Even in the deepest darkness, we can light up and help others

I wanted to share this story by Jack Kornfield:

This was on BBC, not so many years ago, they did a special on the 60th anniversary of the siege of Leningrad in World War II. Leningrad was besieged by the German army for almost three years, through three long winters.

There were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people inside the city, many of them close to starving. One older woman who had been there as a child was describing the experience. She said, “We would go out once a week.” She said, “In the winter, I went out to pick up bread for my mother and myself, and the streets were icy and slippery. I stood in the bread line and finally got my piece of bread. But as I came out, I slipped on the ice, and the bread fell into a muddy puddle. I sat there and I wept. I was just a young girl. Another woman walked out behind me, someone who had also just received her bread. She helped me up, tore her own piece in half, and wrapped it in a white cloth. Then she handed it to me.”

Then, this old woman, having finished her story, led the camera down the hallway of her narrow apartment into the kitchen and opened a cabinet. Inside was a beautiful ceramic container. She reached in and carefully pulled out a folded blue kerchief. She untied it, and inside was that same white cloth, yellowed with age but still intact.

It was like opening a treasure from the past.

She said, “The bread was gone in a day. But I kept the cloth. What that woman did for me gave me the spirit to live through the next year and a half of the siege. I’ll never forget it.”

We have the opportunity, even in difficult times, to let our spirit shine.

Even in the deepest darkness, we can light up and help others.

It was never about giving a piece of bread; it was about giving hope. You can feed your body, and it will last for hours, but when you feed the spirit, it will last for a lifetime.

What a beautiful teaching.