Finding poverty where you least expect it

Thanksgiving morning, as I’ve done for the last few years, my good friend David and I delivered meals to those who either couldn’t make it to family gatherings, needed a little extra help, or who simply reached out and asked their brothers and sisters to be “their keepers.” It is a small but important way to remind myself of the great advantages life has given me, and to teach me the importance of humility, something many of you might argue is a futile task.

The meals, prepared by First Presbyterian Church of Glenolden are hearty, simple and seasoned with love. I’ve written in the past about the wonderful people who started this amazing program.

But this column isn’t about First Presbyterian.

It isn’t really about me, either, or about the wonderful things that happen when a community looks around and tries to fill needs that are endless, gaping holes in the fabric of society.

This column is about how sorrow can hide in plain sight, and how appearances can be very deceiving. It is an invitation to look beyond the surface, and challenge preconceptions.

In past years, the neighborhoods that David and I visited were some of the more depressed areas of Delaware County, places where you knew from the size of the homes or the condition of the streets that the residents were struggling.

When I traveled to the addresses that were on the list of deliveries in those earlier years, I expected to see poverty and despair, and I wasn’t disappointed. There are many hungry people in our beautiful neck of the woods, many who are in pain, many who are suffering from economic, familial, personal or other woes, and I used to think that I could easily identify the pockets where they lived.

This past Thanksgiving showed me how wrong I was, and how foolish it is to assume that the glittering surface of things is a true barometer of what lies beneath.

This Thanksgiving morning, with the diamond-cut sunshine dancing off of late-season trees in full color, the scenes were exceptionally beautiful.

And as we traveled to the addresses on our list, checking off the names of who needed three meals, who needed two, and who needed only one (those were the ones that made me sad,) I was taken aback by the seeming affluence of the neighborhoods we were traversing. I said “Wow, I am having a hard time believing that anyone out here needs a little extra help.”

That, dear friends, is an example of my own myopia. I’m ashamed to say that I was shocked at the fact that people who lived near leafy Swarthmore and right beyond the hollows of Rose Valley might not be able to afford a nourishing meal, or that they might be alone and have no one to share a meal with, so they would have simply gone without.

I have seen poverty and want in my lifetime, but not in my backyard, and certainly not in the magnificent shadows of Swarthmore College, Haverford College, my alma mater Bryn Mawr and near the great old mansions of Delaware County. That might seem naïve of me, and you might say that I simply haven’t been looking, and perhaps that is the point.

Sometimes, life does a very good job at hiding its sharper, crueler edges from those who are content not to see them. I don’t want to pretend that my myopia has been cured, and that I am now fully aware of what is going on and who is hurting.

It is probable that I will forget the feelings I experienced riding along Providence Road with hot meals in Styrofoam containers for people who were happy to have them, even though they might be living next to leafy grandeur.

But that is why I am writing this now, as a reminder to me and a message to you that poverty and need do not always announce themselves in the way we normally expect.

It is good to go into the inner cities and try to bring comfort to those on the streets, those wandering, those adrift and those trapped in urban battlefields in North Philly, Kensington and Chester.

But it is equally important to have our antenna tuned to capture the calls for help from the hidden victims of circumstance, the people that we might think are living comfortably, surrounded by loved ones and warmth, satiated with good food and good fellowship, and who are instead grateful, in the shadow of those beautiful Delco mansions, for a warm meal and the kindness of caring strangers.