When the Roll is Called Up Yonder

When the Roll is Called Up Yonder

“Who’s got the list?” “Do you have the list?” “Can I get on the list?” “Where am I on the list?” “Is there still room on the list?” “Is the list full?”

            I can imagine St. Peter at the pearly gates hearing those questions on a daily basis as new folks arrive. Right now, I hear those questions every morning at Manna House. I have no idea what St. Peter’s list looks like. At Manna House the list is a spiral notebook on a clipboard. St. Peter’s list is very important to be on. It means you get into heaven. The list at Manna House is not quite that important. If a guest gets on the list, they either get a shower and a change of clothes, or socks and hygiene (which includes a fresh shirt off the rack and with colder weather, hats, gloves, scarves, blankets).  

            Even though the Manna House list is not about salvation, both volunteers and guests see it as sacred. The list represents a kind of covenant between Manna House and the guests.

            Manna House promises that there are always twenty-five slots for men’s showers on Monday and Thursday (each man can only shower once a week), fifteen slots for women’s showers (they take a little longer), fifty-one slots for socks and hygiene on Monday and Thursday, and sixty slots for socks and soap on Tuesdays. Manna House also guarantees that if a guest arrives before 8:30a.m. on a Monday or a Thursday, they will get on the socks and hygiene list even if there are fifty-one or more already signed up.

            The guests, for their part, give us their names to get on the list (and it is usually their actual name). They also faithfully (most of the time) listen for their names to be called. They also patiently wait (most of the time) to go into the clothing room only when their name has been called.

            The list at Manna House got its start through the suggestion of guests. When we first opened Manna House ten years ago, guests stood in line for showers or for socks and hygiene. One day a guest said, “Why don’t you take our names and then call us?” Good idea. A list is not a line. With a list, people can enjoy some coffee and each other’s company while they wait to hear their names.

            The list has also functioned to help us get to know the names of guests. I am not so good at remembering names, so I appreciate working the list. Taking names and calling names helps put them in my memory.

            We save the old lists. A spiral notebook lasts about six months before it is filled. Sometimes we go back over the old lists and see names of people we have not seen for a while. Sometimes we see names of those who have died. We also see how long some of our guests have been coming to Manna House.

            I like to think St. Peter might keep his list a bit like we keep ours. Our list is a way to organize our hospitality. Our list helps us welcome guests by name. We do not require any identification. As I said to one guest who was starting to take his I.D. out of his wallet, “You don’t need that here; you’re a child of God.”

            Maybe St. Peter keeps a list just to welcome people. He does not ask for any identification beyond “child of God.” I imagine his saying that is a mighty grace-filled moment and there is both laughter and tears of joy.

            I am not trying to minimize judgment, which is to say, accountability, for wrongdoing. I have some hesitation about what is called “universalism” in which everyone goes to heaven. There have been a few (very few) guests over the years who have so violated hospitality that they are no longer welcome to get on the list at Manna House.

            Likewise, in the Book of Revelation, we get this judgment scene, “And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds” (Revelation 20:12).

            But beyond judgment, I know that we all need God’s grace to make it through this life and into the next, and I cannot imagine God’s hospitality being any less than ours. I can, however, imagine that God’s hospitality is quite a bit better than ours.

            Our list at Manna House for showers and socks and hygiene is, I hope, a sacrament of God’s hospitality. This hope is what made me think of the parallels between St. Peter’s list and ours. It is the same hope I hear in that old Gospel song which confidently sings, “When the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.”

Of Fall, Feasts, and Freddie

Of Fall, Feasts, and Freddie

Fall is starting to give some hints, winter will be here soon enough. The days are growing shorter. The mornings are cool, and sometimes almost cold. The leaves are dropping after brief bursts of red and orange and yellow. Manna House is transitioning from welcoming guests into the shady backyard to escape summer’s heat to welcoming guests to the front porch and inside the house to seek warmth.

            In the midst of these changes, from light to darkness, from warmth to cold, from life to death, the church gives us the Feast of All Saints (November 1) and the Feast of All Souls (November 2).  Both remind us of those who have gone before us in the faith, our ancestors both recently and long dead.

            And so, I remember Freddie Adams who died October 10^th. I wrote about Freddie a few weeks ago as “Donald” whom we could not find. He had been hospitalized at the Med after suffering a broken neck earlier in the summer. He had fallen from a wall, one day before he was supposed to get off the streets and into his own place. For weeks he was in intensive care. We visited him. We prayed with him. We saw his frustration with not being able to speak (he had a tracheotomy and was on a ventilator). Then suddenly he was gone from the Med and we could not track down where he had gone. About a week ago a rumor began to go around that he was dead. The search intensified. Enough phone calls were made by enough people that the truth finally emerged. He had gone from the Med to a nursing home and then to St. Francis and there he had died.

            Freddie was not a man of many words. In the ten years that I knew him, I do not think I ever had a conversation with him of more than a few minutes. He often wore sunglasses, even on cloudy days. He was behind that shield. He was a private person. He had a few close friends; a tight circle it seemed to me. I would guess that he was a loyal and faithful friend. He was also even keeled, not prone to highs or lows. At least at Manna House he was a quiet steady presence. Not sullen, just usually silent.

            Because he was so quiet, Freddie was not well known among volunteers or guests. His personality did not make him “popular.” He did not seek out attention. He mostly stayed to himself. He was not hostile or even distant. He simply did not play the game of trying to impress people. Perhaps for Freddie words were overrated. And so it was easy to pass him by and not even notice him, except for those sunglasses he almost always wore.

            I joked with him on occasion that he had to wear shades because his future was so bright. I do not know if he caught my obscure cultural reference to the one hit wonder of Timbuk 3 from 1986, but he would chuckle and go on and get his coffee.

            Death has a way of making the future not seem so bright. The shorter days remind me of the shortening of our lives. Age makes me more aware of mortality, as does the loss of those I have known. Death comes more frequently, it seems, in offering hospitality to those on the streets. Twin just a few weeks ago, and now Freddie.

            Against the darkness of death there is an old practice of lighting a candle for the dead. Catholics lit votive candles on All Souls Day in memory of the departed. The word “funeral” was perhaps derived from the Latin “funale” meaning “torch.” Torches and lights at a funeral are to guide the departed soul to their eternal home. I am praying for Freddie and imagining him still wearing his sunglasses in his future, which the Feasts of All Souls and All Saints proclaim, is finally truly bright.

Lost Sheep

On Monday a guest asked me, “Do you know where Donald [not his real name] is?”

            “Isn’t he still at the Med?”

            “Nope. Not there. I don’t know where he’s gone.”

            I had to confess that I had not been up to see Donald in several weeks. I knew Donald was in no condition to walk away from the hospital. When he would leave he would need months, if not years, of nursing care. Life gets busy, too busy. I had assumed Donald was still in the hospital.

            The friend shared a rumor. “Some people told me Donald is dead. I know that’s not true. I would’ve heard from his relatives if he was dead.”

            “Why don’t you call those relatives? Maybe you can find out where he is.” The friend made a few phone calls. One of the relatives said they did not know where Donald was. Another said he had been moved to a nursing home and gave the name of the home. I called the nursing home, no Donald there. I promised to let the guest know if I heard anything.

            Today we heard another rumor. Donald was in a nursing home nearby. Right after Manna House closed, Kathleen and I went there to see Donald. Donald was not there.

            I wish I could say this is the first time we have searched for a guest after a guest was hospitalized or imprisoned or went off to who knows where. But the truth is that this happens all too often. Life for people on the streets is often chaotic, relationships are tenuous, the ties that bind have been broken or horribly loosened. 

            On the refrigerator at Manna House is a picture of a guest who disappeared about three years ago. He came to Manna House faithfully for several years. Then we never saw him again. We heard he had been killed. But the city morgue could not match his name to any corpse. Then we heard he was in jail. But no one of that name was there. We checked area hospitals. Nothing. He had vanished into thin air.

            Another guest disappeared in the same way. Rumors of death, jail, and hospitalization were unsubstantiated. Then one day, after nearly nine months had passed, we got a phone call from a minister in South Carolina asking if we knew so-and-so. Indeed we knew him. How he ended up in South Carolina from Memphis was a mystery. How he had my cell phone number was a further mystery. He needed some verification about his identification which we were able to provide.

            Lost guests make me think of the shepherds of Israel and the lost sheep of Israel of whom the prophet Ezekiel spoke. The sheep are lost because the shepherds are unjust; they have oppressed the sheep. Homelessness is created by poverty, neglect, the willingness to regard some people as disposable.

            Ezekiel says, “The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel: prophesy, and say to them—to the shepherds: Thus says the Lord God: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? … You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them” (Ezekiel 34:1-6).

            The work of God, Ezekiel says is to search for the lost sheep. “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak… I will feed them with justice” (Ezekiel 34:16).

            In the parking lot, as I was trying to leave Manna House today, another lost sheep approached me. She was in tears. Her family has completely abandoned her. Her children won’t have anything to do with her. She is isolated. Cut off from human companionship.

            “Pray for me” she said. “And when I’m gone please don’t take my picture down from the wall in the living room. That means a lot to me.”

            I assured her of my prayers, and that her picture hanging in Manna House with so many other guests was not going anywhere.

            “Pray Psalm 23 for me. That’s my favorite” she said. Then she recited through her tears. “The Lord is my shepherd….”

            

Coincidence or Providence?

Coincidence or Providence?

Maybe it is my Christian belief in providence that somehow God acts and speaks through the confluence of certain events. Or maybe I just want to make sense of life (and death), to find some order instead of wallowing in randomness. Twin died on September 27^th. St Vincent de Paul died on the same date. Sarah, one of the matriarchs of Manna House, who died two years ago, was born on that date. I seek significance and even solace in such providential coincidences

            While he was alive, Twin frequented the St. Vincent de Paul Food Mission located a few blocks from Manna House. Sarah did too. Every day of the week, the Food Mission offers a meal to about two hundred people. Folks on the streets call it “The Radio Station” because for many years the Food Mission was located in an old radio station just down the street from Sacred Heart Church.

            At Manna House, we have sometimes reflected on the life and work of St. Vincent de Paul. His ministry with the poor and imprisoned provide a guide for our work. I am sure that Twin and Sarah in their insistence on attentive service would have resonated with his words, “It is not enough to give soup and bread. This the rich can do. You are the servant of the poor, always smiling and good-humored. They are your masters, terribly sensitive and exacting masters you will see. …It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them.”

            I think Sarah forgave me the socks and hygiene, the clothing, the showers, and the coffee that I (and many others) gave to her over the years. I am not so sure about Twin. I think that uncertainty is why I have found it hard to write about him since he died. My memory of him is always going to be complicated, just as my relationship with him was complicated.

            Twin was one of the earliest guests at Manna House. When he initially came to Manna House some ten years ago, he was strong and somewhat of a bully. He sought to intimidate both other guests and volunteers. We had a few conflicts along the way. He was asked to leave at least a couple of times.

            He eventually settled into a more gracious stance. He became particularly noted for his Scrabble playing with volunteers and guests. At the same time, he remained always willing to seek some bending of rules and expectations in his favor. Twin was a survivor and he never quite abandoned his need to hustle and con. Still, he was capable of generosity, and sought in his Islam to grow in faith and love for others. He was always a very private person, revealing little about himself or his history. As his brother told me at the memorial service, “He was hurt bad once and never really trusted again.” Like I said, complicated.

            My last conversation with Twin, he called and asked me to bring some candy up to him at the hospital. As was typical, Twin was quite specific in what he wanted. “Bring me some Werther’s root beer barrels,” he said. It was not the first time he was “terribly sensitive and exacting.” He was not happy that I would not come right away. I was busy. I never got him the candy. He left the hospital, spent a few days at the boardinghouse where he lived, and then went to a different hospital where he died.

            There was another phone call from him between the time he left one hospital and went to another. He left a message. He was mad that I had not answered my phone. I was angry at his anger and did not call him back. I had been down this path with him before, many times. I thought I would hear from him again. I thought he would call in a few days with a new request, and this time I would be able to help him, and we would forget my previous failure.

            He died before that happened. Maybe we both have some unfinished business. For myself, I will ask for the grace of faith of which St. Vincent de Paul wrote, “you will by the light of faith see that the Son of God, who willed to be poor, is represented to us by these poor people.” In that faith I will remember with love Twin, and Sarah. Especially when September 27^th rolls around.