Here are a couple of stories that didn't make the news today. Outside Baltimore, a woman visiting a cancer-stricken friend noticed that the sick lady's sheets hadn't been changed nor her bathroom cleaned — perhaps in months. Ducking out for some fresh linens and cleaning supplies, the visitor returned to strip the bed and scrub the tub.

Here in Vermont, a woman got up in pre-dawn light to drive a disabled woman to and from a doctor's appointment 20 miles away. A few days before, the driver had done the same for an elderly woman needing medical treatment a few miles from home. Although "neighbors" in the geographic sense, the driver and her two passengers had never before met.

These stories didn't make the news, largely because they involved no pop stars shaving their heads. No highly paid athletes on the police blotter. No "Headless Body in a Topless Bar," as a classic tabloid headline once screamed. And no paparazzi recording the scenes.

These are, instead, just a couple of those moments that have been reduced to that bumper-sticker banality — "random acts of kindness."

Nice idea. But in truth, these kindnesses were not remotely random. Each of them stands as the completely calculated act of a good neighbor.

In the case of the Vermonter shuttling a couple of once-strangers-now-neighbors to their medical appointments, the action was anything but a momentary impulse. It lay at the heart of a carefully coordinated plan by Neighbor to Neighbor, a small nonprofit group based in Manchester Center. With about 70 volunteers helping more than 100 mostly elderly care recipients, Neighbor to Neighbor belongs to a nationwide network of community-based efforts called Faith in Action, funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The nation's largest philanthropy devoted to health care issues, this foundation has, since 1993, helped hundreds of local community groups who are reaching out to neighbors in need.

With its image of Bible-thumping "do-gooders" offering soup bowls to the hungry after they sit through a sermon, the notion of "Faith in Action" may put some people off. But the effort is deliberately secular. While Faith in Action relies upon local houses of worship, one of the building blocks of its model is, "Do not proselytize." For the neighbor in need, there's no "catch." No tracts, confessions, pledges to make or services to attend. Just simple acts of consideration, undertaken in the course of an ordinary day, with the goal of caring for neighbors, often with long-term health needs.

For many of these groups — like Vermont's Neighbor to Neighbor — these acts are often small and seemingly mundane: picking up groceries, providing a lift to the doctor, reading, and, perhaps most importantly, just talking and listening. In another corner of Vermont, it means winterizing homes in the face of dizzying fuel bills.

Unlike the slick speech-writing that has given us such facile phrases as, "1,000 points of light" or "compassionate conservative," Neighbor to Neighbor and other Faith in Action groups truly walk the walk. Their deliberate acts of kindness and sensible acts of decency won't nudge Wall Street's stock tickers. They won't make the cover of People.

But the difference they make in the lives of ordinary people in need speaks to what one Hebrew prophet admonished thousands of years ago — "to love justice and do mercy." Or what Jesus told his followers was among the essential commandments: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Or, in the simple words of a modern sage, "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood," Fred Rogers reminded us. "Please won't you be my neighbor?"

Kenneth C. Davis of Dorset is the author of "Don't Know Much About the Bible."