When we do the RadJoy Practice we open our attention to possibilities for finding and making beauty in hurt places. The more we do this practice, spontaneously and creatively in the moment, the more we begin to discover that stepping into a difficult situation with the intent to offer some generosity and beauty changes us as well as the place. Here’s a story about a gift bestowed during a traffic jam.

On a snowy day at the end of January, a team of medics from Josephine County, Oregon was heading back to Grants Pass to administer their last six doses of the day when they hit a traffic jam. There had been a car accident, and authorities had closed the road until the victims had been taken care of and the vehicles cleared.

The health care team worried about the six doses of the Moderna vaccine that they carried. This vaccine, like Pfizer’s, must be used within six hours after it is removed from subzero storage, and time was running out. Suddenly Josephine County Public Health Director Mike Weber knew exactly what to do: they would give the vaccine to stranded motorists.

The medics got out of their cars and started walking up and down the line of traffic, making their offer, and quickly found six happy volunteers to take them up on it.

Weber later said it was one of the coolest operations he’d ever been part of.