A Morning at the Shelter

Yesterday I visited a Catholic women’s shelter here in the Inland Northwest and I was overwhelmed by the experience.  I have lived through a lot that would preclude my being shocked and sorrowed.  What I realized, thanks to Mother Teresa, is that reality of “so few doing so much for so many with so very little.”  I am profoundly cognizant of WHY she is a saint.  She, however, is the first to say it shouldn’t take a saint to deal with what should be a common daily reality: loving our neighbor in need.

A steady stream of women wearily waged an emotional war through the below freezing temperatures, the landscape of dystopia and ‘megalopagus’, to stand in line.  There weren’t enough chairs but it was warm.  Each woman was silent respectfully patient with the two young women volunteers harried and hurried as each woman in turn was helped to fill out a form.

It is a frightening experience to come full-face with such overwhelming need.  The room exploded emotionally for me.  I had to leave.  The frightened faces of the two young women said volumes.

I am still trying fathom what happened.  What I know basically is that those forced to the  ‘margins’ of our pretentious, King Midas illusory culture wed with an empty socialistic institutionalized society are bursting the seams of already overloaded services.  Those trying to reach out and touch and help someone are also screaming inside for help to fill unbelievably deep, critical, life-threatening needs of those who come for aid.  I have before me a very ‘thick’ resource book for someone who finds they are cast out and destitute to find places of service.  It terrifies me that so many wonderful people are out there trying to reach across that dark, widening gap but it is not enough. 

Each person, each one, in the Church must get involved now.  If donations are the only thing you can muster then do it generously.  But the sick, the old, the homeless, the young, families, and the unemployed need ‘people’ out there each moment working to help.

For some reason I can see Mother Teresa, St. Vincent de Paul and St. Therese firmly nodding.