Staying with the Catholic Workers

A big Adventure

During July, I was fortunate to spend two weeks with the London Catholic Workers and two weeks with a city centre priest in Bradford. We went as a family in order that we could all explore vocation together but also have an experience outside of parish ministry that might inform whatever comes next be that parish-focussed or otherwise. We also went camping in Cornwall for two weeks straight after (booked long before the placement) so we had to prepare our two girls for six weeks away from home: a very big adventure for two little girls and quite a journey for the grown-ups too!

Who are the Catholic Workers?

The Catholic Worker movement began in 1930s New York; during the Great Depression. Dorothy Day (Activist, journalist, and convert to Roman Catholicism) and Peter Maurin (French Catholic peasant and agriculturalist) drew together a group of people committed to living out their Christian faith by being alongside the poorest and living simply in order to help others know God’s abundant life. Along with Ammon Hennacy they were also committed to challenge violence and injustice wherever they found it.

Today there are hundreds of Catholic Workers ‘houses of hospitality’ mostly in the USA but also around Europe. Each of these houses is different but they sit within the values and commitments of the original pioneers: Dorothy and Peter.

Sophie, and I went with our girls to stay with the London Catholic Workers at their farmhouse just outside London. One of its founders, Scott Albrecht has been to speak at St Augustine’s Church, Matson and his wife Maria has been named one of five Catholic Women of the Year for 2011 recently.

The Rhythm of the Day

The Catholic Worker Farmhouse is a diverse community rooted in the Roman Catholic Tradition. Some people are committed to the place for the long-term, others are short-term volunteers, others are there because they have nowhere else to go and there stay is for as long or as little as they need.

Because of all this there needs to be an agreed rhythm to the days and weeks; taking the strain out of living together as strangers. So members of the community, along with interns and other volunteers meet each day for Morning prayer at 8am. Morning prayer follows the Catholic Missal but includes a generous amount of silence, bible study and intercessions. I used this time both to be rooted in the needs of the community as well as keep myself anchored back in Matson by praying daily for the needs in our own parish.

Morning Prayer was always followed by discussion on the tasks of the day and any particular pastoral needs of guests. It may be that a guest need help finding work or with legal advocacy of may need money for something. It may be that a new guest is due to arrive and there is rarely much information before she does. Most of the referrals come through the Red Cross or similar agencies that know that Scott and Maria and friends are keen to help if they can.

Every day there is some work to do in the garden and I found this a good exercise in staying in the moment. I am flighty by nature and have a monkey-mind that always wants to jump to the next thing. This kind of work, entered into reflectively is in the Benedictine tradition (think Prinknash Abbey) of seeing work as prayer and prayer as important work. As well as gardening there was often DIY jobs, or car trips to pick up donations of food or other goods.

The rule of the house was that the Kitchen had to be vacated between three and six pm so that whoever was on the rota could cook without interference. With a small kitchen and up to twenty adults plus children rules like this are essential for sanity! Anyone on site at six is expected to come together for the main meal where the Grace is informally said and anything the whole community needs to talk about can be discussed.

Evening Prayer was not part of the rhythm of the day but Sophie and I would usually meet at the lake after the girls were in bed to pray together overlooking the beautiful lake that the farmhouse backs on to.

Wednesday evenings were ‘fun night’ when the ladies would get together and have a social event. While were there Sophie organised both of these and felt it a real privilege to be serving the ladies there in this way. Friday’s were usually film night and although there is no ‘day off’ when you are at the Catholic Worker house Sophie and I managed an evening at the pub towards the end of our stay to have some private time together and to unpack how we felt about everything we had seen and done.

Thursday afternoon included a weekly vigil at nearby Northwood. Northwood is home to a US/UK military intelligence centre. It is where much of the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq are planned and orchestrated. There in leafy London Suburbia is a centre for the study of war but the prophets tell us we should “study war no more” and Jesus said we should love our neighbour so the Catholic Workers vigil and pamphlet nearby in order to remind people of their need to resist the constant warmongering of governments. This weekly act of witness is energised by living with women whose broken lives are a direct result of the decisions made behind the barbed wire face at Northwood HQ.

Those who work at the farmhouse are expected to have spiritual direction or counselling on Fridays at least fortnightly. I came to see how important this was after being there just five days and suddenly realising how weighed down I was feeling by being confronted with the way our lifestyles and politics in the UK have led to the displacement of so many people – people I shared breakfast and garden with now daily and whose presence I could not ignore.

A Catholic priest once wrote, “The poor tell us who we are and the prophets tell us who we should be, so we hide the poor and kill the prophets.” At the Farmhouse there is nowhere to hide the poor and the prophets speak for themselves.

On Sundays many of the guests go to local churches as do members of the community I went to the Anglican Church just five minutes walk away and with whom the farmhouse has good links and then on to a local Baptist Church with some of the guests.

The Unexpected

Having a rhythm of the community helps with the more spontaneous needs that a household like this throws up and in being available to respond to national events. While we were at the Farmhouse a group of three Swedish Bible College students arrived. They had heard about the Catholic Worker Farmhouse while at college and wanted to know more. There had been plans for a ‘Peace School’ for this had to be cancelled when Scott went into hospital.

We decided that as well as give them an introduction to the house we would offer some workshops on political theology. I led a session on Transforming unjust structures and a Christian response to Wikileaks. Wikileaks is a news agency organisation that securely handles information from whistleblowers. Their most infamous example is a young US Army information analyst who released video footage of US helicopter gunmen taking great glee in gunning down innocent civilians, including children and an international journalist in a suburb of Iraq.

While we were staying at the farmhouse, Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks was facing an appeal hearing at the high court. The Swedish government are trying to extradite him without charge but on allegation of sexual assault. Those of us who believe this is a miscarriage of justice waited to greet him in and out of court and to pray for him and lobby for him outside. I spent much of the day in the public gallery listening to his case in exhausting detail. The whole day was emotionally drawn and reminded me of how physically tiring just commuting in London can be. But it is also a reminder of how the powerful don’t like their secrets being exposed and will stop at nothing to silence their critics.

Gratefulness

Our visit seemed brief but formative. I think if we lived there we would miss being part of a wider community and all that this means; the farmhouse is fairly self-contained in terms of day-to-day living and interactions with the outside world – looking for donations, speaking at events, vigils, counselling - are managed by those inside the community. There is not much room for accidental community as one would experience it in the parish. But there are those within the local churches who faithfully support what happens and there is accountability to the wider Roman Catholic Church that provides its own checks and balances. 

But there are thousands of women and children just like those living at the farmhouse who are either sleeping rough or going from sofa to floor at other people’s homes around the country. They have fled terrors we can’t imagine and found our government either won’t help them or tries to send them back. There are even more trafficked women who find themselves homeless and running scared in Britain having followed a dream and discovered a nightmare. The Catholic Workers stand alongside these folk and encourage us to do the same. They live in simplicity and trust God for their daily needs just as Jesus advised for a worry-free life. They give me hope and challenge in equal measure and for that I am grateful.