AN END TABLE, A WHITE SHIRT, A PAIR OF GYM SHORTS AND A CAN OF CORN
November 11, 2011



By Ken Bresnan, Parish Outreach Liaison



When a blogger starts with a title like that, one would wonder where he is going to go. Let’s find out.


Yesterday I was in a conversation with one of my coworkers and we were talking about the theme for this year’s annual No Room at the Inn events, “Together, we can help lift people out of poverty with dignity”.


Needless to say that sent my mind to wandering. Many of my interactions with the poor, similar to most people, are at least one step removed from personal contact with a person in need. We get involved with collections and donations. It has dawned on me that through those collections, we can truly help to raise people up with dignity.


Let me explain how I look at this. I have an old end table in my basement that my wife Rita and I don’t need. I could take it to one of our warehouses for use by one of our programs. But the more I look at it, I realize that I would be using this as a means for getting rid of a piece of junk more than an act of dignified charity. We have had that table for 40 years and it has not survived the raising of four children well. It is so beat up that I don’t even have it in the basement rec room but hidden in a storage area.


If I think that it would be ok for a person in poverty, am I really treating them with dignity? As Bishop Pates stressed in his sermon on centennial Sunday, “Each is entitled to be accorded the dignity consistent with his identity.” The danger here is that through my donations and actions I could be considering the person in need as a second class citizen. I believe that what Christ wants is for us to consider treating people with dignity, the exact same dignity that I want to be treated with. In summary, I wouldn’t want to be given that end table.


I had a new white dress shirt given to me last Christmas. Unfortunately the relative that sent it to me did not account for my ever increasing size. I remember actually having the thought, “It’s too good to give to the poor”. Again, an attitude that does not treat people with dignity.


Recently my wife insisted that I get a new pair of gym shorts for my workouts. The 1960ish pair that I had been wearing seemed to me to still be in good shape. I had been wearing them for a few decades and they held up pretty good. Would I want to receive a pair of gym shorts that someone wore for twenty years? No, it was beneath my dignity.


And finally I will mention a can of corn. My wife and I make a habit of on every weekly shopping trip we buy three extra canned goods for the monthly collection at our church. When I get canned corn for myself, I go with DelMonte. When I am shopping for those three cans, I see myself reaching for the generic brand. As you can see, having thoughts like this and some of the others that I mentioned can lead me down a path of looking at people in poverty as a different group, a sub class so to say.


Not a good way to think. In each of our actions we have to think of the end user as a person with same dignity that God has given each of us. This really wasn’t about an end table, a white shirt, a pair of gym shorts or a can of corn but about treating all people with dignity.