JOY ALONG THE WAY: KEEP ALL THE POINTS OF LIGHT BURNING

In President Bush's inaugural speech he made reference to a "thousand points of light" and went on to explain his meaning as "all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the nation doing good."

I had been listening intently, but at that point my mind was snared by the word picture he had painted and I began to mentally place "stars" in the heavens over my town -- the churches, Red Cross, Cancer Society, Heart and Lung societies, etc. Rotary, Lions, Optimists, Jaycees, Quest, Scope, Tuesday and Wednesday MFWC's, Humane Society, Fish, Meals on Wheels, Salvation Army, Crippled Children's Society, etc. etc. Forgive me for not naming them all. My space is limited.

I felt there were so many such stars over my town it was bright as day all the time, "a shining city by the riverside" to paraphrase President Reagan's simile.

President Bush went on, but I had been bemused with my own picture. Having been fascinated by stars and constellations all my life, I began to assign magnitude to these "local stars" overhead, being very subjective about it and assigning first magnitude to those "points of light" I belonged to. How insufferably self-centered and biased one can be!

The brighter of these thousand points of light to which Bush was referring always attract our attention as do the brighter stars in the heavens. But the night skies would not be nearly so attractive if their little points of light were not scattered about -- the millions of stars that have no names that we know of.

Somehow this thought makes me want to hum some lines from an old devotional hymn, "Let The Lower Lights Be Burning."

So what would some of these lower, less bright points of light be in Bush's metaphor?

There are millions who, daily, make some deposit into the invisible but vast Reservoir of Good Will. One reads, almost daily, of someone who has found a wallet or purse and returns it to the owner, of someone who has stopped on a busy highway to help someone in trouble (a risky thing these days), of someone who gives correct directions to someone who is lost, of the blood donors, the sharers of their abundance, even the friendly wave and smile. Forgive me again. I cannot begin to list them all.

Even such a seemingly insignificant thing as a kitchen paper towel bears the imprint of someone's gesture of goodwill. I tore off a couple of squares to wipe up a spill, but I looked at them first. One square said, "Friendship is a lifetime treasure." There was a pot of flowers, frolicking little rabbits, flying birds amid a shower of hearts. Another square said, "Plant something for the soul." The drawing accompanying this was a watering can, a trowel, a little box of bedding plants. These things didn't have to be printed on the paper towels. They would have absorbed the spill as readily without the suggestions. But just maybe one out of 50 would read the little messages and think of their friends and how good it was to have them and what they might do, that day, to express appreciation for their friendship, or make new friends, or plant a flower to make the world even more beautiful for oneself and others.

Thus the paper towel company has made a deposit in the Reservoir of Good Will. If their sales increase because of it. Good.

Somehow I want to hum another old hymn, "Brighten The Corner Where You are."

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.