open our hearts and checkbooks

'Tis the season to open our hearts and checkbooks to the disadvantaged of the world. In New York, daily stories in the New York Times about the city's neediest cases are a much needed reminder that there but for fortune might go you or I. Donating to the many charities that help the needy is the least we can do pay back for our good fortune, but writing a check is a fairly distant way to help, even an easy one. I wonder how much more good each of us could do if we became involved, really involved, with just one individual in need of help?
I've been thinking a lot about this after seeing the movie The Blind Side, based on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis. It's about Baltimore Ravens defensive tackle Michael Oher and the rich white family in Nashville who took him in when he was a homeless teenager, became his legal guardian and set him on a path that eventually led to his becoming one of the highest paid rookie players in pro football. Critics have trashed the movie for being too sentimental, but I fond the film remarkable because the facts, which it hues to very closely, are remarkable. As Oher tells USA Today:
They've got big hearts. To take somebody from my neighborhood into your house? Nobody does that. I don't think I'd even do that. I'd help you out, but with a daughter and with all the violence and drugs where I come from ... they didn't have to do that."
Just before seeing The Blind Side I finished reading Tracy Kidder's Strength in What Remains, another remarkable true story of Deo, a young medical student in Africa who managed to escape the genocide in Burundi and Rwanda, emigrate to New York, return to college and then medical school in America, and then go back to Burundi to build a clinic. Along the way he was helped by a number of strangers who went to great lengths to help him simply because it was the right thing to do. An elderly woman, whom he never saw again, risked her life by insisting that he blend in with her family to evade soldiers who were slaughtering members of his ethnic group at a border crossing. A baggage handler saw him wandering Kennedy Airport after landing in New York, unable to speak English and with no friends or family in this country, and helped him find a room and a job. A former nun he met when he delivered her groceries decided to do everything she could to help him, eventually finding Nancy and Charlie Wolf, a couple with a huge loft in Soho who gave him a home and helped him enroll in college. From the New York Times review:
About the Wolfs, who are in some ways the heroes of this book, Mr. Kidder writes, “Clearly, they were a couple disposed to take chances.” His subtext is: More of us should be as willing.
I admit, I have never been that willing. I doubt many of us have. Yet all the people who helped these two individuals say the same thing-- bringing a needy stranger into their lives helped them as much as the young men that they aided. It's hard for most of us to truly help an individual, especially the working parents among us, who are usually short of both time and money. But I wonder if there are ways to make that personal connection, even with limited means. A friend of mine who owns a small store, rather than donating to a large charity, sends money each month to a family in Mexico she learned about through one of her suppliers, to pay for the school fees and books for their two children. She likes the much more personal nature of this donation, and the fact that she knows exactly where the money is going. Perhaps this is a better way to donate? Or at least another way.
Kidder’s previous book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, is about Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard-trained physician who believes the wealthy nations of the world have a duty to help the poorest. His organization, Partners In Health, has set up clinics in the some of the world’s most destitute regions, and in the book, Dr. Farmer regularly challenges Kidder, and the rest of us, to do more, give more, help more. I'd love to hear from those of you who have managed to do just that. Any suggestions of ways each of us can help more individuals, short of giving up a bedroom to a stranger, would be great. Meanwhile, ignore the reviews and go see The Blind Side. And take your kids. It's sure to spark the kind of family discussion we should all have more often