I have this feeling – call it a dream – that Americans are about to become a nation of caregivers, and that will transform us.

We went to see a friend and passed a group of white men carrying blue flags and demonstrating, as is their right.

Their flags supported either white supremacists or the police, depending on what you read and who you believe. In either case, they were a response to Black Lives Matters and their many signs and protests.

Perhaps they missed the confederate flag and now want their own flag. It was not clear what they wanted, or wanted to accomplish. They didn’t say. There was certainly no joy in their eyes.

I had a thought. What if we stopped arguing with one another and prepared to be caregivers to the many millions of people who will be needing help in this year and beyond? I feel that is already beginning to happen.

Caregiving is about to become something bigger than any of us imagined.

There are sick and dying people in hospitals.

There are sick and dying health care workers.

This week, tens of millions of people will lose their unemployment benefits because Congress will not act, and the President doesn’t care. There are 40 million Americans expected to be evicted from their homes and apartments this week.

There are millions of elderly people still hoping to see their families and locked away in quarantined facilities because it is still too dangerous to be close to humans.  There are millions of Americans who have lost their health care but still get sick.

And then, there are those millions of Americans who are just plain broke, struggling to pay for groceries, seeing their savings melt away, fearful of their children staying home, afraid of their going off to school.

I was wondering if those of us who are still intact and functioning might lead a nation of caregivers into a new way of being American.  Our kinder and gentler nation, part of Martin Luther King’s dream of justice and love.

Or maybe it’s the old America brought back.

I got an e-mail this afternoon from a man whose wife is an Oregon State Trooper who helped end 60 days of violent protest in Portland last night. President Trump’s robotic agents wasted a lot of tear gas and rubber bullets trying to scare the protesters away.

The troopers ended the violence by pointedly doing nothing. Nobody saw them all night. There wasn’t a single arrest or act of violence. The new police?

I guess my blog about the night was making the rounds in Portland.

I got a message from Val, an Oregon State Police dispatcher, another from a retired Oregon Trooper, and a third from the husband of an Oregon Trooper who was in Portland last night.

All three were thanking me for what I wrote.

The husband, a former police officer himself,  said this: “my wife was proud when she came home. She said people were seeing that many police officers want to be caregivers and not killers and gassers. She hoped people would give them another chance. She said before the deployment to protect the courthouse, a commander told them, ‘remember tonight, you are here to take care of these people, not to scare them or shut them up. Go and take care of them. Be caregivers until  you can’t be.”

I thought it was a beautiful night and a lovely thought, one of the new ways of looking at policing that might just come out of all this pain and sorrow and violence.

I am a caregiver now, I am a hospice volunteer, and I help care for the Mansion elderly and the refugees at Bishop Maginn High School in Albany.

I am not a nurse or doctor or therapist. I don’t get my hands as dirty as the aides, but my heart is full.

My care is offering them help in getting what they need to be safe, comfortable, fed, and supported. There are so many ways to help, so many people in need of help.

I think in the coming years, many of us will have the opportunity to be caregivers as we choose to define the terms and enrich our lives and get them back.  Churches are overwhelmed, food pantries depleted, governments out of cash.

I get messages from foreign countries every day now asking me what is happening in America.

I am no seer, but what I say to them is that we are a good country full of good and loving people.

That will become obvious in the coming months. It happened the other night in Portland.

There is an excellent opportunity for people who are patriots to stop marching when they can and start helping. The protests can and will – and should – go on until there is change.

Caregiving offers the greatest opportunity for change in my lifetime. It changed my life for the good.

Some of us will help raise money for food and shelter; others will find ways to comfort the lonely elderly, to aid the refugees in their solitary struggle to be Americans. Some will help to build housing for the many homeless expected to need help in the coming months.

Some of us will look to help find food and shelter for the new wave of people who are poor and without work and who are coming to our towns and cities in search of a new life.

Some will protest until they feel that justice has been done. That is caregiving too.

Yes, there will be a vaccine sometime near the end of the year, but many people will need all kinds of help for a good long while, surely through the end of my lifetime.

I was thinking about what I learned about caregiving. Perhaps it will be helpful to some others.

I always remember that it is embarrassing to need help and ask for it.

It doesn’t seem to be a natural human instinct.

It is painful to see one’s weakness and vulnerability exposed. Cynical politicians still claim that the benefits to the poor and the newly poor should be reduced so they will want to work again.

Every caregiver of people knows that is a lie; poor people are desperate to work, have a home for their children, and health care for their families.

No unemployment check would pay for all that. Perhaps the people in Congress out to be dragged out and required to spend some time with real people in need, maybe they would learn to be more humble, less arrogant, and inhuman.

It is never easy for people in need or sorrow or pain to have people do for them what they can no longer do for themselves or used to do for themselves. The caregiver must always respect people’s pride, especially when they are the lowest points of their lives.

It’s bad enough to feel fragile and terrified, worse to have to trust a stranger who never knew them when they were strong and whole.

Vulnerable people are powerless and easy to judge and abuse. That is an awful thing to do to people in trouble.

The most desperate of people are often relieved to get help and care.

But most people plunged into this new world of loss and need – and sickness – tell other caregivers and me that it is unbelievably painful and challenging to let go, admit to needing help, and then learn to accept it.

The real caregivers learn that with time and loving care, they can sometimes help people to come to a new understanding of hope and resolve, and to see there is joy and promise – and opportunity –  in new beginnings.

Caregiving is teaching me many gifts of beauty, tenderness, and loving service. My therapy dog Zinnia, lights up the sad and the needy with a wag of her tail. Human caregivers go further and bring the battered back to life; I see it all the time.

Jesus Christ inspired me when I began caregiving, even though I am not a Christian and do not worship him as the son of God. He was one of the world’s first caregivers, the first global God of Love.

“You must love one another just as I have loved you,” he preached. “It is by your love for one another that everyone will recognize you as my disciples.”

Many people call themselves Christians, but very few who call themselves caregivers. So much room to grow. So many needs to fill.

I don’t care to be naive or overstate things, but I saw something powerful in Portland. When they took the masks and rifles and tear gas and bullets and heavy boots away, then the angry protests and the anxious troopers were finally able to see one another as human beings, not enemies.

I don’t believe Portland is full of love by a long shot, neither is the rest of the country. There is a lot of rage, grievance, and suspicion here now. It can only get better, and it will get better.

Doing good feels good. It is so much better than arguing about what good is. My caregiving motto is this: stop complaining. Do something!

I am a lover of symbols.  Portland is a symbol, a beginning if we choose to see it that way.

Imagine a country where all of us saw one another as humans and stopped throwing things at each other: not words, not gas, not bullets. Just clouds of love and care.