This is a wonderful collection of contributions. Thank you all so much. Before adding my own, I have been pondering long and hard, going over events long past and more recent. What they all have in common is that it wasn't "me", I would say "I" had nothing to do with it. Something far greater was at work.

I know exactly what your mother means, TIA, about doing the thing we least want to do, but which is the right and good thing. After I had lost my first baby, the hardest thing I ever did was to go into a maternity ward and visit one of my then inlaws (who had been very unsympathetic towards what had happened to me) the day after her own son was born, hold him, congratulate her and wish them well. Something in me made me do it, for Love's sake, when so much of me was yelling at me not to go and, believe me, it was the last place "I" wanted to be. But it was a life-changing, overwhelming event - the first time I really *knew* for sure that there was something so much greater than "me". I did it for Love's sake, and Love, in no uncertain terms, made itself known.

Like others who have posted, I have also had experiences of being uncannily and sometimes incongruously "placed" somewhere. On one occasion, out of the blue, I suddenly felt a kind of boost or presence (I described it to myself at the time as a "jacuzziness" !) which seemed to hang around and I wondered what it was all about. I didn't have long to wait to find out - A call came from someone I only know very distantly, desperately ringing all the numbers they could until they found someone at home to help them somehow piece together the jumbled confusion of thoughts as they faced breakdown. We kept talking and I kept finding words to say until somebody arrived back at their house and was there to realize the seriousness of the situation and to help them. Most definitely "I" had absolutely nothing to do with this. It was that Something Greater again.      

What is the greatest thing any of us have done ? It is impossible to say, because we would be judging from our perspective, rather than that of the people on the receiving end. The apparently smallest act or word or smile can be the greatest thing that ever happened to somebody who receives it, a light at the end of a tunnel. I know, I have been on the receiving end of this myself. From tiny acorns, mighty oak trees grow. There are two perfect strangers somewhere, right now, who don't know me and I don't know them, but their simple, probably automatic and unconscious act of kindness turned the world around for me and showed me that there *are* good people in this world at a time in my life when I felt the opposite was the case. I will never forget them.

Here are two of my favourite quotes. For anyone who has difficulty with the word God in the second quote, the way I like to look at it is to ask: What's in a name ? a rose by any other word would smell as sweet...

"As we live our lives there is a gift that all can give, no matter how poor in money or talent: hold out your hand and let your heart be in it" - J.A. Galdon

"Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it, for the greatest things grow by God's law out of the smallest. Do not fritter it away in erring act or inconstant will, but make your thoughts, your words, all work to the same end, and that end not self, but God." - Florence Nightingale.


With Love,
Jeanie