Where to Give the Love?

Today is your lucky day if you have any love to give.

This scene from Fleabag has stayed with me.  [Fleabag is talking with her friend Boo about the love she feels for her dead mother.]

Fleabag: I don’t know what to do with it.

Boo: With what?

Fleabag: With all the love I have for her. I don’t know where to put it now.

Boo: I’ll take it. 

Boo: No, I’m serious. It sounds lovely. I’ll have it.

Giving Tuesday – the Tuesday after Thursday Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, First Advent Sunday, and Cyber Monday – is a day of intentional giving to organizations. We all have love to give and some of us even have a little extra money to give as well.

Don’t know where to put that love?  There are so many options, especially in 2020:

• Your local food bank.
• Your neighborhood shelter.
• Your friend who lost their job.
• The lady on the corner living out of a shopping cart.
• The man who hangs out in Dunkin Donuts all day drinking coffee because he has no other place to go.
• Exhausted parents.
• Lonely assisted living residents.

AND there are countless institutional possibilities:

• Disaster Relief
• Racial Equity
• Public Radio and Television
• Scholarships
• Refugee Resettlement
• Computer Training for Low Income Adults
• Interfaith Understanding
• Cash Bail Assistance
• Animal Rescue
• Heating Bill Assistance
• Fighting Hate Groups
• Women’s Health Care

And then there is always your church, synagogue, mosque, temple.  Any faith community actually being faithful has numerous local projects where you can share the love using your money or your time.

Do you have any love to share?  So many of our neighbors will be happy to take it.  Fun activity for today: give a First Responder a gift card for coffee, groceries, donuts.  Seriously.  If you have a spare $5 or a spare $100 do this today.