Thrift Store Saints - a very good read
- Jane Knuth, author & volunteer
I want to tell you a story today. The story is true so names have been changed. All the names except for Jane’s. Because Jane wrote all the stories that come from this good story and published them in a book which I have loved reading. The story starts out with how Jane came to “volunteer” her time to serve the poor and reveals how the poor became her teachers.
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This is not the kind of match the professional human resources manager would come up with. The candidate, in this case is a reluctant volunteer, forty years or more younger than the rest of the team who reside somewhere in the 70 – 94 age range.
She will not be working in an “uptown” office window suite, but she will have a pretty good look at her inner-city surroundings just across the railroad tracks and not far from the county jail where the thrift shop location resides.
Jane Knuth, author of “Thrift Store Saints, Meeting Jesus 25 cents at a Time”, is inside St. Vincent de Paul Thrift shop, where she spies the homeless shelter across the street, and two vacant boarded up houses next door and a funeral parlor kitty-corner across the intersection. She is there to buy a rosary for her daughter’s First Communion, a religious item available nowhere else in town.
Intimidated somewhat and admitting to herself she is not a fearless soul, she considers leaving her selected merchandise on the counter and splitting, — as in, –making a fast exit. But then…..the first saint comes marching in.
Well, not exactly marching. She describes him as being small of manners and cleanliness and big of voice and beard and he proclaims loudly, “I need shoes to wear to church,” in a loud, slurring voice, that gives off a thick smell of recently consumed alcohol. “These here you gave me yesterday ain’t nice enough for church going.”
This is a large man and Jane takes two voluntary steps backward, giving him plenty of room. Then she witnesses the tiny, elderly clerk work patiently and politely with the large drunken man who becomes, on the spot, a large, drunken, angry man when he cannot get a new pair of shoes. Dorothy, the clerk, allows him the chance to return tomorrow when he demands to see a manager. (Hint: There is no manager at this store.)
While Jane and other customers in the store are looking for a handy exit aisle, the man waves his hands some more, grumbles, swears, but gives up in this instant, to Jane’s utter astonishment. Dorothy’s unshakeable kindness is too much for him. He turns and shuffles out of the store.
Jane returns to the counter, asks if the door should be locked. “Maybe, just for a little while,” says diminutive Dorothy, the grandmotherly clerk who is eighty-two years old, and will volunteer twice a week for another thirteen years.
Technically, Jane didn’t apply for the job, but was “invited” by Dorothy to join them if she had a little “spare time” on her hands. Dorothy would become one of Jane’s closest friends in the years to come, but at the time of the invitation, she is only trying to think how she can gracefully get out of helping in this crazy place with rosary beads, free shoes, drunken street people, no manager and white haired hundred pound saints.
Jane agrees to attend a meeting the next week. That’s all. She has joined no organization, signed no papers, taken no vows and she adds, “exchanged no recipes”, revealing a humor that is highly entertaining and continues throughout the real-life stories and challenges she writes about in each story chapter.
She is sitting in a circle of nine elderly women and asks where are the others (which is rather Biblical, I must say, referring to the ten Jesus healed with only one returning to him in gratitude). “Why aren’t there any people my age?” she wonders aloud. They all have jobs, she is told, no time for volunteering. What about the Gen Xers and college and high school students? Not there at this time.
Her concern soon starts to mount for these elderly volunteers all alone running a thrift store on the seedy side of town. How could this possibly work? There seems to be a lack of leadership, and she envisions them dumping more than her share of organizational responsibilities upon her because she is the younger one. Then they openly discuss the financial problem they have to the tune of $50,000.
At this point Jane is dumbfounded. Because it is not $50,000 in the red. They have $50,000 cash in donated support that they have been unable to give out fast enough to draw it down to a more reasonable amount to distribute to the needy. The St. Vincent dePaul Society not only sells recycled clothing, appliances, household goods, and new religious articles, but actually gives out money to the poor to help prevent a heating or electric service from being shut off. They also stave off evictions, help with medical expenses and necessary prescription costs, and many other unique needs and services.
So as she sits there, Jane hears these nine ladies fuss over their inability to spend the amount of money they have generated, when they know there is great need in the poor community for these funds. They just want to “give it away as fast as we can”, stating the main problem is a lack of volunteers. They need to be able to keep the store open more hours and visit in the neighborhoods, even when dark, to find out what they need. Virginia, who is “ninety-something”, explains this to Jane.
Jane winces, appalled at the idea of Virginia driving at all, let alone at night in the inner city. They continue the discussion and bring up the option to stop taking donations at all. Nobody likes this idea. Bernie says, “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.”
While they continue to talk about how they can give away money faster, Jane, who now seems moved in the Spirit, imagines she has more to give this group than a pair of hands to sort clothes. She can organize….the shelves, the merchandise, the tiny office with files piled skyhigh on every cubic inch, the paperwork with a computer system, efficient service for the customers to even pay with credit cards, something which is not possible now.
Their response to this? “That’s nice, dear,” Virginia says. “But what we could really use is someone who would take out the trash every night and clean the bathroom.” Dorothy adds that they really need someone to order the religious gifts they sell, because it is one of the major income sources of the store. This becomes Jane’s job, among other things, like meeting saints.
On the way out of the meeting, they show Jane where the toilet brush is kept. These lessons in correct perspective will keep happening to Jane.
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. This is Jane’s first book. She, in her middle-class, suburban, church-going background, experiences a soul-stirring transformation in this volunteer service, as she begins to see the poor, one at a time – in a completely different light – as saints who can lead us straight to the heart of Christ.
Each chapter introduces the reader to new “saints” and reveals Jesus to her in the poorest people in town. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.” She began writing down the individual stories because she wanted to remember the people and the lessons they taught her.
Do you remember before Jane joined the thrift shop, there were no younger people helping at the store? Over the years, that became remedied as Jane recruited both high school and college volunteers, which enabled them to work and deliver goods into the neighborhoods with their young, strong muscles. Their volunteered time also keeps the store open extended hours which now includes a Saturday morning.
In the preface of the book, Jane recalls how most of us meet Jesus on Sunday and recognize him in the bread and wine, the scriptures and the hymns. That is the seventh day of Creation, the day the Lord made holy. Jane’s book is about how we can recognize Jesus on the other six days of the week; the days he called good. He is there in the person in front of us in old clothes; he is there in the belligerent one; he is there in the tired, lonely and hopeless one. He is there in the one who is only waiting to be recognized.
Knuth introduces you to Jesus in these people in nineteen short chapters – one at a time. You will love meeting them.
Thrift Store Saints, Meeting Jesus 25 cents at a Time – Jane Knuth – Loyola Press
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