All God's Children Gotta Go

All God’s Children Gotta Go

For our homeless guests, there are few if any public bathrooms they can use without fear of harassment or arrest.  At the end of each day at Manna House, we let our guests know that it is “last call for coffee.” 

At the same time we do last call for coffee we do last call for the use of the bathroom in the house.  For this last call for the bathroom I announce, “last call to pee for free with dignity or to take a crap without getting a police rap or to take a leak without having the police take a peak.” 

The first part of that rhyme comes from Ed Loring of the Open Door Community in Atlanta who was a leader in a movement to get public restrooms in downtown Atlanta.   Ed once took a toilet into the mayor’s office and sat upon it reading from the Bible.  Inspired by Ed’s poetry and activism, I added the concluding “stanzas.”  For our guests this ritual announcement brings laughter as it makes fun of a reality they regularly face.

However, I have on occasion shared this closing “poem” in churches where I’ve been invited to talk about Manna House and hospitality with homeless persons.  And when I have done that a few “good Christians” have told me that this “poetry” is crude and vulgar.  I’ve also been told by those few good Christians that such language is offensive. 

What I find offensive is that there are few places where people can “pee for free with dignity or take a crap without getting a police rap or take a leak without the police taking a peak.” 

I’m troubled by a kind of Christianity that takes more offense at “bathroom talk” than the absence of bathrooms for people who are experiencing homelessness.  I’ve pondered this taking of offense.  I fully recognize the poetry is awful, but I think there is a deeper theological reason for the offense.  I think it might be a reflection of disembodied Christianity.  Disembodied Christianity focuses on the soul to the detriment of the body.  Such a dualistic Christianity wants to “save souls” to the neglect of the bodily realities of being human.

A little biblical study highlights that “there is not a single place in the New Testament where the expression, ‘to save the soul’ ever means final salvation from hell…. In the New Testament we should always understand it as equal to our expression ‘to save the life’” (http://www.biblestudymanuals.net/save_your_soul.htm).

Life includes eliminating waste.  Jesus as fully human had to go to the bathroom.  God knows what it is to have to go. 

Further, to live well our bodies have to have access to places to pee and to crap.  Lack of adequate sanitation has been connected with the spread of disease.  Jesus said that he had come so that people may have life to the full.  Certainly a full life includes being able to go to the bathroom when one needs to go and in a place that is clean and private.

Hospitality is defined by welcome that respects the dignity of guests.  For Christian hospitality this must include welcome that respects that we are embodied persons.  Such hospitality makes a bathroom available for guests to use.  But hospitality must also advocate for public restrooms, for places where all God’s children can pee for free with dignity or take a crap with getting a police rap.”