As a child.

As a child, my thinking was shaped by dint of the devotional spirituality of the 1940 the frigid War and the stories my mother told me of her privation and hunger during the Depression.

When I was 15 the Rotary fraternity ran a public speaking strive to hold and I got to join a small clump at the United Nations. I will at no time forget sitting down with the U Ambassador, Dean Rusk, and the Ambassador of India. There was a session of the Security Council in succession the "Palestinian Question." The world was clearly to a great degree larger and more complex than I had imagined.

While my thinking was challenged, it did not necessarily change all that to a great degree I had a nice Catholic charity mindset, modified somewhat by the agency of reading about government responsibility to care for its people

Imagine then my surprise arriving in Italy in 1962 common week before the opening of the next to the first Vatican Council, to discover nation like John XXIII, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Abbe Pierre and Cardinal Cardijn, moulder of the Young Catholic Workers. by dint of the end of four Council sessions I had bring outed some basic principles about the dignity and rights of each human being.

My first hands-on experience with the be in agonys of the poor occurred in Fredericton, NB where I supported a clump of parents in their strive for access to safe drinking water.

In 1973-1974 I exhausted six months cleaning offices at Queen's Park, another six month driving a taxi, and meantime got to know my neighbours in southern Riverdale. At the same time I bring outed a fairly strong analysis of the social and economic buildings in Canada and elsewhere.

Six years later I lay the foundation of myself on the outskirts of Lima, Peru living in a shantytown without electricity, running water or sewage disposal. The children there died massively of craving for food and lack of hygiene.

After almost a year of being sick myself, I raise myself working as chaplain in a prison where the conditions were atrocious. Contact with the community like Gustavo Gutierrez helped me understand what kind of world I had enrolled and how to face it with sense of possible fulfilment They helped, but I am not confident they succeeded. As the violence grew into an undeclared civil war, keeping my head straight became a challenge. Sixty thousand folks died in the violence of those years and 16 million infants died of pine and infections.

Today I find myself sitting in beautiful Montreal as Director of progress to maturity and Peace. Sometimes I pinch myself to diocese if this is real. I have learned, like Samuel, to recognise the voice of the infinite though it still scares me and I still frequently want to (and do) move on from it. That voice is always mediated from the courage and the try of the poor.

As Director of exhibition and Peace, I find that my option for the poor many times puts me paradoxically face to face with the decision-makers and the power-brokers of Canada.

I meditate on the "Our Father" as the basic framework for my social thinking today. The world is right when we discover ourselves as sisters and brothers in a world gifted with with equal reason many blessings, by a providence who shares all and forgives all. God's reign in succession earth is a matter quite simply of sharing and of reconciliation. The challenge is to acquire from here to there and, while the path may be highly convoluted, it is also extremely simple. My guides and my heroes are the poor and the exclud not because they know better, not because they are better, not because they have the answers, unless simply because they are poor and exclud They ne sharing and reconciliation; they ne growth and peace.

As prolonged as I keep my judgments and my heart fixed onward them, I am not far from the path.

Dick Renshaw CSC is the executive director of the Canadian Catholic Organization for unravelling and Peace (CCODP).

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