they wouldn’t have learned elsewhere. When we feel alienated alone, we can go out and help others, give a little of ourselves. Community service helps us “get out of ourselves” and pay attention to others. It helps us in our relationships with friends, family members, and co-workers. It makes us forget about what we don’t have and be thankful for what we do have.When we do something for another person, a simple message on a piece of paper, even our mere presence, might make that person’s day. As Geneva Johnson, chief executive officer of Family Services of America said in her speech to Case Western University, “one of the values we profess in America is we believe in commitments and loyalties beyond ourselves. We humans have shown ourselves capable of nobility, of kindness, and of generosity. We must draw on our strength from those who exhibit the best that is in them.”I’d like to end with a n analogy from Henry Emerson Fos*censored*’s 1920 book on the “meaning of service”. It is an analogy from the Holy Land that talks about rivers, rivers that run parallel to human life.The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are made of the same water. It flows down, clear and cool, from the heights of Harmon to the roots of the cedars of Lebanon. The Sea of Galilee makes beauty of it, for the Sea of Galilee has an outlet – it gets to give. It gathers in its riches that it may pour them out again to fertilize the Jordan plain – but the Dead Sea, with the same water, makes a horror. For the Dead Sea has no outlet – “it gets to keep”. Notice especially the phrase “it gets to give”. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. Thank you for your time, I wish you ladies good luck, have a wonderful evening. ...
