One of my frequent affirmations is this: Let me be the answer to someone’s prayers today.

It’s easy to forget that we are all just walking each other home, as Ram Dass said so eloquently. Especially right now when we’re so divided, when anger and fear seem to be our primary mode of operation, it may feel simpler to hunker down and hold your ground, giving nothing away. Rather than reaching out, the impulse is to hold your thoughts and feelings and actions very close.

But maybe, just maybe, it’s also just as easy to think about how we can be the answer to someone’s prayers.

Some days it’s business related. Yesterday I met a couple of clients at a house that they hadn’t considered before and they looked at me, looked at the views, looked at the courtyard gate, and then the beautifully carved front door and said, “This is it. This is what we’re leaving California for – a home like this. This is exactly what we wanted.” And then we wrote an offer.

It’s easy to be the answer when you’re providing stellar customer service, when you Come From Contribution as my mentor Judy Camp used to say. She said it over and over and over. It was almost an admonition from Judy, the toughest and sweetest coach I never knew I needed. If I complained about a colleague or a deal going sideways, she’s peer at me through those red glasses and ask, “Are you coming from contribution? Are you making things better or worse?”

Good questions. Good mentoring. Giving away all the knowledge she had not because it profited her, but because I needed it. Because it was her gift. Being the answer to my prayers on a daily basis. That was Judy Camp.

When I was in the fourth grade, Vivian Horne was my teacher. Every afternoon after lunch, we’d take our seats and put our heads on our desk and she’d read to us. We were just in from recess, winded and dirty and wound up, and I’m sure she’d figured out early on that reading to us was the best way to diffuse all that energy.

The reading was magical. Up to that point, I had read children’s books, but not chapter books that went on for days like the ones she read. She made me hungry for long stories that unwound over time, for more words that took me elsewhere. That was the year that this farm girl fell in love with “The Baseball Life of Willie Mays” and “The Secret Garden” and “A Wrinkle in Time.”

But here’s what stuck with me, along with that love of reading and relaxing. One afternoon after reading a chapter from “My Side of the Mountain,” Mrs. Horne looked up and said, “Maybe one day one of you will write a book that I can read from.”

All my life I’ve heard those words in my head. Maybe one day. My lifelong dream, perhaps thanks mostly to Mrs. Horne and the hunger for books she gave me, has been to write a book. And now I have. Not a masterpiece and certainly not one that any fourth grader would like, but a book nonetheless.

Who mentored (or mentors) you well? Who deserves a call or card or email thanking them for showing you the ropes? Who gets recognition today for being the answer to your prayers, whether it was last week or in the fourth grade? Whose mentoring are you most grateful for today?

If Judy Camp was in town, I’d call her and invite her out for one more lunch at La Boca. But we lost Judy a couple of years ago. I never got to thank her enough. Don’t let that happen to you. Show the folks who changed your life how grateful you are for their help.

And how can we give back to those mentors? My thought is that we pay it forward by mentoring well, whether it’s for an entire year, like Mrs. Horne, or for a day. My affirmation right now is that I be the answer to someone’s prayers today. What’s yours?