Thrift Store Saints: Meeting Jesus 25 at a Time

by Jane Knuth

Overview

First place winner for "Popular Presentation of the Catholic Faith" from the Catholic Press Association!

Thrift Store Saints is a collection of true stories based on Jane Knuth’s experiences serving the poor at a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store in the inner city of Kalamazoo, Michigan. At the outset of the book, Knuth is a reluctant new volunteer at the store, sharing that her middle-class, suburban, church-going background has not prepared her well for this kind of work. By the end of the book, Knuth has undergone a transformation of sorts, and neither she nor we can ever view the poor in the same way again.
 
Knuth’s transformation is rooted in the prevailing message of Thrift Store Saints: When we serve the poor, they end up helping us as much as we help them. Throughout the book we are introduced to new “saints,” as Knuth thoughtfully, at times humorously, describes how her encounters with the poorest people led her to the greatest riches of God’s grace. 
 
Thrift Store Saints makes clear that it doesn’t require heroic Mother Teresa-types to make a difference with the poor, and it even more powerfully shows us that working with them is not gloomy, depressing work. Knuth’s moving stories demonstrate the profound joy any of us can experience when we see serving the poor not as social work, but as a spiritual path that leads us to the heart of Jesus.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780829433012
Publisher:	Loyola Press
Publication date:	10/01/2010
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	276,903
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jane Knuth has been volunteering at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store in Kalamazoo, Michigan, for the last 15 years. She is also an eighth-grade math teacher. Jane and her husband, Dean, live in Portage, Michigan. This is Jane’s first book

Read an Excerpt

A Note from the Author

All of the stories in this book are true. However, the St. Vincent de Paul Society strictly guards the privacy of the individuals whom we help. In keeping with this, I changed names, occupations, physical descriptions, and details of the assistance we rendered. Any resulting resemblance to other persons is coincidental and unintentional. Peoples’ problems are rarely unique, but their goodness always is—that is where the disguises may fail. I ask for forgiveness if that is the case. There are a few instances in which I received permission to tell a story without changes, and I am grateful for these generous souls.

Preface

Thirteen years ago I reluctantly volunteered to work at a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store on a temporary basis because they were a little short of helpers. Right away, curious incidents that were almost like grace started to occur. Like grace, but not quite. It felt like something that would be grace very soon, if only I would keep coming back.
Thrift Store Saints is about recognizing God among us when the language is rough, the labor seems mindless, and everybody is wearing old clothes. God is certainly in the bread and the wine, and in the Gospels and the Epistles. He is in the organ preludes, the processions, the incense, sometimes in the sermons, and always in the fellowship of believers. But six out of seven days he is raking leaves, visiting sick babies, giving away the day-old bread, and handling the money.
The “Rule,” or spiritual path, of the St. Vincent de Paul Society can be summarized in three steps:

1. Pray together.
2. Help poor people face-to-face.
3. The poor are our teachers.

We are their students. As a student of Vincentian spirituality, this book is my midterm. I hope and pray that my teachers, the poor, will grade on a curve.

Is This a Church?

Three people are waiting on the sidewalk in the drizzle. I drive past them and around the end of the building.
As I park my car next to the fresh graffiti, I chew on my lip and say to myself for the hundredth time, What are you doing here, Jane? You don’t know the first thing about helping poor people. I climb out of the warm car, put my purse in the trunk, and lock all the doors. In the midst of my anxiety, I remind myself what I’ve been taught. This isn’t social work; it’s a spiritual path. Those three people standing outside aren’t problems to be solved—they are my teachers. They aren’t going to mug me—they’re going to show me the way to God.
I consider retrieving my purse out of the trunk. But I don’t. I stick my hands in my pockets and walk around the corner of the building.
“Morning,” I greet them as I fit the key in the door.
The youngest man cups his hands around his eyes and peers through the plate glass window at the racks of clothing, mismatched dishes, and blankets, and asks me, “Is this a church? My worker at the Department of Human Services gave me the address. They told me St. Vincent de Paul, but this looks like some kind of store. Am I in the right place?”
“No, it’s not a church, and yes, you’re in the right place. Do you need help with something?”
He nods. “The electric bill.”
They are all nodding.
“The rent.”
“They shut off my water.”
“It will be just a few minutes.” As I open the door, I apologize for the foul weather and explain that I can’t let them inside until more of the volunteer staff arrives. I have lengthened their miserable wait, but no one complains. They shrug and shiver.
The store is cold, but the furnace begins to seek its daytime temperature. I hang up my coat as my coworkers arrive. Before I unlock the door, we pause and clasp our hands together for a prayer to start the day. We’re not very pious at the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Usually our prayers are seat-of-the-pants petitions, no preambles and no qualifiers; people are waiting in the rain after all. “Lord, we need money.” “God, give me patience.” “Help us to listen better.” “Don’t let the roof leak again.”
The work of the St. Vincent de Paul Society lies smack in the middle of this drizzly, impious world. We are out on the front lines doing that confusing Beatitude thing without Roman collars or mission statements. That is what being “laity” is all about; it’s about the other six days, the ones that God called “good.”
The seventh day he called “holy” and we focus on worship, study, and celebration for that reason, but there is also something of God to be found in the rest of the week. This book is about the other six days, stories of God on the job and on the street.
“Is this a church?”
Maybe it is.

1
Dorothy

The first day I walk into the St. Vincent de Paul shop I am there for a quick in and out. I need to buy a rosary for my daughter’s First Communion, and this is the only local place that sells them. The limited operating hours of the store have foiled me twice already on this mission, but at last, I have caught them before they close at 3:00 p.m.
The tiny, white-haired lady behind the counter helps me select a rosary, a satin case, and a prayer book. She bags them for me, totals up my purchase on the register, and then balks at my offered credit card.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “We don’t take those.”
I know this can’t be right. Every store in town takes credit cards. McDonald’s takes credit cards. I offer her a different card, but she isn’t fooling around.
“Would you have cash or a check, perhaps?” she asks.
“Look,” I tell her. “This is the third time I’ve driven downtown. Your hours are lousy. What are working people supposed to do? I teach, and I have children in school, but you close at three o’clock. Now you’re telling me you won’t take credit cards? This is ridiculous.”
She nods sympathetically. “Most of our customers don’t have credit cards. So usually it’s not a problem.”
I am pretty sure she is making this up. At this stage in my life I don’t realize that there are people in the world who don’t have credit cards. I begin to look around me suspiciously.
The little shop is a one-story concrete block structure with three large plate glass windows. The main room where I am standing is about the size of two garages. The center floor space is dedicated to tightly packed used-clothing racks. Floor-to-ceiling shelves line the three windowless walls and are crammed with cast-off household items. Where I am standing, in the front of the store near the windows, six glass-front display cases surround the cash register, showing off brand new rosaries, prayer books, Bibles, medals, and crucifixes. The shiny religious gifts contrast oddly with the clutter of used merchandise. It’s as if someone set up a chapel inside a garage sale. Something isn’t right.
Could this place be a front for illegal activity? Maybe this little old lady isn’t really selling rosaries at all. Maybe this is really a cover for some other kind of action.
The neighborhood certainly fits the bill. There is a homeless shelter across the street, two vacant, boarded-up houses next door, train tracks half a block away, a funeral home kitty-corner across the intersection and, last, a prosperous-looking firm dealing with electronic security systems across from that.
I am on the point of leaving the merchandise on the counter and announcing that I intend to shop elsewhere when a very large man pushes his way through the front door and points a finger directly at the cashier in front of me. He is big of voice and beard, but small of manners and cleanliness.
“I need shoes to wear to church,” he announces in a loud, slurring voice. “These here you gave me yesterday ain’t nice enough for church going,” he says as he looks in the direction of his feet.
We all look. The unholy shoes appear to be gently worn loafers, and they are approaching the counter in an indirect saunter. As they waft nearer, so does the thick smell of recently consumed alcohol.
I take two voluntary steps backward, giving him plenty of room. He towers ten inches above me, which is reason enough to yield the right-of-way, but his entire person is daunting in itself. There are deep lines running from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth, which blend into the fuzziness of a stubbly jaw. His square shoulders balance well with thick salt-and-pepper hair and, if not for the obvious substance-abuse issue going on, here would be a man who is at his most impressive stage of life.
He’s still impressive. Just not in a positive way.
The tiny, elderly clerk smiles the same sympathetic smile at this smelly giant that she has just been directing so patiently at me and says, “Now, sir, those shoes are perfectly good for church. We talked about that yesterday when you picked them out, remember? My husband used to wear ones just like them to Mass on Sundays.”
His thighs bump into the counter and for a moment it looks like he might pitch over on top of her. Then he slaps his palms down next to my daughter’s rosary beads and catches his balance by leaning his weight on the counter.
At this point, the alcohol smell is no longer covering the rest of the aroma coming from him. I switch to mouth breathing. In my peripheral vision I see other customers start to edge toward the door. My path is blocked for that route. I move around the end of the counter in order to put something solid between us, and find myself practically standing next to the cashier.
She smiles reassuringly at me and pats my hand and says to the man, “We give shoes out twice a year, you know that. You can come back in September and we’ll help you again.”
The large, drunken man is now a large, drunken, angry man. He pounds one of his fists on the counter and rages about the charitable inadequacies and small-mindedness of the St. Vincent de Paul Society (I am paraphrasing, of course). “Tell the manager I want to see him! I’m not putting up with this no more ’cause I need shoes for church and you people call yourselves Christians and you don’t give me any and that ain’t right!”
I tug on the little lady’s sleeve and whisper, “Should I call 911?”
She shakes her head at me and says calmly to the man, “Sir, I’m sorry you’re upset. I only wish we could help, but shoes are in such short supply.”
I am practically cowering behind the counter, glancing around for a way to defend myself and the clerk. I snatch up a ministapler and hide it in my palm.
“I want a manager! All I’m asking for are proper shoes to be seen in the house of God and you people don’t give me nothing!”
She tries to reason with him, but drunken people lack those sorts of skills. Finally, she says, “How about if you come back tomorrow and I’m sure a manager will have time to see you then.”
He breathes fumes into her face and shouts, “What’s your name? I’m coming back tomorrow and I’m telling your boss exactly how you treat people. Tell me your name!”
“Oh,” she waves her hand gently. “You’ll never remember my name, sir. I’m nobody important anyway. You just come back tomorrow. I’m sure everything will work out.”
To my utter astonishment, he gives up. Her unshakable kindness is too much for him. He grumbles and swears and waves his arms some more but in the end, he turns and shuffles his way out of the store.
In the silence that follows, the remaining customers poke their heads out from behind the clothing racks and ask, “Is he gone?”
I say to the clerk, “Do you want me to lock the door?”
She hesitates, then nods. “Maybe for a little while. I don’t really care to talk with him again right away.” She hands me the key, and I go to turn the bolt while another customer peers out the plate glass and gives us a running description of where the man is headed.
When I get back to the cash register, my daughter’s rosary, satin case, and prayer book are still lying innocently on the counter.
The cashier frowns at the articles in a concerned way and says, “I could loan you the money for these if you want to bring it in next week. Let me just check my purse to see if I have enough with me.”
I blink. She can’t mean it. “You don’t want to say things like that,” I whisper to her and glance over my shoulder to see if any of the other customers overheard her.
She waves a hand unconcernedly and says, “Oh, I’m not worried. I’m sure you’ll bring in the money. No one would walk away with a rosary and a prayer book without paying for them.”
I study her solemnly. “I’d probably go straight to hell for that, wouldn’t I?”
She laughs gently and winks at me.
I scrounge around in the bottom of my purse looking for paper money and coins, no longer grumbling about the three trips I have made. Eventually I find enough money to cover the bill and I hand it to her. She smiles, thanks me, and says, “Our hours are limited because we don’t have enough volunteers right now. You wouldn’t have any extra time to help out, would you?”
It’s 1995, her name is Dorothy, she is eighty-two years old, and she will volunteer at the store twice a week for another thirteen years. She will become one of my best friends, but right now I am only trying to think how I can gracefully get out of helping in this crazy place with rosary beads and free shoes and drunken street people and white-haired, hundred-pound saints. Being Catholic, I’m all for martyrs, but not as a personal vocation. Luckily I have not signed a credit card slip or given them a check. No one here knows my name or my phone number; it’s still possible to escape with my anonymity intact.
As I back away and mumble about “busy schedules” and “young children,” she smiles sweetly at me and says, “Don’t I know your Aunt Catherine? She and I were schoolmates together.”
So much for anonymity.

2
Losing My Balance

The next week I am sitting in the back room of the store in a circle of nine elderly women. Dorothy’s white hair is no anomaly; every member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society is over seventy. I am thirty-seven.
I agreed to attend this meeting. That’s all. I have joined no organization, signed no papers, taken no vows, and exchanged no recipes. My purse is locked in my car, and I purposely did not bring pen or paper with me. I sit with my feet flat on the floor and politely refuse Dorothy’s offer of coffee.
To Dorothy’s left sits Mary, one of the cashiers. She is a feisty Croatian with beautiful white hair and a bad case of arthritic hands. Mary introduces me to Rosemary and Virginia on her left, both of them quiet but friendly enough. A jolly lady next to Virginia (I don’t catch her name) who doesn’t work in the store but visits people in nursing homes as her contribution to the group, shakes my hand vigorously and welcomes me. Sitting across the circle from her are two Bernies and an Alice. Everyone keeps talking about another Bernie, the president of the Society who only recently retired from volunteering. This confusion of Bernies messes with my mind for most of the next hour.
Alice, as the secretary of the group, asks Mary to read a prayer. After that, she leads off the meeting with the first order of business, which is to figure out who will be the next president. A few nominations are submitted and politely refused. Everyone claims ignorance of the duties involved. It doesn’t take long before it’s obvious that absolutely no one wants the job. Dorothy looks at me and smiles in that sweet way that roped me into attending this meeting, but there is no way. I’ve been on enough church committees in the past to know when it’s a good time to sit on my hands and avoid eye contact.
Apparently, the absent Bernie resigned in a hurry without training anyone and left no instructions behind. No one wants to talk about the circumstances of her departure, but the upshot of it is that they are stuck with no leader and no candidates to take over.
I look around the circle of gray and white heads and ask them, “Why aren’t there any people my age?”
“They all have jobs,” is the collective opinion. “Baby boomers have no time for volunteering.”
Well, jobs or not, all my friends seem to be volunteering around the clock—coaching sports; fund-raising for schools; organizing charity golf outings, phone-a-thons and walk-a-thons, raffles and auctions, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4-H, political campaigns, environmental cleanups, carpools, and vacation bible school. They all have at least one no-pay job on top of their other commitments. But why are none of them at the local Catholic charity?
And my generation isn’t the only one missing. Where are the Gen Xers? And what about the college and high school students? Why are these elderly volunteers all alone running a thrift store on the seedy side of town, and how can this possibly work? They simply can’t do this all by themselves. Add to this the lack of leadership, and I begin to worry that they will expect way too much from me if I join. All the headaches of running a church group will fall on my shoulders because I am young and strong and competent.
Along with the memory of the drunken customer, nightmarish images of committee meetings, fund-raisers, volunteer recruitment fairs, negative balance sheets, recognition luncheons, bake sales, and phone trees appear in my imagination. I am already searching my pockets for my car keys when someone asks for a report from the treasurer.
Alice, the secretary, is also the treasurer of the group. She reads the minutes of the last meeting and ends with the current bank balance. This is when the second crisis arises. Due to a lack of volunteers, the income from the store has been building up, and they haven’t been able to give it away fast enough. Alice announces that they are fifty thousand dollars in the black, which leads all of them to cluck their tongues in disapproval.
I am dumbfounded.
I have never in my life heard of a church group that is overfunded. I think that they must have the figures reversed, but no, these nine ladies really have generated more money than they have been able to spend.
“What are you going to do with all that money?” I ask.
One of the Bernies frowns grimly and says, “We are going to give it away as fast as we can.” Everyone in the circle nods in agreement, and a discussion begins.
Virginia, who is ninety-something, explains to me, “The St. Vincent de Paul Society visits people in their homes to find out what they need. Our problem is that most of us don’t like to drive into the rough neighborhoods after dark, and in the winter the sun goes down at five thirty.”
I stare at her, appalled at the idea of her driving at all, let alone at night in the inner city.
“Perhaps we should stop taking donations for a while,” Rosemary suggests.
But nobody likes that option very well.
Dorothy says, “Maybe we can ask people who need help to come here to the store?”
Bernie shakes her head. “We really should visit them in their own homes. That’s how the Society is supposed to function. It gives people more dignity to have us come to them.”
But lately, home visits haven’t been possible for this tiny group who call themselves Vincentians, and meanwhile they keep right on generating income through the thrift store operation and donations from benefactors. Fifty thousand dollars is an embarrassment of riches for these daughters of the Great Depression. They are determined to give it away—but how?
In the end, they decide to put the word out in town among the various churches and help-agencies that they will begin to hold office hours for people seeking financial assistance.
“We’ll write checks as fast as we can,” Bernie promises everyone.
It’s been said that the giant redwood trees in California don’t die in the usual way. They don’t get sick or weaken with age. Instead, what happens is that a perfectly healthy tree, on a windless day, with no disease or rot or even the excuse of a lightning strike, will lose its balance and topple over—ca-thunk. Tree experts speculate that there is a weakness in the roots, but no one knows for sure what causes these sudden deaths.
Understandably, this is distressing to tree lovers.
People often speak of “fallen-away Catholics.” It’s been said that their numbers in the United States would make up the second-largest denomination of Christians in the country. I’ve known a few self-described members of this group. It’s as if these missing brethren are like untouched redwoods, suddenly careening to the forest floor for no good or apparent reason. People pray for their return to an upright position, but no one seems to understand what causes the phenomenon.
Understandably, this is distressing to church lovers.
I am a baby boomer. My generation knows how to fix the world like no one else. That’s how we grew up. We were told to get an education and then go out and “make a difference.” “Question authority,” was our mantra. “Never follow blindly.” We were all born to be leaders—not a follower in the bunch. Many of us Catholic boomers are still committed to changing the world, but not always from a position inside the Church. We are busy saving the environment, advocating societal reforms, standing up for human rights, and protesting injustice, but our concerns tend to be rooted more in the earth than the heavens. Many of my generation, good committed activists, no longer attend church. There are fallen tree trunks all around me.
At my first St. Vincent de Paul meeting, listening to the surreal discussion of how to give money away faster, it dawns on me that I have a lot more to offer the group than just an extra pair of hands to sort clothing. Talk revolves around (and around and around) routine management issues within the thrift store operation. How should we standardize prices? Shall we allow customers use of the restroom? Should we have a bag sale to reduce the inventory? Who keeps moving the scissors?
While the St. Vincent de Paul members discuss mundane matters like pricing tags and osteoporosis, I am already planning how to rip out the green shag carpet in the office and rev up the recruitment of new members. But first, it’s obvious to me that what the place needs most is someone who can organize things better. Merchandise on the store shelves looks cluttered, the clothing racks are too tightly packed, the tiny office contains files going back two decades, and the entire place smells like a Michigan basement. I pride myself that I am very good at organization, and this is a talent that I can generously share.
Near the end of the meeting, I clear my throat and set the new course for the group with my first revolutionary suggestion. “What we need to do is to organize all the paperwork with a computer system. Once I get that in place, we can use it for inventory control, paying bills, client files, and make it possible for customers to use credit cards for purchases.”
They look at me blankly and look at each other knowingly.
One of the octogenarians actually rolls her eyes. “That’s nice, dear,” she says. “But what we could really use is someone who would take out the trash every night and clean the bathroom.”
I smile thinly at her while my mind reels with the insult. How is cleaning the bathroom going to change the world? That is not my idea of volunteer work. I can clean bathrooms at home if I want. It is a waste of my intellect, my education, my organizational skills, and my zeal to expect me to do such work. No wonder these people have no young volunteers. Perhaps it’s time to pack up my leadership talents and leave this group with their ugly carpet and their wads of cash. If there is a weakness in my tree roots, it’s their fault for not valuing my strengths.
But Dorothy, having gotten me this far, isn’t letting go so easily. “What we could really use is someone to order the religious gifts we sell. The lady who used to do that has left, and none of us has the time. What would everyone think about letting Jane try her hand at it?”
I am astonished. There is not a single crucifix hanging in my home, my only prayer book is on a shelf in the basement, and my Bible has exactly zero dog-eared pages. My roots are pretty shallow in the forest of religious paraphernalia.
The group talks it over for five minutes before deciding that I probably can’t mess it up too badly. They set me loose with six display cabinets full of inventory, a twenty-five thousand dollar yearly budget, and file drawers of catalogs from wholesalers in New York, San Francisco, and Rome. This is one of the major sources of income for the store. I haven’t lost my balance yet, but my head begins to spin.
They also show me where the toilet brush is kept.

3
A Street Theologian

She shifts from foot to foot glancing around hopefully at the racks of used clothing in the store. Her medium brown, straight hair is tied back severely in a ponytail, seeming to stretch the worry lines on her forehead and at the corners of her mouth into deeper crevices. She wears no make-up, and she is of the age where makeup helps a great deal.
Our new Society president, Gene, summons me from the back room where I have been sorting and pricing clothing. When we were successful in recruiting his help through a word-of-mouth plea in the parish, and before he had his bearings, we quickly elected him president before he knew what had happened. New at the work, Gene tends to give downtrodden women in need of clothing to the female members.
“She says she needs some clothes,” he tells me. “Help her find something—but no fur coats or leather jackets—got it? Write it all down and stick the tally on the filing cabinet.”
Not an unusual situation. Although we generally sell the items in our store at rock-bottom prices, even a few dollars can be too much for some of our customers.
Now, as I approach her, I realize she is probably my own age although her last twelve years have pretty obviously not been spent like mine, as suburban mom, part-time teacher, and occasional volunteer. She coughs, and the gravel in her throat hints of too many cigarettes. Her sinewy arms and tightly muscled calves underneath her close-fitting jeans speak plainly of manual labor and all day on her feet and have nothing to do with aerobics classes and long hours spent driving children’s carpools. She is a tough lady asking for charity from someone who in other circumstances would be one of her peers. I realize that this is going to be excruciatingly hard for both of us.
“How can I help you?” I inquire as I reach her.
She unexpectedly blushes. “Oh! Not so much—I just got a new job—a good job,” she emphasizes. She wedges her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “It’s just that they want me to wear navy blue pants, no jeans, see? I’m waitressing at that new bar on Stadium Drive—nice place. Have you seen it?” I shake my head; my carpool doesn’t go through the university campus. “Well, anyway I don’t get my first check until next week and the pants are kind of steep at K-Mart and I was hoping . . . I’ll pay . . .”
“Sure, no problem,” I’m saying as I turn away to lead her to the rack of women’s slacks. “What size do you need?”
“I’ll pay for them Friday when I get my check.” She’s not looking at the slacks yet. “I’m not asking you to give them to me, it’s just—.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I cut her off again. “What size?”
“Um, eight, sometimes ten.” She’s still not looking at the pants, only at me.
I pull out a pair of faded Dockers and a wool blend with a plastic belt. “How are these?”
“Great. Perfect. How much are they?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I repeat casually.
“No, really, I just don’t have the money now but I will on Friday.”
“Okay,” I say and I look at her full in the face for the first time. “But these were donated to us; you are welcome to them. If you want to pay us back, just donate something to the shop when you get a little ahead.”
“Oh,” she looks relieved, “Sure, I can do that. I’ve got some stuff I don’t need. Good stuff. I’ll do that.”
“Fine.” I feel like apologizing for the awkward way I am dealing with her. It wasn’t me who donated the slacks, and I feel like a fraud accepting her gratitude.
Tears are starting to pool in her eyes. “This is really super of you. I didn’t know what I was going to do for work tonight. The boss wasn’t happy last night when I wore my jeans.”
“What else do you need?” Why do I keep interrupting her? “A blouse?”
“No, no, they give us a shirt that has their name on it. I just wash it out every morning.”
“Shoes? Socks?”
Her lips tighten and the tears well up again.
“What size?” I turn quickly away from the tears and lead her to the racks of shoes. She picks out a pair of loafers and then we go to the socks. Not much to choose from because those of us who buy socks whenever we need them don’t think about donating our old ones. My client finds two pair and looks at me hopefully. I nod and give her a small smile. Next I lead her to the underwear and the tears come out in full force. I walk over to the cash register and get her a tissue. When she can see well enough to read the sizes on the bras and panties, we are all done in under five minutes. I think of the hours I spend shopping for clothing at the mall and mentally squirm.
I lead her over to the counter and start tallying up her small pile of items as part of our record keeping. While I write, she starts talking. While she talks, God reaches down and touches me.
She’s still wiping at her tears as she begins. “I was baptized Catholic as a baby, that’s how I knew about you folks. When I was a kid I’d heard St. Vincent de Paul helped people. I can’t say I was raised Catholic. My dad, well, he wasn’t a very good Catholic . . . or a very good father for that matter,” she grimaces. “But anyway, since I grew up, I’ve gone to one church or another most of the time. My dad doesn’t go to church, but he believes in God. There’s plenty of folks that go to church but don’t believe in God. Matter of fact, not all churches believe in God. Like I said, I’ve been to quite a few.”
I look up from my writing, “How do you know which churches believe in God and which don’t?”
She thinks for a moment, “Well, it’s like this. At first they all talk about God. ‘God loves you, Jesus loves you, we love you’—they all say stuff like that. It’s only after you’ve been in them for a while that you can tell the difference between the ones that really believe what they’re saying and the ones that don’t.”
I’m seriously intrigued. “So? . . . How?”
“After a while some of those places begin to talk about the devil and sins and evil. A little more time and pretty soon that’s all they talk about. Ain’t long and they give up talking about God altogether. They believe in the devil—they sure do. And I’m not saying they’re wrong, but they don’t seem to believe in God nearly as much. And they’re not nearly as interested in God as they are in the devil either. That’s when I know it’s time to find me a different church.”
I put down my pen and concentrate on her words. She must see that for the first time I am really listening to her because she goes on.
“I’ll tell you something else, too; some church people, they talk about forgiving all the time, but they don’t have any idea how hard it is to forgive because I don’t think they’ve ever had something really wicked done to them. I’ve had a hard time with forgiving my dad. I left home when I was fifteen because of him. Most church people, they don’t have a clue. Don’t get me wrong. Forgiving is the most important thing. If you can’t forgive, it eats you up inside. I forgave my dad, and we get along fine now. The rest of my brothers and sisters won’t even talk to him.”
I realize she’s talking about me. I’m one of those people who have only had to forgive little offenses, and I can’t even seem to do that properly. “So . . .” I almost don’t ask, but then I need to know. “How did you forgive your father?”
She doesn’t answer right away. She looks at the other customers and at my colleagues working at the cash register. She takes a couple of steps away from them so that she’s talking just to me.
“Well you know how church people say you have to forgive because Jesus forgave the people who crucified him? They say he forgave them while he was hanging on the cross. I heard that over and over. They say if you want to be a Christian, you have to forgive everybody because Jesus did. Well that’s not quite right.” She pauses, making sure I am not taking offense. “I got my Bible out and I read that story myself—the one about him being crucified. And what actually happened, what he really did say, was: ‘Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.’ He was talking to God, not to them. He was praying for them.” She pauses, waiting for me to comprehend.
I stare at her, speechless.
She smiles, “That’s right, too; you can look it up.”
“You—You’re right.”
“What good does it do to forgive people who are laughing at you and are still in the middle of killing you? They don’t want forgiveness for one thing. For Chrisakes, he still had the damn nails in his hands! God didn’t ask that much of him. And I don’t believe he asks that much of us either. So that’s how I forgave my dad. I did what Jesus did. I prayed, ‘God, you forgive him, because right now I can’t. Those old nails were still in my hands and God understood that. I prayed that way for a long, long time. And one day when I didn’t feel them quite so much, I could forgive. I’m the only one in my family who will go see my dad.”
I bag up her clothing. As I hand it to her, she thanks me again and turns to walk out of the store. I ask her a question to keep her from leaving. Then I follow her to the door, hoping for still more of her amazing insights. When we are out on the sidewalk, she reaches into her blouse and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of her bra. She lights up and inhales deeply, with a sigh. And then comes my moment of ultimate spiritual humility. She asks shyly, “Will you pray for me?”
“Yes,” I answer, “Yes, of course.” And then, from deep down I say, “And will you pray for me?”
She looks at me shrewdly, hesitating. “You don’t look like you need it,” she observes matter-of-factly.
It takes my breath away.
“Oh, yes—I do. Please, will you?”
“OK,” she agrees, and then she smiles.
Ten minutes later, insisting that she really does have to get to work, I reluctantly let her detach herself from me, and I wander slowly back into the store. Virginia and Dorothy cluck their tongues in sympathy and say to me, “My, that was nice of you to listen to that poor woman go on and on. Sometimes they just want to talk, don’t they?”
“No, no, that wasn’t it at all,” I protest. “Honestly, I wish I hadn’t interrupted her so much. I should have let her talk more.”
They smile fondly at me. “You certainly have a lot of patience, Jane.”
 

Table of Contents

A Note from the Author vii

Preface xi

Is This a Church? 1

1 Dorothy 5

2 Losing My Balance 13

3 A Street Theologian 21

4 Reinforcements 29

5 Home Visits 41

6 Willing to Be Disturbed 51

7 Saints and Sinners 57

8 As Much Fun as Christmas 65

9 What's a Welcome Worth? 71

10 Whose Pope Is He Anyway? 87

11 Tim 97

12 Ordinary Days 103

13 Thrifty Givers 111

14 Flying the Same Plane 119

15 Not My Poor People 127

16 Four Women 133

17 Echoes of Christmas 139

18 Cool 143

19 Replanting the Forest 147

A Conversation with Author Jane Knuth 151

Acknowledgments 157

Interviews

Portage, MI

Editorial Reviews

"[Jane Knuth's] stories of the people that visit the store are very inspiring and she uses these stories to teach us the Vincentian principles of divine providence, spirituality and seeing the face of Christ in the poor."
--Ozanam News

The stories are fascinating, the reflections probing.
--Review for Religious

 "I love Jane Knuth’s books Thrift Store Saints and Thrift Store Graces."
--Ray Dupont, National Saint Vincent de Paul Stores Committee Chairperson

From the Publisher