Year End Review

Most of us at the house make a point to set goals for ourselves each semester and review them at its close. In ministry, in a life like we live, there are so few ways to quantify results and really get a look a how you are doing. I just finished reviewing my goals for the fall semester and am pleased with the work that I have done but am more impressed with the feeling of joy I got as I just reflected on this last year. God has been so faithful to our community and we have done and seen more in this last year than most will in a lifetime. I always say, and really believe, that we have front row seats to life. As I reviewed the year I realize the inaccuracy of that, we have a good view because we are players, on the stage, practitioners, missionaries.
The year kicked off with our dear friend dennis driving into the back of a semi truck! Crazy old man won't stop for nothing though and never missed a step with the kids he has given his life to. Next, the Conscious slumber party. It was freezing out so our conscious party became a lock in. It was beautiful. Will & I and 30 homeless friends crashing on the floor together. In February I remember matt trying to 'showcase' stupid 'christian' books as our book of the month and being overly concerned that someone might take it seriously. Robby was busy in the other room building a bookshelf with a secret passage to what is now mommas room. March was crazy, There was a hostage situation a couple doors down from us and tactical units all over our street, We installed a garden at the good Samaritan inn for a drizly, cold, yet productive house day. We met tomas that month too and our homechurch finished the Gospel of John together. Oh and steve got an apartment! April was marked by a wave of confession as our community started to take seriously the role and power of this discipline among ourselves. A neighborhood addict, with whom we had been good friends broke into my car, was caught red handed, and asked,'can i keep the cd's?'. Gio and will had moved out and Chris and Ryan moved in, a tree fell on and crushed our neighbors house, and I spoke at underground for the first time in a long time about my experience of what is often called a dark night of the soul. We all prayed for and helped move in the girls who are staying in the telford house with hopes that we could be brothers and partners to these amazing women. David set a new bar for vulnerability and called us all into a deeper commitment to each other, sekajipo dropped his long awaited album, and tomas took brian and I to school us on the streets for a few nights. We mourned the closing of gullys, our beloved scratch and dent store, and we have been collecting and passing out blankets as the weather dropped. We started projects in the yard, build with salvaged material, have taken on the winter without using the heater, Chris has married and left us (for an admittedly better looking roommate), we celebrated mommas 62nd birthday together, another Christmas, 12 more conscious parties, 12 awesome community days, a very successful home church year,Halloween block party, thanksgiving dinner at the house, Christmas breakfast and at least 150 hours of house meeting time together. We also just saw Walter leave our place and move into a home for veterans where he will finally get the care he deserves. We have seen lives changed for better and worse, we have seen each other grow, fall, rebel, repent, and try. We are still slobs that don't wash our dishes, sinners that suck at life, and powerful agents of change because we are in the hands of God and at least trying to create a culture that is actually submitted to Jesus. Tonight, as we all gather to celebrate this year and look forward to the next may we smile and know that God has been good to us.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Christmas Time

Above are some of the gifts I made for Christmas gifts this year. Luffah, basil pesto, mint jelly, aloe juice, and vinegar veggies,all with ingredients from our gardens. It really was a great experience for me to feel the freedom (and ability) to make gifts for my family instead of fighting the annual battle with what i always perceive as obligatory materialism and consumption. I really enjoyed Christmas this year and had a great time with my family, Natalia's family, and our community.
Speaking of homemade gifts, David gave me my very own framed death certificate!
Time of death- Any given moment
Body removal service- 1.800.GOT.JUNK
Place of death- ironically close to the hospital.
It was legit looking. Notarized and everything. I love it.

There was also a small (probably a first annual) breakfast at our house on christmas morning for those who had nowhere else to go. I wasn't there but heard from those that where that it was a great time.

I am really glad to be part of a community that always practices hospitality and generosity. I'm glad to be with people that always hold the incarnation as a central reality and model for living. I am thankful for living in a place that is always available to those with nowhere to go. Its a place where 'christmas' seems ordinary and that is special to me. Thank you lake house for making the holidays ordinary. I love you all.

Momma's birthday

momma hates crowds but loves movies. Tonight was her 62nd birthday and there is quite a crowd of people that love momma. She has been so much to so many of us that people just kept coming by all night. as her movie collection grew so did her smile and her ability to handle the crowd. We often hit a threshold with her. I haven't figured out the exact number but I know when we hit it because she always vanishes. Tonight she got into one conversation after another and really seemed to be enjoying everybody. I really love her and the community that loves her as well. We got her her very own mini dvd player and she just hugged it and jumped up and down and said it made her cold go away. It was awesome. Thanks to everybody who came by to make this night special for her.
I am so grateful for her having shared another year of her life with us and am looking forward to many more.
momma, we love you!!!!

House Day - December 2010

We built, we burned, we bantered.

Smores, Twisty Ties, Dumpsters & Reflection

I remember a time when I waited five days each week for the weekend. I recall a time when couldn't perceive Monday through Friday as a time of joy; rather, it was the routine, monotonous interim between brief periods of fun and excitement in my life. In short, I remember a time when I spent most of my days waiting to live. And then I moved into the Lake House.

Twelve hours ago I was already knee deep in Monday evening. The night's responsibility to prepare dinner was mine, and I was entering the house two hours late due to a last minute appointment at work. I didn't want to let down my family of nine, but I was forced to prioritize a distressed client with a tight schedule, so I rested on my confidence that my community would understand the decision to serve others before ourselves. As I walked through the kitchen door, I found some of them sitting around with bowls of cereal and silent looks of desperation written across their faces. So... I got busy. I was moments away from shelling out $40 at Boston Market when Natalia, who knew my usual cooking partner was no longer available due to a phenomena called "marriage," instantly halted me and volunteered to help me cook. In her usual resourceful way, she scrounged up a bit of this and that until we ended up with a melting pot of various pasta shapes, sausage cuts, homemade sauce and twisty ties that I had forgotten to remove from the bundles of noodles. It was surprisingly tasty.

Before long, Jimmy, the tall, handsome Puerto Rican of our community, waltzed in ready to hit the weights as we normally do on Monday nights. Instead, due to the temperature outside (and inside the Lake House) we discovered ourselves huddled around the living room fireplace with other members of our community, cooking smores, fighting to stay warm and wondering when we might pass out from carbon monoxide. As people dwindled in and out the room, the conversation plunged a bit deeper until Jimmy and I were discussing our recent desire to rededicate ourselves to God. It had begun just yesterday during church when Brian, the director of the Underground, reviewed the impact that Jesus has had on the world over the last 2,000 years. Because of Christ's influence we have hospitals, universities and calendars. We have the very concept of hope and equality of the human race, which had not previously existed in ancient thought. With this in mind, Jimmy and I agreed that our lives would be a tragic waste if in the end we look back and realize that we did not turn the world upside-down. After all, we know personally the most powerful figure in the history of the universe, and we live presently in an age with such great need and injustice. Why shouldn't our lives serve as the conduit for Jesus' radical touch and transformation? How is it possible that our lives might become anything else? And why aren't our lives having that sort of impact right now?

As Jimmy and I were dwelling on the need for deeper devotion to God, Jon and David were in the next room hammering out some house documents for our ongoing communal formation. After they were finished, Jon was soon recruiting folks to accompany him on his journey to Home Depot where he would scavenge blocks of cement from dumpsters. Our house values simplicity and ecological sustainability, therefore we are always striving to do spend less and reuse resources out of concern for our neighbors and the environment. These chunks of cement, which were Home Depot's trash, would become the treasured foundation of our new shed. As everyone piled into Jon's truck and sped off, Jimmy and I stayed behind in order to wrap up our time together with an activity that each of us secretly wanted: prayer. We sat in my room and thanked Jesus for our new found inspiration to know and follow him, and we begged him to help us in this endeavor because we both knew all too well how prone we were to waning.

Jimmy left soon after while the rest of the house returned in time to find the fire dwindling and the room being invaded by frigid air. At this point, most of us would love to turn on the heater except that our electricity comes from a plant that uses coal which in turn pollutes and pains the communities from which it's mined. As opposed to being the covert partakers of an undue system that hurts people and the environment, we lit the fire once more and piled into the living room with our sleeping bags to enjoy injustice-free heat and a good night's rest.

I was half asleep when the doorbell rang at 1:00 AM, as it sometimes does at the Lake House. As Andrew answered the door, I could hear the rattled voice of a young woman explaining how she was nearly stabbed across the street. I will admit that as I lay there I couldn't help but think "Agh... I just wanna sleep. Do I really have to tend to someone else? When does it stop?" But in a flash i remembered what my oath to Jesus entailed, and that this was part of it. There was no way I could ignore her tonight and then say I love God tomorrow. So... I crawled out of the couch and followed Philip into the kitchen. As I introduced myself I noticed the tattoo that spanned both of her hands: "Don't Hate." How appopriate. As Philip slipped into his room to put on something warm, Andrew calmed her down and answered some of her questions, explaining who we were, what we were all about, and why we were all in our PJs together sleeping the living room... before long Drew and Phil had taken her home, and the night was finally over...

There is never a dull moment at our house. There are always ideas being born, projects being started, people dropping in and dishes being dirtied. I used to wait to live. Now, I'm more alive than I've ever been.

"For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it." -Matthew 16:25

Peter Maurin’s Personalist Gift to the Catholic Worker

by Carolyn Griffeth
reposted from Jesus Radicals

Central to Catholic Worker lore is the story of Dorothy Day’s conversion from a life of socialist agitation to a life of Catholic piety, a conversion which both magnified her longing to join the struggle of the poor, and stymied the participation she once had in it. For four years following her conversion Dorothy was reluctant to participate in any form of social activism, a trend she parted with in 1932 when she went to Washington, D. C. to cover the “hunger march”. Her heart was pierced by the countless ragged, hungry men gathered there. The next day at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Dorothy prayed ardently that “I might find something to do in the social order besides reporting conditions. I wanted to change them, not just report them, but I had lost faith in revolution, I wanted to love my enemy, whether capitalist or communist.” Were it not for this prayer, she later admitted, she would likely not have been so receptive to “the French peasant whose spirit and ideas [would] dominate the rest of [her] life,” who awaited upon her return home.
This French peasant, laborer, and itinerant scholar was Peter Maurin, who had immigrated to Canada in 1909, and then to the United States in search of his Christian vocation. This vocation eluded him throughout a decade of teaching and Catholic political activism in France, and then two more decades in the new world where he lived as a traveling laborer until World War One. This lifestyle created an in-road into a comfortable life as a French teacher. Like Dorothy, Peter had also experienced a radical conversion; at the age of fifty-three he walked away from the comfort he had struggled to gain in order to pursue a life of poverty, charity, and agitation, which four years later brought him to Dorothy’s door.
Not being one to talk of himself, Peter never revealed the details of his own inner-transformation, but rather when pressed by one interviewer explained dismissively that “a world in search of affluence and security had gone crazy, and I decided to be crazy in my own way.” One is left to speculate on just how Peter’s vocation was found. Peter is best known as an intellectual and as a synthesizer of the philosophy and wisdom of others. Being of such a nature, perhaps Peter’s conversion flowed naturally from the intellectual clarity and vision he arrived at after long studying the gospel, the lives of the saints, Catholic teaching, and the writings of a diverse group of philosophers and scholars. Peter formulated this clarity into a three-part program of action, a program that began with him, and through his graced encounter with Dorothy Day gave birth to the Catholic Worker Movement.
At the core of all Maurin’s thought lies the life and teachings of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount in particular: “Blessed are the poor . . .” For Maurin, poverty was essential to entering into the life of Jesus and embodying the message of salvation Jesus preached, as was nonviolence or the love of enemies. One became poor because Jesus gave everything, even his life, to serve humankind. Voluntary poverty and nonviolence also gave witness to the primacy of the spiritual and prophetically demonstrated the orientation society had taken towards materialism and violence. The rumpled, old and only suit Peter Maurin wore on the occasion he met Dorothy gave evidence to the life of poverty he had chosen. After the onset of the Catholic Worker Movement, Peter had ample opportunity to model non-violence as a way of dealing with conflict. Dorothy relayed one account in the September 1948 Catholic Worker: When two men at Easton farm fought over an egg to eat, Peter refused to eat eggs or milk the rest of the summer, so that other might have more.
Peter also took to heart the teaching of Mathew 25:31: to serve those in need is to serve Christ. As the second pillar of his program he recommended Christian hospices, in the tradition of the early and medieval Christians, where the Corporal Works of Mercy would be practiced at a personal sacrifice. In Dorothy’s words: “We were to reach the people by practicing the works of mercy, which meant feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner, sheltering the harborless, and so on. We were to do this by being poor ourselves, giving everything we had; then others would give, too.” Peter did not hesitate to be the first to put his teachings into practice: “When a reader who had been sleeping in the subway came into the Catholic Worker office one day and disclosed her need (the apartment and the office were already full), Peter’s literal acceptance of ‘If thy brother needs food or drink, feed him, and if he needs shelter, shelter him’ meant that we rented a large apartment a block away which became the first House of Hospitality for women.” In the same spirit, Maurin would often stay overnight at Uncle Sam’s Hotel for forty cents a night, or simply sleep in the park because he had given his bed to someone in greater need.
Likewise, Peter paid great respect to the seven Spiritual Works of Mercy as described by the Catholic tradition: to admonish the sinner, to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to comfort the sorrowful, to bear wrongs patiently, to forgive all injuries, and to pray for the living and the dead. In particular, he embraced “instructing the ignorant” or “agitation” as his particular vocation, and sought to instruct Bishops and bums alike. One of his pedagogical techniques was reciting monologues that would continue uninterrupted until his point had been made and then listening to the fullness of his conversation partner’s ideas without interruption. Another technique of his, was to begin a conversation with one person in a crowded setting like Union Square but in a voice loud enough to attract others. In order to get profound ideas across to the common person, Peter wrote and recited Easy Essays, or pithy poems designed to get stuck in your head. With all these strategies it is no wonder John Woodlock of the Wall Street Journal wrote of Peter: “He can cram more truth into your cranium at high speed in a single hour than any ordinary person could do in a week.”
Nonetheless, one could argue that Peter’s pedagogy was a secondary factor in his success as an agitator; the greater factor was his unshakable belief that all individuals shared his interest in the big questions: What has gone wrong in contemporary society? And, how can society be recreated to better serve the common good and the flourishing of the human person? Moreover, he assumed that everyone was capable of grasping profound truths and willing to transform one’s life in conformity thereof. To this end, Peter proposed Round Table discussions as the first pillar of his three-part program. Round Tables were to compel the exchange of ideas across class divisions in order to understand the roots of social problems and thus forge radical answers.
Having found a disciple at last in Dorothy, Peter spent every day for the next four months, from three in the afternoon until eleven, following her around the house in order to give her a “Catholic education.” Respecting that Dorothy was a working, single mom, Peter would not only bring books, but also summaries of them, which he wrote as an act of service for those without the time to read the works he recommended. Peter’s summaries included a digest of Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories, and Workshops (1889), which concluded, from the study of peasant society, that the principals of cooperation and mutual aid, rather than competition, were the most natural tendencies of humankind. Other sources Peter eagerly brought to Dorothy’s attention were the English Distributists who decried the evils of industrialism and advocated a land and craft society, and the French Personalist, Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), who emphasized the absolute value of each person, made in the image of God, as the proper philosophical foundation for society. In the words of Mounier, Peter described his own program as a personalist one, a “green revolution,” which begins with an awakened sense of vocation that compels one to take an active role in history.
Another source of inspiration which Maurin brought to Dorothy was the example of the saints. Peter said, “In the Catholic Worker we must try to have the voluntary poverty of St. Francis, the charity of St. Vincent de Paul, the intellectual approach of St. Dominic, the easy conversations about things that matter of St. Philip Neri, and the manual labor of St. Benedict.”
“Peter loved St. Benedict,” wrote Dorothy, “because he said that what the workers needed most was a philosophy of work.” This philosophy flows out of the Benedictine motto: Laboreare et Orare—Labor and Pray—which emphasized an ideal unity between work and prayer, religious life and economic life. In his own life, Peter had seen the degrading effects of capitalism and communism, both materialistic economic models that emphasize wealth and production rather than the wholeness of the human person or the flourishing of human relationships within society. As an alternative, Peter proposed Christian communalism, believing that the development of one’s interior life was best fostered by a spiritually-centered communal life emphasizing poverty over affluence, self-giving over self-advancement, and cooperation over competition.
Peter cited Benedictine monasticism with its emphasis on hospitality, prayer, life on the land, art, and labor, as just such a model which could transform not only the person but also the wider culture. From his studies of monasticism, Peter also acquired the idea that human goodness can be fostered by appropriate structures. Therefore, Peter would formulate a daily schedule with set times for prayer, work in the fields, meals, rest, crafts, study, etc., for himself and whoever cared to follow. It was these small structures as well as the practice of the works of mercy, and the return to a village-like land and craft based culture, which fleshed out Peter’s idea of a “society where it is easier to be good.” To this end, Peter proposed farming communes or “agronomic universities,” to reintroduce city dwellers to the spiritual richness and simplicity of life on the land as the third and final pillar of his program. On Peter’s farming communes, community members were to live not only in cooperation with one another, but also in cooperation with their animals, which were considered as community members, and with the land, which was to be farmed using the most earth-friendly methods available—all of which was akin to living in cooperation with God.
Nonetheless, it is St. Francis, not St. Benedict, to whom Peter Maurin has commonly been compared, and who was arguably his greatest source of inspiration. The radical conversion Peter underwent coincided with his reading a series of books and papal encyclicals on St. Francis. In one of his Easy Essays Peter summarized the way of St. Francis, which he sought to emulate:

Saint Francis desired that we should give up

superfluous possessions.

Saint Francis desired that we should work with our hands.

Saint Francis desired that we should offer

our services as a gift.

Saint Francis desired that we should ask other people for

help when work fails us.

Saint Francis desired that we should live as free as birds.

Saint Francis desired that we should go through life giving

thanks to God for God’s gifts.

Like St. Francis, Peter was described by Dorothy as possessing “a freedom and joyousness that come from a clear heart and soul.” This joy and freedom flowed from his adoption of Franciscan poverty and the clarity he possessed about his own vocation, which was, in the spirit of St. Francis, to preach the gospel at all times in both word and action. Peter’s method of “agitation”, employed to awaken the human intellect and to compel one towards conversion, as well as his three part program, were his attempt to bring the gospel to the common person and to the social realities of his time. In short, Peter sought not only to talk of salvation (one’s growth towards holiness, or the full realization of oneself moving towards God), but to make salvation more possible by creating a spiritually nourishing culture.
It is remarkable how precisely Dorothy’s prayer “to find something to do in the social order” for the poor was answered in Peter Maurin. “Without him,” Dorothy concluded, “I would never have been able to find a way of working that would have satisfied my conscience. Peter’s arrival changed everything, I finally found a purpose in my life and the teacher I needed.” In turn, Peter found in Dorothy the student he had searched for, one with the capacity and charisma to put his program into action. Because of Peter and Dorothy’s student-teacher relationship, Peter has commonly been understood as the intellectual founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. Yet from the beginning, Dorothy sought that Peter would be known for more than just his ideas and even insisted that biographers writing about her write instead about Peter. In the end, Dorothy set out to write her own biography of Peter which, though unfinished, was recently published in Peter Maurin: Apostle to the World. Dorothy’s reflections within, make it clear that Peter was not only her teacher but also her spiritual mentor in whom she saw the “face of Christ.” Upon Peter’s death, Dorothy compared their time together to the time the disciples walked unknowingly with the risen Jesus, quoting Luke 24:32: “Was not our heart burning within us whilst he spoke along the way?”

'...to present her to himself as a radiant church'

She had embraced singleness and was single mindedly committed to Jesus. I remember talking with friends over the years about this girl that no guy could get. We called her her the big fish, one buddy always joked that she was Rapunzel in the tower. She was beautiful and her commitment and dedication to God made her that much more beautiful.
Tonight she gave up singleness and vowed to pursue God with Chris. Singleness was truly a gift that she cherished. She was free to go wherever God called and whenever He called. She was free to pour her life out into community and ministry. As they exchange vows I can't help but stand in awe and reflect on the depth of this union. It is no small thing.

As we prayed for Chris as a community before the wedding I was overwhelmed with joy for them both. They are making vows and immediately setting their eyes on the Philippines. There marriage is, from day one, about the kingdom and Gods purposes in the world. I love them both and am so excited to see what God does with these two lives. 

This blog marks the end of Chris's time in our house and the beginning of their life together. They will always be family to us. 

We are so happy for you both.

Joann your life is an inspiration. Chris we will miss you.