In 1999, a dear friend of mine gave me a set of books that forever changed my life. They were Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy and Something More. Because of these books, I learned how to appreciate my life anew. And I learned of new ways in which to bring harmony to my life, like with feng shui.
One of feng shui’s tenets is that respecting natural resources is essential for inviting in good chi (life energy). For instance, water represents wealth. Ignoring even the slightest drip sucks away chi as well as literally washes money down the drain.
One day I was out walking our dog Budly and saw that someone had left the hose on in the car wash bay at the apartment complex we were living in. Half-jokingly I said, “Uh oh, Budly. That’s bad chi. We better turn it off.”
Guess what was on the ground just beyond the spigot? An enormous pile of change!
I had been willing to give feng shui some consideration before, but this? About cinched it up for me that there might be something to it!
Still, I felt kind of bad about taking the money. (It wasn’t a fortune’s worth, no more than five dollars or so, but it was two pockets full.) I was fairly sure someone had left it there while cleaning out their floorboards and had forgotten about it. But how could I hope to reunite lost money with its rightful owner? Surely I’d have a slew of people lining up to claim it, even if it was just a small amount.
“Finder’s keepers,” I reasoned. Still, it didn’t feel quite right taking it just for me.
But what if it wasn’t for me? Earlier that week I’d had Budly into the vet for his shots. They’d had a jar on their counter for spare change to help them care for the injured strays that were brought to them.
That’s what I’d do with the money! I’d save it until the next time I had to go to the vet, then I’d put it in their jar.
And I knew just the place I’d store it. In this one Arizona Iced Tea bottle I’d been saving because I thought it too pretty to toss.
From then on, every time I found change into the bottle it went. The next time I went to the vet, I made sure to take the bottle. Which was almost full, because I seemed to keep finding change everywhere after that.
The receptionist was amazed. She’d seen people drop in spare change from their pockets, sure, but to bring in their spare change bottle? Unheard of. I had to explain it was more than that. In that moment, the name for it came to me. The BK Bottle. (So named for Budly, our dog at the time, and Kitty, our cat.)
Since then, Budly’s passed and we’ve gotten a new dog, Murphy, and the bottle has transformed into the BMK Fund.
I’ve never quite gotten it all the way full. I seem to find causes worthy of a BMK Fund donation before that happens. After the vet there were the books for children from lesser income families in Florida, bags of dog and cat food to donate to the Jacksonville Humane Society at Thanksgiving, then the Red Cross’s Disaster Relief Fund after I lived through Florida’s hurricane hell of 2004.
The other night the local news ran a story about an underground railroad for dogs. They’re known as “Dixie Dogs.” They’re rescued from catch-and-kill Southern shelters and transported up north for adoption.
Many Southern states, like North and South Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee, do not have spay/neuter laws, whereas it’s mandatory in places like New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. There are people in those states wanting to adopt, but there’s a shortage of adoptable pups. So the North Shore Animal League of America works with places like the Precious Friends Puppy Rescue in Clarksville, Tennessee, to save animals that would otherwise be killed.
Precious Friends first checks the pups to make sure they’re healthy, then they’re given shots, then away they go. They’re transported fifty miles at a time via a network of people. (Each one takes a 50 mile leg, meets up with the next person, makes the transfer, and so on until the pups get to their final destination.)
Mostly volunteers staff this underground railroad, and many costs come out of their own pockets.
Guess where the money in the BMK Fund is going next?
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