Called to community living, but not to religious life, at least in its traditional sense, I set out to find a place where I could work, play, and pray with people who shared this calling, in all its joys and pains, and were living out the love of a compassionate God together. Hence began my theoretical romance with the Catholic Worker, love child of none other than old-time radical Dorothy Day and her philosophical French counterpart, Peter Maurin.
The Catholic Worker movement today is represented by some two hundred houses of hospitality and sustainable farms across the United States and in Germany, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K. Since the movement has ties to anarchy, there is no CW headquarters. Each house has its own personality and focus. There’s a running joke among the workers themselves that goes, “Have you heard about the Catholic Workers? They’re not Catholic and they don’t work.”
But in general, the stock for a CW stew is stirred together from a variety of the following zesty ingredients:
community—in which workers live in voluntary poverty alongside (literally, in the same house as) the involuntarily poor
hospitality to those on the fringes of society
resistance of the unjust structures in society (through newsletters, protests, civil disobedience, and daily nonviolence)
study and discussion of the issues at hand (from nuclear proliferation to hunger and beyond)
prayer—to seek the radically welcoming God who calls the world to transformative action
In two weeks, I fly into the desert to get my taste of these lofty principles on the ground. As a romantic idealist, I’ve experienced my share of disillusionment and am going in with the expectation that it may not be…what I expect. Loving unbrushed, untamed, unruly humans—which include the whole earthen species when you see them before breakfast—is not really a glamorous task. But my hope is to learn and to grow, and I think there’s plenty of room for that.
The Catholic Worker movement today is represented by some two hundred houses of hospitality and sustainable farms across the United States and in Germany, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K. Since the movement has ties to anarchy, there is no CW headquarters. Each house has its own personality and focus. There’s a running joke among the workers themselves that goes, “Have you heard about the Catholic Workers? They’re not Catholic and they don’t work.”
But in general, the stock for a CW stew is stirred together from a variety of the following zesty ingredients:
community—in which workers live in voluntary poverty alongside (literally, in the same house as) the involuntarily poor
hospitality to those on the fringes of society
resistance of the unjust structures in society (through newsletters, protests, civil disobedience, and daily nonviolence)
study and discussion of the issues at hand (from nuclear proliferation to hunger and beyond)
prayer—to seek the radically welcoming God who calls the world to transformative action
In two weeks, I fly into the desert to get my taste of these lofty principles on the ground. As a romantic idealist, I’ve experienced my share of disillusionment and am going in with the expectation that it may not be…what I expect. Loving unbrushed, untamed, unruly humans—which include the whole earthen species when you see them before breakfast—is not really a glamorous task. But my hope is to learn and to grow, and I think there’s plenty of room for that.
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