Start Small, Stay Small

Therese of Lisieux and Dorothy Day emphasized “the little way” or what Shannon K. Evans terms “the worthiness of the small.” The little way endorses being modest and not running after grandeur and the grandiose. About twenty years ago, those of us gathering to discuss a vision for hospitality for Manna House sought to be faithful to the little way. We committed to starting small and staying small. Hospitality, we believed, required welcoming our guests as individual persons with names, stories, dignity. We did not set as goals “ending homelessness”, or “saving” people.” Rather, we sought to offer hospitality, to meet a few modest needs in a little way that would respect our guests as human beings made in the image of God.

    I have found over the years that I sometimes fall into three temptations to abandon hospitality animated by this little way. 

In the first temptation, I seek control over those we welcome. This is evident whenever I focus on being more efficient. In offering showers, I try to do more and more showers in less and less time. In offering “socks and hygiene” I just hand over what we have instead of taking the time have each guest say what they want. When I seek control, I forget that “efficiency is the work of the devil.” Instead, I fall into the oxymoron of “efficient hospitality.” When I seek to be in control, I offer hospitality according to my convenience and desires. I rush guests rather than respect them as persons.

            In the second temptation I engage in the opposite of control. I practice a grandiose generosity in which “anything goes.” I violate boundaries. I give without concern for consistency. If a guest asks for it, I give it. Like control, anything goes is more about my desires than hospitality. I desire to be lauded as generous, as kind-hearted. Anything goes feeds my desire to be a savior who can do everything for everyone.

            The third temptation is also grounded in my expansive ego and reflects the oxymoron of “successful hospitality.” In this temptation, the hope I have for every guest, that they will have good lives, gets distorted into my desire to remake guests in my image. In this temptation, I measure my “success” in hospitality by how many people I get off the streets. I use my white middle class standards to define what our guests should aspire to. I want them to conform to my social standards of respectability. I deny their agency, their hopes, dreams, desires, and woundedness—their personhood. They become means to my ends. 

            In contrast, hospitality offered in the “little way” asks me to simply welcome people as they are. As Michael Sean Winters writes, “Success is not a Gospel category.” Rather than pushing others to conform to my expectations, I must drop my ego, and allow the guests to change me. In hospitality it is much more likely that the guests save me rather than the other way around. This was Jesus’ point when he said, “Whatever you do unto the least of these you do unto me” (Matthew 25:31-46), and when Paul said, “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you” (Romans 15:7).

            So, the hospitality offered at Manna House in the little way is not much. Two mornings each week for showers, socks and hygiene, coffee, sanctuary. One Monday meal each week. Each morning, six to eight volunteers, 100 or so guests. We do not pretend to be efficient, to provide a “solution” to homelessness, or to meet every need or to successfully remake people on the streets into productive citizens. 

Our purpose is hospitality, not charity doled out from above nor social services to get people back into the system. We do not get people off the streets or out of poverty. We provide a place for people to be welcomed as people. It is a small thing. It doesn’t amount to much. Like a mustard seed. And we hope, in the words of the prophet Zechariah, we will “not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin” (Zechariah 4:10).

“Have You Ever Lost Hope?” Easter Arrives at Manna House

“Have you ever lost hope and tried to commit suicide or homicide?” The question startled me.

At the end of the morning’s hospitality at Manna House, I had sat down on a couch in the living room. A few photocopied leaflets had been left on the couch, apparently to be shared with our guests. The leaflets were handwritten. At the top were the words, “Homelessness Incorporated” with the question just below. “Have you ever lost hope and tried to commit suicide or homicide?” 

 

Sometimes I forget the amount of despair our guests carry. As Kathleen says, “They bring us their best.” And for most of our guests, most of the time, that is true. Despite being on the streets, our guests are typically kind, gentle, courteous. The ones who come with an edge, sullenness, or a sour disposition are so few that they are memorable.

 

Yet, the question surfaced the reality below the manners and sociability. Life on the streets is hard, deadly hard. 

 

Even though we try to offer hospitality with respect and graciousness, it is inherently humiliating to ask for a shower or clothing, or some other need to be met. St. Vincent de Paul got this when he wrote many years ago, “It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them.” What we offer can so easily denigrate and dehumanize those we seek to serve. We can be agents of despair. We offer goods everyone ought to have; goods that are basic to human dignity. Yet those goods are shared by getting on a list and then waiting for one’s name to be called.

 

“Have you ever lost hope?” How hopeful can one be when the next meal, the next shower, the place to safely sleep, the security of a home—are all in question?

 

Finding this note on the Monday after Easter, I had to wonder about hope in the midst of suffering, humiliation, and injustice, and the way hospitality both resists and is implicated in those. 

 

Resurrection hope is not an easy hope. Such hope only comes through the cross, as Jesus said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He took those words from Psalm 22:1, which carries both despair and hope, together. Immediately following forsakenness come words of hope, “Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame” (Psalm 22:3-5).

 

“Have you ever lost hope?” Acknowledging the loss of hope means I once had hope. I know what hope is, a trust in the goodness of life, that there is meaning to my life and the lives of others. Resurrection affirms loss is real, death is powerful, and so are those who impose death. But resurrection also affirms something more real and more powerful, life, love, and liberation. Those keep blossoming up despite all odds, like the dandelions emerging from the cracks of cement each spring, or hospitality offered with love. 

 

“Practicing resurrection,” Tex Sample writes, “involves a radical reorientation that places us in proximity with people who are poor, oppressed, marginalized, excluded, and silenced.” Why? Because if I believe in resurrection, in the power of hope and love, I have to practice resurrection with people being crucified, who wonder if God is forsaking them. I have to love, to offer hospitality and seek justice, in the face of the question, “Have you ever lost hope?”

Fear Not!

The angel of the Lord is encamped around those who revere God to rescue them. Psalm 34:7

 

A concrete angel stands in the backyard of Manna House. For several years, it stood with one of its wings broken off. Now it has been repaired, but the scar from the break remains visible. A guest frequently leans his bike against the angel while he drinks his coffee and visits with other guests. On one occasion there was a guest who engaged in conversations with the angel. I am not sure what they talked about but I’m hoping it was about the hospitality we offer. 

 

More recently, Nancy Weirs and her daughter painted two angels as part of a mural adorning one of the walls of the shed in the backyard. Inside the house there is an angel painting that came from someone as part of a donation. 

 

I guess we are surrounded by angels, not just in sculpture and paintings but also the kind indicated in Hebrews 13:1-2, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels unawares.”

 

In the Bible, angels typically function as messengers from God. When an angel shows up it is apparently startling, if not terrifying, as the first words out of an angel’s mouth is often, “Fear not!!” (Genesis 21:1-21, Luke 2:1-12, Matthew 28:1-10, Acts 27:1-26).

 

I’m guessing there’s some kind of psychological and even theological connection between the Hebrews 13 notion of angels coming to us under the guise of strangers, and the need to be told “Fear not” by angels who show up unexpectedly. 

 

In these strange days I need to hear that angelic message, “Fear not.” Maybe the concrete angel with the scar best speaks that message. She’s wounded but healed. The assurance comes from someone who has been broken, has been hurt, but still stands.

 

I see this, too, in our guests, the strangers who come to Manna House, some of whom must be angels as the Bible testifies. They also often carry an irrepressible spirit. Perhaps this is how they survive under hard conditions. These angels from the streets have a humility connected with humor and hope that gives them a lightness under heavy conditions. As G.K. Chesterton said, “Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” 

 

I have a lot to learn from these angels encamped around me. God’s messengers come from the streets and gather in the backyard. With their broken wings, they tell me, “Fear not.” They bring the presence of God, as Jesus promised, “whatever I do unto the least of these I do unto him” (Matthew 25:31-46). They tell me in this time to keep hope alive. God isn’t done yet.

Epiphany

Morning prayer begins, “O God, you are my God, I watch for you from the dawn. My soul thirsts for you, by body longs for you” (Psalm 63:1). As I pray, I hear guests arrive on the front porch. The morning is bitterly cold. A north wind cuts through clothing, touching the soul. On this Epiphany morning, no star is visible above, only grey clouds. 

 

The Magi sought the Christ child. What do I seek? What do the guests seek? I dare to think we seek some of the same things. On a dark and cold morning, we seek warmth and light. And we seek welcome, a place where we can be at ease, share stories, laugh, be ourselves. God knows we share a humanity, made in God’s image, but also wounded, broken, that image tarnished. So across divides and differences, we seek wholeness, a healing for our sin sick souls. We seek welcome.

 

In Epiphany, we are to find God in our lives. In Epiphany we are to become conscious of God’s presence. Like the Magi we are to recognize divine presence in something ordinary and yet extraordinarily joyous. For the Magi, that is a newborn baby, the Christ child. That child as a grown up tells us we will find him in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-46). 

 

This morning I found Christ in George who needed a new coat. He was fresh out of jail. The coat he had was not returned to him when he was released. When he tried on the coat he said, “This will do me fine; very fine.” At Manna House, in the ordinary offering of a coat to a guest, I suddenly felt an extraordinary joy. 

 

Something coalesced for me this morning that I had not found throughout Advent, nor on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I found Christ in this home. This is not my home, nor the home of the guests. Rather, in this place I find welcome as I also offer welcome. It is Christ’s home. 

 

Maybe this is the spirit of Epiphany. The Magi with their gifts welcomed Christ as they were welcomed into Christ’s home. As Matthew tells the story, this hospitality quickly came to an end. Herod already sought the death of the newborn. And the Magi had to leave by a different route to avoid Herod. But for a moment there was hospitality in this home, the sharing of welcome, offered in joyous resistance to a world hellbent on death.

 

I was asked in a conversation later this same day, “Where do you find home?” Where is a place for me of love, of acceptance, of welcome, of rest, of deep emotional and spiritual ease? I am still pondering that question. But I also know I found home in a moment of Epiphany this morning. Warmth, light, welcome was shared; there was extraordinary joy against the grey and the cold.

Christmas Unprepared

I could not recall a Christmas for which I was less spiritually prepared than this year. I had some good intentions, go to church, follow an Advent devotional, listen often to “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” and listen to the “O Antiphons.” 

 

I did none of those. Instead, life grabbed me in ways unanticipated, and unwanted. I will not share the details here, but there were disruptive and emotionally difficult developments, both personal and public.

 

This morning at Manna House, in my prayer time before opening, I sat with my lack of preparation for Christmas. I made some attempts at rationalization. But I ultimately accepted that I failed. I did not prepare for and was not ready to celebrate the birth of Christ.

 

With that weighing down my heart, I left off my prayer time and started preparing Manna House for this morning’s hospitality. I engaged in the routine preparation: fill the sugar and creamer dispensers, and put them out on the table in the backyard, along with the water cooler; take out all the items to be given out for “socks and hygiene” and place them in the counter on the back porch; take out the 100 cup coffee pot, coffee cups, stir sticks, and vitamins and place them at the coffee serving station; wipe off the picnic tables; and finally start the space heater in the warming center for our guests. I did what I do each morning to prepare Manna House for hospitality.

As I neared the end of this work of preparation to welcome our guests, an old familiar scripture came to mind, Matthew 25:31-46. Jesus begins to teach saying, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne.” Then he describes a judgment based upon whether we fed the hungry, gave the thirsty something to drink, gave clothes to those who needed them, took care of the sick, and visited those in prison. Jesus underlines that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I had prepared for the presence of Christ after all.

Christmas “is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making the crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of everyday, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil” (Thurman, The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations, p. xiv).

Loving Those We See

NOTE: I originally wrote this in 2014. Sadly, in 2024, in national politics and many churches not much has changed.

 

One of our Manna House guests is in the hospital. She was brutally beaten, stabbed, and left for dead just a block from Manna House. This guest is an African American transvestite. We lifted her up in prayer this morning when we opened at Manna House. I invite you to do the same. 

 

Our guests from the streets who are LBGTQ are especially vulnerable. When Manna House first opened nearly 20 years ago, I quickly learned that they were harassed and harmed by other persons on the street, by their families, by random attackers, and by police officers. They are also sometimes even excluded due to their sexuality from places that are supposed to serve people on the streets. 

 

At Manna House, we’ve been clear: all are welcome here. Further, we do not allow any denigrating language about someone’s sexuality or attire. Everyone is to be treated with respect, with the dignity that they have simply as human beings made in the image of God.

 

I know that within the broader society and in religious communities, there has been and continues to be quite a struggle over the acceptance of LGBTQ people. As a Christian ethics professor for some thirty years, I’m quite familiar with all of the arguments about homosexuality. The more I have studied the more I have become convinced that based on the Bible, Christian experience, and psychology, the traditional condemnations are wrong. 

 

But it was not until I became involved with Manna House, that I began to have regular experience with persons LGBTQ people. Many of the arguments I would cover in class were mostly in my head. In offering hospitality to people on the streets, I have also gotten an education in my heart. 

 

The most painful part of that education is my experience with the suffering of LGBTQ people due to ignorance, and hatred. One story stands out. Several years ago, on the front porch of Manna House, I had a long conversation with an African American LBGTQ guest. In tears, she told me of her being kicked out of her family home by her preacher father before she was even 18. 

 

She ended up on the streets, turned to prostitution to survive, and to drugs to numb the pain. She showed me the marks on her wrists from multiple suicide attempts. She said to me that she wanted out from the pain of addiction, prostitution, and rejection, of being on the streets. She just wanted to be accepted for who she is. Then she took my hands and said through her tears, “I need you to pray for me.” 

 

I was taken aback. I had never heard such a desperate plea for prayer. And at this point in my own life, I was not all that comfortable with someone who was transvestite nor with that kind of spontaneous prayer. But I prayed; how could I not?

 

I prayed that she would experience the truth that she was a child of God, that she would find a home, a place where she would be accepted and loved, and that she could be freed from addiction, and find good work that was not harmful to her. By the time I was done, I felt tears on my face to match hers.

 

I never saw this person again. I don’t know what has happened to her. I do know that her prayer request deepened my conviction that as Dorothy Day said, “the only solution is love.” I’m tired of arguing about homosexuality with hateful bigots, whether in churches or out. I know how destructive churches and the broader society have been in the lives of those who are LGBTQ, even with the semi-polite arguments about “hating the sin and loving the sinner.” Those arguments still legitimate hatred and I can’t abide them. 

 

Our Manna House guest lies in a hospital bed now, stabbed, beaten, and struggling to live because of such hatred. And she is, tragically, just another one among many. 

 

“Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20).

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

In my Thursday morning prayer at Manna House, I saw in my “All Saints” book that the anniversary of Twin’s death was coming. One of the first guests at Manna House when we opened in the late summer of 2005, Twin was well-known among volunteers. He consistently took on and defeated all challengers in Scrabble. He was equally adept at chess and checkers. While he played, he also talked trash. He was confident in his skills and equally confident that no one could beat him. His confidence was also evident in the way he carried himself. To some, he might have seemed arrogant. But really, it was just that he knew who he was and was comfortable with himself.

Twin died on September 27, 2015. I still miss him. And I miss Robert, Sara, Abe, Brad, Tony Bone, Ron. The list goes on. Death is a reality for all of us, but it seems to come earlier and more often for our guests from the streets.

 

I thought of Twin often on Thursday morning as we served our guests. I couldn’t help but notice how death seems to be creeping up on a few. Their walk is less steady, or they have lost significant weight. One who came by shared that he had had a stroke. His strength was sapped. His talk was labored. 

 

Later that same day, as I drove on an errand, I needed to listen to some music. I put on a Tony Bennett CD. That’s not my “go-to” music, but something soft seemed in order. After a few songs matching my mood, I was surprised by his rendition of “Over the Rainbow.” I focused on the lyrics, almost as if I was hearing them for the first time.

 

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby

 

I thought again of losing Twin. But I also thought of my Mom, who sang me lullabies. And my Dad, who didn’t, but I can’t think about Mom without thinking of Dad. I thought about this place, “Somewhere over the rainbow, Way up high.” A place we can all call home, a place where all are welcomed, family, friends, strangers. A place where there is no suffering on the streets. A place where "God will wipe away every tear.... there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away" (Revelation 21:4).

 

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

 

I have had dreams of those I have lost. My Mom, my Dad, and after she died of suicide, of my cousin Mary Jo. Coming to a stop light, I noticed the car ahead had a Minnesota license plate. My home state. But more, the license plate started with three letters, “MJW.” Mary Jo Weis. 

 

Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me

 

Howard Thurman once wrote, “Again and again, we are reminded by the facts of our own lives that there is an aspect of our experience which seems to be beyond our control.” Thurman described such “coincidences” as encounters with the Divine. These are times and places where we are pulled into what Lerita Coleman Brown, drawing on Thurman, calls “holy coincidence.” In such “holy coincidence,” we experience the depth of the Mystery in which we live. In this Mystery we long for love to last, for those we loved to be alive, for life to be just and good for every person, for a magnificent reunion with Twin to play Scrabble, to have a beer with Mom and Dad, to laugh with Mary Jo. We know that Mystery is the deepest truth of life, but here we see through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12).

 

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh, why can't I?