Thrift stores highlight messiness of real charity

THRIFT stores have always been a source of funky clothes for college kids, vintage or antique finds for collectors, and Halloween costumes for all. But the recent recession has sent more than a few middle-class folks to places they can get the most for their money, and increasingly that means rummage sales or thrift stores.

Buying used items no longer has the stigma it once did. In fact, it’s acquired a green stamp of approval as part of the “Reduce, reuse, recycle” trilogy.

Although some in the aisles at Goodwill, Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul are those who could afford to shop elsewhere, the majority of thrift-store shoppers are people who will never set foot in Macy’s or Williams-Sonoma. They buy used socks and underwear because they cannot afford new. Many of them cannot even afford the used ones.

They are the homeless, the underemployed, the formerly incarcerated. They seem to have the worst luck, suffering layoffs, evictions, foreclosures, serious illness, divorce or death of a family member – often more than one of these catastrophic events in a few weeks.

To most of society, they are outcasts. To Jane Knuth, they are saints, people who challenge her comfortable, middle-class spirituality and give her surprising, often uncomfortable insights into her faith, her politics and her own life.

In Thrift Store Saints: Meeting Jesus 25¢ at a Time (Loyola Press), Knuth describes how she reluctantly agreed 13 years ago to volunteer at a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store, where her experiences proved true the Vincentian tenet that the poor are our teachers.

She honestly confesses her failings – her initial condescending judgment of the store’s disorganized management, her fear of customers with untreated mental illness or criminal backgrounds, her frustration with donors who try to unload worthless junk. Like many of us, Knuth would rather pontificate about the problem of poverty in America than help individual poor people face-to-face.

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