“If I die tonight, no one will miss me.”

One of our guests said this to me on this cold Thursday morning. He had slept outside in the twenty-degree weather last night. Now he was warming himself near the heater in the chapel area at Manna House and waiting for his hot shower. He asked me if I knew whether or not the city would open warming centers tonight. I did not know. 

I called the Office of Emergency Management for the City of Memphis which makes the decision about opening warming centers. I waited through a menu of options which included the Animal Shelter, Garbage Pick-Up, and the Non-Emergency Number for the Memphis Police. There was no option for “Homeless Services” or “Human Shelter.” I selected “0” for the operator. I was told that there would be no warming centers tonight. The forecast is for a low of 31. For Friday the forecast low is 18. I later learned from a city official that warming centers will be open Friday night, but they are not consistently open due to lack of funding. Another city official callously said, “There should be plenty of space at area shelters.” This is simply not true and also glides over the fact that there is no free public shelter in the city of Memphis. 

All shelter in Memphis is church affiliated or run by private organizations. And almost all of those are not free. The largest shelter in the city, the Union Mission, mandates attendance at a Christian worship service in order to stay overnight, and also charges $6.00 for the night. It does offer a few free nights before charging. The only regular free shelter is Room in the Inn Memphis which works with area churches to place people overnight in church spaces. Tonight, there is one church offering shelter through Room in the Inn.

At least one person has frozen to death in Memphis this winter. Eric Martin died near City Hall a few weeks ago. Each winter, people on the streets freeze to death in Memphis. Others die from pneumonia or other illnesses they catch in the bitter cold. 

Earlier this week I learned that a member of a Madison Ave business association referred to people on the streets as “trash that needs to be picked up.” 

The Mayor’s Office and this businessman share the view that some people are expendable. For them, people on the streets have no inherent worth or value. Value depends upon social standing, typically measured by such characteristics as economic status, race, gender, sexuality, and mental and physical health. 

The Gospel holds a different view. “Blessed are the poor,” Jesus said (Luke 6:20). And in case someone missed his point he told a judgment day parable in which God takes the position that “Whatever you do unto to the least of these you do unto me” (Matthew 25:31-46).

“If I die tonight, no one will miss me.” I wanted to tell this guest at Manna House this morning that he is not expendable, that he is wrong to think such a thing. In honesty, I could not tell him either of those things. So, I simply said, “If you die tonight, I will miss you and so will Kathleen and Ashley and everyone else at Manna House. But please don’t die. It’s time for your shower.”

https://mlk50.com/2022/01/21/a-homeless-man-froze-to-death-outside-city-hall-how-should-the-city-respond/

“Do you share the Gospel with the people who come to Manna House?”

“Do you evangelize the people you serve at Manna House?

Yes, we do, if by sharing the Gospel (or evangelizing) you mean what Jesus meant by sharing the Gospel (evangelizing) which was to share

“good news to the poor, 
    to proclaim release to the prisoners 
    and recovery of sight to the blind, 
    to liberate the oppressed,  

and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

We hope to be good news to our guests who come from the streets and in poverty by offering hospitality that respects their dignity as made in the image of God. 

We hope to proclaim release to the prisoners as we advocate stopping the criminalization of people in poverty, ending the death penalty, and undoing the mass incarceration done by our racist and classist criminal justice system. 

We seek to liberate the oppressed as we stand opposed to the “filthy rotten system” of consumer capitalism that oppresses the poor and God’s creation, and we urge a Beloved Community dedicated to the common good. 

We proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Biblical Jubilee, Isaiah 61:1-3, Leviticus 25:1-22) as we urge and practice a radical redistribution of goods so that everyone can enjoy enough to have life and have it to the full (John 10:10).

“How many people have you saved at Manna House?”

We have saved exactly zero people at Manna House. We are not God. We are not Jesus Christ. We don’t save people. God does. Our guests at Manna House do bring Jesus Christ to us, just as Jesus promised, “Whatever you do unto the least of these you do unto me” (Matthew 25:31-46). We seek to love each of our guests as Jesus commanded us to do, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34).

For the needy will not always be forgotten, nor will the hope of the poor perish forever. (Psalm 9:18, Modern English Version)

Manna House began sixteen years ago. A few of us gathered as a community of volunteers to serve people on the streets and others in poverty in the downtown and midtown areas of Memphis. Several of us had gotten to know people on the streets as we worshipped at Sacred Heart Catholic Church at the corner of Cleveland and Jefferson. 

Three of those people on the streets, Sara, Tyler, and Abe, were regulars at Sacred Heart. They became the “holy trinity” who taught us about the needs and strengths of people on the streets in that neighborhood. They invited us to open a place of hospitality in which sanctuary would be provided, where people would be welcomed for coffee, conversation, showers and clothing, and above all, treated with dignity. Resources were pooled and a house was purchased at 1268 Jefferson to be remodeled into a place of hospitality. 

Our guiding inspirations, in addition to Sara, Tyler, and Abe, were the Open Door Community (then in Atlanta), the Catholic Worker Movement of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, and the long traditions of hospitality in the Christian tradition and in other world religions. 

In the late summer of 2005, Manna House opened without fanfare but with much hope, love, and faith. The then five-year-old daughter of Kathleen, one of the founders of Manna House, held a sign that said, “Free Coffee” and announced to all who walked by “Free Coffee for Sale!” People from the streets started to stop in and relationships were built. In the early months, coffee, conversation, and the occasional sweet roll gathered people several times a week, while fresh socks and hygiene items were also shared. By January, a new shower room was opened, so three times a week showers could be offered with a change of clothes. The “socks and hygiene” continued as well. In the winter months, coats, hats, gloves, blankets, sleeping bags, and more were also offered. In the summer months, fresh t-shirts, baseball caps were added. Haircuts were offered.

Hospitality, the welcome of people in their dignity as made in the image of God, and no requirements of ID or “needs testing” has been our central practice at Manna House. A little over a year later, a former guest (now off the streets and housed) began “More on Monday” a simple meal offered every Monday at Manna House. Over the years Manna House has also hosted a variety of start-up organizations, including Door of Hope, Outreach, Housing and Community, Room in the Inn Memphis, and Homeless Organizing for Power and Equality (H.O.P.E.). Most recently we also opened the Women’s Sanctuary, working with Room in the Inn Memphis to offer shelter to women at a second location on Greenlaw.

All of this has been done over the years with a completely volunteer staff. No one is paid to work at Manna House. We are ordinary people offering hospitality. We started small and have stayed small so that we can offer a personal welcome to our guests. During our sixteen years, people from a variety of faiths (or no particular faith) have served at Manna House.  We have also hosted groups from schools and universities, and other organizations both locally and from across the United States. 

We’ve received financial support from many different individuals and from a variety of religious communities and other organizations. We do not seek or accept any government funding or complicated grants requiring a professional staff. For about $35,000 a year we serve 100 or so guests each day that we are open; that is, about 15,000 people a year. Since we have no paid staff all financial support goes to serving our guests either directly through goods that they receive or indirectly through maintaining our two places of hospitality where our guests are welcomed. We are a 901c3 (official name, “Emmanuel House Manna”), and each year we file a 990. 

We have continued our practice of hospitality through the pandemic. Though the pandemic has changed some aspects of how we offer hospitality, it has not deterred us from continuing to welcome guests, to offer a place of sanctuary, to offer showers, clothing, coffee, a weekly meal, and shelter at the women’s sanctuary.

Please consider supporting the work of hospitality at Manna House. Checks can be made out to Manna House or to Emmanuel House Manna (the official name of our nonprofit) and mailed to 769 Stonewall, Memphis, TN 38107.

Thank you!

The hospital, the jail, or the morgue. These are the three likely places where Manna House guests have gone if I have not seen them in a while.

One guest disappeared about a week ago. He showed up this morning. He had a cast on his right arm that ran from his fingers to just below his shoulder. 

“What happened?”

“I tripped and fell on a sidewalk. I’ve been in the hospital. They’ve done three surgeries on my arm.”

He had an awkwardly large and wide sling going around his neck and holding up his arm. He asked for something that would not chafe his neck so much. I suggested we try a tie. I went in and got several from the clothing room. With a little adjustment he had a new slender and non-chafing sling for his cast.

I was approached by another guest later in the morning. I had not seen him for several months. 

“Where you been?”

“Jail. Do you know how I can get my Social Security started again? They cut it off when you’re in jail.”

The Social Security office on Cleveland is still closed to walk-ins due to pandemic restrictions. A person can make an appointment online. Not so easy for someone on the streets. I gave him a few options, like using the public library for computer access.

A week ago, I was told that one of our guests had died of COVID. I have not been able to confirm that rumor. I certainly have not seen him, so I can still hold out the strange hope that he might be in jail or the hospital.

Many years ago, the Open Door Community in Atlanta (now in Baltimore) had a large crucifix with the Christ figure dressed in donated clothes from the community’s clothes’ closet. “The Vagrant Christ” was a regular at street liturgies during Holy Week. It was the Open Door that first opened my eyes and heart to the Liberation Theology understanding of, “the crucifixion of the poor.” As Jon Sobrino wrote of this crucifixion, “Poverty [and I would add, homelessness] is not some sort of natural destiny… It is the effect of historical decisions made by human beings. It is the effect of unjust structures. … It’s contrary to the plan of God the Creator, and contrary to the honor which is due to God.” 

I have learned from the Vagrant Christ and theologians like Sobrino that the poor are crucified. I have learned from the Open Door and at Manna House that when I offer hospitality I stand at the foot of the cross. 

To stand at the foot of the cross, Barbara Holmes writes, is to respond to God’s call “to stand silently at the places where the national powers are crucifying the innocent and waging war against the poor… willing to embody a contemplative resistance which is simply the expression of love and faith that transcends the ability to see or understand the outcomes” (Joy Unspeakable p.106). She adds that to stand silently is not to stand passively. Contemplative resistance requires that I listen, learn, and then bear witness to the ongoing crucifixion of the poor in our society. 

            I find it hard to stand at the foot of the cross and practice this contemplative resistance. There are mornings I do not want to go into the backyard and hear the stories of our guests. Just like with the guests this morning, there is little that I can do when they tell me of their time in the hospital, the jail, and the ways death comes on the streets and in poverty. In contemplative resistance I come to sit with these realities. 

At the foot of the cross, I listen to their stories and learn again how hard and yet necessary it is to trust in the power of love, and in the presence of God in the people who trust me enough to share what they are suffering. They teach me what Jesus knew on the Cross. Even as he cried out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” God had not abandoned him, just as God had not abandoned him in the silence of 40 days of fasting and prayer in the desert. God was with him in the isolation and the darkness. 

At the foot of the cross, when I hear the stories of the Manna House guests, if I practice contemplative resistance, I will also experience the presence of God. I will experience how God remains present and affirms this is not the way things are supposed to be. 

This is a paper I gave at the D.B. Rinehart Institute for Ethics in Leadership Conference at Viterbo University, LaCrosse, Wisconsin, October 22, 2021

In this age of intense political and cultural disagreement and division, what might the Christian practice and virtue of hospitality contribute to reflection upon and ways to improve relationships with each other, and our political and cultural discourse within civic life?

In seeking to respond to that question, I will identify and expand upon four major themes within the Christian tradition of hospitality which reflect biblical and theological wisdom namely, Love, Listening, Learning, and Limits. I believe these four aspects of the practice of hospitality can offer some help in how we enter into relationship with other people, particularly those with whom we most vehemently differ and disagree. I offer my reflections upon those four themes in light of my experience of over twenty-five years in offering hospitality, both in Atlanta and Memphis. I also fully recognize that these four aspects of hospitality by themselves are not sufficient for addressing the significant divisions we face today in our society; they are a contribution not a solution.

As a contribution, these dimensions of the practice of hospitality can offer some practical and hopeful help in our personal lives as we relate to people with whom we differ and disagree. I see both a realism and a hope in the practice of hospitality. The realism is that hospitality “always involves risk and the possibility of failure” (Pohl 14). Strangers are not always friendly, or even nonviolent. Hospitality does not always result in good relationships. Good relationships can be broken. Good relationships are difficult to create and sustain. The hope is that in the practice of hospitality we can enter into relationships that are mutually transformative, that result in mutual good. The hope is that as we share a place of welcome, conversation, a meal, we can come together to recognition of our shared humanity and a willingness to share life together, even as we will have disagreements and conflicts. With this realistic hope in mind, I offer these four dimensions of the practice of hospitality.

Love
Hospitality as a Christian practice has a long biblical and theological history. The Bible identifies strangers as sent from God, as messengers of God. We see this in the Abraham and Sarah story of welcoming strangers who are angels in disguise (Genesis 18).  Jesus as the Incarnate Son of God identifies with the stranger “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:31-46). The New Testament Letter to the Hebrews urges us to “not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2). Christine Pohl in Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as Christian Tradition, draws upon this biblical emphasis and the resulting Christian faith tradition of hospitality to state, “Hospitality is a way of life fundamental to Christian identity” (x). She describes evidence of the practice of hospitality from the early church to contemporary examples. Hospitality is a crucial practice in being Christian.

Love as a Christian practice within hospitality recognizes the stranger as made in the image of God. In hospitality, love is practiced through recognition and respect, especially for those who we disregard and dishonor (Pohl 61). Jesus asks his followers to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44) and to recognize him in the stranger, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and the imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-46) saying “Whatever you do unto the least of these you do unto me.”

Love practiced as recognition affirms fellowship with the stranger as a fellow human being. In recognition, we affirm that we share a humanity and a transcendent destiny beyond our differences, significant as those may be. Love also affirms the Divine presence in the stranger. Love recognizes the other as the presence of God as Other. Love calls us to recognize, to see, the stranger as our brother or sister in Christ. In this love, we welcome others, and respect them by affirming their dignity. In love, hospitality affirms that each person matters. No person is dismissed as unworthy of attention.

As applied to our issue of civil discourse and engagement, love practiced as recognition rejects the reduction of any person to a particular social group, stereotype, or political party. Recognition affirms a “common identity” rather than oppositional identities. (See Christian S. Cleveland “Civil Discourse at the Table of Reconciliation,” in Virtue and Voice: Habits of Mind for a Return to Civil Discourse, location 756 of 3578). Hospitality in its affirmation of each person as created in the image of God puts into practice this common identity at a personal level, and urges that such recognition be the basis of our social and institutional lives as well. In this way, hospitality practices an openness to relationship with those deemed “other.” Thus, hospitality is remedial, counteracting the social divisions and inequalities of the broader society as it provides a modest welcome to each person (Pohl 63). As such, hospitality does not solve all social divisions and social ills. Yet in its practice of love, it provides the possibility of building social discourse based upon recognition and respect for each person as part of our shared humanity. With such respect civility becomes possible. (See Adam Pelser and Ryan West, “Respect as an Intellectual Virtue,” in Virtue and Voice, 80-106).

To practice this love is hard. To recognize and respect the stranger as human, as made in the image of God, as our brother or sister in Christ, challenges our tendencies to withdraw and build walls against the stranger. It is not easy to offer this recognition and respect to those with whom I deeply disagree and from whom I am quite different. And I as I will indicate later in my discussion of limits, there are boundaries that are necessary to establish and hold to in order for hospitality to even take place. Welcoming another requires a space and a place into which persons can be welcomed, where each and every person is respected.

Even with boundaries, the challenge in love as respect and recognition involves overcoming one’s fears, repulsions, and stereotypes that perpetuate social divisions. It requires an empathetic engagement with those with whom one does not typically associate, or with whom one finds association difficult.

As I have practiced hospitality over the years, I find some of my biggest challenges with regard to love and respect with white guests who want to assert their entitlement to special treatment, and also openly disdain African American guests. Like Facebook “Friends” with whom I consistently disagree, I find it difficult to empathize with them and understand them. I have to overcome my repulsion in order to listen to them, and serve them with respect. I often return to what Dorothy Day wrote in her autobiography as she quoted from Dostoevsky, “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

Pohl, following Day and others in the Christian tradition of hospitality, urges that the demand of love to offer respect and recognition, can only be met by persons sustained by a strong life of prayer and times of solitude (Pohl 13). There is a mysticism inherent to hospitality, in which through God’s grace we come to see those with whom we deeply disagree as fellow humans, as made in the image of God, as the very presence of Christ. To love our enemies and welcome the stranger, we have to enter into prayer. In prayer, we ask that we might see the most difficult persons as God sees them, as God’s children. In prayer, we experience God’s unbounded love for us, which empowers us to love others as God loves us. This is the heart of Jesus’ great commandment, ““A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34).

How we regard with love those who are difficult to love is a powerful test of our faith. As the First Letter of John puts it, “If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). The mystery of God’s love is that we experience God’s love to the extent that we welcome God’s love for us as unearned, that God loves us even as we are unlovable. This is what grounds our love for those whom we regard as unlovable. I do not know of any other way to enter into this kind of love apart from prayer, apart from the acknowledgment of God’s gracious presence in my life. I do not practice this kind of love “naturally” but only “gracefully.”

Another way I might describe this love comes through Will Campbell’s stories in Brother to a Dragonfly. In one of those stories, Campbell recalls how he recognized “the redemptive company of a racist Jesus” in a favorite uncle who came to sit with him while mourning the death of a child in their extended family. This was an uncle who deeply disagreed with Campbell’s work for civil rights, who was openly racist. (Campbell 150-151). In another place Campbell writes, that “anyone who is not a concerned with the immortal soul of the dispossessor as he is with the suffering of the dispossessed is being something less than Christian” (Campbell 201). Hospitality practices the loving truth that as Campbell puts it, “We’re all bastards, but God loves us anyways” (Campbell 220).

Listening
A fundamental way to show recognition and respect with hospitality is to listen. Let me quote a renowned theologian, Beyonce, in her song, “Listen.”

Listen to the song here in my heart
A melody I start but can’t complete
Listen to the sound from deep within
It’s only beginning to find release
Oh, the time has come for my dreams to be heard
They will not be pushed aside and turned
Into your own all ’cause you won’t
Listen

Beyonce’s song indicates what happens when the songs of one’s heart are not heard, the dreams are not listened to, the relationship ends. Listening is a fundamental part of hospitality that makes relationship possible. Being heard is central to how each of us is affirmed as a human person with dignity, with worth. But what does it mean to listen?

The Rule of St. Benedict, which emphasizes hospitality as a key practice of monastic life, starts with the word, “obsculta,” which is translated, “listen.” Centuries of Benedictine spirituality have emphasized the connection between listening and obedience. Obsculta can mean either “listen” or “obey.” Further, the Latin word “obedire” which literally means “listen to” is the foundation for our English word “obedience,” to obey. The Rule of Benedict recognizes that listening is a way of attending, of paying attention to another in such a way that we are open to the divine presence in that person. As one Benedictine writer observes, “There is nothing casual or half-hearted about this kind of listening. It requires close attention, hard work, care. It means more than just absorbing words. It must embrace nuance, intention, and the subtleties that can easily escape us today, when we are used to scanning at high speed or rushing to add our own contribution before we have fully grasped the meaning of what we have just heard…. We are too full of our own noise to listen properly” (Digital nun, https://www.ibenedictines.org/2020/09/01/listening-with-the-ear-of-the-heart/)

To listen to others in this way in relation to cultural and political division does not mean ceasing to be an activist, to be one who seeks justice. Rather it means, in the words of Will Campbell, to cease being a “doctrinaire social activist” (Campbell 225). The move away from being doctrinaire comes from listening, from learning how the story of oppression is rarely as neat as pure good versus pure evil. As Campbell tells his story of involvement as a white southerner in the civil rights struggle, he writes, “We were right in aligning ourselves with the black sufferer. But we were wrong in not directing some of our patience and energy and action to a group which also had a history” (Campbell 226). And that history, that story, can only be heard if we are willing to listen with empathy, with compassion, and a desire to understand, with recognition and respect for the humanity of the storytellers.

At Manna House this means listening to the stories of African American men who tell of poverty and abuse and harassment from a system set up to benefit white. But it also means listening to the stories of white men who tell of poverty and abuse and harassment from a system set up to benefit whites. And those white men carry a special shame because in a system set up for them, they still “failed.” Since they are told they cannot blame the system, they blame themselves. Meanwhile, the local Union Mission teaches them that it is because they do not love Jesus enough that they are on the streets. When I try to discern what these stories I hear might mean theologically, and how they reflect our deep division, I am better able to love, and I also enter into another practice within hospitality, learning.

Learning
When we listen carefully with respect and recognition, we become open to learning, to gaining knowledge and perhaps even wisdom. Hospitality often speaks of this as the mutual transformation that takes place between host and guest in the practice of hospitality. Returning to the story of Abraham and Sarah welcoming guests, the hospitality they offer results in their being gifted by their visitors with the promise of a son. When the disciples on the road to Emmaus welcome the stranger, he turns out to be Christ known in the breaking of the bread. I could tell many stories of how I have learned from guests at Manna House. They have taught me about God, about faith, about grace and redemption. They have deepened my understanding of racism, classism, heterosexism, of policing and of politics and economics in the US. (See my blog, Radical Hospitality, https://radicalhospitalityblog.com/).

In reflecting upon how I have learned in the practice of hospitality, I see that listening grounded in respect and recognition opens me to what Jason Baehr discusses as intellectual virtues necessary for civil discourse. He argues in Virtue and Voice, that “public discourse is deficient largely on account of how frequently and pervasively it manifests intellectual vices like narrow-mindedness, intellectual arrogance, intellectual dishonesty, dogmatism, and close-mindedness” (Baehr 6). To counter those vices, he urges we need to develop “intellectual virtues” that include curiosity, attentiveness, open-mindedness, intellectual carefulness, and intellectual thoroughness. Intellectual vices include intellectual laziness, inattentiveness, intellectual arrogance, dogmatism, intellectual dishonesty, intellectual hastiness, narrow-mindedness, and close-mindedness” (Baehr 15).

We have to practice those intellectual virtues in order to learn. Intellectual viciousness prevents learning and is manifest in such things as name-calling, failing to fact-check, ignoring counter-evidence and arguments, willfully misinterpreting opposing views, hiding weaknesses in one’s own position, making sweeping generalizations, etc. All of those are inimical to hospitality as they are to civil discourse.

Baehr points out that learning does not mean accepting or even giving any and every belief or argument an open hearing (again something to return to in the discussion of limits). Some views simply do not merit intellectually virtuous consideration. Such views fail to advance human knowledge. At the same time, when we acknowledge our tendency to value our own conclusions above others, we can listen with respect and seek to understand how those we disagree with hold the position they have. In this way we “argue to learn” rather than “argue to win.” We can warn ourselves about “epistemic overconfidence” and keep an awareness that we limited in our own cognitive perspective (Baehr 33-36). In Christian terminology this would be an awareness, in the words of St. Paul, “none are righteousness, no not one” (Romans 3:10 and see Psalm 14:1-3).

In the practice of hospitality, Baehr’s analysis is confirmed. I have found that Learning requires both humility and a sense of humor. Humility is an accurate self-understanding and of our place in the world, along with an ability to acknowledge our own limits and failings. This undergirds our openness to others, and a non-defensiveness. Humility affirms that guests from the streets know the realities of homelessness much better than I do. They also often know better how I can serve them. Manna House was established in consultation with people on the streets who identified what they needed and much of how we should respond to those needs. They also very much see themselves as having “ownership” of Manna House, letting new volunteers know how things are to be done, and informing new guests of the expectations for civility and even charity with other guests and volunteers.

Humor is closely related to humility as humor involves the ability to laugh at ourselves, and to see the incongruity of life. Humor keeps us from taking ourselves or life too seriously. Humor checks self-righteousness and dogmatism. Both humility and humor affirm that no one person and no one group of people have a corner on truth. Hospitality requires a sense of humor, to undercut any self-righteousness or sense of a “savior complex” that those of us offering hospitality might have. Jokes shared certainly lighten the mood at Manna House. So do practices like singing “Happy Birthday” to any guest or volunteer who is having a birthday, but doing so in an intentionally off-key manner so that all can join in without reservation.

Together, humility and humor can work to help us hold our beliefs and our ways of doing things with some tentativeness. Our humble sense that we are finite, fallible, and corruptible supports our willingness to revise our perspectives when given a good reason to do so, a willingness to critically review our own views, and a willingness to acknowledge that others may hold opposing views in good faith. Humility and humor undercut defensiveness. They also de-center us, humility and humor clarify that the world does not revolve around us. Many times in the history of Manna House guests have suggested better ways to do things, and they are almost always correct. Our practice of hospitality is better because we listen and learn from our guests.

Neither humility nor humor, however, should be understood or practiced in a way that cooperates with humiliation. Listening and learning, along with love, are good faith efforts to create and maintain relationships. They are not invitations to abuse. And this brings us to the fourth and final aspect of hospitality, limits.

Limits
Hospitality has its limits. In the practice of hospitality, people can wear out their welcome and be asked to leave. In the practice of hospitality not everything goes. At Manna House, we are firm in our expectations, for hosts and guests alike. No denigrating, degrading, or disgusting comments or actions are allowed. A warning is given, and if a person does not change the behavior, that person is asked to leave (and this applies to guests and volunteers alike). If the person does not leave (we have only had this issue with guests), we announce that we are going to shut down unless the person leaves. Peer pressure almost always works to get the person to leave. But sometimes we have to shut down. And there are occasions when the violation has been so egregious that the person who was asked to leave is told not to come back, sometimes for up to a year.

Limits are also present in that we cannot do everything for everybody. We have limited days and hours of hospitality. We have limited numbers of showers we can offer, and a limited amount of clothing and “socks and hygiene” we can give. We do not serve food, except on Monday evenings. We do not allow smoking on the premises. In this time of COVID, we require masks and practice social distancing. We limit the number of guests allowed into the house. We offer much of our hospitality in the backyard.

All of these limits point to how we cannot do everything in our practice of hospitality, but we remain willing to do something (Pohl 135). Likewise, our boundaries are there to ensure that we will continue to offer hospitality. Boundaries make hospitality possible because they preserve the space and place and people who offer hospitality.

Pohl gets to the tension of limits in the practice of hospitality when she states that “hospitality practitioners live between the vision of God’s Kingdom in which there is enough, even abundance, and the hard realities of human life in which doors are closed and locked, and some needy people are turned away or left outside” (Pohl 131).

The reality of limits offers some help in think about how there are also limits to civility. If someone or some group is seeking the destruction of our shared life altogether, or is urging policies that oppress people, those must be resisted. To shout peace, peace, when there is no peace is to be complicit in injustice. As James Baldwin put it, “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”

At the same time, we can state those limits with love, with respect and recognition, with a willingness to continue to listen and perhaps even learn from what causes such behavior. Seeking to understand is not seeking to justify. But we cannot understand if we do not enter with some empathy into the lives of those with whom we disagree. Demonization does not prepare us for civil discourse or for addressing any underlying causes for the hatred and viciousness. At the same time, we may well need to step back and away from those holding such positions, and publicly oppose them. It is naïve and a failure to accept our own limits and the limits of others to not recognize and oppose wrongdoing. Our efforts at civil discourse will live in the tension between God’s Kingdom in which we sit down together at an abundant and joyous table, and the realities of family dinners (and political disagreements) where there are squabbles, and fights, and sometimes the need to walk away.

What to conclude?
I have offered four dimensions of the practice of hospitality as elements that might improve relationships with each other, and our political and cultural discourse within civic life.
In order to create and sustain a more civil discourse, we might learn from hospitality about how love, listening, learning, and limits can create a community in which persons are welcomed, treated with respect, heard, and valued for what they bring to the table. Hospitality can also indicate that such practices are not an invitation to moral and intellectual relativism or abuse. I return at this point to urging a hopeful realism in addressing our differences. We can begin, at least, to draw upon hospitality as we seek life together marked by love that respects and recognizes each other as God’s children, and in that opens us to listen and to learn, knowing full well that none of us are without fault, that we will disagree, and even fail in relationship, while also affirming we need to keep trying to be better with each other.

Sources:

Will Campbell, Brother to a Dragonfly: 25^th Anniversary Edition, Bloomburg Academics, 2000.

Greg Ten Elshof and Evan Rosa, eds., Virtue and Vice: Habits of Mind for a Return to Civil Discourse, Abiline Christianity University Press, 2019.

Christine Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999.

What we call the Chapel at Manna House is an extension of the shed in the backyard. In this covered space there are a few old donated church pews and some park benches, along with a statue of St. Francis, and a large crucifix where a silver Jesus hangs from a wooden cross attached to the shed’s sheet metal wall.  It is not fancy. But it has been the scene for a few weddings among guests, memorial services for guests who have died, and even one ordination for a Manna House volunteer now a chaplain at a local hospital.

In COVID times, since we cannot crowd into the house, guests gather in the backyard, even when it rains. We make do with picnic table umbrellas, a red tent, and the Chapel, as places where the guests can stay dry.

As I moved around the backyard this morning talking with guests, I stopped in the chapel.

“How you all enjoying church this morning?” I asked.

“This ain’t no damn church,” a rather sour faced guest responded.

I said, “You’re sitting on pews, there’s a statue and a crucifix, and over there is the minister.” I pointed to another guest, and then added, “He’s about to take up a collection, $5 dollars from each of you.”

“I’m a minister, too!” the sour guest said. And we all laughed, even him.

Then he said, “Charlton Heston was a horrible Moses. He messed up that movie ‘The Ten Commandments.’”

“He sure did,” I said, “no white man would stand with slaves and get them free. Besides Moses was dark skinned.” 

The guest smiled and shook his head as if amazed and asked, “What’s your name?”

I told him and asked him for his name. Then he said, “Let me tell you a joke.”

“Sure.”
“A man goes to church on Sunday. While he’s waiting for the service to start a Deacon taps him on the shoulder and says, ‘You aren’t allowed in here. You got to go.’ The man is upset, but he doesn’t want to cause a scene, so he gets up and goes. During the week he prays about it and thinks about it and decides maybe he wasn’t dressed properly for church. So, he gets a suit and returns the next Sunday to the same church. While he’s waiting for the service to start a Deacon taps him on the shoulder and says, ‘You aren’t allowed in here. You got to go.’ The man is upset, but he doesn’t want to cause a scene, so he gets up and goes. During the week he prays about it and thinks about it and decides maybe he needs to make a sizeable offering then he’ll be allowed to stay. So, he returns the next Sunday to the same church. He makes it until the offering when he puts $500 dollars in the plate. Just then the Deacon taps him on the shoulder and says, ‘You aren’t allowed in here. You got to go.’ The man doesn’t want to cause a scene and he leaves. But he’s very upset. He prays to God, asking God why this is happening. ‘Why won’t they let me in to that church?’ God answers him, “They’ve never let me in either.’

As the guests and I laughed, the man said, “I don’t go to church. You see why. That’s why this can’t be a church.”

“Well, you’re here and you just gave a great sermon, so this is church now.”

“Strangest damn church I’ve ever been in,” the man said, only now he smiled.

I have to confess that for the past month or so, I have not been very attentive to the presence of God at Manna House. I have grown tired of the changes to how we offer hospitality due to COVID. Masks mean I cannot see smiles. Social distancing prevents the relaxed gathering of people in the house. A number of guests who are housed, but enjoyed the community of conversation around coffee, have simply stayed away. Our coming together is always tinged by some level of anxiety about contracting COVID.

God got through all of that yesterday and got my attention. It started, of course, with a guest who called me by name.

“Pete,” he said, “you don’t remember me, do you?”

When I arrived at Manna House on this morning to open the gate and help prepare the house for hospitality, I had seen this man sleeping in the parking lot. He was under a blanket, on the hard surface of the lot, sound asleep. A purloined grocery cart stood watch over him, filled with his belongings. I figured he would eventually wake up and come across the street to Manna House for a cup of coffee, and maybe get a shower and a change of clothes.

About mid-morning, I was unloading donations from my car at the front of Manna House.  I saw that the man was now awake. I also saw that he had difficulty standing. I went across the street and asked him if he would like a cup of coffee. That is when he called me by name.

Then he told me his name. And yes, then I remembered him.

This began a conversation and a process that involved driving him to his lawyer’s office so they could help him get his disability check started again (his check had been stopped because he was in jail this past year), a quick stop at Catholic Charities to get a sack lunch, and then on to the Methodist University Hospital Emergency Room, to get medical clearance to stay at the Room in the Inn Recuperative Care Center.

All of this was facilitated by several of us Manna House volunteers, while others continued the usual hospitality of showers, socks and hygiene, and coffee. One of the volunteers that helped me with driving the guest around and getting him into the Emergency Room is a Memphis Theological Seminary student who is doing his Clinical Practicum at Manna House this semester.

When we got back from the hospital, we started to have a conversation about Manna House and how it works. Another guest came up to us and said, “God bless Manna House.” I responded, “God bless you. Do you know you are blessing?

A little later, at the end of the morning, Ashley and Kathleen fixed the broken wing of the concrete angel that has stood in the backyard of Manna House since we opened. Thanks to their careful work and some cement glue, the angel is now whole.

But as I looked at the angel, I saw the cracks were still visible in her wings, reminders of her brokenness. I started to think about all of the angels, all of the messengers of God who remind me of God’s call, of God’s gracious presence.

Those messengers have always been there, and yet in these days of COVID I have missed them. I have not been paying attention.

The angel reminded me of God’s presence that I had seen in the man in the parking lot, in the way in which volunteers responded, and in the guest who said, “God bless Manna House,” and that I now realized in myself. Every one of us at Manna House, whether guest or volunteer, comes with broken wings, more or less healed. It is in our brokenness, our wounds, that God’s gracious presence comes and helps us so that our compassion grows, as Paul wrote of God telling him, “My grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made whole in infirmity” and so Paul concluded, “Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

The angel with a broken and now repaired wing called me back again to the grace of God that comes in hospitality, when we welcome each other in our brokenness. As it says in the New Testament Book of Hebrews, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for in doing so, some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2). Yes, to angels with broken wings, they are most adept at announcing God’s loving presence.

Death Clothes; Resurrection Love

I spent part of Thursday morning at Manna House sorting through clothing donations. On this particular morning, among the clothes I sorted, were some from a young man who died a little more than a week ago. His sister and her husband brought the clothes to Manna House on Tuesday.  Such donations of clothing from the deceased are not unusual. Over the years, we have often received donations of clothing that belonged to someone who had died. 

But this was the first time I started to reflect on how the receiving and sorting of clothes from those who have died is a holy task. I think I am beginning to see this now because I am still reflecting on my Mom’s death this past February. After she died, I sorted through her belongings with my sister and brothers. Though we certainly kept mementos, we had to let go of a great deal, including most of her clothing. In our grief, we had to let go of many things that would remind us of her. In my grief I am trying to learn how to live with love in the face of death. I am trying to nourish compassion and love and openness to God by acceptance of vulnerability and death.

This shapes how I see the giving of the deceased’s clothing as a holy moment. Those who have lost a loved one come to donate clothing they have seen the deceased wear. The old saying that “clothes make the man” point to an intimate reality about clothing; what we wear reflects our personalities, our work, our leisure, our sense of style (or lack thereof). In this way, the clothing of the person who has died still reflects something of his or her spirit. To give away their clothing is an acceptance of their death. It is part of the hard work of grieving. To let go of the clothing of the deceased is to let go, again, of the person who has died. For me to receive that clothing is to acknowledge the loss of those who grieve and to participate in their time of grieving. This is holy work, to grieve with those who grieve.

The giving of the deceased’s clothing is a holy moment, too, because the people who are grieving also affirm their desire for others to have this clothing. They honor the deceased by offering the clothing of the deceased for continued use, for people on the streets to be well-dressed, as well-dressed as the person they loved. The clothing is handed on so that others may have what they need. There is a graciousness in letting go while in grief so that others may receive. At the same time, the grief itself is lightened by the knowledge that others will use this clothing, others will appreciate in their lives a good pair of pants, or a comfortable shirt.

In light of my faith and my Mom’s death, I reflect on this holy moment of receiving the clothes of the dead by recalling a central mystery of Christianity, the cross and the resurrection. The clothing to be donated comes to me as a sign of death. I know from my Mom’s death that death’s power was palpable in the grief I felt not only when my Mom died, but also when her belongings were gathered up to be given away. How hard it was to bag up the very clothes that reminded me of the one I loved. Yet, as I found after my Mom’s death, and as I have seen at Manna House, the giving of the clothing for others to use is a sign of compassion and love in the midst of grieving the loss of a loved one. This clothing offered for others to use moves beyond the reality of death to the reality of ongoing life. Giving the clothing of the one who died is an act of love. And this love is not only what makes life possible, that love is not ended by death. 

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.”—Robert Frost, from “Mending Wall”

Manna House reopened today. We were closed last week due to repeated break-ins. In the past six weeks we have had more break-ins and attempted break-ins than in our past fifteen years. I think our last break-in was more than ten years ago. 

The person or persons breaking in were quite determined. They used a crowbar to pry off security bars on windows and bust through doors. Once inside they did additional damage to interior doors that were locked. And they rummaged about looking for things to steal creating additional messes. 

Over the past few weeks, we have gone to work, repairing, replacing, and reinforcing doors and windows. We also cleared tree limbs and other brush that might obscure views of the house from the street. Since not much was taken (there is not much to take), we also restocked and got rooms back in order.

But beyond these physical repairs and clean up, I have needed time to for spiritual repair. I need time to remember why I do this work and who I seek to serve. I have to address my anger, frustration, and feelings of despair.

One way to do this was to talk with our guests. On the mornings we were closed, I went to Manna House. I stood on the front porch and greeted guests as they arrived and shared with them the news that we were not open. Then we talked about the break-ins. They found the break-ins as confusing as I did. And, as they talked they offered me some reassurance.

“Why would anyone break in here?” one guest asked, “There ain’t nothing to take. You give it all away.”

“Sorry this is happening. It don’t make no sense.”

“Isn’t everything in here donations? What’s to take?”

“Evil abounds.”

“Damn, I hate missing my shower, but I understand.”

“I’ll pray for you all.”

I also took time to simply be at Manna House, in silence, and in prayer. The space felt desecrated in some way. These break-ins felt personal, like whoever was doing this was attacking the hospitality we seek to offer at Manna House. Was it a disgruntled guest? Was it someone I had angered? Why so determined to get in and do damage to this place? Or were these break-ins the work of someone who could care less about Manna House? Is Manna House just another place where there might be something of value to steal?

            I do not have answers to those questions. But as I have sat with them, a few things have emerged to keep me going. Manna House is a place of hospitality, where we welcome people and share needed goods. But Manna House is also a place with more resources than someone on the streets or otherwise in poverty. Our fence, our security bars and locked doors, are all signs of holding onto things, of trying to shut some out on some days and at some times. During certain days and hours, we are walling some out. I have no doubt, as we wall out some, we do give some offence. I know we give offence by the anger that comes when I have said “No” to a guest’s request, for clothing, for a shower, for a backpack. My “no” always has a good reason (boundaries, limits, our hours of operation being sustainable), but that good reason is from my perspective, my place of privilege, my place of power. My good reasons will not assuage the anger a guest may feel. And such anger may well have led to these break-ins. 

            I have had to remind myself that Manna House, the work of hospitality I do there with others, is a sign of grace, but also of sin. The hospitality is the grace. The sin is that the goods of this earth are not shared justly, and that even hospitality reflects on some level a divide between “haves” and “have-nots.” I am not saying such sin means Manna House should be broken into (just as I would not say we should do away with our fence and locked doors and security bars on the windows). I am saying, I need to avoid the self-righteousness which feeds my anger and discouragement about these break-ins. I need to realize that even in the good of hospitality I share, I am not addressing the deepest hurt and injustices that feed the evil of break-ins. I need to realize this is God’s work in a broken world, not my work.

            When Manna House reopened today, that good of hospitality was shared again. And the guests did as they so often do, they offered me pastoral care. “Don’t take it personally,” one guest said, “just keep doing what you do. A better day is coming. You wait and see.”

Lately, Jesus, Dorothy Day, and St. Therese of Lisieux have gone to work on my soul. I had succumbed to the deadly “bigger is better” and “busier is better” viruses. There were mornings at Manna House when I wondered if it was worth our even staying open. Given the risk to ourselves and to our guests, and the small amount of hospitality we were offering, should we even keep our reduced schedule of two mornings a week, from 8:00-10:000am?

Part of this questioning no doubt came from my sense of the paucity of what we were offering compared to the “glory days.” Pre-pandemic we were open three mornings a week from 8:00-11:30am. Typically, we would manage twenty-five or more people for showers, fifty-one or more for socks and hygiene, and three to four hundred cups of coffee served to several hundred guests. Now we had two mornings a week from 8:00-10:00am, six people for showers, maybe thirty for socks and hygiene, and a hundred or so cups of coffee for maybe sixty guests all total.

Part of my questioning also came from the slower pace for myself at Manna House. With fewer guests, on many mornings I found myself with a significant amount of “down time”—when there was little or nothing to do but wait for another person to finish his shower, so the next guest could be called in.

I know I was also mourning not only the reductions in service, but also the loss of relationships with people on the streets and others who came to Manna House each day we were open. Those relationships relied upon offering a place where it was comfortable to come and hang out. With our limitations on going into the house (one person at a time for use of the bathroom, and one person at a time for showers), we did everything else outside, including the coffee serving and “socks and hygiene.” It was not that comfortable for hanging out. For the people with a place to stay, the choice to stay away was easy. And many of the people on the streets likely found warmer places to go. In either case, the community at Manna House was smaller.

In my mourning and questioning, I heard the voice of Jesus say, 
“‘Come unto me and rest;
lay down, thou weary one, lay down
thy head upon my breast.’
I came to Jesus as I was,
so weary, worn and sad.”

And I listened as I rested, and Jesus said, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches” (Luke 13:18–19).

Then I heard Dorothy Day say, “by little and by little,” we are made whole by the small things, chosen deliberately and repeated each day in the service of the poor.

Then I heard St. Therese of Lisieux say that I should seek the “Little Way” in which “What matters in life is not great deeds but great love.” The key is not performance but relationship.

In the spirit of the little way of the mustard seed, Jesus, Dorothy, and Therese called me to embrace the gift of the smaller, the slower, the fewer. In this gift, I have space for practicing the presence of God. At Manna House this means I can slow down and recognize God’s presence in each guest as “Christ comes in the stranger’s guise” (see Matthew 25:31-46). When I am not so rushed, I can see each person’s dignity, and listen more carefully to each person. I can also take the time to sit for conversation.  

On Thursday, this gift of the smaller meant I sat down with a couple of guests, one black and one white. I listened to their stories about when they were younger. I was gifted as I saw their eyes brighten and smiles come across their faces as they reminisced about growing up in the country. They had simple stories about hunting, swimming, and taking care of “chores.” For a few minutes we were all in another place, a smaller place, a simpler place. Bigger and better took a back seat to the beauty of being with each other. And it was good.