Looking for the Dead

                The rumor was she was dead. Even a location was given: found lying face down at the end of Beale Street. One guest told me and then several others corroborated the story. She’s dead. A Manna House guest, one we have had serious difficulties with over the years.

                So the phone call to the morgue with its fancy “Medical Examiner” name had to be made. If she was dead, it was likely no one would claim the body. If she was dead, we would want to do the funeral.

                I called, not sure if they would tell me if she was there. A volunteer suggested I introduce myself on the phone as “Doctor Gathje.” I said I think they might even be more open to sharing information if I go with “Reverend Gathje, pastor at Manna House.” After all I do have an internet ordination for just such occasions. “Reverend” might open a door or get me information withheld to mere mortals.

                The person who answered was very polite and helpful. I don’t know if “Reverend” made a bit of difference to her. I do know that I heard the faint clicking of a computer keyboard immediately after I introduced myself and offered the name of the possibly dead guest.

                “No one with that name is here.”

                “Thank you. That’s good news. Thank you. Have a blessed day.”

                Not dead. But where might she be? No one had seen her in her usual haunts the past few weeks. Maybe she’s in jail. I checked the Shelby County Kiosk where you can look up those imprisoned. There she was. Her mug shot with her defiant anger was posted along with a list of charges.

                “She didn’t go down easily,” I said. Four counts of aggravated assault.

                Kathleen tentatively tried to find a redemptive purpose in all of this. “Maybe this time they’ll keep her long enough to get her stabilized with some meds.” Then she realistically added, “But really I don’t have much hope for that or after.”

                I thought of Gary Smith’s book, “Radical Compassion: Finding Christ in the Heart of the Poor.” There he tells a story of a fight that breaks out between two people on the streets. One man pulled a knife on the other. Smith writes, “The potential victim then shouted at the knife wielder, in a voice that echoed off the tall buildings and over the 2 A.M. traffic noises, ‘You can’t kill me motherfucker. I’m already dead.’” Smith continues, “Many consider themselves dead because no one ever told them about the beauty of their lives.”

                Earlier I had come across Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Summer Day.” Her poem ends with, “Tell me what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

                How can persons so abused, so hurt, so damaged, move from being “already dead” to knowing their beauty and that their life is precious?

                Not every story has a happy ending. So I am going to sit with this one for a while. The guest is not dead; but she’s in jail and facing serious prison time. Prison is rarely redemptive.

                 I know that somewhere beneath her struggle with mental illness and the horrors she has experienced on the streets there is a precious beautiful child of God. Or as a guest told me, “She’s a knucklehead, but she needs love too.” God, may love find her.

"For I was in prison and you visited me."

Two different letters from two different Manna House guests doing time in prison arrived together in my mail today. And that seemed appropriate. Both just went before the Parole Board. Both were denied parole. Both remain unfailingly hopeful that when they get out things will be different in their lives. Both are grateful for the support they get from Manna House. Both asked to be remembered at prayer when we open at Manna House each day. Both seemed more concerned about how Manna House is doing than about themselves.

            “Could I send those books you sent back to you? I’m through with them and so I thought you could put them on the shelf at Manna House.”

            “Please lift me up in the morning prayer at Manna House.”

            “So how is Manna House and how is everything there going?”

            “I got the money for my shoes. I will go home with something on my feet. Thank you for everything you did for me. I couldn’t have did this time without Manna House and God.”

            “Tell everyone at the Manna House that I said hello.”

            I am thankful for these letters from the incarcerated Christ. You might recall that Jesus identified with those imprisoned when he said, “I was in prison and you visited me” (Matthew 25:31-40). Christ is crucified daily in our jails and prisons. How we treat prisoners is how we treat Christ. Imagine if all the people who claim the name “Christian” really put into practice Jesus’ identification with those behind bars! It might stop the sick jokes about rape in prison, or it could end the death penalty, or put out of business all of the privatized prisons making money off of human enslavement. It might at least improve the food, the health care, and the educational opportunities for prisoners.

            I am thankful that Manna House hospitality can sometimes extend to our guests who end up behind bars. On occasion we visit. But mostly we try to offer what limited support we can with money, and sending books, and letters. We also support other jail ministries like “Grace Place.” And we work for changes in the criminal justice system that would treat the incarcerated Christ with basic human dignity.

            Jail or prison is a fairly common experience for those who are housing deprived. A recent national study on “Jail incarceration, homelessness, and mental health” revealed that those deprived of housing make up 15.3% of the U.S. jail population. Homelessness is 7.5 to 11.3 times more common among jail inmates than in the general population. The study found that homelessness and incarceration appear to increase the risk of each other, and those factors are also influenced by mental illness, substance abuse, and “disadvantageous socio-demographic characteristics.” Seen through faith eyes this study reveals that jails and the streets intersect to form the cross of Christ.

            Basic to following Jesus is to live the resurrection. Jesus lived the resurrection; that is why he was crucified. Living the resurrection means to live in resistance to the powers of sin and death, the powers that crucify, that imprison, that make people hungry, thirsty, strangers, without shelter. Christ calls from the streets and from prisons and jails, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God, of course, listened to Jesus and overturned his death sentence, raising him from the dead. Do we?

Tending to Woundedness

There is often an intimacy to hospitality that is uncomfortable for both the giver and the receiver. On Monday, Kathleen had shared in this intimacy. Tuesday it was my turn. A guest had been bitten just under his armpit by a spider. Spider bites afflict people on the streets as they try to find rest in abandoned buildings or under bridges. This man had gone to the hospital and the infected area was lanced and cleaned, but his wound was still open and needed attention. So he asked for help.

                He stood patiently this morning as I did what Kathleen had done on Monday. I applied some antibiotic lotion to the wound, placed a gauze bandage over the wound, and then wrapped an ace bandage around him to keep the gauze bandage in place.

                Doing this kind of first-aid was not something I had expected when we opened Manna House eleven years ago. But in those years we have bandaged a variety of wounds, some small, some large. Some we could not handle and we took the wounded person to the hospital.

                Offering hospitality keeps me close to wounded humanity. The wounds are not always physical. There are just as often emotional and spiritual. Tending to those wounds often means just listening or standing with the person in prayer. In offering hospitality, in treating those wounded, I have also become more aware of my own woundedness and limitations. Hospitality requires recognition of some level of shared vulnerability, and to get to shared vulnerability we need to get close to each other, as close as binding up a wound under an armpit. Hospitality offers in the midst of shared vulnerability and intimacy a deep respect for the human dignity of the person receiving hospitality.

                As I have thought this week about how we as wounded treat the wounded, I have returned to two people who in their own ways responded to wounded humanity and who have inspired me over the years. Both died this past Saturday and their deaths have been weighing heavily on my heart. At Mass on Sunday one of the songs included this line from Scripture, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). But as I sang, I felt defeated and stung by the deaths of June Averyt and Daniel Berrigan. I realized I needed to do some remembering in anticipation of resurrection to come, and to move in the interim toward some healing in my woundedness caused by their deaths.

                Both June and Daniel were heroes of mine in responding to the wounded. I knew June better than Daniel, having worked with her through Manna House. She came by Manna House at least once a week, looking for a guest with whom she was working or seeking out others who she might be able to help get into housing. June was our “go to” person for getting people housed. She knew plenty about the woundedness of people on the streets, and she was forthright about her own woundedness. “I am not easy to work with,” she would say, “I can be prickly.” She was not being falsely modest, just honest. Dan was well known for his response to those wounded by war. He was a peace activist. But he also practiced hospitality, working for a number of years with AIDS patients in New York. Dan also did not suffer fools gladly. He was quite adept at puncturing pompousness, often with humor.

                I knew Daniel Berrigan much less well than June. I interviewed him as part of my research for my PhD dissertation. Then at various times our paths crossed, at Jonah House in Baltimore (a community his brother Philip and Liz McAlister started), and at Kalamazoo College where his nephew Jerry Berrigan was a student of mine, and a few times on picket lines or activist gatherings.

                Both June and Daniel were grounded in their responses to woundedness by their deep faith. Their faith was not sentimental and not ostentatious. They were thoughtful questioners and seekers, but within churches with traditions of reflection and liturgy that provide space for dwelling with Mystery. The way things are is not the way things have to be was a conviction that guided both of them because they both had the conviction that there is a God greater than mere human convention and human arrangements. At the heart of this God is love and justice, and both are necessary for our lives to be fully human.

                Both June and Daniel knew that wounds are caused by cuts made by powerful systems of injustice that do violence. So both were quite skeptical of the powers that be. Both resisted those powers in their own way. June resisted by working through the nooks and crannies of the system, much like a weed forcing life through the cracks in a sidewalk. She was skilled at getting grants and working the system for the people she served, those who were on the streets. Dan was notorious for his acts of civil disobedience, especially as a member of the Catonsville Nine and the Plowshares Eight. Neither was under the illusion that their efforts would by themselves overturn either homelessness or war, but as Dan said, “Just because you can’t do everything, doesn’t mean you have to do nothing.”

                Both June and Daniel knew that resisting a wounding system and responding with love to the wounded required a sense of humility and humor. Daniel often wrote of the importance of “modesty” by which he meant living within our humanity, accepting our limits as part of the goodness of human life.  We are all so wounded by arrogance and pride, the overreaching of humans into weapons of mass destruction, over-consumption, and claims of national and racial superiority. Daniel’s poetry and many books display his humor laced with realism that puncture such arrogance, such as his famous line, “If you’re going to be a disciple of Jesus, you better look good on wood.” June had little patience for grandstanding or drama. For her it was important to simply get the work done, to get people into housing and keep them there through the nitty-gritty of community support.  

                I doubt that June and Daniel ever crossed paths. Except in my life they did. I have a hunch that if their paths cross in heaven they will be good friends. For both of their lives I am grateful. In faith I hope to meet with both of them again. In the practice of love and hope they will continue in my life now. May they both enjoy the blessed presence of God. Thursday I expect one of us at Manna House will be treating that spider bite again.

Sanctuary

Sanctuary                    

 “A guy came by and said, ‘What you looking at?’ Man, I wasn’t looking at nothing. But he was pick and pick and pick at me and I wasn’t having it.”

This guest had starting sharing his lament as soon as I crossed the street to Manna House. He told me that he had avoided two fights as he waited for me to show up to start the coffee.

As I unlocked the gate he continued.

“Then another guy came by, and I was just standing here waiting, and he wanted to get into it with me. “Why you staring at me?’ I wasn’t staring at no one. I just looking at the street.”

As we came into the front yard he said, “I guess I’m not safe until I get inside this gate.”

I thought about a guest from a number of years back. He would arrive each day in tattered and dirty clothes. Even if he had showered the day before and gotten clean clothes, by the next day he was a mess. Kathleen finally asked him, “What happens to you when you leave here?”

His response was to point across the street through the front door, “You see those dogs over there? They get me.”

There were no dogs to be seen.

Kathleen asked, “Do the dogs ever come in here?”

“O no,” the guest said, “they wouldn’t dare come in here.”

Sanctuary. A place of refuge. A stronghold. A place of safety.

A guest came today to share her grief. Her cousin, a former Manna House guest, had died. They had been raised together like sisters by the cousin’s mother. Lengthy hospitalizations and time in a nursing home were now over for her “sister.” I did not know the guest who died very well, but Kathleen did. She knew this death was coming, but still this was hard news.

And in the midst of this, I thought of a faithful volunteer who just lost her mother. We had prayed for her and her family when we opened. We had also prayed for guests in prison and in the hospital as we held hands, guests and volunteers together. In our prayers we want to extend God’s sanctuary beyond the gate of Manna House.

A guest came to tell us of another former guest who was just diagnosed with liver cancer. The prognosis is not good. His friend said, “He wants people to pray for him but he doesn’t want his name spread all around.” When I assured her of our prayers, she added, “He’s all worried about the funeral. He doesn’t have anything and he knows his family can’t afford it.”   

“Tell him not to worry about that,” I said, “Manna House can help.”

A former guest who is now housed and working came just to talk and to be heard. She had a few things to tell us about her life. She wanted to share some good news about how well her job is going. It was good to hear some joys.

Later I was out in the backyard and saw a guest praying silently in the chapel area. He was alone, sitting on one of the benches there. He was bowed over making his supplications. “God hears the cry of the poor,” I thought.

Sanctuary. A place of refuge. A stronghold. A place of safety.

After I came inside from talking with the guest at the gate, my day had started with Psalm 46 as I listened to the coffee pots begin to percolate creating a kind of Manna House style Gregorian chant:

“God is with us;

God is our stronghold.

God is for us a refuge and strength,

an ever-present help in times of distress.”

We shall not fear though the earth should rock,

though the waters rage and foam,

though the mountains quake at its surging.”

Good Shepherd Needed

Good Shepherd Needed

Yesterday was “Good Shepherd Sunday.” Jesus the Good Shepherd said in John’s Gospel, “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28). I could have used Jesus and his good shepherding this morning, both for myself and for a guest.

I was at Manna House and I had just finished plugging in the coffee. As I headed from the kitchen into the living room I could hear someone yelling. I went outside. Standing on the patio in the front yard was a woman shouting at the few guests who had gathered early. It was just before 7am. Manna House would not open for another hour.

She turned to me, “They don’t want to listen. They don’t want to be saved. They want to go to hell. The Lord has put it upon me to save them and save them I will.”

“Could you save them a little less loudly?” I asked.

Apparently she could not. Her screed continued with vile and vivid descriptions of the sins of the guests gathered, along with a few obscene gestures. The stream of words was chaotic, with little islands of sense in the midst of the nonsense. “These people need to hear it. They are evil. They are from Satan. I cannot be silenced. The Lord has put upon me to preach and preach I must.” This was more street screeching than it was street preaching.

I remembered to stay calm and not raise my voice, “I’m asking you to leave today.”

“Call the police on me if you want. I’m not leaving.” This statement was spiced with some rather creative swearing and invective. And now she was in my face up on the front porch, waving a rolled up magazine at me.

“I’m not calling the police. I am asking you to leave for the morning.”

I stepped inside the house and called Kathleen. I needed her calming voice and support. The woman outside must have thought I had called the police. She went down the steps of the porch, paused to throw our front yard garbage can (thankfully empty), gathered her belongings, and then went down the street to who knows where. Her inner anguish continued to spill out as she went.

Where’s the Good Shepherd when you need him? She was a lost sheep, and I certainly was not much of a shepherd. Manna House had little to offer her and this morning, since I asked her to leave, she was denied even that little. Our hospitality is not that of the Good Shepherd. Ask us for something and sometimes you will receive. Knock at our door and sometimes it will be opened unto you (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, 8am-11:30am).

Thankfully I have seen some good shepherding when people like this woman get the help they need, get housing, get health care, and get well. But not this woman, not this morning.

In fact, you can go to any large city in the U.S. and find on the streets someone like this woman. Lost in a fog of mental illness, without housing, without medical care, subject to the violence of wolves who will rape and abuse, she is not alone.

She is among the poorest of the poor. Last night she slept on cardboard underneath the awning of the building across from Manna House. And though she is poor, she is not the problem. The problem is that as bad shepherds we would rather spend our tax dollars on more military, more prisons, more football stadiums and basketball arenas than help her.

The problem is that we elect bad shepherds like the ones running the Tennessee legislature. They deny funding for health care while passing bills to make the Bible the state book of Tennessee and to discriminate against gays, lesbians, and transgendered people.

The problem is also in our hearts. They are not the hearts of good shepherds. Instead, they are closed and hardened like Pharaoh’s, satisfied with keeping people enslaved and exploited. We are like the anti-Good Shepherd. We have learned to accept the presence of the suffering on our streets all over this country.  

When I went back inside, I prayed Psalm 23. Come Good Shepherd come! We need some green pastures, still waters and restored souls. We need some goodness and mercy. Maybe tomorrow the Good Shepherd will show up and this woman and I will have a better morning.

Waiting Upon the Lord

Waiting Upon the Lord       

He is always there waiting at the gate when I arrive at Manna House. He stands on the sidewalk as I unlock the gate for the front yard. I usually arrive by 6:40am to start the coffee. Even when I arrive ten or fifteen minutes earlier, he is there. If I arrive after 6:45am, he tells me “You’re late.”

            He is usually alone at that early hour, though occasionally there is one or two others. But he is the only one consistently there, waiting.

            He has a place to live, a small apartment nearby. So why does he come so early? I have asked him that question several times. He has said a variety of things in response, all pretty much the same.

            “I’m up. I get going.”

            “I dunno. I just want to be here.”

            “I don’t mind waiting.”

            The explanations do not explain much. So, I’m left to wonder. He does not have to be there early to make sure he gets on the shower list. He never gets on the shower list. He does not have to be there early to get on the socks and hygiene list. We guarantee guests can get on that list until 8:30am, even if by then we have more than fifty one people. He does not have to be there early to get coffee. We serve coffee all morning. What draws him out to be there so early?

            I asked him again this morning, “Why do you get here early?”

            His answer this time was different, “I like to wait.”

            I have been mulling over his response ever since. He may well be the only person I have ever met who likes to wait. Since he gives a positive meaning to waiting, I am going to start thinking of him as a witness to waiting. In his witness, he may well be onto something easy to overlook, the importance of waiting, of embracing waiting, of practicing waiting.

            His embrace of waiting made me think about the importance of waiting in a life of faith. The Psalms have many references to waiting upon the Lord. (See Psalm 5:3, 25:5, 27:14, 33:20, 37:7-9, 39:7, 123:2, 130:5-6, 145:15-16). The two major seasons in the Christian year are about waiting. In Advent we wait for Christmas. In Lent we wait for Holy Week and Easter. 

            What these all have in common with each other is a sense of expectation and hope. To wait in faith is not passive acquiescence to the way things are. To wait in faith is to actively anticipate intervention, transformation, liberation, resurrection. To wait in faith is to prepare for what one is waiting for. The biblical words in Hebrew and Greek for “waiting” typically carry the meaning of waiting expectantly, of waiting with hope.

            Maybe I can learn from this guest at Manna House the importance of waiting as a spiritual discipline. To wait means to avoid both impatience and boredom, to avoid both not being willing to wait, and not thinking there is anything worth waiting for. Maybe this guest is teaching me, giving witness to the waiting of which the Psalmist writes, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in God’s word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning” (Psalm 130:5-6).

Easter Fish

Easter Fish

We are in the season after Easter so when asked, I insisted that the “Word for the Day” had to come from one of the Easter stories.

“Read the one about the guys going to Emmaus.”

So, I did. The whole story, from the two disciples meeting Jesus along the way to Emmaus, to his explaining the scriptures to them, to his staying with them and them recognizing him in the breaking of the bread.

“They should’ve mentioned the wine, not just the bread. You can’t eat that bread without some wine.”

“Some people say it was grape juice, not wine.”

“Why? Jesus made water into wine. He liked wine.”

“Either way, you need something to wash that bread down.”

“Didn’t Jesus feed his disciples fish after he rose from the dead?”

“That’s another story. It’s a different one.”

“Hey, what’s that fish sign Christians used?”

                I never know when the focus of the discussion is going to change slightly. I wanted to get my answer right, so I used my phone to look up the fish symbol. The Greek word for “fish” is “ichthus.” Ichthus is an acrostic for Iesous, Christos, Theou Yious, Soter, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” The first letter of each of those words in Greek creates the Greek word “Ichthus.”

                “Why did they use that sign?”

A little more research, “Well it turns out that it was a kind of secret symbol among Christians who faced occasional persecution from the Romans. The fish sign could mark meeting places without arousing suspicion.”

                “You mean like a sign to indicate a Christian cat hole?” A cat hole is a secret place a person on the streets creates in which he or she might sleep safely and protect one’s scant possessions. Sometimes a cat hole is under a bridge or in an abandoned building or behind a thicket of bushes. The goal is to have a place others cannot easily see or find. The goal is to have a place the police cannot find, to avoid persecution.

                “Yup, to mark a Christian cat hole. “

                “Did you know that hobos in the old days had ways of marking safe places? We’ve got one of those on our H.O.P.E. shirts.” H.O.P.E. stands for “Homeless Organizing for Power and Equality. It is a local advocacy group made up of people currently or formerly on the streets.

                “I’ve heard that but what were some of the signs?”

                More research revealed some of the common signs marking safe places and also ways to give warnings. I shared that my Grandma Weis used to feed hobos out the back of her house. The house was near some railroad tracks. My Mom told me this story a few years ago when we were first starting Manna House. I would guess that there was a mark on the house or nearby that directed hobos to my Grandma’s house.

                “Hey, those hobos were on a journey, like the disciples going to Emmaus.”

                “But where do you see Jesus around here?”

                J.C. happened to walk out the door. I frequently call him “Jesus Christ.” There was a lot of laughter when I said, “Well, there he goes right now!”

                I talked with J.C. once and asked him if he minded me calling him, “Jesus Christ.”

                “Nope. It’s a good name and I get your point. Jesus is in those of us who come here.”