These Shoes Take On Water

The heavy rains Wednesday night soaked our guests. So, they arrived Thursday morning looking bedraggled. One guest, who had a tracheotomy long ago and cannot speak, handed me a slip of paper with this written request, “Can I get a pair of tennis shoes? These take on water.”

 

His request made me think of a Bible story about another night storm (Mark 4:35-41). The disciples and Jesus were on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. A massive storm suddenly developed and “the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped.” Like our guest’s shoes, that boat was taking on water. Jesus, meanwhile, was asleep on a cushion near the boat’s stern. The disciples cried out to him, “Teacher do you not care that we are perishing?” 

 

I went to the back room to look for shoes, size ten and a half. Thankfully, the stock of shoes was good today. 

 

I returned to the living room. The guest calmly tried on the shoes, looked up, and smiled. He gave me a thumbs-up. The shoes were good. He was good. These shoes would not take on water, at least for a few months. I could feel a wave of peace coming from this man. It is not simply that he cannot speak; there is a stillness about him, a center that will not be rocked.

 

But what about Jesus? Was he sleeping through the storm again? Does he care that there are people on the streets with shoes taking on water? Does he care that our guests are drowning in a whirlpool of chaos? Where is Jesus in this story from Manna House?

 

I think Jesus was in the quiet guest. Jesus in the Bible story woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” At this “the wind ceased and there was a dead calm.” Then he asked the disciples a few questions, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

 

I had come to Manna House this morning still struggling with my little faith. My reading of “All Saints” took me to Peter Maurin born on this date, May 9th, (co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement along with Dorothy Day). I had marked this date as also the birth of Daniel Berrigan (peace activist/war resister) and Sophie Scholl (resister to the Nazi regime). I found out later it was also the birthday of John Brown (armed resister to slavery). I thought about how I had ended up at Manna House, through a long line of ancestors in the faith. These included those already mentioned, but also, Murphy Davis, Ed Loring (he’s still alive, but a mentor), Fr. Rene McGraw, O.S.B., my parents, my Grandma Weis. Surrounded by this cloud of witnesses, why should I fear, why would my faith be so paltry?

 

Then came this guest with his worn-out and wet shoes. And his simple written request, “Can I get a pair of tennis shoes? These take on water.” I could see his quiet dignity, his calm in the storm in which he lives, his trust in this place Manna House to be there for him. So, in him, Jesus broke through and asked me to wake up, to not be afraid. He asked me to realize the strength of the faith I have been graciously gifted with from these ancestors in the faith and from guests who give so much, like this man with his note. The rest of the morning, I felt at peace. Maybe I’m taking on less water. Maybe Jesus isn't asleep.

Resurrection at Manna House

This time after Easter and before Pentecost seems like a long stretch. My Easter joy, not very strong to begin with, has faded. But there are still Easter songs to be sung and Sunday readings that tell the triumphant tale of the spread of the Gospel following Jesus’ resurrection. Sure, there are bumps along the way, but angels spring people out of prison, conversions are happening all over the place, and apostles are going around healing people. At one level it all seems a bit too easy.

            I guess I’m still stuck at the empty tomb, at least as we have it from the oldest manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel. Like the women, who see the stone rolled away, I'd much rather flee and say “nothing to anyone” because, like them, I am “too frightened” (Mark 16:8). Resurrection? Jesus executed by Roman imperial power is alive? What does it mean? What are the consequences for how I live if Jesus’ resurrection is true?

            Then Monday rolls around and I see dead men going into the showers at Manna House. I think of a homeless man I read about who yelled out in a fight, “You can’t kill me! I’m already fucking dead!” I see the despair in our guest’s faces because being on the streets is a road to early death. Many guests hide it most mornings. As Kathleen says, “They give us their best.” But it lurks there. Sometimes it comes out in harsh words toward another guest or one of us volunteers. Sometimes it comes out more directly as one guest told me recently, “I don’t see much point in going on. I’m about all gone.” 

            I think about the guests who have died during the nearly 19 years that Manna House has been open. This past week was the one-week anniversary of Brad Winchester’s death. Meanwhile, I get a text from a chaplain at the VA who tells me James Sutton has died. I used to greet him, “James Sutton, he ain’t no mutton.” He’d roll his eyes.

            Resurrection? I don’t feel very hopeful. Homelessness. The slaughter of the people in Gaza. Terrorist attacks. Ukraine. Sudan. Climate change. I can easily see how death seems more powerful than life. 

            A lot hinges on the word “seems.” I start to wonder if I have to go looking for resurrection. The women at the tomb of Jesus were looking. Later the disciples on the road to Emmaus were looking and listening.

            A man came out of the showers at Manna House. He had gone in with face down, shoulders dejected, quiet. Now his face shone. He stood tall. And he gave witness, “I feel alive again!”

            I know it is not much. Given where he is headed for the rest of the day, and what he is up against every day, this moment is brief. The structures of poverty and racism, the culture of hatred toward the poor, and the misplaced priorities of government budgets all remain in place. Yet, this little revelation gives hope of the possibility of a larger liberation, of resurrection.

            Yes, it is not much, but it is something. Enough to hear the truth in what Daniel Berrigan wrote: “We are people of the resurrection,” and “we have longed to taste the resurrection. We have longed to welcome its thunders and quakes, and to echo its great gifts. We want to test the resurrection in our bones. We want to see if we might live in hope instead of in the … twilight thicket of cultural despair in which standing implies many are lost.”

            So, I’ll go again to Manna House, acting on and testing this hope of resurrection, looking for signs of resurrection, and learning from guests who resist death. 

To Love What is Mortal

“To live in this world 

 

you must be able 

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it 

 

against your bones knowing

your own life’s journey depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.” –Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods”

 

Oh girl, that feeling of safety you prize 

Well, it comes at a hard hard price 

You can't shut off the risk and the pain 

Without losin' the love that remains 

We're all riders on this train—Bruce Springsteen, “Human Touch”

 

“Daily washed the feet of poor people” from the Profile of Saint Oswald of Worcester, Feast Day, February 29 (the day of his death in 992).

 

“Ain’t nobody got no business mistreating nobody.” –Diane B., guest at Manna House

 

Hospitality draws us close to serve other people in their vulnerability, their woundedness, even their death. Guests come with needs, some of them physical, which are relatively easy to address. A shower and some clothes, a haircut, “socks and hygiene,” a cup of hot coffee; none of those are all that hard to share. It is the emotional and spiritual needs that require more. To listen or have a conversation with a person who has lost their place to live and have lost work, or sobriety, or family, or friends, or their minds, that takes empathy, compassion, patience, and in all of that, love. 

 

To practice hospitality with love requires being close, in the same space with those who come. Hospitality means smelling sour breathe, body odor, rotting flesh, shit. Death hangs over hospitality. People on the streets and people in poverty die younger than the general population. One study found the mortality rate for unhoused Americans more than tripled in the past ten 10 years. Another study notes that the average life span of a homeless person is about 17.5 years shorter than the general population. 

 

I doubt Mary Oliver was thinking about hospitality with people on the streets when she wrote that our own life’s journey depends upon our capacity “To love what is mortal” and “hold it against your bones.” And I’m sure Bruce Springsteen was not thinking about hospitality when he wrote, “You can't shut off the risk and the pain, Without losin' the love that remains.” But they both get at something fundamental about love and the practice of love in hospitality. In both we join with others in the shared human condition in which fragility, vulnerability, woundedness, and death are unavoidable. And to recoil from this human condition is to also recoil from love. That is the pathos and the promise inherent to human love. There is no love without risk, and finally without loss. But there is also no human life worth living without love.

 

This love is at the heart of being a disciple of Jesus. To keep practicing love knowing vulnerability and death is how we practice resurrection. We love, we practice hospitality, by getting close to people and allowing them to get close to us, physically, emotionally, spiritually. St. Oswald, whose Feast Day of February 29^th was celebrated Thursday morning at Manna House, understood that a Christian faith that does not touch and is not touched by those who are hurting, abandons Christ who both touched the hurting and was crucified. Thus, St. Oswald, “Daily washed the feet of poor people.”

 

To practice resurrection is to live the loving conviction that every person is created in the image of God and deserves respect and recognition. As a guest put it this morning at Manna House, “Ain’t nobody got no business mistreating nobody.” Our business in offering hospitality is overturning mistreatment, overturning death with affirmation of life and love, holding people close, holding the love that remains, knowing we’re all on the same train.

A Guest We Thought Was Dead, Lives, Alleluia!

Yes, she’s alive. The guest I had heard was dead, is living. Thanks be to God! And I am grateful to the St. Vincent De Paul Food Mission for letting me know that she was seen there a day ago.

This isn’t the first time a guest was said to be dead, who wasn’t. In the early days of Manna House, we received word that a guest was severely beaten, loaded into an ambulance, and driven away to a hospital. We called around to the various hospitals. None had a patient with this guest’s name. We couldn’t get any further information, and a number of guests confirmed the person was dead. 

We had a very nice memorial service at Manna House for this dead guest. Guests and volunteers alike expressed their love for the deceased with stories and heartfelt testimonies. Then, she turned out to be alive! She had been in a coma. No one at the hospitals had known who she was. When she awakened, she asked for visitors and we were contacted. That’s how we learned she was alive. When we visited with her, she was delighted to hear about the memorial service. As with Mark Twain, rumors of her death had been greatly exaggerated.

Since that event, I have tried to be careful about sharing the news that a guest has died. There have been several more times when the word on the street was grim. Death had come to so and so. Then the dead guest showed up at Manna House for coffee and a shower. Always a bit disconcerting, though joyous.

With this most recent guest, I received confirmation about her death from a number of sources. And the guest was nowhere to be found in her usual haunts. Nothing from hospitals, either. The holidays made getting word from the morgue difficult. It all added up to her being dead. Then she was seen at the St. Vincent de Paul Food Mission. Where had she been? A new place to live too far away from where she used to hang out had kept her from her panhandling corner and from Manna House. So, not dead; just relocated.

What to make of these events? When I shared with another volunteer the news about this guest being alive, he responded, “Resurrection!” Which would be wonderful, except the guest was not dead. Not even resuscitation, like Lazarus, since unlike Lazarus, this guest had not died. Maybe this experience was more like the Gospel story in which Jesus said of a girl thought to be dead, “She’s not dead, she’s just asleep.” Though I’m guessing this guest didn’t sleep through the three weeks we thought she was dead. 

Still the Holy Spirit moved me to keep mulling over that volunteer’s initial response of “Resurrection!” And so, I came to see there was something of a theology of resurrection that I was missing. When I offer hospitality to people on the streets and others in poverty, death is never very far away. The nearness of death makes it plausible that a guest who suddenly disappears is likely to be dead. So many times, the rumor of a guest’s death is true. A call to the morgue provides the awful confirmation. The memorial service goes on. The guest’s humor and stories or grumpiness and surliness are no longer in the mix. The community at Manna House grieves. We lose guests to death on an almost monthly basis. Life on the streets is deadly. Homelessness kills people, either slowly due to disease and poor health care, or rapidly through accidents, or overdoses, or freezing to death. 

Hospitality is a small attempt at resurrection in this field of death. Hospitality lives through the Living One who said, “I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! (Revelation 1:18). Hospitality rejoices to hear that a guest who was thought to be dead, lives. And hospitality continues in the face of death, to offer resistance to death through a place to be alive, to be welcomed, to be with others, to be respected and affirmed in the dignity of human life.

In the practice of hospitality, I am joyous that resurrection is stronger than death, and that a sign of resurrection is that death was cheated this time. With this guest, death was denied. “Alleluia!”

Jesus and Francis and the Manna House Chapel

Jesus and St. Francis have been with us at Manna House from the beginning. I guess that is how they have places of honor in our backyard chapel. Jesus brings us to Manna House, especially with his insistence on “Whatever you do unto to the least of these you do unto me (Matthew 25:31-46). Francis with his love for outcasts and his holy foolishness gives us the levity and humility needed to do hospitality in solidarity with our guests rather than offer charity from above. 

There are certainly other inspirations as well. St. Benedict, in chapter 53 ofhis Rule, reinforces that guests are to be received as Christ (from Matthew 25:31-46), and he added an emphasis upon stability—staying put in one place for the long haul. Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement and the Open Door Community provide concrete models of hospitality and resistance in the contemporary world. All of those and more ground who we are and what we do at Manna House. 

But it is Jesus and Francis who welcome guests to our “chapel.” Jesus on his cross and Francis in his traditional pose with a bird feeder adorn this place. In the winter, the chapel is enclosed and has heaters to warm guests who arrive after cold nights. In the summer, the chapel provides extra shade, supplementing the trees, providing a cool respite from the heat of the streets. The chapel, because it is at the rear of the backyard is also a bit more secluded and quieter than the rest of the backyard. It is away from the entrance to the yard, and away from where we serve coffee and where we offer people “socks and hygiene.”

 

Jesus and Francis are there every morning. They are as much a part of a morning of hospitality as the guests and the volunteers. From time to time a guest will place a cup of coffee on the bird feeder Francis holds in his hands, and sometimes I find an “offering” of cigarettes or a few coins placed there. Other times I have come across a guest standing in prayer in front of Jesus, looking him in the eye and telling him what is on their souls.

 

Jesus and Francis welcome the tired guests who stretch out and fall asleep on the two old church benches in the chapel. They welcome the lost guests who seek a place with some community and peace. They welcome those guests who carry their grief over loss, and those who carry guilt from judgments easily offered by churches and society. 

 

In the chapel, Jesus and Francis quietly listen to stories, jokes, and discussions about sports and politics and music. They see people’s faces, their weariness, their smiles, frowns, and tears. They watch a guest read his well-worn Bible, while another reads a novel from our “library” in the house. 

 

Besides these daily welcomes, Jesus and Francis are also there when we host a special event in the chapel. There have been a few weddings between guests. But there have also been too many memorial services for guests who have died.

 

In their welcome, Jesus and Francis offer love. Jesus with his arms outstretched in the cross takes up all the suffering brought to him. Francis with his little bird feeder humbly affirms respect and dignity for each person who enters. 

In the quiet of the morning before the house and backyard are opened to guests, they welcome me with love too. I don’t come here every morning. Sometimes the mosquitoes are too thick. Sometimes it’s too cold. Sometimes I just prefer the laundry room in the house which offers a cozy comfort and on dark mornings some light by which to read about the Saint of the Day and to pray the Psalms. 

 

But when I do come to the chapel, Jesus and Francis offer me the same love they offer the guests. I need to know and feel their love. This practice of hospitality can be a hard path. The work gets tedious. The finances are typically precarious. The guests and volunteers all bring their faults and foibles and rub up against my own. Sometimes there are painful conflicts, and so often my impatience and pride get in the way of hospitality. Jesus and Francis remind me of their love. They share with me their love which will animate hospitality and bring the joy of staying faithful to that love.

 

“Live Jesus in our hearts forever! 

 

“Lord make me an instrument of your peace… for it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to everlasting life.”

 

 

Hospitality to the Demonized

At Manna House we offer hospitality to the demonized. The people who come to Manna House as guests carry labels that demonize them. They are “homeless.” “Crackheads” “Crazy.” “Panhandlers.” “Lazy.” “Dangerous.” “Drunks.” “Addicts.” And some are given derogatory slang names that demonize them for being “Queer,” or “Trans.” The demonizing makes it easy to blame them for being on the streets. They are at fault, not the lousy economic and political systems that favor the powerful, not the churches, not any of us who are hard-working, responsible, clean-living people.

 

Going right along with demonizing those on the streets is the theologically sanctioned demonizing distinction between the “saved” and the “damned.” Those on the streets are damned and need to be saved. Thus the “rescue missions” that dot urban centers. Get saved and get off the streets. 

 

I started down this line of reflection in response to Fr. Gregory Boyle who wrote, “Jesus stands with the demonized until the demonizing stops.” Boyle rightly sees that Jesus rejects the demonizing and asserts a divinizing of the damned. In a biblical passage that is central for the practice of hospitality, Jesus goes so far as to say, “whatever you do unto the least of these [the damned], you do unto me” (Matthew 25:31-46).

 

As I was having these high thoughts on Thursday morning before Manna House opened, I was interrupted by a woman’s voice, not melodious but grating like fingernails on a chalk board. Her voice shattered my meditation with her complaint, “Pete! Pete! There’s a man in a green shirt bothering me. Make him stop!”

 

The pecking order even among the demonized was alive and well on the front porch. At the low end of that order is this particular guest. She is a lightening-rod for harassment. It is a rare morning when she does not make a complaint that someone is bothering her. She is always ready to take umbrage at what is said around her. She is the “Karen” of Manna House.

 

And other guests, like the man in the green shirt, know this, and some of them, like him, find it humorous to stir her up. They take pleasure in her anger and her denunciations.

 

I admit that I find her hard to take as well.

 

So, at 6:30 in the morning, ninety minutes before Manna House opens, during my morning prayer time, with her voice coming through the open window in the laundry room, I am tempted to respond, “Damn you, can’t you sit quietly on the front porch and leave each other alone?”

 

But instead, I reluctantly go to the front door and step onto the porch and say to everyone gathered there, “How about we all live in peace until we open?” That is my meager hospitality to the demonized at this moment. Then I walk back inside. I hear no more commotion and no more complaints.

 

I find it as easy as anyone to demonize those I disagree with or whom I find too different from me. When I offer hospitality to the damned, I do so as one who has not been saved. I remain all too willing to damn others. I resonate with St. Paul’s statement, “None are righteous, no not one” (Romans3:10). For Paul, this was to undercut self-righteousness based upon the claim to be saved; a claim used to exclude and demonize those deemed “not saved.”

 

Hospitality teaches a different way from dividing people into “saved” and “unsaved,” between “godly” and “ungodly.” When we practice hospitality, like Jesus, we recognize that we are all in this together, that we are all broken and in need of healing, that all of us need compassion, respect, love. 

 

If there is any salvation for any of us (the very word “salvation” comes from “salve” which means to heal), it is in the gracious healing of our mutual love for each other. We are all made in God’s image, all people for whom Jesus lived and died and rose from the dead, all people to whom God offers grace. 

In Jesus, God stands with the demonized, until there are no more demonized. And if I am going to follow Jesus, that is my call too, especially with those I find most difficult and damnable, like the man in the green shirt and the woman on the front porch this morning. 

God Loves Suzy

“Would you pray for me?”

I was asked this question by a guest on the front porch at Manna House some fifteen years ago. 

What followed stays with me and speaks to what is being done to trans people in the United States these days.

When I asked Suzy (not her real name) what she wanted me to pray for, she began to tell her story. She had been born biologically male. But she realized early on in her life that her assigned male gender did not fit with who she really was. She was never interested in boy things. She saw herself as a girl. She wanted to dress in “girls’ clothing.” As the “son” of a minister, this led to her parents’ condemning her, and angry “discipline” that included beatings. Finally, she was thrown out of the family home at age thirteen. She had lived on the streets ever since. She survived the trauma of this rejection and her being without a home through prostitution and drugs. 

“I’m so tired. I want to kill myself,” she continued in tears, “I just want to be loved for who I am. Pray that God will love me. Pray that I find a church that will love me.”

I said, “I do not have to pray that God will love you. God already loves you. You are loved by God.”

“But then why won’t any church love me?” she asked.

I shared with her about a few churches that I knew were welcoming and affirming; places I knew would open their arms to her, “They will love you.”

I took her hands in mine and prayed. “God help Suzy to know that she is loved, fully loved by you. Help her to find a church where she will be embraced for who she is.”

I am telling this story now because there is an evil spirit abroad stirring up hatred toward people like Suzy. Laws are being passed based upon that hatred. Too many churches are either openly endorsing this hate or silently standing by while it goes on.

I am telling this story now because Suzy’s suffering and tears are a cry from the heart that echoes the heart of God. 

I am telling this story now because it reminds me that at the very center of our practice of hospitality at Manna House is the belief that each guest is sent by God and embodies the presence of God. 

The biblical testimony is clear. Jesus taught that “Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me” (Matthew 25:31-46). God sends messengers who come as strangers. To hear God’s voice we need to welcome those strangers (Genesis 18, Hebrews 13:1-3).  “Whoever mocks the poor [the vulnerable and despised] shows contempt for their Maker” (Proverbs 17:3). God hears the cry of the poor (Psalm 34:6). God does not despise those marginalized because of their sexuality, but rather they reflect God’s work in the world. In the prophet Jeremiah, the Ethiopian eunuch Ebedmelech rescues Jeremiah, acting on behalf of the king of Judah, and is later spared by God for this act (38.7–13; 39.15–18). The Ethiopian eunuch in the New Testament was a triple outsider — a gender-variant foreigner from a racial minority. He was not allowed to worship in the Temple due to his sexuality (see Deuteronomy 23:1, No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of God). But Philip welcomes him into the church (Acts 8:26-40).

 

The fear and contempt of trans people expressed in laws, political rhetoric, and the teachings of too many churches is contrary to hospitality. It is contrary to God’s love for the stranger, for the poor and vulnerable, for the marginalized. It is contrary to this basic truth, God loves Suzy.