Where Can I Find Some Compassion?

.Tom Kromer's memoir Waiting For Nothing is a stark, hopelessly poignant account of the author's years as unemployed and homeless, and I can choose to comment on any of a myriad of anecdotes and portraits painted by Kromer, yet I was most affected by his descriptions of his experiences in the church-run missions. When I think of charity and the Church, I imagine compassion for all men and unconditional acceptance, yet Kromer's experiences and the experiences of countless other homeless people in missions during the Depression paint a very different picture.

The homeless were forced to sit through long sermons in order to obtain a bed for the night and were fed stews Kromer described numerous times as "slop" and "swill" and in which a man once found an overcoat button. Kromer also repeats several phrases along the lines of "All mission stiffs (mission workers) are the same. They are all bastards". Though any homeless man was guaranteed a meal and could hope for a bed in a mission, it was so low on the list of the stiffs that it come right before starving. Having to eat and sleep in a mission was certainly no treat, and Kromer recounts that men were often treated cruelly by the staff. At the end of the memoir Kromer lies in a mission bunk bed crawling with lice and watches another stiff in the throws of death. When Kromer asks one of the mission staff to call and ambulance or assist the man, the mission worker treats the entire situation as a nuisance, an inconvenience. He writes, "If all this stiff needed was a glass of water to save his life, he would croak anyway. Nobody in this mission would give him a drink of water".

At what point does a man become unworthy of the compassion of the Church?! There is nothing that resembles true charity or compassion in the descriptions provided by Kromer; rather there is a sense that these missions provide "food" and a place to sleep to the homeless because they have to, not because they should or want to, but because they feel a burdening sense of responsibility!

So what do these "missions" say about the state not only of the Church, but also of the entire nation during the Depression? It is certainly not surprising that the homeless found that little sympathy or compassion came their way from those who had employment, food and money, however when even the organizations that exist for men to turn to in times of crisis treat human beings as animals, that is when the state of the nation is gravely apparent. Then United States has certainly not experienced a period like the Great Depression since, so the effect of the severe economic crisis can be take into consideration when examining the state of church-run charities during that time and comparing them to today. However I still cannot help but ask myself what changed? Did the decrease in the number of the homeless make them less unappealing after the depression? Did people come to their senses and find it in their hearts to care about the fates of other human beings? I doubt it. I'm sure it all comes down to money in the end: the government and the church now have more money to contribute to their charities and programs, therefore overall conditions (including staff) have changed for the better.