Welcome Back to the Shit

Welcome Back to the Shit

Kathleen and I were gone last week to Minnesota to vacation with my family.  Monday morning at Manna House, a guest greeted me with a wry smile and said, “Welcome back to the shit.”

            The temperature was already in the 90’s. The humidity was syrupy thick. Guests arrived sweaty, tired, and mosquito bitten after trying to sleep out on the streets.

“I can always put on more blankets in winter,” a guest said, “but in the summer I’m down to my skin. There’s nothing more to take off.”

Said another, “The mosquitos are bad, real bad. Swarms of ‘em. The heat’s bad; they ‘re worse.”

But the weather and the bugs that make up the shit are not the worst of it. Conversation Tuesday morning turned to police harassment. For the first hour we were open a cop car was parked across the street from Manna House. It faced directly into the backyard.

“Why’s he over there?” a guest wanted to know.

“Just trying to intimidate us and make us feel watched,” another responded.

“Like they do when they order you to take off your backpack and then dump all the contents on the ground,” said another.

“I don’t even carry a backpack anymore, a guest responded. “It ain’t worth it. Cops on me all the time, ‘What’s in there?’ I got tired of it.”

Another guest took a different approach. “Cop did that to me once. He dumped out my backpack and I walked away. He ordered me to pick up all that stuff.  I told him, ‘You’re the one who dumped it out. You pick it up.’ I kept walking.”

We all laughed at this story, and this made me think that the guest who greeted me had a wry smile. This laughter and his smile are the power of resistance to the shit. The shit does not define him or any of our guests. Sometimes they're just not going to take anymore shit. They are in the shit but they are not shit. They are human beings made in the image of God.

This is how hospitality resists the shit. Hospitality welcomes guests with respect and dignity. Hospitality offers sanctuary. Hospitality has another world in view, one in which there is justice that reflects human dignity. And that is why hospitality must lead into work for justice. These days that justice work in Memphis means standing with current and former guests of Manna House at City Hall to call again for a Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board. It also means demanding justice for Darrius Stewart, shot and killed by a Memphis police officer.

The prophet Isaiah called Israel out on its shit and in doing so also lived into the laughter and wry smile of God: “On this mountain God will remove the veil of mourning that covers the peoples. The web that is woven over all nations will be destroyed.  Death will be no more. The Holy One will wipe away every tear. God’s people will be freed from shame. This is the solemn promise” (Isaiah 25:6-9).