Loaves & Fishes, March-April, 1992

THE HEART OF THE CATHOLIC WORKER

(Editor's note: The following is from a talk given by Michael Kirwan at "A Conference On Homelessness And The Church" held at Clairvaux Farm on October 12, 1991. Michael is founder of the Catholic Worker in Washington, DC. The community runs two houses of hospitality in the city and two farms in nearby West Virginia. The text has been edited slightly for clarity in written form)]

by Michael Kirwan

A few years ago, the eminent Harvard psychologist Robert Coles wrote a book about Dorothy Day, a brief biography. In the book he mentioned an incident in which he went down to First Street to meet with Dorothy. I'm not sure if she knew he was coming. He walked in and saw Dorothy sitting at a table listening, not talking but listening, to a homeless woman. The homeless woman was inebriated and, as Dorothy said, was making no sense whatsoever. But Dorothy sat patiently and listened to this woman and after a few minutes she looked over and saw Robert Coles standing there. She said to him, "Are you waiting to speak with one of us?" Robert Coles said he never in his life will forget these three words "one of us." How in heaven's name can Dorothy Day feel that he was waiting to talk to this woman who was inebriated and not making any sense? But he said those three words told him what Dorothy Day was all about. It was about dignity and respect and love for any human being that came into her house of hospitality.

But let me tell you the contradiction of Dorothy Day. In 1972 I was at the Catholic Worker in New York. I had gotten out of college and my mother said, "Do something!" as I was roaming around. She said, "Why don't you go up to New York and work with Dorothy Day?" And I did. Well, in New York, as I guess in most houses, they have what is called "taking the house," in which you are responsible that particular night for answering the door, answering the phone, and seeing that the house is locked up. I was taking the house that night and Dorothy Day came back. I guess she had forgotten her key; she knocked on the door. She had come back from speaking to a group. It was very cold and rainy, one of those miserable New York nights when it was horrible to be even walking, let alone living, on the street. Dorothy knocked on the door and I answered it. Right behind her was a homeless man. He was dirty, he was inebriated, he was very wet and very cold and he wanted to come in. I looked at Dorothy and I looked at this man and I said, "Boy, what a great opportunity. Here is this wonderful woman, people think is a saint, lover of the poor, and with this poor person behind her, now I can show her what I can do with the poor and how I can love them equally as well as she can." She came in, started to go up the steps to her room and I said, "Sir, why don't you come in and I'll fix you a bowl of soup." In one motion Dorothy Day turned around and said, "You will not! Tell him to come back tomorrow, the house is closed." I never forgot that. Here was the woman whom the Catholic church and many other people consider a saint, lover of the poor, perhaps turning Christ himself away, coming at the door. And why haven't I forgotten that incident? First because of who was involved, but also because I have done the same thing many times since. It's been one person to many, one incident too many. I've been tired, I've been overwhelmed, I've been fed up.

I have sat here listening to all those wonderful speakers, all the way from Ed to Buddy, and I agree with every one of them. It warms my heart to hear it. But I think as we sit here, all of us would agree how overwhelming it is, what an up-hill lonely struggle to go on day to day in the midst of so much against you. And no one realized it more than Dorothy Day, no one. Her greatest fear was that she would not persevere. She said she wouldn't persevere if it weren't for the men and women who came into her life and made it possible for her to go on. They were her community, her support. The church told her in no uncertain terms that she could in justice and in right live no other life, live no other way. She didn't have a choice. Her church did not tell her: "Dorothy Day, it's up to the Roman Catholic Church, or it's up to Islam, or it's up to your Jewish neighbors, or your Presbyterian or your poor, to feed the homeless, to clothe the naked." It's not up to them, it's not up to our churches, it's up to us! If you don't put yourself on the line, you cannot get anyone else to do it. We don't get off that easily. We never get off easily, and as long as we live we can never say we've done enough. And that woman proved it. But she could only prove it, and she could only live that life, because she had the support of the people that came to her and lived that life with her. And I'm not just telling you about staff and volunteers, I'm talking about the poor. I'm talking about the homeless; I'm talking about the needy; I'm talking about the hungry that she shared her home with. Just like Martin Luther King said, he did what he could. He didn't solve the world's problems. Martin Luther King didn't try to win it all. He did what he could. He let people know they could not get off the hook simply by saying it was somebody else's responsibility. It is our responsibility as much as we're able; we have to do what we can. And we have to follow through with every fiber and with every ounce of our being. And I can't say less than that.

In our houses of hospitality in Washington we have no staff. We have homeless men and women who came into those houses once on a soup line, stayed, and now make it their home. Our farms in West Virginia are working farms with cows, pigs, chickens, goats, geese, ducks, dogs, cats, horses, and lots of vegetables. We canned 4,000 quarts last year on a wood cook stove. And who did that but homeless men and women from the streets of Washington, all on their own, with no supervision, no guidance, no administration. Every day in Washington in our soup kitchen 300 people are served in a dining room that's no bigger than 30 feet long. Two tables, every day, run by homeless men and women who now live in that house. Dorothy Day said you can do no less. You cannot identify with the poor unless you smell the same smells, put up with the same roaches, identify with the same rats walking over you at night. If you don't live with the poor, mentally, physically, emotionally, you can't identify with the poor, in whatever way you're called to do that, and there's no way of getting around it.

In 1981, Cardinal Hickey, who had just come to Washington from Cleveland, came to our first hospitality house on Christmas Eve. We had 40 people sleeping in four rooms and all of us slept on the floor next to each other. He said, "Oh, I think what you're doing is a great idea. I'll have Catholic Charities send you a check." I said, "No!, Archbishop, as much as we need the money, what we need are helpers of hospitality. We need a house next to every church, every synagogue, every Islamic center. We need a house, to put into practice what we are always talking about. We cannot be Christians, we cannot be people of faith, unless we physically do hands on involvement. Without this, we cannot justify our churches, our religion, our very self."

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin talked about the need to put our faith on a level on which all of us could identify. I am amazed when I give talks, and I give a lot of them, in our churches and schools all over the country, I am amazed at the response of people coming up and wanting to know how they can help.. People have to be involved. That's what breaks down barriers, not being up here and talking, but getting to know people one on one, getting to live with people, bringing people into our lives. I started, as Buddy did, by taking people into my dorm room at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. when I was going to school. I started taking soup down to a heating vent around the State Department. One night I took a large gallon jug of hot split pea soup. I set it down on the heating vent and started to walk away as I always did. A man picked up that jar of soup and in one motion broke it over my head. The hot split pea soup ran down and it burned me , but I didn't feel it because I was afraid. I said, "Sir, why did you do that?" He said, "Because you're treating us like dogs! You bring this food out, you set it down like we're some animal or some pet and then you walk away." He said, "Visit with us, talk to us, we are human just like you are!" What that man did was break down that first barrier of fear, of my being intimidated, of my realizing we need to do more than simply feed, shelter, and clothe. We need to treat people as equals with dignity and with love. That is our first priority. Dorothy Day used to say, anybody can give a person shelter. What people need first is love, equality and a sense of purpose, a sense of being, and a sense that there is justice, a right to everything that everyone else has. They need that extra coat in the closet, that extra pair of shoes. And what we have and don't need is injustice. We are doing them no favors, giving them no gifts; we are giving them what is rightfully theirs and it needs to start with us.

But as I said, and as I've heard all day, we can only do that with support. We need mutual support. Dorothy talked often of community. It cannot be done alone. We have to work together. We have the resources in this country. We have the churches. It breaks my heart to see these empty buildings in the midst of so much want. Where is this faith put into action? And I think that's what we need to identify with. If there is any message that we leave with today it is to put the radical Christ into our lives, the Christ who was homeless, the Christ who talked about identifying with the poor one on one.

It's come to me time and time again in our houses of hospitality. These houses of hospitality aren't there as institutions, as some kind of an organization. One thing Dorothy Day emphasized -- the house of hospitality is your home. It's where you begin, where you live, where you move and have your being. It's not something that is part of a national organization. It's something that exists because you began it, you identify with it, you put yourself on the line, you opened up whatever you have, whatever resource, wherever you're coming from. This house of hospitality exists because I opened up my apartment. The farm exists because we felt there was a need to get people off the street into a simpler life. It's not part of some movement out of New York , where the Catholic Worker began, saying, "Now we're going to start a house here, a house there." The houses are very personal, and they're all different. They reflect the people who live there. and I invite all of you -- stop in, stop in our houses in Washington if you're ever there, and I hope that I'm not there when you come. I want you to see the hospitality of the poor. I want you to see who welcomes you at that front door. When people call me up and say, "Oh Mike, we have blankets to donate," or "We have food. When's a good time to bring it down?" I tell them, anytime is a good time to bring it down. I want them to see where it's going. I want them to put themselves on our doorstep. I want them to be involved with what the house is all about. And I want them to see what the poor can be like if given an opportunity, the same opportunity we ask for in our own lives. I want people to know why it's called a Catholic Worker House. I didn't have to call it "Catholic Worker." I want people to know that our farms and houses make a statement. They stand for a message. It's a message of non-violence, of Dorothy Day and of Christian faith in action. And it's a message of resistance to why these houses have to exist at all, why they have to exist in a country like this. It's wrong to have to need them. But while we need them, they will be there...

One of our farms in West Virginia is named after a woman. She was a woman who spent 30 years on the streets of Washington before she came to our house of hospitality in 1981. She came from Oklahoma originally, from a dust bowl farm of the 30s. She came to our farm and died six months after she got there, she was so worn down. Now she's buried there. But before she died she told me that the six months she spent at the farm were the happiest of her life. Why? Because she realized she was needed. She was the only one on that farm of 25 men who knew anything about farming. And she taught us everything -- how to milk a cow, how to take care of chickens. She named our pig Charlotte. She came to realize at the end of her life that she had a lot to give. She had been beaten down so often in her life and told she was worthless and useless, had nothing to offer. She had a lot to offer, and she gave it in a way that I've never seen before. Our house in Washington is called "Mary Harris House." When I lived in the dorm at George Washington, the university found out that I had taken in a homeless person, after two persons had died on the street. They took me to court and the judge gave me three months to find another place to live. I found a place in the Shaw area of Washington in a little house of four rooms next to another house of four rooms in which lived an elderly African-American woman named Mary Harris. Mary was so poor that she had a wood stove and all she could do to keep heat in the house in the winter was to go up and down the alley picking up pieces of wood to heat her home. But from the very first, when I as a white person moved into an all black neighborhood, very poor, Mary was the only one who from the very first day offered her hand in hospitality. She was hospitable, gracious, and incredibly kind. One day my electric was turned off because I hadn't been able to pay the bill. Mary came over with her kerosene lamp and said that I was free to keep it as long as I needed it. Hers had been turned off so many times that she had been forced to buy one. She gave from her own need, not from what she had in excess. Mary used a walker. She was very, very crippled. But she never ceased to give. When she died, I named our women's house after her. That is the kind of person that Dorothy Day was talking about...

If we cannot open up our home to people who need a place to stay, we are still not off the hook. Because every house of hospitality, every shelter, as Mitch Snider well knew, every single place in this country that has homeless or poor men and women, needs somebody to go there, relate to people, do nothing more if just to sit, as Dorothy Day was doing that day when Robert Coles walked into the door. We can do something with our resources, no matter what they are. But we cannot get off the hook. We have to put ourselves on the line, day in and day out, and never feel we've done enough. I think that is what hospitality is all about. That is what Christianity or any other faith is all about. That is what we have to be about or we cannot justify our involvement in programs. We cannot justify our involvement in churches; we cannot justify, I don't think, what we are as human beings. We are talking about human beings. We are talking about mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers and brothers and sisters and children, down and out on their luck.

Why did I start doing this? I did it very gradually, not because I wanted to. I did it because I fell in love. I simply fell in love. I got to know people. I broke down barriers that I had created in my own life as to who people were, how they came into these circumstances. When I came back to my apartment to find a homeless man listening to Lohengrin by Richard Wagner, I thought, "This is crazy!" (First, because I can't take Richard Wagner for any length of time!) But here to have a homeless man who isn't supposed to have any education and little culture -- listening to Lohengrin on the stereo! That really floored me! What was going on? It was breaking down barriers, getting to know people on a one to one. And I think that's what our faith calls us to. And that's what I call you to. I ask you. It is a challenge. It is a daily challenge in faith. And believe me, it's a hard struggle. There are days when I rue ever having gotten involved because I'm overwhelmingly tired. There are days I just don't want to go on, but I know I have to continue. And the people that enable me to go on are the people I live with. And I love them, and they love me. It's not a one-way street. It's a street that gives as much as it takes. And believe me, it has to be that way. We're only human, all of us, every one of us that's ever been created, we're only human. That's all we are, that's all we'll be, and that's all we're expected to be. And we have to take it from there.