Diary of a Chapter Leader

Time to Make Time

That's what I need to do. Make time. I have several entries in mind, but haven't made time to write. So tonight, I just stayed at work to work on some personal stuff. I am in charge of the Area calendar. I try to get it complete before World Peace Prayer the first Sunday of the month. This usually involves sending a few nice yet harassing emails to get dates. This month I haven’t even started the harassing and some districts have sent in their dates. So I put the calendar together and sent it out for review. It takes a bit of time because I make it color-coded by chapter. That way I can just look at the green dates and ignore the blue and purple. Also, May is contribution month so there are additional meetings for that. That is done for now.

Last Wednesday we had a meeting to review the May Contribution activity. My MD leader was late; we carpooled, so I was late. There were three women from the region, our two area leaders, a chapter MD and a district WD there when we arrived. They were watching a video. If you are in SGI I’m sure you will see this video. After Matilda Buck talked about the significance of contribution, there was an experience. A hair stylist decided (a few years ago) to save her tips and donate $10,000 to SGI during May of the following year. She started saving the cash and when she had $500, she put some rubber bands around it and put in a safe place – presumably not a financial institution. Soon she had indeed saved $10,000 and it wasn’t even May yet. So now, she has $10,000 in cash “in a safe place.” Anyone else see a problem with this? When May comes around, she has become attached to the money and won’t give it up. We assume it is still in cash. Then she received guidance and held on the cash for another year before finally donating it. I guess the point was that she needed to let go of her attachment to money or that money.
I remember my YWD days. I went to Sunday practice – remember those days? Anyway, one day the territory YWD leader is up there talking about May contribution. She said we should contribute every Sunday at practice because we (girls) can’t hold on to money. I was probably 29 - 30 years old. I couldn’t believe my ears.
Many years later, this same woman was involved with Boys and Girls Club (now Elementary School Division). My husband and I took our two daughters to a meeting. Our oldest was probably six and her sister was about three. This woman had all four of her kids there. She had the gall to tell us that our younger daughter was too young and we had to take her out even though this woman’s 3 years old could stay. Picked up our daughters and left - never went back. We never understood why it was so important to remove our three year old. Ah, the good old hard power days.

Hey, I got way off track. I’ll have to finish tomorrow.