Hospitality is a Two Way Street

Hospitality is a Two Way Street    

Every morning Jerry has a donation to give.  It is almost always in a plastic grocery bag; sometimes he has two or three.  The donation usually has to be thrown away.  The clothes are too dirty and smelly, or they are nothing our guests would find practical to wear (like women’s high heels).  I’m not sure where he gets such a donation, but he offers it every day. 

Jacob helps set out the chairs every morning, and he unfailingly also helps bring the chairs back in at the end of the day.  He also frequently goes through the front yard picking up discarded coffee cups or other trash.  Today he held the cigarette of a guest who went inside to use the bathroom.  Since Jacob doesn’t smoke, his style of holding the cigarette was distinctive to say the least.

Superman (you have to know his last name), likes to sing in the shower.  His voice fills the house.  Thankfully he’s a pretty decent singer.  He is certainly better than the “Manna House Choir” when we sing “Happy Birthday” to one of our guests, like we did today. (He was insistent that we sing today even though his birthday is Sunday).

When names are being called for “socks and hygiene” or for showers, guests are good at nudging the guest whose name has been called to make sure they get where they need to go.

Sometimes I’ll be approached with a question from a new guest about where to go for an ID, or where they might get help with housing, or with getting a bus ticket back home, or getting eyeglasses or teeth fixed.  Quite often I turn the question over to other guests who have a great deal of experience negotiating various agencies around town.  They are invariably helpful with information.

Occasionally, a guest will tell us about another guest who’s in the hospital or has landed in a nursing home, or who’s in jail.  Prayers are requested, or sometimes it is a visit that is needed.  There is a community of concern and compassion.

When someone new to the streets is looking for a place to eat, there’s always a guest or two who volunteers to take the newbie to the Radio Station, the local soup kitchen.

I’ve heard a guest correct another guest who has used foul language, “We don’t do that here.”  Or, “This isn’t that kind of place.”

When showers are going on, guests frequently take care to clean up after themselves when they are done; making sure the shower room is decent for the next guests who are coming in.

When we pray together before opening, guests have lifted up for God’s care and blessing, spouses, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  We have been asked to pray in response to serious illness of various kinds, including heart attacks, kidney failure, and cancer, along with accidents, and on occasion the murder of a relative or friend.  And guests have prayed for those of us who are volunteers, through cancer, family crisis, and other illnesses.

Following my Dad’s death three years ago, upon my return to Manna House, a number of guests asked not only how I was doing, but how my Mom was doing.  One guest has continued to ask about how my Mom is doing right up to the present.

All of this is to say, the guests at Manna House are incredibly hospitable.  Their love, respect, and compassion for us as volunteers is genuine and constant.  I’ve been asked sometimes, “How do you do that work?  With so much need it must be depressing.”  And it is true there is a lot of grief in coming to know and love people who are in such suffering, and who are treated so unjustly.  But it is at least equally true that I experience so much love and acceptance and joy at Manna House that my life would severely diminished if I wasn’t there three mornings a week.