“People Like Us…”

People like us…

I was listening to a interview on Canadian public radio the other day. It was about child prostitutes and the johns who prey on them.

The woman being interviewed ran a support group for these vulnerable children. Many had fled their homes because of abuse but they also ended up fleeing the child services and foster care that had been set up to help them.  Tragically, too many of them encountered abuse there also.  Abandoned, fearful and outcast, they ended up on the streets, where they fell prey to pimps, johns and dealers.

One teenager had reported, “There were other agencies to help us but by the time we knew about them, we wouldn’t go because we know what people like that think about people like us.”

There’s the indictment:  ‘. . . what people like that think about people like us.”   ‘People like that’ are the clean, the pure and the respectable;  ‘people like us’ are the outcasts, the outsiders, the ‘sinners’, and they know their place.  Tragically, it’s far away from the clean and the pure and the Church, powerful and prestigious, is often seen as aligned with this group.  Sinners keep their distance.

It is then that I recall with fondness some of the Oblates I know.  Father W. works in an inner city parish.  He volunteers with a Christian charity that reaches out to women on the streets.  The volunteers go out at night, in pairs, offering candy, sandwiches and care packages to the women.  Father W. joins the volunteers when he can, walking alongside them, offering presence and prayers to all whom he encounters.

I think of another Oblate parish where the congregation hosts a supper kitchen and women’s group for inner city women.  In yet another city, the Oblates founded and run a clinic for drug addicts.

Throughout the world, Oblates are known for not knowing their place, for going outside the boundaries of respectability and safety in order to draw close to people.  The divisions of ‘people like that’ and ‘people like us’ are broken down as the Oblates show a different face of love.

Sandy Prather HOMI

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2010 at 11:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized.
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