Lighting The Way Small Acts Of Charity Shine Hope Over Despair

There are people, good, loving people, who long for children and will never have them. There are babies, hopeful, sweet, full of possibilities, who will never find a home. Sometimes the lives that most need to never intersect.

I look at the pictures of the Romanian orphans playing with their kitten and choke on the knowledge that my average American cat has more love and better food than these children will know in their abbreviated lifetimes.

The pictures strike a chord within this community, which for all of its self-consciousness, still has the concerned heart of a small town. Donations pour in. People feel better, at least temporarily.

Another open wound in our world is given some loving attention. It may not be enough, it often isn’t, but it’s worlds away from despair.

It’s still better to light that single candle even if it burns for only a few hours. My mother, the queen of the votives, has lived her life on this premise. Many mothers do.

I know a woman who has waited years to adopt a child. She and her husband have everything to offer, all the outward signs of well-being and all the inner, intangible gifts of the spirit.

They have come close, heartbreakingly close, to getting a child only to have something go wrong at the last moment. Governments, even those that espouse some shaky democracy, forget their own children. Still, this would-be family waits.

The pictures of the orphans break the woman’s heart but at the center of the break a brave hope is born; there is a still a child that can find its way home to her.

Another couple tries for three years to have a child. They long for a brother or sister for their beloved daughter. She was conceived easily, carried successfully, labored into the world with equal parts pain and joy. Now every attempt to repeat the miracle fails.

The daughter was born before the father went through Desert Storm. The couple wonders, tentatively, incredulously, if there is a connection.

Pragmatic as their military training, the couple decides it ultimately doesn’t matter. The result is the same: They cannot repeat the miracle. They hope for a different one.

They are told of a friend of a friend whose granddaughter is pregnant. Fifteen years old. A child having a child. Impossible situation, just the kind this couple can embrace. The papers are signed, the nursery is ready, the baby is theirs. For two weeks.

The girl’s family wants the baby back. They made a terrible mistake. Yes, the couple agrees, terrible.

Somewhere in their hearts the couple knows the loser in this battle will be the baby, their baby, the baby that was theirs for two weeks.

They give the baby back.

A friend sends them an article about other adoption options. It is too soon, the couple thinks.

But they keep the article neatly folded, like a christening gown, in the desk drawer. There, in the darkness of the tiny oak chamber, another hope may be born.

In the best of all possible worlds, these people, and the thousands like them, all possessing the heart and the courage and the commitment to love a child, would have a child to love.

But this is not the best of all possible worlds. Just ask a hungry child, down the block or across the world.

The image of the beggar at the baker’s window is an old one.

Shivering and starving, a man peers through the window at the rich delicacies on the other side of the glass.

Customers, plump and rosy-cheeked, load their baskets with yet another treat. They are oblivious to him.

There are all kinds of ways to go hungry. Just ask the couple who gave their baby back.

I tell my mother these stories and she vows to light more candles. It’s worth something, this ritual of remembering loved ones and strangers.

My mother lights candles in the hope that strangers’ lives will intersect in a way that saves them both.

I wonder if there are enough candles.