BY Brett Gershon
A year or two ago our community had a discussion on what we view as being a “successful” guest stay. This topic came to the fore following a series of guests leaving our community in difficult circumstances. Given the nature of what we do, this is hard. Guests who come through our doors become friends in whom we become deeply invested in their full human flourishing. When a guest leaves this place back into a life of struggle with any number of the issues that this world throws at people who live in poverty, it can be so disheartening that it can call into question what you are doing entirely. “Does what you do even help?”
We concluded that we count as successful any guest stay in which we offered love that was in some way received as such by the guest. “Did we love well the guest that came through these doors?” And “Did our guests feel loved?
While we live in a society that is predicated on callous indifference to our neighbor, the practice of hospitality in the Catholic Worker instills radical compassion for those whose struggles too often, in the day-to-day trenches of American life, go unseen. When founder of the Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day said “The greatest challenge of the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us,” she called those of us caught in the insidious churn of chasing the individualist American Dream, to step into spaces where we must–as liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez says–know the names of the poor whom we claim to love. In this, your heart will break. Poverty, addiction, and violence, are no longer abstractions and problems that exist out in the world, but demons that sit, nagging on the shoulders of those whom you love.
Image by Stephen Crotts.
It has been difficult for me to shift away from a posture of effectivity as judged by the world toward one of faithfulness in Love. I came into the Catholic Worker movement because I wanted to fight against social evils through revolutionary love. I wanted to do my part to change the world. As time has worn on in the movement, I have become increasingly aware that whatever good we do is usually impossible to see. I have grown to love and care about people whose lives later were claimed by their addiction. My heart has broken at the continued suffering wrought upon the poor because I have invested in relationships with people who have suffered. When suffering continues despite my best efforts to ameliorate it, it is discouraging.
When our hospitality does not contribute to rehabilitation of the addict in recovery or does not result in some upward trajectory toward greater housing stability for the chronically homeless individual, I also doubt if this work is “effective.” However, I continue to believe that compassionate love and sharing life with the stranger in need is the path that God calls us to faithfully walk. My heroes continue to be those who, in the face of appearing hopelessly ineffective, lean even harder into their calling to love boldly and fearlessly resist evil.
Brett Gershon is a member of the Bloomington Christian Radical Catholic Worker in Bloomington, IN. He and his wife, Sarah Lynne, were previously members of The Mennonite Worker in Minneapolis, MN, and he was the editor of the Jesus Radicals website for many years.