I’m fascinated by the germination of good deeds. Where do they begin? How do they grow from a mere idea to an actuality?

On the 26^th of January, I caught up by phone with José Chavez, a custodian in the San Jose, California, Unified School District who’s been instrumental in creating a library for the village school in Limón, Michoacán, Mexico, where he grew up. (I learned of his project through a librarian friend who was soliciting books in Spanish.) Not only did he lead the library project, but he helped (physically) build a concrete plaza and paved areas in the village. When that was finished, the priest in the village called him up and said, “Why don’t you help us make a little room behind the church for people to meet?” So he raised $3,000 from among his friends and relatives in the immigrant community, many of whom gave $50, $100, $200.

I imagine that many people, like me, dream about all the good we’ll do someday when we acquire enough wealth to have a personal foundation. Here was a working class person who didn’t wait to be rich before taking action.

Below are extracts from our conversation:

LK: Tell me about how you started this library.

JC: I was born in Limón, Michoacán, and when I came here in 1974, I was thinking one day, ‘We don’t have any books [in the village].’ Three of us came from the same school, and [when we went there] the government only gave us three or four books, so I said to my friends, “Why don’t we try to build a library for the kids in that school?” So we [Salvador Andrade, Mario Andrade, and José] filled out an application to the government in Sacramento [Mexico] to see if the government will help us. The government said it would give 75 percent, if we would give 25 percent. So we started to collect the money [from other immigrant friends and family in the San Jose area].

Truly healing and mending the world can seem like an overwhelming task, beyond the capacity of everyday folks. It’s easy to feel that only big actions — starting an organization, a publication, a nonprofit, or a school and reaching at least thousands — counts. In today’s post, I’d like to say a word in favor of one-to-one generosity because recently I experienced several instances that were balms and blessings.

Case One, the Restaurateur

Over winter break, my family and thousands of others attempted to visit the Academy of Science. It should have been a tip-off that vehicles lined even the furthest edges of Golden Gate Park, so, after learning that we’d have to wait three hours or make alternate plans, we began trudging back to our distant, expensive parking lot. Along the way, my husband noticed a vegetarian Indian restaurant with a buffet lunch.

I wasn’t hungry myself, so we debated whether or not the proprietor would believe we weren’t pulling a fast one — a party of three paying for two all-you-can-eat meals.

“We might as well ask,” I said, expecting a not-unreasonable rejection. We entered the little hole-in-the-wall where the woman behind the counter greeted us in a kind and quiet manner, devoid of salesmanship. I asked my question, and, without weighing it, she assured me my non-customer presence would be no problem. I didn’t have to present an argument or plead my integrity.

Genesis

Twenty years ago (already!), I belonged to an activist church with a woman minister, gay leaders, and a social justice agenda. I chose it and similar organizations because my life of getting and spending, work and amusement, politics and personal life, felt empty and insufficient. So I took up a two-stranded way, spiritual and political, protests and potlucks, rallies and fund raisers, services and singing, meetings and celebrations. The church became an important community to me, but I needed further growth. Let me illustrate:

Our church owned and rented a tiny house to a woman and her teenaged son who were not parishioners. I lived close by, so they were my neighbors though I didn’t know their names and never introduced myself. At some point, I heard, the woman became ill with cancer, and then she died. Her son held a garage sale to raise funds; I browsed, but saw nothing I wanted and, with a vaguely uneasy feeling, walked away. Some weeks later, he came around selling Ginsu knives. I didn’t need knives, so I didn’t buy any. I don’t remember how many other attempts he made, but eventually he couldn’t make the rent and had to move out. That was the end.

At some point, I came to view this incident with horror, remembering my lack of response, the feeling I had that the situation was too bad but not my concern. I was focused on grand causes, so many ways to change the world that I could not help a neighbor even when he knocked at my door. Did it matter that I didn’t need an old kettle or Ginsu knives? Why couldn’t I have given money? Why couldn’t our whole church have put our heads and resources together to help? I’m sad and disappointed that our bottom line, the rent, prevailed over loving our neighbor and caring for the orphan, a literal neighbor, a literal orphan. It was almost a test case for living by principle, and I failed it. I remained passive (though sympathetic) in the face of need and pain; I often wonder if that struggling son thought, Churches and their ” love”: what a joke.

Big changes came about in both my personal and organizational life. I began to pay more attention. Those were the Reagan years when one effort after another came to heartbreaking failure. I began to ask the question: with all my hours of effort, all my meetings, whom exactly have I helped? Could I name one individual? I couldn’t – outside of family members. I became convinced that I needed to integrate long-term efforts with short-term acts and daily responses to unexpected opportunities, the kind that arise when heart and eyes are open. I wanted my destination and my journey to match. It’s a goal I still pursue.

This and my future posts on Tikkun Daily, then, represent an effort to remind myself and others of what small groups or individuals are doing right now and can do to heal and mend our local worlds, to celebrate the wonderful efforts we imperfect humans are capable of . May it strengthen us to– as the great French socialist, Jean Jaurès, put it –”live every day in a socialist state of grace,” to live now the battle that is “never won and never lost.”

Blessings on the journey!

Spotlight on Immigrant Service Day, August 29, 2009