Poverty and environmental destruction have many things in common, including this: They’re frequently hidden in plain sight.

 I thought about this last month, when I wrote about Latino neighborhoods in my blog Finding Your Way, and on a recent drive through West Virginia, when I saw a series of high, utterly flat ridges. Nature didn’t create perfect table tops in West Virginia. The mountain peaks that used to sit on top of them were blasted away by coal companies.

Suffering through a tragedy will change you in ways you can scarcely imagine. It’s often a matter of choice as to whether those changes will be positive or negative. Not always, but often.

 I’ve been thinking about this a lot since I heard a radio clip about a woman named Karen Robards, whose son David was born with Down Syndrome. That would be a blow to any parent, and Karen and her husband, Tom, were devastated. In time, though, they founded a special education center near their home in New York City. The center has helped hundreds of students and their families. Karen considers her experiences with children at the center and with her own son to have been an incredible journey.

At a recent Seva talk in Delaware, an audience member asked the trickiest of questions: How can people get involved in the type of service that will do the most good—while bringing meaning to their lives? There are a thousand roads into service. But each of us is suited only for certain roles.

This is a tough issue, and I wasn’t prepared to address it. I don’t remember much about the answer I gave, except that it wasn’t very good. I stood in front of 75 people feeling a little naked—you know, exposed as the dummy that I really am. I did manage to say that, having finished my book, I’m wrestling with the same dilemma: What should I do now?

IT'S BEEN NEARLY A YEAR since an investigation revealed widespread abuses by charities that use telemarketers to raise money. Yet few people have heard of the study or its results.

In June 2013 the Tampa Tribune published a detailed exposé that began, “The worst charity in America operates from a metal warehouse in Holiday, (Florida). ” The article reported that the Kids Wish Network used telemarketers to raise millions of dollars, ostensibly to help dying children. Only three cents of every dollar actually reached the children.

THE WOMAN SAT on a rolled-out sleeping bag beneath the protective awning of an office building, just barely out of the cold winter rain. Her hair, brown and curly, seemed bouncy in a way that she did not. She was perhaps 30, dressed in jeans and a pretty, if frayed, pink fleece jacket. She might have been a backpacker ready to embark on a weekend camping trip—except that she wasn’t. An array of plastic bottles holding water and GatorAde sat next to her on the sidewalk. As I watched from the window of my dry, warm car, she rooted through a large backpack and pulled out an extra pair of socks.