Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men

I'm struggling a bit with the spirit this season. The tragedy in Connecticut was a painful way to end a year filled with senseless violence and soul bruising events. There are moments, many more of them recently, when I despair at the state of the world and an imagined future.

Yet I still believe in the inherent goodness of people; I am still moved to tears by human generosity, frailness, community. So today as I send you my best wishes for a peaceful, joyful Christmas, I share the following "Random Acts of Kindness" from the Reader's Digest Best of 2012 edition and hope that it lifts your heart as it did mine.

• Every morning in West Tennessee, some down on his luck person finds a freshly baked pound cake on their stoop. Attached, a simple note: "Somebody loves you". This bit of decency comes courtesy of the Nine Nanas, long-anonymous women devoted to helping the less fortunate.

• From his wheelchair, all Patrick Connelly could see at the Blake Shelton concert in Overland Park, Kansas, was a sea of people. Then two strangers hoisted Connelly aloft on their shoulders for over 20 minutes in grueling 100-degree heat, long enough for the disabled man to watch his hero perform.

• When a thunderstorm totaled waiter Greg Rubar's car, two regular customers decided that a 15 percent tip just wouldn't do. So the couple handed him $5,000 in cash and told him to buy a new car.

• Born with a rare immune deficiency, three-year old Lucas Gonzalez was in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant. And his family knew where to go to raise the funds: the social news site reddit.com. Within 24 hours, they collected more than $50,000.

• In a record-setting spate of anonymous giving, total strangers from all over the country donated a kidney for someone in need. It all started when Rick Ruzzamenti, 44, of Riverside, California, gave a kidney to someone in New jersey.  Inspired by the anonymous gift to her uncle, the recipient's niece, Theresa A. Gavin, donated her kidney to Brooke R. Kitzman, a needy patient in Michigan. Kitzman's ex-boyfriend, David Madosh, continued to pay it forward by giving a kidney to someone he didn't know in Pennsylvania. When it was all over, 30 recipients and 30 donors had participated in the chain.

• Hours before the bank foreclosed on Grandview Baptist Church in Morgantown, North Carolina, an anonymous person paid off $345,000, a huge portion of the church's loan.

• Her family's financial straits meant no Christmas presents for Helen Cardenas. So the Seattle five-year-old wrote to Santa asking for gifts, then attached the note to a balloon. Seven hundred miles later, it landed on Frank Sanderson's ranch in Laytonville, California. The Sandersons bought the presents on the list and sent them to Helen.

• Since overcoming a rare eye disease that left her blind for four years, Brooklynite Casey Rivera, 38, a mother of two children, has been donating at least $50 of her monthly disability check to a charity or using the money to buy clothes or other gifts for neighbors in need. "Since I got my sight back, I love seeing people smile," Rivera says.