LA in the summer
Damn it's been a long while since I updated this blog.
I'm in Los Angeles right now watching the phones at the LA Catholic Worker. I'm an intern here until the 7th of August and I've been keeping really busy. Our average day at the kitchen starts at 7:00am with breakfast and coffee and waking up. Then we all pile into a big van and drive to the soup kitchen located in the heart of skid row. We open with a prayer and then we get to work making the salad, stirring giant pots of soup or chilli or stew, buttering and slicing bread and serving ice water to the people who have started to line up as early as 9:00am. Our community here has a daily vigil near the Federal Building and so someone will go to our usual spot with a sign to keep the protest going that person leads the reflection at the end of our day.
We are not a missionary organisation.
I can't stress this enough, often when I tell people about the work that we do here in LA or about the Catholic Worker movement in general it seems that people think that because we're Christian and serving food to peoplee that we have some mandate to lead people to God and to pray over them and prosteletize. That's not what we are about and that's not what this movement is about. If people are lead to God by our actions then it is the work of God intervening in their lives and is hopefully as a result of the consistency with which the people here live what they believe. We don't nor have we ever prayed over the people eating with us nor do we make the hungry listen to sermons, there are actual missions in the neighbourhood and that's their bag.
The Catholic Worker movement is and has always been firstly about recognizing Christ in other people and uppon seeing him there, serving that person as though they were Christ. This means we are all about practicing what has been called the works of mercy, these are:
feeding the hungry
giving drink to the thirsty
clothing the naked
sheltering the homeless
caring for the sick
visiting the imprisoned
burrying the dead
with the exception of the last one the LA Catholic Worker engages in all of these. At our soup kitchen we feed and give drink to the people of skid row, when we recieve donations of clothing or blankets they are given away to all who need them, there is a small clinic which provides medical care and a dentist who works for free providing care for people who could never otherwise afford dental work.
The house here was donated to the community back in the seventies and has somewhere in the neighbourhood of fifteen bedrooms many of which are occupied by long and medium term guests. The LA Catholic Worker doesn't operate on a shelter model, if someone asks to move in it's voted on by the community and if there's a room free and nobody objects then they are welcome to move in and stay as long as they like with no obligations put uppon them other than that they stay sober and don't drink or do drugs.
It gets hot here and sometimes the work is tiring but it's not without its rewards. The kitchen closes at noon and by two we are all home and free for the rest of the day. We eat dinner together every night with different people taking turns to cook. We eat what we serve at the kitchen and rest in the afternoons and evenings. Occasionally someone will come and give a talk or there will be some presentation like a documentary followed by discussion and we do other things together like community meetings to divide up the chores for the coming week and to plan protest actions and of course there's lots of time to relax.
No one in the community needs to work joe jobs to keep food coming in or money in the bank, all the food and money that we recieve from donors and organisations is held in common and there is always enough for everyone.
If you want to learn more about the Catholic Worker movement or the LA community you can go to
www.catholicworker.org
www.ctholicworker.com
and
www.lacatholicworker.org
That's pretty much what's been going on in my life. The other thing that's been taking yp my time has been The Christian Radical, maintaining our blog and putting the zine together it's kind of eaten up a lot of my blog energy. I'll try and write more here but for now don't expect a lot.
I'm in Los Angeles right now watching the phones at the LA Catholic Worker. I'm an intern here until the 7th of August and I've been keeping really busy. Our average day at the kitchen starts at 7:00am with breakfast and coffee and waking up. Then we all pile into a big van and drive to the soup kitchen located in the heart of skid row. We open with a prayer and then we get to work making the salad, stirring giant pots of soup or chilli or stew, buttering and slicing bread and serving ice water to the people who have started to line up as early as 9:00am. Our community here has a daily vigil near the Federal Building and so someone will go to our usual spot with a sign to keep the protest going that person leads the reflection at the end of our day.
We are not a missionary organisation.
I can't stress this enough, often when I tell people about the work that we do here in LA or about the Catholic Worker movement in general it seems that people think that because we're Christian and serving food to peoplee that we have some mandate to lead people to God and to pray over them and prosteletize. That's not what we are about and that's not what this movement is about. If people are lead to God by our actions then it is the work of God intervening in their lives and is hopefully as a result of the consistency with which the people here live what they believe. We don't nor have we ever prayed over the people eating with us nor do we make the hungry listen to sermons, there are actual missions in the neighbourhood and that's their bag.
The Catholic Worker movement is and has always been firstly about recognizing Christ in other people and uppon seeing him there, serving that person as though they were Christ. This means we are all about practicing what has been called the works of mercy, these are:
feeding the hungry
giving drink to the thirsty
clothing the naked
sheltering the homeless
caring for the sick
visiting the imprisoned
burrying the dead
with the exception of the last one the LA Catholic Worker engages in all of these. At our soup kitchen we feed and give drink to the people of skid row, when we recieve donations of clothing or blankets they are given away to all who need them, there is a small clinic which provides medical care and a dentist who works for free providing care for people who could never otherwise afford dental work.
The house here was donated to the community back in the seventies and has somewhere in the neighbourhood of fifteen bedrooms many of which are occupied by long and medium term guests. The LA Catholic Worker doesn't operate on a shelter model, if someone asks to move in it's voted on by the community and if there's a room free and nobody objects then they are welcome to move in and stay as long as they like with no obligations put uppon them other than that they stay sober and don't drink or do drugs.
It gets hot here and sometimes the work is tiring but it's not without its rewards. The kitchen closes at noon and by two we are all home and free for the rest of the day. We eat dinner together every night with different people taking turns to cook. We eat what we serve at the kitchen and rest in the afternoons and evenings. Occasionally someone will come and give a talk or there will be some presentation like a documentary followed by discussion and we do other things together like community meetings to divide up the chores for the coming week and to plan protest actions and of course there's lots of time to relax.
No one in the community needs to work joe jobs to keep food coming in or money in the bank, all the food and money that we recieve from donors and organisations is held in common and there is always enough for everyone.
If you want to learn more about the Catholic Worker movement or the LA community you can go to
www.catholicworker.org
www.ctholicworker.com
and
www.lacatholicworker.org
That's pretty much what's been going on in my life. The other thing that's been taking yp my time has been The Christian Radical, maintaining our blog and putting the zine together it's kind of eaten up a lot of my blog energy. I'll try and write more here but for now don't expect a lot.
posted by Chris Rooney | 4:38 PM
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