About charity

[jlh]

Many many have linked to www.4christina.org (though in these sorts of cases too much is never enough) and if you gave you should let cleolinda know about it. If you'd like other ways to give this giving season you can go to this post of mine, though I will warn you that it is a very personal list based on my own beliefs.

I saw a bit of rumbling about people making "obligatory" mentions of charities in their wish lists. Every time I saw someone mention a charity in their wish list it was clear it had real personal meaning for them--cancer charities noted by those who had lost loved ones to the disease, that sort of thing. My family stopped exchanging presents in favor of charitable gifts about seven years ago. I'm lucky because for various reasons there just aren't a lot of material things that I truly want, but there are many non-material things I would love to see. (Believe me when I say that I am very unlucky in many other ways.) Hence, my wish list was authentic to what I am really wishing for this Christmas season.

I am recovering my old love for Christmas, a bit buried the past few years for personal reasons, and giving is such an important part of that tradition. To be uncharacteristically spiritual for a moment, I think giving in these says is what it means to be a good Christian, to try as best we can to follow His example. Or you can think of it as spreading good karma in the universe, or a mitzvah. However the meaning reveals itself to you, there is never a wrong time to give.

Comments

[chinawolf.livejournal.com]

I second what you said about "obligatory" charity on the wish lists. The two I named are those closest to me regarding the AIDS NGO stuff I've done. I would have named more if I could have provided easy to link to donation pages for those without making people spend more in international money transfer fees than what they'd give for the charity. (I.e. the Red Ribbon Center in Hong Kong, Care Australia, and Reporters Without Borders because I believe their work to be almost as important as MSF's.)

*hugs* Love your grateful posts.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Totally, yeah--I wanted to have a link to International Red Cross but the site hated me. HATED ME

[moony]

*bwee*

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! yay!