Some Reflections on “Here I Will Stay”

 Carla Piette was a 40-year-old Maryknoll sister who was tragically killed during a flash flood just five months after she arrived in El Salvador in 1980.  She had come in response to a plea for help from Archbishop Oscar Romero.  Romero was murdered (by troops trained at Ft. Columbus, Georgia) the day she arrived in the country.  Before she died, she wrote a poem called “Here I Will Stay.”

“Here I will stay.”  There is a phrase that goes around Catholic Worker circles about committing “for the long haul” in offering hospitality and engaging in works for justice and peace.  Benedictine monks take a vow of “stability” which means to live in a particular monastic community and not go flitting about seeking a better place.  Carla Piette in her poem reflects these Catholic Worker and Benedictine sensibilities.

“The Lord has guided me,
dropping me here
at a time and place in history
to search for and find him.
Not somewhere else.
But here.”

A visitor at Manna House asked me today how long we’ve been open.  It will be nine years this coming September.  We continue to offer hospitality in the Catholic Worker tradition.  With this tradition we emphasize that each guest is to be treated as Christ (see Matthew 25:31-46).  We find God (or God finds us) in our guests.  Catholic Workers also refuse government funding (as we do), do not get paid for offering hospitality (also true of us), are opposed to war and the death penalty and urge the creation of a society in which it is easier to be good (all stances we share), and are quite good at being fools for Christ (we like foolishness). 

“And so here I will stay until
I have found that broken Lord
in all his forms
and all his various pieces,
until I have bound up all his
wounds
and covered his whole body,
his people,
with the rich oil of gladness.”

            We’re not planning on going anywhere.  When we opened we made a commitment to our guests to offer hospitality at Manna House three mornings each week. We’ve found three mornings a week to be sustainable.  When we try to do more (like we do sometimes) we find it wears us down.  An occasional emergency response we can handle for a while, but not for long.

            There is plenty of work to be done each day that we are open.  Despite the official proclamation of a few weeks ago, we don’t see any decline in the numbers of people experiencing homelessness on the streets of Memphis.  There are still plenty of broken and wounded walking the streets.

“And when that has been done,
he will up and drop me again,
either into his promised kingdom
or into the midst
of another jigsaw puzzle of
his broken body,
his hurting people.”

            Though God can be surprising, I don’t see this work here ending any time soon. The “jigsaw puzzle” which is Manna House is where I’m called, with others, to be.  Those Catholic Worker and Benedictine commitments to the long haul are worth attending to. And although I like the Book of Revelation for its unveiling of the pretension of Empire, I don’t see God’s Kingdom coming anytime soon.  I’d be happy to be wrong.  “Come Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).