The Second Epiphany: Charity
I couldn’t tell you why I was even looking, but I came across the dictionary definition of Charity the other day and noticed that the etymology includes the Late Latin (whatever that is) caritat –, caritas, meaning Christian love. (if the writers of the entry in question are to be believed)
Suddenly (don’t judge, I’ve been busy thinking about other things up until now) the whole “Faith, Hope and Charity”1 thing made much more sense.
Yes, yes, I know that I’m probably well behind the curve on this most un-earth-shattering revelation, but to me, charity had always meant something akin to alms giving or organized, non-profit type things.
It never occurred to me that in the Christian sense, charity and love were fungible commodities.
I blame the King James Version and the Illinois Public School system for this gross miscarriage of linguistic justice!
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I’ve never done much of anything in the way of volunteer work. I was Santa one year for an animal shelter. People brought their dog or cat (or whatever, but mostly dogs or cats) to the local PetsMart and for a donation had a photo of the animal with Santa Claus. That pretty much covers my philanthropic experience.
I think I WOULD do more volunteer work, but there’s no cause that I feel passionate about.
I liked working with the doggies. That was kind of fun, but mostly pointless. And I always think that if I were going to be giving my time to something, while I love dogs, people should probably take precedence.
And of people, I would think that children are the least able to help themselves, but I imagine most people think that and I would bet that there’s a significantly larger proportion of volunteers for children’s causes than there are for other causes. Purely conjecture, mind you.
So, then I’m left with adult humans. I don’t really buy into the (insert disease, disorder or disability) cure thing. Anything done for such organizations is to fund research which doesn’t help anybody except the researchers (assuming that no cures will be forthcoming soon).
I’m open to suggestions.
1. 1. “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”