A Culture of Caring…

A few months ago we started wondering if we might be able to spark relationship building and solidarity by mailing the following letter to good solid Savannah people. One letter per week, 52 weeks a year. Play that out by 10 years, then 100 years…

 

Dear Michelle,

 

I hope this finds you well. I am sending this letter to one person per week for 52 weeks. You are the seventh.

 

A. Please locate and obligate yourself to someone who lives on thin ice in Savannah. Find ways be appreciate each other. Find ways to question the status quo. Imagine growing old together. Seek Solidarity. Learn as you go, then …

 

B. Please think of three people you know in Savannah and ask them to do A and B as well.

 

C. Hold onto this letter until you do A and B. When done, send the letter back to me. No hurry, just sometime in 2010.

 

I won’t bore you with details, but you are welcome to call me at 912-236-5798, or email me at tomkohler@bellsouth.net or find me on Facebook or at the Sentient Bean for coffee.

 

Tom Kohler

 

After sending about a dozen of these, we had a couple of phone calls. Not from people to whom we had sent letters, but from people we know and who know our work. One was from Rev. Liam Collins. He had met a man with a who was living a hard life on an SSI check of few hundred bucks a month and asked if we might help the two of them think about some possibilities.Yep, we can do that.

 

The second call was from Clete Bergen, an attorney we know. He asked us to lunch and brought someone with him who “was being a citizen advocate without knowing it.” I listened to her story and helped her think about how to engage other people in the story. We can help her in some other ways as well.

 

The letter and the two stories are part of a culture of caring that we promote. A culture of people caring about and for one another. A culture of caring about who is left out, and who we need to be a little extra intentional about inviting in.