How To Catch A Miracle

Generosity of Spirit ignites an ever expanding virtuous circle.
-The Miracle Collectors

We’ve spent a year worried about catching Covid-19, admittedly, some of us more than others. As someone who is older (since when did “senior” and “elderly” refer to people over 60?) and given the dreaded co-morbidities, I fall into the worried group. Hence, I have stayed away from pretty much everyone, everywhere. One silver lining (pun intended), it turns out my hair is not as gray as I thought. In any case, proximity to people, viral loads, and contagion have been occupying my mind.

Being contagious has a bad rap as it is usually associated with illness, but it has another, friendlier meaning; simply put, it is “likely to spread to and affect others.” Like when a friend or child can’t stop laughing, it’s hard not to feel yourself pulled into the joyful abandon. In The Miracle Collectors, we devote an entire chapter to Generosity of Spirit, a powerful and contagious combination that enables us to bring out our best selves and pass it on to others. One of the many aspects of Generosity of Spirit is the notion of pay-it-forward, or in one recent case, pay-it-backwards.

At a Dairy Queen drive-thru in Brainerd, Minnesota, one man’s gesture to pay for the order for the car behind him continued for 900 cars! The unbroken chain of kindness lasted three days – the last order each day left $10 to keep the kindness going into the next day. It was a few days before Christmas; the end of a long, tough financial year for many in the town and the chain reaction brought the staff to tears. As the store manager said, “I think this touched a lot of people that we didn’t even know it touched, deeper than we know…you don’t know what’s going on in a person’s life.” Generosity that keeps on going combined with the spirit of positive energy is a once in a century contagion we can all celebrate. (Katie)