INDIANAPOLIS - The money in the white envelopes bought one cancer patient a beautiful ham. It bought nine disabled children an afternoon of golf and giggles.

True, some money may have been squandered on an addict's high. But it did buy an exhausted mother a massage.

The $50 in each white envelope spread hope. And it left some people thinking they could make a difference in the world.

It started one Sunday when Linda McCoy, pastor of a free-spirited church here called the Garden, preached about kindness - or as she put it, sowing seeds of love. Then she held up 50 envelopes. An anonymous donor had filled each with a $50 bill.

Anyone could take one, no strings attached. All the donor asked was that the money be used for good.

"We can make this world a better place," McCoy told her congregation. "What a wonderful adventure."

Many who picked up the envelopes spent weeks pondering how best to spend the $50. Some wrote checks to established charities. But others were stirred to reach out directly to the needy. Teachers and plumbers, therapists and nurses found themselves driving the streets of Indianapolis, studying the worn faces they passed, looking for a need they could meet.

"I wanted to make a difference in someone's life," said Loretta Johnson, an insurance underwriter.

As it turned out, the envelopes made as much difference to the givers as to the takers. The middle-age, middle-class members of the congregation found themselves listening to strangers' hard-luck stories with empathy this time instead of skepticism. The donor had trusted them to use the money wisely. They took that trust and passed it on.

"The older I get, the more cynical I've gotten. I see what goes on in the world, and I'm disgusted. But this project helped me see there's still hope," said Carol Meeks, a home economist who used the money to grow a huge garden that will provide fresh produce for the hungry.

"Sometimes, we're too focused on what's wrong with other people. This project encouraged you to see the good in them," said Mary Jane Mesmer, a business consultant.

She gave the money to an Amish family that a friend had met by chance in a hospital coffee shop. The family, from rural Indiana, had come to the city for their son's kidney transplant and seemed bewildered and afraid. Mesmer thought they could use a stranger's kindness.

Over and over throughout the project, such kindness proved contagious.

Many participants easily tripled or quadrupled the $50 as friends, touched by the donor's generosity, opened their own wallets. Dee Caldwell, a real estate agent, raised $325 to take 40 low-income kids to play with the baby animals on her farm. Nurse Patty Fredenburgh raised so much money for her Special Olympics golf tournament that she is buying T-shirts for the children.

The phenomenon of one good turn sparking another is rooted in our psychology, according to Jon Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia who has spent years studying this reaction.

When we see someone do a good deed, he says, it elevates our view of human nature. That elevation can produce physical changes: the proverbial lump in the throat or tightness in the chest. It also triggers altruism.

Once elevated, people often feel inspired to do their own good deeds, he says.

Haidt calls the Garden's project a "brilliant" way to leverage elevation by creating an ever-expanding chain of goodwill.

"This is one of the most effective uses of $2,500 that I've ever heard," he said.

Not that elevation is always instant. Donna Hoffman, for instance, thought seriously about keeping the $50. A single mother who drives a school bus, cleans houses and is writing an inspirational novel about angels, Hoffman figured she deserved the cash.

She kept the envelope for several weeks. It didn't feel right.

"I kept thinking, 'You know what? I'm rich,'" Hoffman said. "I'm rich in my heart because I have an opportunity to do something with this money." She gave it to a friend, Pam Burleson, who cares for a brain-damaged son.

"I was really, really touched," Burleson said. So was Hoffman, who proudly reports that "the world now feels a little smaller, a little less frightening."

After consulting with their two sons, Nancy and Peter Howe gave the $50 (and a sizable contribution of their own) to a single mother whose only child is battling leukemia. She has difficulty finding the cash to buy gasoline for her daily trips to visit him in the hospital.

"I still think writing a check to the American Cancer Society is a wonderful thing, but this ... had so much more meaning," said Nancy Howe, a mental-health counselor. "We want to do more of it."

She has signed up her family to build Habitat for Humanity homes. And she recently gave her son's old trumpet to a child who could not afford one, instead of selling it for several hundred dollars as she had planned.

Church services at the Garden are often memorable, as McCoy spices up her sermons with video clips from The Simpsons or pop songs performed live by the 12-piece Good Earth Band. The 800-member congregation prays in a dinner theater in a residential neighborhood in northwest Indianapolis. The Gardeners eat bagels as McCoy preaches.

Even by the Garden's standards, however, the "seeds of love" campaign was extraordinary. After distributing the envelopes, McCoy devoted her next four sermons to the subject of giving.

She showed clips from the movie Pay It Forward, in which a 12-year-old boy sets out to change the world by doing good deeds for three people and asking them each to show kindness to three others in turn. She also videotaped congregation members talking about how the project affected them.

"It's been so interesting to see the little ways in which people are now more aware of the needs and hurts around them," McCoy said.

As the Garden's experiment in philanthropy draws to a close, the donor who launched it is thrilled.

A self-described "child of the Depression," accustomed to scrimping, the donor said she found it hard to give away so much money all at once. It was especially tough to hand it to strangers - who, for all she knew, might blow it on a steak dinner.

Yet she filled all 50 envelopes, hoping that such an unusual gift would make people look at the world differently. She made the donation anonymously to keep the focus away from her.

"It's too easy to write a check to the American Red Cross at Christmas and feel self-righteous. It's too easy to feel good about yourself without giving anything of yourself," the donor said. "I wanted to make an effort to engage people, to show them that they could go out and do God's work."

The experiment succeeded beyond her dreams. Members of the Garden became engaged and opened their hearts; so did the donor.

"I learned," she said, "to trust."

Stephanie Simon is a reporter for the Los Angeles Time, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.