Impact

One of our early Saturday morning chores as a kid was helping my Dad bring our trash to the dump. We would wait in line and watch person after person throw their trash into these huge piles of garbage. And as I grew older, the dump started to look tragic to me. So much waste, so much loss. And then in 1978 (the summer before my friends and I started 8^th grade) something amazing happened in MA. We found out that we could collect any bottle, turn it in and get 5¢. I wish I had pictures showing the kids pulling wagons through town looking for bottles. It was all about the money; who knew what recycling meant?

As I’ve grown into an adult, things have drastically changed. There isn’t a child in America who doesn’t know about recycling and reusing. They are taught to conserve, to think of our planet and to cherish her. And as a small business owner, I have changed, even over just the past tumultuous year. I’ve realized that everything I do impacts other people and the very planet I live on. When loggers remove too many trees and trees become scarce, my paper price goes up. When gas prices
go through the roof, prices go up on everything from groceries to shipping. When health insurance goes up 30% in one
year, I can’t give my employees a raise. When other businesses close, I have to lay off valued employees. It’s all a circle
– a circle of impact.

But in a way, it’s also forced me to drill down and look at what’s most important. First and foremost, my responsibility is to keep my employees working. By getting really creative, we designed new products that we could cost effectively make here in our plant in Clinton, MA. By going down to the bare bones, we were able to re-hire laid off employees. We feel truly blessed. Thinking about it further, I realized that each and every person has the capacity to change the world. For greedy Wall Street executives, they took advantage of the poor and impacted the world in an unbelievably negative way.

For someone like my friend Father Michael Bercik, he impacted the world, one person at a time, by showing unselfish love and mercy to everyone who was lucky enough to know him. Father Mike, my dear friend, is a Franciscan priest who is very, very sick and may die soon. At 55 years old, he is ready to return to His Father. I worked with Father Mike as a music minister for almost 15 years. Some mornings, I would greet him and say, "Father Mike, are you OK? You look so tired." He would tell me that he had spent the night with a family at the hospital, or he had sat with a grieving mother all night long who had just had a miscarriage, or he had spent the night consoling a police officer who witnessed a horrific accident. He never told anyone but his staff – never used it as an excuse – just kept giving and giving and giving. And the joy! He would wear a rainbow clown wig for Children’s Mass. He filled the church with song – singing at the top of his lungs, while decorating for Christmas. People, his people, grew to know and love him and depend on him. But like many saints, he forgot to take care of himself.

As we prayed around him at the hospital on Saturday, we reminded him about how much he has impacted the world. People took his gifts and shared them with their loved ones. He gave us all an example of how one kind word; one loving gesture carries forth into the world in ways we will never know. His favorite song is called City of God. I wish you could have heard him sing in his beautiful tenor voice, "Let us build the City of God. May our tears be turned into dancing. For the Lord, our light and our love, has turned the night into day." I will miss you, my dear, dear friend. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ~ Mary Pat