c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is the author of”Turn Toward the Wind”and publisher of Religion News Service.)

(UNDATED) I embarrassed my children again the other day.

Waiting for them to emerge from the swimming pool locker room, I sat down on the edge of a planter and began to absent-mindedly pull out weeds. Soon I had accumulated a nice little pile of crabgrass, thistles and vines.

When the boys saw what I was doing, they stopped bickering long enough to gasp. My youngest asked what was an obvious question for him,”Mom, did someone pay you to pull those weeds?” My teen-ager was more concerned.”Mom! I can’t believe you did that. The other kids are going to think that my mom is the gardener around here.” As they rushed to jump on their bicycles and distance themselves from me, I ran after them, trying to explain.”No, no one paid me to do it. And there isn’t a gardener for the swimming pool, so that’s why we have so many weeds.”But if everyone did just a little bit to help. …” My children chimed in at this point.”We know. …””The world would be a better place,”they said in sing-song voices.

My teen shook his head as he sped away from the scene. I recognized his exasperation as I flashed back to my own days as a teen-ager and my father, whom my sister and I nicknamed”Daddy Do-right”.

I know that no matter how much I try to mind my own business, my family conditioning to help others is just too strong to overcome.

Nearly every day of my childhood, my father reminded my sister and me to”look for someone to help; look for a way to make things better.”We, too, repeated it in sing-song voices and cringed as my father ran to the aide of some poor, innocent person.

At the grocery store, he’d suddenly disappear to help someone with her bags. At the gas pump, he’d offer to clean the windshield of someone who was more well dressed than he. In church, he’d open his hymnal and pass it on to someone who was struggling to find the right page.”Daddy!”I’d cry out.”Leave those poor people alone.”I spent my adolescence in a constant state of panic that my father would be mistaken as a mugger instead of a Good Samaritan who simply didn’t know when to stop.

But over the years, despite my embarrassment, I realized that my father really was doing an amazing amount of good. He wasn’t just a passive helper. He actually looked for ways to assist someone. He sought ways to make things better.

At my father’s funeral I met dozens of people I had never seen before. The man to whom my father loaned money when he was down on his luck. The former employee who told me how my father had given him another chance despite his criminal record. Others who simply remembered his giving spirit as exceptional.

More than the eulogy that praised my father’s business accomplishments and civic service, these individuals stood as a testimony to one man’s ability to make the world a better place by simply looking for trouble and fixing it as best he could.

I will never be as open-hearted as my father. But I have learned that looking for ways to do good is a discipline that becomes a habit and eventually becomes an outlook. Each of us is equipped to do it. Each of us has abilities that someone else needs. And each of us is capable of doing an amazing amount of good.

Whether it is pulling weeds or opening a door, offering a compliment or assisting a senior citizen, every one of us can do a little good each day and make the world a better place.

It is easy to ask the government to fix things. It is simple to blame political leaders for our funk. But it takes only a little effort from each of us to change our community and, perhaps, to change someone else’s life.

It may sound simplistic and pollyanna-ish. It may embarrass your children. But looking for ways to do good will change your world. And discovering how much you have to offer will make you feel better, too.

MJP END BOURKE