No Idle Hands

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Wielding a paint roller at an emergency shelter for homeless teens in his soon-to-be adopted home city, Barack Obama charged all of us on this national day of service to share in the responsibility to make America better again.

"No idle hands."

If you can't join in the service projects today—you're ill or incapacitated, you're at work, your responsibilities constrain you—then give some thought to what you can do in the months to come. Think about what needs doing...right in your community, your neighborhood, your block.

I'm visualizing the bleak landscape around the neighborhood elementary school around the corner ablaze with flowers planted in the spring by all the folks for blocks around who can share the beauty of their home flower gardens. All it takes is somebody to get it started....

I'm gathering up a collection of necessaries for a gift bag for our local women's shelter. I'll bring it along to our next monthly midday meetup lunch. It was Gale's idea. We all get those gift bags for Christmas or birthdays or valentines. Instead of tossing them, or recycling them for gifts to friends or family, wouldn't it be lovely if every group that gathered for lunch, or tea, or circle, or church, or party brought along gift bags (or items to fill them) and then one of the group would deliver all to the local women's shelter. Or children's hospital. Or whichever charity of need the group decided on for that gathering.

And don't just do it one day, one event. Make it a habit. Help build Gale's Gift Bags from one group to every group. All it takes is somebody to get it started....

I've a call in to the director of our local library system today, the community's moving into a brand spanking new library building this spring and there bound to be ways to pitch in and help make that happen. All it takes....

There's a springtime of spirit across this great land, and even if we're still in the brutal cold harshness of winter with still too many weeks and time before the first green of new life begins to peep out of the snow, that spirit of springtime will sustain us.

And in the meantime, there's much to do. No idle hands.
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