What does “love your neighbor as yourself” look like today?
The economic fall-out from the Great Hunkering is taking a particularly heavy toll on small businesses, especially those in which human contact is inevitable. The profit margins for restaurants, hair salons, small shops and bookstores can be pretty slim; a sharp decrease in appointments and foot traffic may be catastrophic.
How to help?
If you’ve got favorite shops and restaurants you are reluctantly refraining from visiting in these microphobic days, buying gift certificates (to use yourself, or give as gifts) and pre-paying for your next haircut or pedicure are, in effect, small interest-free loans that not only may help to maintain the economic health of both businesses and communities, but are also good for morale—the store owner’s and yours, affirming that this too shall pass.
A friend, knowing I need reminders, texted: Hey, Kate! Don’t forget to pray. Don’t forget to wash your hands for 20 seconds.
Connection….
Did the math, and as it turns out, it takes me just a bit over 20 seconds to say the St. Francis’ Prayer.
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.
Pray-n-wash, my friends!