THE STEP, NOT THE LEAP:

The Resourcefulness of the Invisible

• Philippians 4:11-12: “Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound; everywhere and in all things, I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.”

• P.S. Eccentric that I am, I am mentioning a P.S. at the beginning of this weekly post. I was going through the edits on my post tonight in preparation to press “post”, when I sadly discovered Substack is now seemingly preventing comments from any but paid subscribers! This is NOT my desire, I enjoy comments from all who read my work! You can try to comment…but if you cannot, until I figure this out, feel free to send me a Direct Message on Notes, if you are a free subscriber and have a question or comment. OK??

• Having been a member of the working poor for the decades of my adult life, I developed a resourcefulness skill as a survival tactic. This is also called “street smart”, one of the best skills I have ever learned in my nearly 73 years. This is most assuredly not from a book but directly from the rough and tumble of real life.

• I grew up middle class but never achieved that level in adult life. I have worked in all kinds of jobs, I have l learned by the direct method of doing, I have a degree in the formidable “School of Hard Knocks.” I learned to be quietly observant of opportunities hiding in plain view. The poor are often “invisible” and sometimes considered useless or less than human. There are also gems hidden in them, including me…and yes, I am blunt enough to say that!

• Sometimes when people have a lot, they can lose their intense focus and begin to “coast” and make assumptions that it will always be “this way.” Calamity can slam anyone, any time.

• I learned about the power of resourcefulness when I became an on-site apartment Manager in downtown San Francisco in the mid to late 1990s, for 6 1/2 years.

  Keeping watch over a stately but creaky old Victorian, 4 floors, 17 units, I saw firsthand how much people waste and take for granted, most especially young people with “disposable income.”

• Me being in my 40’s and a building of 20-Something tech and finance workers, I kept some basic order but ran into stark differences.

• I remember a concept I read about, about taking waste and transforming it...well, at my old SF apartment building, I saw plenty of waste and I essentially transformed it right into my own, via the unglamorous garbage can. Yes, I am bold enough to say I found useful things IN THE GARBAGE CAN. (mind you, this was always inside large bags, not strewn in the detritus!) Even I have my limits!

• Since one of my daily tasks as manager was to make sure the trash chutes were not clogged (they often were…) and to sweep up around the two huge cans, I was able to reconnoitre the unexpected treasures in the receptacle at the bottom of the chute! Usable and even luxury things were tossed. As stunned as I was by the usable items directly thrown into a large garbage bag and tossed down the chute, I was not stupid. I was street smart enough to retrieve stuff from tied off garbage bags and clean it and use it myself. Please note, this was NOT food! This included books, kitchenware and houseware, merino wool sweaters, cashmere turtlenecks, linen, silk, gold rings, lapis, tiny diamonds, black calfskin leather. I “kid” you not (San Francisco). I quickly developed an instinct about “things coming down the pike.”

• Some of us are mighty leapers...mountain goats, confident in the precipice, woven with the feet that leap!

• While I like and admire leaps, except for my brilliant 50-yard dash in 6.8 seconds back in track and field of 7th grade...my leaps are limited to short hops.

  I work best in the step by step, as Holy Spirit calls it, the “holy plod.”

  My challenge is I tend to camp out in the plod. Progress requires some movement, even small ones. Holy Spirit is an excellent “nudger.”

  The great thing about God is He works with each of us in the temperament we have.

• I had a recent email talk with an accomplished lady who is a polar opposite to me, very gifted in the outgoing and outreach. She is confident in the world of business and markets the heck out of herself. Nothing wrong with that...but there is an intensive-intrusive element of marketing and it does not rumble with me. Street smart, I am. Smooth and urbane and commercial, I am not remotely. I am not a bumpkin...but I am plenty straightforward and...blunt! I do not promise what I know I cannot deliver. There is so much pressure on people nowadays to BUY BUY BUY!! It is frankly, too much. It gets VERY old. “ SHOP NOW”, we are almost commanded. Well, my answer is often, “NO.”

• This is the strange kinship I have with what I call the micro-entrepreneur, the tiny one person business that flies by instinct and resists being smarmy or captured. No reason not to market...but I have such a visceral reaction to “advertising”, I resist much of the traditional forms. I would rather just “connect” with someone mind to mind and spirit to spirit then to lay down some big promise to do this or that for someone. With a person as up, down and sideways as myself, that unusual method resonates with me. If I connect with someone and we resonate with one another, there is a possibility of a partnership of sorts, to do business or provide help to one another in some form.

• I know this makes no logical sense...but it works for me. I am reasonably certain there are other “crunchy” people out there like me, “crunchy” meaning untamed to some degree and highly intuitive, not herded into a controlled corner.

• That is one thing that is so unique to the USA, the rugged individualist template runs deep here, sometimes “cussedness”, sometimes irritable, sometimes blunt. I can be all of those things, although God is smoothing my edges bit by bit.

• The main thing is to partner with God. He is rather smart and He knows a few things, like the gifts He gave to you alone and how to use them step by step.

• Foundation first, however.

• Foundation is not flashy. It is the grounding cord we all need, in order to advance and do our honorable work. That means humility, willingness to learn and knowing you do not know everything. Resourceful people keep their eyes and spirits open, even if it is a bit muddy out there…

  Wendy Elizabeth Williams, Friday, October 3, 2025

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