint. Though our hearts may be as big as Desmond Tutu's, our spheres of influence and our resources seem woefully inadequate to ease the pain around us.

And yet--if we were able to see with the eyes of another realm, perhaps we would see spots of beauty glowing gold around the edges, slowly expanding until they touch and mingle with each other. Maybe as we--you and I and all the others who long to make a difference--do all we can to release love in our unknown sphere, it will circumnavigate the globe like a grid of light. Together, we will cover the earth in kindness.

Will it make wars go away? I don't know. Will hurricanes and droughts and earthquakes still happen? I'm guessing yes. But if we can see with other eyes that greatest of gifts--love--and give it wherever we are in the world, people will know they are not unseen. Not dispensable or insignificant, but loved and longed over, and it can comfort their hearts in the midst of whatever disaster they may be facing.

Adages abound--"Bloom where you're planted." "Light your corner of the world." Either those who penned those words were also hoping that the way they live their life would make a difference, or they actually knew that it would. I'm banking on the latter, because that's what I feel, too, if I drill down below the surface doubts and the guilt that follows on its heels.

And one thing I do know--that small though my sphere may be and limited my reach--if I do not live and love and try with all my heart, the world is the poorer for it. I may be just one small light, but if all the small lights decide they make no difference anyway and decide not to shine, the whole is diminished.

John Donne's immortal poem comes to mind:

No man is an island, entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were,

As well as if any manner of thy friends or of thine own were;

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls:

It tolls for thee."

In the same way, if any man's death diminishes mankind--us--then one person's life enriches it. One small light reaching out and uniting with other small lights increases the shining. Tiny raindrops you and I may be. But let us cast ourselves wholeheartedly into that great ocean, confident that no matter how little we may be, one raindrop really does raise the sea.