c. 2008 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ My new “Blood Donor” card from the New York Blood Center arrived last week. It contains important lessons for these turbulent and frightening times.

The card has my name on it _ a reminder that I am unique, something we tend to forget in the aggregation of statistics about consumer debt loads, unemployment rates, opinion polls, mortgage default trends and disposable income.

It reminds me that I am a person, not a number. I exist, and my existence ultimately isn’t defined by debt, job retention, political views or financial measures. I have known good times and bad times, abundance and scarcity. Through it all, I kept on breathing, dreaming, loving, writing, believing. Life can be difficult, but it doesn’t cease to be good and interesting.

The second line on the card is my donor number. It identifies me as nearly the 6 millionth person to donate blood in New York City. That’s a lot of people lying still for 20 minutes while a pint of blood diverts into a plastic bag. It means that my pint matters, but that I am not alone. In any response to human needs, I am part of a great “cloud of witness” of people who care and act.

Just think of the thousands of ways people care and act, from giving blood to teaching immigrants to raising children to comforting a co-worker. As craven as marketing tries to portray us, and as hate-driven as politicians try to make us, people tend to do good, even when no one is looking. Individuals doing good add up to an enormous social force for good.

The third line has my group number. I have no idea what that means. Maybe it tells an administrator that I donated at Rockefeller Center. I don’t need to know what it means. Agencies and companies can “slice and dice” me all they want. I still wake up each morning to my family. They are my “group.”

The fourth line is my blood type. Mine is a common blood type. Who receives it is unknown to me. Someone in New York City, probably. A neighbor, in the loosest sense of the word. I don’t need to know. I trust the Blood Center to use my donation wisely.

That kind of trust is missing in critical venues. I don’t think people object to paying taxes, for example, as long as they trust government to use their money wisely. I think people are willing to work hard if they trust their employers to be fair and ethical. I think people are generous with their faith communities when they believe their congregation is doing worthwhile and effective ministry.

The final line contains an indecipherable bar code, a sign of our computerized and data-driven age. Data about me exists in more databases than I care to know. Some spam me every day, some target me for predatory marketing. But life remains the wonderful adventure it was in the innocent days before data-mining.

This is the arena of faith _ this conviction that my existence is unique and my giving makes the world appreciably better. In God’s eyes, I am beloved. I’m not the only beloved, not part of a small elect tribe of the supremely righteous and blessed, but one of countless souls for whom God cares.

In the phrase of our time, life isn’t “all about me.” And yet it is about me _ and the difference I alone can make.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)

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