Offering the liberation of presence

As I help prepare dinner in my house, the echo of countless overlapping conversations assails me. In a five-minute span a few nights ago I heard at least a dozen different and entirely unrelated stories.

One man across from me described surviving the Midwestern winter in a house with no heat or electricity. Another talked of travels across the world, the end of those ventures with his release from the Army, and his subsequent difficulties finding any sort of productive place in society. A woman described the simple joy of being able to chew after living for years with teeth that desperately needed to be pulled.

Not exactly the normal type of conversation you might expect to hear when coming home from work -- unless, of course, you live a particular lifestyle.

For the past four months I’ve been staying at the Holy Family Catholic Worker House in Kansas City, Mo. I am serving as a Lasallian Volunteer, one of many post-college youths placed across the nation in community with the Christian Brothers of De La Salle to empower those who have been marginalized by society.

Dedicated to a life of nonviolence and solidarity with the impoverished, Dorothy Day opened the first Catholic Worker house with Peter Maurin in New York City in 1933. Wishing to live out the works of mercy, they opened their doors and offered food, company and a kind ear to those that stopped in. Inspired by Peter and Dorothy’s example, individual Catholic Worker houses live out the Gospel by providing different types of hospitality across the world.

The primary ministry of our Kansas City house is to serve dinner six nights a week and breakfast on four mornings. The meals are open; anyone can come for food and fellowship. Many of our guests are homeless, experiencing the trials of living on unlivable wages.

So many things amaze me about the Worker’s ministry: the sheer number of volunteers who give up time to help cook and serve; the incredibly enduring spirit of our guests, who have been through so much; the support of other local communities that understand the trials of such an undertaking as ours.

Many things also overwhelm me. Every day more than 100 people come through our front door, each with pressing needs: to drink some clean water, to find help to pay for medications or local bus passes, or to simply have someone sit and listen to them. I end up feeling surrounded by people asking for help, as if stuck in the middle of a never-ending storm of human grief and suffering.

Simply because of the ratio of guests to volunteers it’s inevitable that some will be neglected, go unheard, or find themselves treated in a manner none of us would consider right or fair. Worse, some may simply be told no -- a person without the money for our half-priced bus passes may be told they are out of luck, a person who desperately needs help with a prescription but has used up his or her voucher for the month may be left with no option but to live with their illness for another month.

Each guest who hears the no, of course, is unique and important. Each has much to teach us about life. And if we are to take the scriptures as meaning what they say, each of these is Christ -- representing the divine presence here on earth.

So, at least in some way, we say no to the Lord when we refuse the bus pass or the prescription voucher. Yet, how else can we function? We are only a few facing so many. We only provide small, temporary and personal solutions as we wait for society’s more complete response.

However, in the midst of this failure I think we provide something more important than any service or good ever could -- perhaps even something much more faithful. We provide presence.

For so many people we are the only ears that take the time to listen, the only people to bother to ask to hear our guests’ stories. In this presence we try to acknowledge their equality and our place with them in God’s love.

Day once said that hospitality is the opening of our hearts to the needs of others. Our worship is the presence of our lives with the many Christs among us who are so neglected by society.

It is worship that continually challenges us.

Knowing that we have little to offer the toothless woman is at best frustrating. At worst it can be destructive, driving one to fill every need until all the energy is gone.

But perhaps in offering all that we have -- our actual presence with her in her struggle -- we find a kind of liberation for both her and us.

Joshua J. McElwee is NCR editorial intern. His e-mail address is jmcelwee@ncronline.org.