I still feel the glow of Tuesday, watching all of those proud and strong young women collect their prom gowns and try them on, bewildered and excited.

I won’t ever forget the look of joy and excitement in their faces. I’m happy to be invited to the prom, I’ll get to see this again. Last year’s Prom Queen, Zinnia, has also been asked to return. So has Maria.

I was running around the room Tuesday at Bishop Maginn High School, trying to keep up with all these smiles and glows; there was a great photograph everywhere I looked, I couldn’t miss it.  All I had to do was hit the shutter, and a great image was captured.

By know, I know some of these girls very well, and they trust me, and this is so important when it comes to taking a good picture. I was very humbled by their trust in me.

Such a moment of satisfaction is rare, and I confess I didn’t want to let go of it, even though I will. Life moves on and on. Like so many others, I wish we could package these moments and keep them in the refrigerator for when we need them.

I couldn’t help but feel somewhat sad about all the angry people in our country suffering from so much hate and desperately looking for lies and conspiracy theories to lift them up. Joy would be at their fingertips if they looked for it. That never works, it can’t bring joy.

Thanks to Tania Woodward, we spread great joy and meaning with four plastic sacks full of prom dresses.

It seemed simple, but it wasn’t; it was rich in feeling and connection and community. I love the circle of caring women – Tania, Maria, Sue, and the students who made a chain of love and good feeling.

These girls had never seen dresses like that before, let alone wear them to a prom, and I suspect they will never wear them again after the prom. They work too hard and are too practical and busy putting together their futures.

What sticks with me is this extraordinary feeling I get when good happens. I’ve always believed that there is a selfishness in doing good – it just feels so good, and the glow lasts a long time.

My role model for good deeds is Jesus, who is not a God to me but a guide. “Those who do good deeds,” he said, “will rise to a resurrection of life.” I understand what he meant.

Thomas Merton wrote that “Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.”

I believe he is correct we do find it with others. I found it in the faces of those girls as they experienced a moment of transformation, a sense of possibilities, the realization that people care, the chance to be, just for a moment, their idea of a princess, a kind of magical royalty, I could see it in the faces.

To wear a gown like that for the first time in their complicated lives was almost like an angel reaching down with a wand, just like in all those movies, and turning them into something that was only a dream, and just for a moment. They know too well what life is like.

I was drowning in lovely messages, but this being America, there was always a jolt from the snarky Greek Chorus we call social media to bring me back to earth and remind me what it means to be human. It is healthy to get these messages; humbling makes me stronger about myself.

It makes me own what I write and do.

“I hope you can take a good women’s studies class before you are tempted to use the word “fierce” about females again’” wrote Anna.

Oh, poor Anna, I thought, I wish should could meet some of these very fierce young women who saw their mothers and granddaughters raped and their fathers murdered, and their homes burned to the ground.

How weak words must be, Anna,  if this is all you can take from this story when all around you, people are basking and savoring the warmth in it and the hope it inspires.

Most of these girls spent years in camps without enough food, and little safety and comfort.  Or they have grown up in low-income families on very tough and dangerous inner-city streets. They dreamed of princesses and gowns and have fought so hard to rebuild their lives.

They are strong and determined, and brave.

They are fierce in every sense of the word, and that is why they survived and will thrive in their new lives. “This is the brightest day of my life here,” said J— from Myanmar, whose family lost everything in the genocide still raging there, as she put on her prom dress and looked in the mirror.

She went from a refugee camp to Bishop Maginn to a full scholarship at a perfect college.

She is plenty fierce; you can see it in her eyes.

These stories come to me once in a while, not often enough to make the ordinary. I am grateful for each one, and it proves the selfishness inherent in do-gooding. It makes me feel great and lucky to be alive.

It gives my life meaning and resurrects it, just as Jesus said.