For what it's worth, and that's a lot in my book, Jesus changed the game for us on this one. We all know "love your neighbor as yourself." And as I stated above that's pretty straightforward. We all know how to love ourselves. But Jesus gave a new command to us when he said, "A new command I give you, love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." Well that upends whatever I think about love, and love now becomes what the recipient defines as love and not necessarily the giver. Of course this is so much richer and deeper than my simple analysis, but it helps with my smaller point.

Denver Moore drives this home again for me in Same Kind of Different as Me. Denver was the black homeless man whom other homeless men avoided. Suddenly he's confronted with two suburban white affluent volunteers at the local soup kitchen.

Lemme tell you what homeless people think about folks that help homeless people: When you homeless, you wonder *why* certain volunteers do what they do. What do they want? Everybody want somethin. For instance, when that couple come to the mission, I thought the man looked like the law. The way he dressed, the way he acted. Too high-class. His wife, too, at first. The way she acted, the way she treated people...she just looked too sophisticated. Wadn't the way she dressed. It was just something about the way she carried herself. And both of em was askin way too many questions.

While everybody else was fallin in love with em, I was what you call skeptical. I wadn't thinkin nothin evil. It was just that they didn't look like the type to come in and mess with the homeless. People like that may not feel it within themselves that they're better than you, but when you the one that's homeless, *you* feel like they feel like they're better than you.

What struck me was how these folks, Ron and Debbie Hall, looked past themselves to try to learn and understand how to love the homeless on their terms - despite the awkwardness at first. A good lesson for me here.

But these folks was different. One reason was they didn't come just on holidays. Most people don't want the homeless close to em - think they're dirty, or got some kinda disease, or maybe they think that kind of troubled life gon' rub off on em. They come at Christmas and Easter and Thansgivin and give you a little turkey and lukewarm gravy. Then they go home and gather round their own table and forget about you till the next time come around where they start feelin a little guilty 'cause they got so much to be thankful for.

• 2 Blood Drives and ~200 pints of blood
• Provided toys for ~2,000 children
• Provided meals for ~100 families for the holidays
• Developed and held HOPEville, a homelessness awareness program with ~70 participants. Created new partnerships with Faces Without Places, Project Connect, and the Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless.
• Presented on the subject of working with church leadership and volunteers to the HOPE worldwide US Chapter Think Tank
• Established a youth service aspect to the Cincinnati chapter that provides service opportunities to high school and college students
• Sent volunteers on 6-week Americorps assignments
• Sent volunteers on 2-week HOPE Youth Corps assignments
• Provided volunteers for Go Cincinnati
• Provided volunteers for three community safety fairs
• Placed a representative on the HOPE worldwide National Chapter Advisory Board and the National Youth Advisory Council
• Wrote and submitted a grant application to Impact 100
• Established and implemented fund raising and program funding conduits
• Initiated a grassroots communication strategy for development across the HOPE worldwide US Chapters
• Connected Cincinnati volunteers with other volunteers around the US and the world
• And, most importantly for me, created a vision and opportunity for other volunteers to step up and do things they didn't believe they could do

The "I" seems presumptuous, I know. Please understand that there is no way I could not have done this without a ton of help from some really great people. Please forgive me if your name should be on this list and it slipped my mind. Feel free to put it in the comments.

• Convergys Corporation's Chris Holtman and Brooke Beiting
• Lorrie Jenkins, Kim Isaac, Laura Huesman, Justen Harris, Livia Dilts, Gillie Collins, Lisa Craig, Eliot Isaac, Steve Ruhl, Kathy Baumhardt, Mark Baumhardt
• Two Men and a Truck (Hamilton East) and Meagan Rhodes
• Toys R Us (Florence) and Joshua Cox
• The Cincinnati Church of Christ
• Sogeti's Dale Sterling
• Empower MediaMarketing
• Cargill and Virginia Foreman
• Carespring and Debbie Moore
• Ideal Fitness and Connie Douglas
• The Myers Y. Cooper Company and Faith Taylor
• Crossroads Church
• Faces Without Places and Beth Griffith-Niemann
• Project Connect and Karen Fessler
• Impact 100

Tufte has taught me to put my name on everything (about 1/3rd of the way down), good or bad, so that I can take pride in and accountability and responsibility for my work. To keep me humble, I may post a list of all the things that didn't ship in 2010. That list includes some really important things.