Nothing new on the bench

L---- was horrified I was giving my rug away and now it's in his room.

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Tuesday, it was very hot here.  We have a three-foot deep pool in our back yard that we set up every summer.  G---- and I were soaking in it Tuesday evening when we heard a woman's voice across our backyard fence.  Our new neighbor said, "Hey, your bench is great.  I got a flat-screened monitor for my computer off of it last week.  It works and everything."  It is my hope that this type of thing is what most donaters to the Free Bench dream of.  Namely, that this item, which they no longer need or use, will be exactly what someone else needs or can use.  That it will save someone money, or make them happy.  At its best, the Free Bench is not a dumping ground but rather is a receptacle for acts of generosity. 

One of my writing friends, Sacha R., wrote a children's book about tzedakah, which is the Hebrew word for acts of charity.  In her book, her young protagonist learned about distinctions between types of charitable giving, from those where the receiver knows you as the donor, to those where something is given anonymously.  There is particular value to tzedakah when one is not known as the giver - perhaps because that kind of giving is absent of any ego desire to be identified with an act of charity.  It is done simply because there is a need that the giver wants to meet, whether others know they met it or not.  I don't mean to suggest that people who - under cover of darkness - bring their perfectly good flat-screened computer monitors to the Free Bench are practicing the highest form of tzedakah.  But our neighbor is a young woman to whom the price of a flat-screened computer monitor is significant.  Someone saved her that expense, and she'll never know who it was.