Houses of Hospitality

Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple, Monreale Cathedral, Palermo

I am the newest volunteer at GCH, here for a short(ish) stay of six months. I’ve been invited to write about coming to the community, and I thought of contrasting this place to Camphill, since I volunteered in one of those communities for ten months.

The quickest way to draw out the difference between the two is the following—at the end of January, I was arrested at a Palestine protest. If this happened to me at Camphill, even if I wasn’t roundly shown the door, I feel sure that the sense of having committed a grievous faux pas would have made me leave.

Long term Camphillers tend to be left leaning, but socially quite conservative. Everyone knows they are involved in a good work (providing support to adults with learning disabilities), and that is enough to be getting on with.

Large scale disruption of society is not in the Camphill credo. I got the sense that in the early days, the socially conscious sensibilities of the sixties were more prevalent. But with the introduction of the Care Inspectorate, comprehensive legislation around the care of vulnerable adults, and the fact that most community income now comes directly from government spending, Camphill and revolution aren’t compatible.

In contrast, while we agreed we should get better at preparing for the worst when someone goes out to protest, here at GCH, they stand by a comrade in need. Never have I had the sense that everyone is contemplating what a maladapted hooligan I am.

Here, there is an understanding that we are in a shared struggle against an unjust status quo, each working in whatever capacity suits us best. And that, at the end of the day, a few tables will be upturned in the temple before the kingdom comes.

 A further difference between GCH and Camphill is how comfortable I feel here. There were times at Camphill when I felt like my whole personality was a faux pas. I arrived fresh from a Scottish council estate and a chaotic failed attempt at a commune, and the very wholesomeness of Camphill life alienated me.

The typical Camphill volunteer is a middle class German teen. Living there was my first encounter with so many peers from financially stable, two parent families. It seemed like everyone’s mother and father were together in holy matrimony, and on top of that, they were both heart surgeons.

The farm was the saving grace of Camphill for me. It was an open space where I could run around, get muddy, wield pitchforks, and generally swear and shout. I had free expression at tea break, messing around with the autistic service users I came to have genuine friendships with. It was the place where I was able to be outspoken and test the boundaries of Camphill social convention. And if I don’t flatter myself too much, I think sometimes I cheered things up.

But at the opposite end of that spectrum were whole community social events, which were frequent, performative, and mandatory. These wholesome gatherings always put me on edge. I felt like a coarse, ill mannered ned forced to imitate, if not quite ‘high society’, still a type of society I had never experienced. I always felt like a fugitive about to be unmasked and would sneak off for as many cigarettes as would get me through the evening.

In contrast, here at GCH, I genuinely enjoy it when we do things together. And I don’t feel like I need to stretch and strain to be something different than who I am. Maybe it’s because I’m a few years older and wiser. But I think it’s also something hard baked into this community.

The whole place is aimed at reaching out to the disenfranchised, people who’ve been handed way worse cards than me and who don’t even have the security of citizenship in the country they live in.

Camphill is also trying to help people, but it does it in a totally different way. Camphill’s approach is pedagogical. It ultimately aims at making people with learning disabilities better. Teaching them to do useful work, to feel responsible for others, and to be less chaotic in their interactions.

The approach here couldn’t be more different. This community certainly doesn’t see itself as teaching guests how to behave or integrate into British society. It is just an open hand, a point of rest, an attempt to offer compassion.

Maybe that’s why I feel so comfortable here. To stay at Camphill, I felt I would have to cut off large parts of myself and let them disappear. Let all my bad memories be overwritten by pleasant dinner parties and cold dips in the loch.

Here, there is no such pressure. This community doesn’t turn itself away from the pain of the world, seeking to insulate its members within an ideal, mini society. This community is here to engage with and confront that suffering.

I suppose that is to be expected when the image of a crucified God is at the heart of a place. It is really no wonder I feel comfortable being here with all my wounds.

(Disclaimer: despite my moaning, Camphill is pretty nice. I love going back there as a visitor, it is just not somewhere I would commit my life to. I wouldn’t advise anyone against volunteering there.)

Eva Martinez

Notes on Failure

Dorothy Day, John Orris

“Certainly the Catholic Worker movement has failed.” Dorothy Day wrote those words in a 1947 editorial reflecting on the movement’s first fifteen years. There are plenty of grounds to contest them—look at the miracle whereby this movement, with no structure, no consistent leadership, and of

ten no money, has persisted for almost a century and now in more than one hundred communities. Countless people have been housed, fed, and clothed, and their dignity upheld, in spite of all the efforts of the State, the economic order, and the devil to deny it. But this, of course, was not Dorothy’s point. She was reflecting on all that had been left undone, and the extent to which the Revolution of the Heart had not been fulfilled—both in the flawed individuals who made up the communities, and in the Church which had largely ignored the movement’s original call for a house of hospitality in every parish. The labourers were very few, and not always effective, and the need was unfathomably great.

In addition to our own house of hospitality, we ran our own night shelter between February and November last year. We provided ten beds and accommodated twenty people across the year. Every night without fail we provided a freshly cooked dinner, a warm bed, and breakfast to people who would otherwise have spent most nights on the street. Beside our own work, it was enabled by the many people who gave their time as volunteer cooks, and all those who provide the donations which pay for the heating, water, and food. I am very grateful to all those who made it possible to stay open, and for the privilege of doing a little of God’s work in proclaiming the good news to the poor—all the works of mercy are forms of evangelism, because the good news includes the fact that it is not necessary that anybody in this city should have to sleep outside in the rain, if we love our neighbours enough to invite them into our homes.

Still, we were always conscious of how little we were offering people—a folding bed in a rundown old church hall which we couldn’t keep as warm as we would have liked, with one shower and two toilets down a steep flight of stairs which were difficult for some of the guests, and having every morning to leave until night, whatever the weather. It was much less than they deserved. If we are welcoming Jesus into our house in the guise of the poor, it is surely appropriate to feel a little shame at the paucity of our hospitality for the King of Heaven, even if it is because we have little to offer. Nor were we ever in a position to welcome the guests as equals – with a limited service, there was more conflict, often about use of the shower, and we had to mediate. Ensuring that the guests had an environment in which they felt safe obliged us to wield authority and enforce rules. Catholic Worker communities generally want, as far as possible, for guests to be equal members of the community, but this is rarely achieved in practice. Certainly, in the night shelter the hierarchy between those giving and those receiving hospitality was always very apparent, so that beside our anxiety about the quality of the service, I felt a less useful anxiety about whether we were being ‘real’ Catholic Workers, which is, I suspect, more common in our communities than we generally acknowledge.

King Solomon in Old Age, Gustave Doré

By October we had come to the very difficult decision that we would not be able to keep the shelter open over the winter. The primary reason was that, straightforwardly, we were running out of money, and while a grant and an exceptionally generous donation have improved our situation in the last couple of months, the extra cost of the shelter, particularly in heating the hall through the winter, might have caused us serious problems. The other reason was that, on top of all our other work, many of us found the shelter exhausting, mentally and emotionally. The shelter was never intended to be permanent, but having extended it from its initial three months to the eventual ten months, it had become part of our life, and while the decision not to open in the first place would have been relatively easy, the decision to close it after nine months of operation was very difficult. I, for my part, was left with a sense of failure, which was to an extent irrational. Considered objectively, we did a very good job with our very limited resources, and the guests expressed humbling gratitude for what we had done. We were, moreover, very happy that all of them moved on to other accommodation rather than the street. Still, those whose cases were not resolved still face an indeterminate period of destitution, reliant on night shelters and the generosity of friends, and at the mercy of an inhumane border regime. Some of them may still be among the many thousands who will sleep on the streets of London this year.

It is difficult to feel a sense of success while these conditions continue. In the face of the vast suffering of this city—let alone the rest of the world—our efforts will always seem insufficient. Dorothy Day more than once reflected that Christ was a failure at the point of his crucifixion, and was victorious precisely in his failure; consequently, if we are setting out to follow him, we can expect to fail too, at least as the world understands it. The call is not to resign ourselves to these problems as though they were insoluble—in fact they are all solvable, and could be solved today if more people had a will to do so!— but to recognise that our sowing is worthwhile regardless of the extent to which we ourselves see or enjoy the reaping. This is almost a consolation. Still, I think it’s important for us to acknowledge, and allow ourselves to feel, the failure in our work, rather than strain to maintain an illusion, to ourselves or anyone else, that it is a constant unalloyed success. As Solomon knew, there is a time for mourning as well as a time for rejoicing.

Thomas Frost

Oily Money Out!

Landscape with Upright White Figures, Wassily Kandinsky

Every week across the City of London, oil and gas companies, climate deniers and far-right lobbyists meet for conferences, dinners and drink receptions. As they pop champagne corks and toast to their obscene profits, we are seeing the ef

fects of their actions across the world: extreme weather events, climate breakdown, and destruction of biodiversity. The climate crisis is being orchestrated in London. 

Fossil Free London—a group that I have been organising with since joining LCW—refuse to let this happen. Our group exists to make our city inhospitable to the oil and gas industry by disrupting their events and confronting them with the reality of the climate crisis.

Our goal is to shut down events that allow companies like Shell, BP or Equinor (to name but a few) to be present, and shatter the facade of their legitimacy. Not only do we refuse to let them party in peace, but we are there to confront them with the consequences of their actions. We tell them stories of the lives that they have destroyed, the biodiversity and communities that have been decimated. We are not there to engage in dialogue as we believe that the time for civilised conversation is over. 

Since joining Fossil Free London, I’ve managed to get into award dinners, conferences about gender equality in the fossil fuel industry, events about the use of AI, even a drinks reception of Republican Party Overseas members. Perhaps the most nerve-wracking was when we disrupted a venture capital event where Richard Tice (Deputy Leader of Reform UK) was speaking. It’s amazing what manner of mischief you can get up to with a confident stride and a business-like outfit! Our tactics vary depending on the type of event we are disrupting, but our aims remain the same: bring noise and disruption to spaces that need to hear the truth. 

Getting involved with Fossil Free London has made me realise how deep my grief for the climate is. Before every action, we take a moment to remind ourselves why we are here. We hear stories of obscene oil company profits or yet another supercharged climate disaster. We share stories of people we know whose lives have been turned upside down. Often when I go into these actions, I think of our guests, many of whom have travelled from countries that have been torn apart by the climate crisis (or conflicts over natural resources). Indeed, there is something particularly disturbing about how these companies exacerbate the issues that cause people to make dangerous journeys across borders, all the while calling fossil fuel extraction good, plain financial common-sense. 

Confronting the very people who are destroying our planet can be challenging: there have been times that I have come back from an action feeling rather shaken up. Perhaps this is because actions like these require you to bring your whole self. Physically, I have to be willing to be manhandled and dragged out of buildings by overly enthusiastic security guards (sometimes even by disgruntled event attendees). But it also requires you to believe that justice for the climate is intricately bound up in justice for displaced people everywhere. Unlike some climate groups that I have been involved with, Fossil Free London are clear that there cannot be climate justice without justice for Palestine, the destruction of fascism, and the liberation of all workers and people.

Our calling at the London Catholic Worker is to build community with some of the most marginalised people in our society. But we are also, crucially, a community of resistance. Dorothy Day once wrote that “we must cry out against injustice or by our silence consent to it”. For me, our hospitality work is informed and fuelled by our activism and vice versa- indeed, I truly believe that we cannot do one without the other. So while I do bring my rage and grief to these disruptions, I also bring my faith and, in turn, the Catholic Worker’s desire to create a new society formed by love and justice out of the shell of the old. I believe that one day we will live in a world where ‘justice [will] roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’ (Amos 5:24)- but we must fight in order to get there. 

Naomi Orrell