"Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness." ~ Anne Frank

This Anne Frank quote resonates with the example I promised yesterday to share with you today. *

This is the first recollection that came to me:

My friend, Kathy, and I had just began an early morning beach walk before class at the University of Santa Monica. She and I were graduate students there. We hadn't walked far when Kathy stopped and held her stomach. "I think I'm going to be sick," she said. She looked like she might faint too. I knew she had just started taking a bunch of vitamins and had taken them on an empty stomach that morning. With her leaning on me, we slowly made our way toward the shade under the Santa Monica Pier.

There was a man under the pier. I had noticed him as we approached. He looked like he had spent the night there, actually many nights. I avoided making eye contact.  

Once there, sure enough, Kathy was sick. Neither of us had water or a tissue.   

Tenuously, the homeless man approached us. "I don't have any water but you're welcome to what I have," he said, holding up a bag wrapped around a bottle of amber liquid.
He was sincere and kind, gentlemanly and generous. 

In an instant, that man, and the whole situation of Kathy sick under the pier, went from ugly to beautiful and from scared to sacred. There was nothing "other" about him. Nothing offensive. Nothing frightening. There was nothing to judge. He was one of us, three people with basic goodness who happened to be under the pier at the same time.

With love, gratitude, and joy,

Charlene     

* If you didn't read yesterday's touchstone, it asked us to recall a time when a transformation happened and we went from scared to sacred, or from fear to faith, or from ugly to beautiful. 

LOVE: It will grow each time you give it away.

- from The Twelve Gifts of Birth