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Hospitality to the Homeless ˜ 95
Ed Loring taught a course at Columbia Theological Seminary during the
January term, and I have learned a lot by listening to tapes of his lectures. On
the fourth day of the class, just a week and a half after Pony’s death, Ed helped
solve the mystery for me and his students, and I am ashamed for my innocence
and ignorance, which make me guilty of Pony’s invisibility.
If women and children form the fastest-growing group among the homeless,
why are there so few women and children at the Butler Street Breakfast, at
St. Luke’s soup kitchen, here at the Open Door If Pony had children, why did
I never see them with her Why didn’t I ask these questions before Pony died
The answer is clear and simple to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. It
is as blinding as the tears poor mothers shed; it is as deafening as their cries for
their poor children.
When the Egyptian slave masters wanted to control their Hebrew slaves,
they sent out an order that all the baby Hebrew boys were to be drowned in the
Nile River—a slaughter of the innocents much like the one Herod ordered when
Jesus was born. Hebrew mothers went to great lengths to hide their children;
Moses’ mother hid him in a floating basket on the river. Homeless mothers in
the United States face a similar death for their children: if children are seen at a
soup kitchen with their mother, or in the public library, or dragging wearily
down the street when they should be in school, the children will be shuffled
from agency to agency, passed from foster home to foster home. Surely this is a
death no mother can bear for her children. So Pony and her sisters are in hiding;
we do not see this invisible mass of hungry and homeless humanity; we do
not hear their cries and stories.
In a recent faith history from an Open Door resident-volunteer applicant
named Sarah Moses, I read the following astute observation: “In the current welfare
debate we see the double standard of a society that wants women in the
upper class to ‘stay at home’ and nurture the children, but that wants to put the
single mother on welfare ‘back to work.’”
On the first Sunday in February, the Open Door Community began its celebration
of African American History Month. We listened to the proud voices
of our ancestors who have struggled in the movement toward liberation. I
thought of Pony as I heard these words spoken by Sojourner Truth:
America owes to my people some of the dividends. ... America
can afford to pay, and America must pay. I shall make them
understand that there is a debt to the Negro people which they
never can repay. At least, then, they must make amends.
We must pony up. There is a huge debt white Americans owe to our African
American sisters and brothers. We must pay for the hundreds of years of time
and labor stolen. We must pay for the lives that were destroyed. We must pay
for the children who have died in poverty. We must pay for the men who were