The pattern is getting predictable. I sign up to do something altruistic, and then when the day arrives I grouse to myself.

"Why did I say I would? I have other things I want to get done."

But I show up with a practiced smile, and by the time I'm finished it is genuine.

Last week a team of friendly people cooked up a storm. Cookies, soups, pies, pumpkin bread, pasta, rice, and chili all materialized from the combined efforts of twenty pairs of hands. Then another group showed up to pack it into containers and deliver it around town. I was part of the second round, so had never chopped onions or stirred batter.

The lucky eaters were people who were dealing with health issues, or new babies, or moving, or other manifestations of overwhelm. It was a list any of us could and should be on, but we had finite resources and picked sixty.

I took Benjamin with me, not because he wanted to but he did have his eye on those cookies. We motored around with a box of yummies with cards signed "The Pay it Forward Crew". People like answering the door to someone holding a pie. Not only that it is fun to be the one holding the pie.

Life affords us multiple opportunities to show up with dessert. Or if not pie, a warm bed for a traveler, or a listening ear. Somehow the fact that we did not ourselves build the bed, or craft the inner workings of our middle ears, we get to feel ownership. That makes it immensely more enjoyable, and increases the odds that we will do it again.

John Gray says that when a boy takes a girl to the movies, and she likes the film, inside he is feeling responsible.

"I made that movie."

 I have given you a land for which you did not labor, and cities which you did not build, and you dwell in them; you eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant. Joshua 24