Small Things with Great Love: Adventures in Loving Your Neighbor by Margot Starbuck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
When my son was young, he used to read “choose your own adventure” stories where you could select one of several different paths through a book that led to different endings. Starbuck’s book is organized in this way except that all the paths lead to one end–joining God’s adventure of loving the world around you.
Her title is inspired by Mother Teresa who said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Starbuck’s “choose your own adventure” format allows the reader to begin to identify very practical ‘baby step’ ways we can love the world whether you are young, middle aged or old, single, married, care-giving, live in the city, the suburbs or rurally, are male or female, and so on.
I found her ideas both practical and creative. For example, for middle-agers, she observes that most people in this demographic have extensive social networks, and therefore, social capital. She poses the question, have you ever thought of using that to help a needy person–say someone who needs a job? Her prose sparkles and gives the sense that this is both doable and joyful. Nor does she come across as a holier-than-thou. She admits to going to the discount department store for good deals on clothes for herself and her kids only to later realize that she hadn’t thought about the sourcing of the clothes. That leads into thoughtful conversation about both spending less so that we might give more, but also spending more to support local vendors and just manufacturing practices.
She concludes with resources to put this all into practice, emphasizing choosing one thing–not a myriad, with which to start. Sounds like she has been talking to us and our friends!