"I shall pass through this life but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do. Or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature. Let me do it now.

Let me not defer or neglect it. For I shall not pass this way again,"reflects Etienne de Grellet in a profound statement regarding giving to one's fellow man.

In particular, we can create goodness by what we do for others, often in small unobtrusive gestures and actions - an encouraging word, a thoughtful gift, a gentle touch, perhaps a few minutes of patient listening. It is to our advantage to create and add to goodness wherever we go, to step out of our normal arena of circumstances and to follow our hearts into the realm of the extraordinary and exquisite, where man meets man, spirit to spirit.

When we contribute to goodness, it makes for a better world for all of us to live in. And we're then responding to what our human souls invite us to do.

We have within us the capacity to set our souls "free to give for the sheer, beautiful sake of true giving," relates Daphine Rose Kingma. "In giving freely, purely, for no reason and every reason, you move into another person's emotional landscape - not because you must, not because you have no choice, but because in your heart . . . you have felt the spiritual necessity of acting out your love."

Cellist Pablo Casals adds to Kingma's reflections: "Each man has inside him a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a man to listen to his own goodness and act on it."

The question that counts is this, says Casals: "Do we dare be ourselves?"

Even if we do dare to be ourselves, we may underestimate our ability to enrich lives. "The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded live as we pass through this world," relates Leo Buscaglia. "There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our encouragement, who will need our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give."

Illustrating goodness and compassionate service is the story of a single woman who adopted a teenager who had been in the state social welfare system for years.

When she adopted this teen, the woman changed employment so she could be home with her as much as possible. To accomplish this, she left a job as administrative assistant in a company to become a department secretary in a college, with an accompanying decrease in pay. So, for several years, she and her adopted daughter lived on a very modest budget, one that did not allow for saving for a down payment on a house. She tells this story, which she has entitled "A Hundred Dollar Thingee:"

"Mom?" whispered my daughter, in her after-school check-in call. Her quiet tone was very unusual for her because she has an enthusiastic, booming voice.

"Yes, dear."

"Mom, we got a hundred dollar thingee in the mail today," the whispering continued.

"Oh, honey, it's just a scam. Look at it. We'd probably have to buy a thousand dollars worth of something we don't need to get the hundred dollars off."

"No, Mom, it's a real hundred dollar thingee. Like a dollar."

"You mean like real money?"

"Yeah, Mom, it's real money. It came in the mail to both of us." She had to tell me it was addressed to her as well as me, as we'd been working on not opening other people's mail.

"Well, dear, hide it somewhere and don't tell anyone that we got it."

"Indeed it was a real hundred dollar bill that had been mailed to us with just a short note inside, saying it was from friends. From the start, we received money at irregular intervals all summer and into the fall, a total of about seven hundred dollars. Sometimes with a note, often wrapped in plain paper. The envelopes were hand-addressed, and I tried to match the handwriting to any sample I had among all my friends, including the envelopes from previous Christmas cards. I could not find a match.

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"Then, in the middle of November we received another envelope with another hundred dollar bill in it - but this time there was a typed letter included. The letter said that our `friends' knew that we wanted to buy a house but did not have the down payment for one. They, as a family, would give us enough for a down payment, five to six thousand dollars. So excited, I started looking for a house immediately, but the housing situation was bleak.

"I hunted all through November and into the first part of December with no luck. Toward the middle of December, another envelope with a typed letter arrived - in the envelope was a $6,000 cashier's check. This letter apologized for holding us to a down payment on a house and released us to do with the money whatever we wanted. However, within two weeks we had found a little house to buy and have since moved into it, where we have been for the past several years.

"No, we haven't a clue who gave us the money. Our `friends' will remain anonymous, but their benevolence won't. They did not ask us to keep this quiet and we have not. There is so much negative broadcast in our world that I want to do my part in letting it be known there is plenty good being done, too."

(Story submitted by Joyce Baggerly from Provo, regarding her own, and her daughter, Cassie's, experience.) Note: To the woman who wrote anonymously to me regarding her attractiveness - please contact me regarding a message from someone who very much wants to be your friend.

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