This Sunday we will be hosting a showing of The Line, a documentary about the growing number of people in the United States who live below the poverty line.  I have to admit I previewed the video with tears in my eyes.  I know…it is only the story of four households, but their story is multiplied many times over affecting far more of our neighbors that I dare to imagine.

Maybe some of the power of the documentary is that it puts names and faces on those who, otherwise, are often invisible to us.  I remember years ago taking a group of high school students from upstate New York into New York City on a Midnight Run to distribute food and clothing and blankets along with a few minutes of humanizing conversation to the men and women who lived on the streets of the city.  Before we went the students told me there were no homeless people in the community in which they lived.  The next time I saw them they shared with me they had been wrong.  Because of their experience on the Midnight Run, their eyes had been opened and they began to see what was just below the surface in their own backyard.  Maybe the same thing needs to happen to many of us when it comes to those who live below the poverty line in our country.  It is harder to turn away or to categorize them when we have looked them in the eye.

When I get to moments like this…
When I actually take time enough to pay attention…
And to open my eyes…
And to be honest with myself…
I remember a quote from Archbiship Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran Archbishop who was assassinated because of his advocacy on behalf of the poor in his country.  He never called anyone poor.
Instead he referred to them as “those made poor.”
I am afraid he was more correct than we often dare to admit.