The Calling to Social Service

Two things stood out to me while reading the first three chapters of Jane Addam’s “Hull House:” the story of how she was called into social service/her persona, and her relationship with her father.
Jane Addams describes herself as sensitive to the moral concerns of life. She noticed this about herself at an extremely young age. It seems that she as an extremely acute conscious and therefore very sensitive to disobedience and the evil side of life. Addams recalls her first encounter with poverty. She states that she had her “first sight of poverty [and] felt the curious distinction between the ruddy poverty of the country and that which even a small city presents in its shabbiest streets.” Addams was of course surprised at this because it was unlike anything she had ever seen before since her dad was a wealthy mill owner and ensured the stability and success of his family.
This reminds me of the early life of Siddhatta Gotama, before he became the Buddha and I realized that he and Addams shared similar callings in life. At his birth it was predicted that Gotama would either be the next ruler or a monk. Since his father wanted the former, he shielded Gotama from the harsh realities of life. One day Gotama was able to walk in the streets and was appalled at the poverty that he saw. Like Addams, he decided to do something about it…he did not try to save the world and eliminate poverty but he tried to work with it, which is what Addams did with Hull House. Hull House is a place to educate the poor and to provide shelter and company. So I guess I saw Addams as a 19th century Buddha of sorts.
I found the relationship that Addams had with her father an odd one. To me it seemed that, as a young girl, Addams treated her father like a religious figure, almost like her personal god because she was fearful of him and obeyed him in every way. Yet it seems that once she found her calling for social service she did not view her father is this strict sense anymore. Even though she always had her Christian faith it seemed that something was lacking, that an institutional religion could not solely fulfill her. When she was younger, she thought that her father would fill this void but she found out that social service was a better fulfillment. This just shows that religion is a multitude of things, not solely the idea of going to church and reading from a holy book.