Therese of Lisieux and Dorothy Day emphasized “the little way” or what Shannon K. Evans terms “the worthiness of the small.” The little way endorses being modest and not running after grandeur and the grandiose. About twenty years ago, those of us gathering to discuss a vision for hospitality for Manna House sought to be faithful to the little way. We committed to starting small and staying small. Hospitality, we believed, required welcoming our guests as individual persons with names, stories, dignity. We did not set as goals “ending homelessness”, or “saving” people.” Rather, we sought to offer hospitality, to meet a few modest needs in a little way that would respect our guests as human beings made in the image of God.
I have found over the years that I sometimes fall into three temptations to abandon hospitality animated by this little way.
In the first temptation, I seek control over those we welcome. This is evident whenever I focus on being more efficient. In offering showers, I try to do more and more showers in less and less time. In offering “socks and hygiene” I just hand over what we have instead of taking the time have each guest say what they want. When I seek control, I forget that “efficiency is the work of the devil.” Instead, I fall into the oxymoron of “efficient hospitality.” When I seek to be in control, I offer hospitality according to my convenience and desires. I rush guests rather than respect them as persons.
In the second temptation I engage in the opposite of control. I practice a grandiose generosity in which “anything goes.” I violate boundaries. I give without concern for consistency. If a guest asks for it, I give it. Like control, anything goes is more about my desires than hospitality. I desire to be lauded as generous, as kind-hearted. Anything goes feeds my desire to be a savior who can do everything for everyone.
The third temptation is also grounded in my expansive ego and reflects the oxymoron of “successful hospitality.” In this temptation, the hope I have for every guest, that they will have good lives, gets distorted into my desire to remake guests in my image. In this temptation, I measure my “success” in hospitality by how many people I get off the streets. I use my white middle class standards to define what our guests should aspire to. I want them to conform to my social standards of respectability. I deny their agency, their hopes, dreams, desires, and woundedness—their personhood. They become means to my ends.
In contrast, hospitality offered in the “little way” asks me to simply welcome people as they are. As Michael Sean Winters writes, “Success is not a Gospel category.” Rather than pushing others to conform to my expectations, I must drop my ego, and allow the guests to change me. In hospitality it is much more likely that the guests save me rather than the other way around. This was Jesus’ point when he said, “Whatever you do unto the least of these you do unto me” (Matthew 25:31-46), and when Paul said, “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you” (Romans 15:7).
So, the hospitality offered at Manna House in the little way is not much. Two mornings each week for showers, socks and hygiene, coffee, sanctuary. One Monday meal each week. Each morning, six to eight volunteers, 100 or so guests. We do not pretend to be efficient, to provide a “solution” to homelessness, or to meet every need or to successfully remake people on the streets into productive citizens.
Our purpose is hospitality, not charity doled out from above nor social services to get people back into the system. We do not get people off the streets or out of poverty. We provide a place for people to be welcomed as people. It is a small thing. It doesn’t amount to much. Like a mustard seed. And we hope, in the words of the prophet Zechariah, we will “not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin” (Zechariah 4:10).
