Strangers

“I have always relied on the kindness of strangers”

— Blanche Dubois, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

Most of us have been fortunate enough not to have to build our lives around the hope that a well-meaning stranger will appear at the exact moment we need one. We have homes to return to, people who know our names, cars that take us where we need to go, and circles of family and friends who make us feel held.

But if we are honest, each of us can remember a moment when someone we did not know stepped into our day and changed it for the better. Maybe it was a small kindness, one so ordinary that it should have disappeared from memory, but it did not. We remember because, in that moment, someone saw us. Someone noticed we needed help and chose, without reward or recognition, to make our burden lighter. Later, we tell the story, with advantages, because we will long remember how that stranger made us feel.

That’s what OTS allows us to become for the families we serve. Families that have lived through circumstances most of us can barely imagine. We may arrive as strangers, but we bring something profoundly human: presence, compassion, and time. And sometimes, time is the one gift that tells someone they are not alone. That they have not been forgotten.

Just one move this Saturday. A mother and two girls, 17 and 12, and a boy 14.

It is up in Olney, so nearby, and a townhouse, so ground floor. All we need is a small crew, and we should be done in an hour, door to door. We meet at the Unit at 8:00.

Definitely a good one for newbies, so if you haven’t been on a move yet, I remind you that Emerson said, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”

So let’s not wait.