Not All of Us Are Saints

Starred review from August 1, 1994
Although he broods that he falls short of the selflessness of Mother Teresa, Hilfiker's perceived lacks make his questing need for service, his humanity, comprehensible to those who find saintliness unnatural. For seven years the author ( Healing the Wounds ) practiced ``poverty medicine'' at Christ House, a Washington, D.C. medical recovery shelter for homeless men sponsored by the Church of the Saviour; he left in 1990 to found an AIDS shelter. Rarely have we been so powerfully forced to confront the plight of those who have been battered by homelessness, lack of education, poor nutrition and addiction; rarely have we been made to see how grossly inhospitable to the spirit is poverty. Holfiker does not allow us to disregard the helplessness of those who are unable to climb out of their own histories, even as he himself becomes frustrated that his patients often do not--sometimes cannot, under the conditions of their street lives--cooperate in their medical care. Along with case histories of his patients and accounts of his bouts with public welfare organizations, Hilfiker presents his well-reasoned criticisms of a society in which justice is procedural rather than distributive: ``Wealth, opportunity and a good education are not equally available to all.'' Earning $34,000 a year at Christ House, and given a comfortable rent-free apartment at the shelter for himself, his wife and their three children, Hilfiker questions whether his privileged life compromises his integrity. He provides the answer with this journal of what happened when he lived and worked among those whose poverty results--as he makes us aware--from the very societal structures that gave him affluence.