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MARCH 2, 2003- Eighth Sunday of Year
† "No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak, no one pours new wine into old wine skins."
Mark 2:18-22
† Jesus was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white…. A cloud overshadows them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved…"
Mark 9:2-9 IMPACT 100
Wendy Hushak lives in Cincinnati with her three school-age children. After her divorce three years ago, she quit her job as a bank vice president to spend more time with her children. She volunteered her time at her children's school, but she had this sense that she wanted and needed to do more. But she understood all too well that big ideas usually cost big money. "I 'm not independently wealthy, so I can't write a big check," she explains.
There are a lot of women like Wendy Hushak, women in the same position who'd like to do something significant. That led Wendy and a group of her friends to start Impact 100, a philanthropic organization that is elegantly simple. "The idea was that if 100 women would each donate $1,000, we would then have $100,000 to give to the community."
The group went to work recruiting members who pledged to donate $1,000 a year to the foundation. The membership roster includes not only attorneys and doctors, but secretaries and teachers for whom scraping together $1,000 is no small task, By setting a goal of $100,000, all 100 women would feel part of this huge gift.
This fall, the members of Impact 100 voted their first $100,000 gift: to the Greater Cincinnati Oral Health Council, which provides free dental disease prevention and treatment services to the homeless and low-income families.
This year, Wendy Hushak and Impact 100 hope to boost the membership to 500 so that the foundation can make annual grants in education, culture, environment, health and family concerns. Although limited in their time and income, these women have discovered the difference they can make--one thousand dollar check at a time. It's bite-size activism, but with a big impact.
[People, Jan. 27, 2003; The Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 23, 2002.]
CONNECTION: The members of Impact 100, in their generous vision and selfless efforts both as a group and as individuals, are what Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called "agents of transfiguration": "God places us in the world as God's fellow workers--agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so that there will be more compassion and caring, so that there will be more laughter and joy, so that there will be more togetherness in God's world." There exists within each one of us something of the transfigured Jesus: the core values of compassion and justice that can guide our lives to fulfillment and purpose, the courage and generosity to do great things for others, the grace to make God's kingdom a reality in our own time and place. The "sacredness" that Peter and his companions see in Jesus on the mountain dwells within each of us, as well. That "sacredness," that love of God, within us enables us to "transfigure" our homes and communities.
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