Cherith Brook (Kansas City)
If you ask folks on the street “which way to Cherith Brook?” they’ll just give you a confused look. Very few of those who come to “the shower house” know its official name, much less have they heard of the Catholic Worker movement. But if you need to get cleaned up, a change of clothes, a cup of coffee or breakfast on a Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday they know the best spot in town is on 12th street near Benton.
My visit with Cherith Brook was a bit of a reunion. Having lived there for most of 2014, there was a bodily sense of familiarity to see the huge mural adorning the shower house. The benches I slowly constructed 8 years ago are still around, though quite the worse for ware.
For 16 years now they’ve owned their two buildings. One a large brick house occupied by Eric and Jodi and their family and Catholic Worker guests just passing through, the other features 2 apartments used by CB community members above 2 store fronts. One of those ground facing spaces was rented out by a barber who preceded the community until his recent passing away. It’s now under renovation for use by the community.
The main work of Cherith Brook is providing showers. Each morning a list of 15-20ish folks is made, first come first serve, and when the time comes they are invited to enter two at a time to bathe. Guests are welcomed in after a temperature check and asked to wash their hands and grab a mask. The first stop is the clothing closet where they're welcome to peruse CB's big collection of clothes, separated by size and gender. They have it all (when they have it donated that is); t-shirts, collared shirts, pants, shorts, sweatshirts, jackets, shoes, socks, underwear.
They operate on a kind of ~take one leave one~ policy. Did you get a new shirt today? After your shower throw your dirty one in the laundry basket to be washed and put into the clothing room for tomorrow. Your shoes too small? Feel free to find a better pair but turn in the old to be washed. Its their way of making sure the clothing room stays stocked. Don’t have a sweatshirt but need one? That's ok too. No need to turn anything in in that instance.
Over where clean towels and washcloths are available you’ll also find a number of hygiene items; individual sizes of bars of soap, toothpaste shampoo, and conditioner, razors, toothbrushes, ibuprofen, lotion, hair ties, combs, sewing kits, reading glasses, and more. But there’s no need to worry for folks who don’t have an extra hand to carry all that, the showers are already stocked with large bottles of body wash, lotion, shampoo and conditioner.
Next guests head on over to their own private shower room. Maybe one is already open, or maybe they’ll need have a sit down on one of the chairs or couches in the waiting area. When its their turn, guests have 15 minutes before they'll hear a knock on the door warning that there's only 5 left. Folks spend that time as they like, its a full bathroom with toilet, shower, sink and mirror. After guests are all clean they can help themselves to use of the hair clippers in the waiting area (some days students from the barber college give cuts too) or to the use of the sink if they still need to brush their teeth or shave. The showers are cleaned by volunteers after each and every use to make sure they’re ready for the next person. This cleanliness is what separates CB’s showers from the rest.
CB anchors Eric and Jodi learned the art of providing showers as hospitality in their time at the now defunct Open Door Community in Atlanta. When they started up in KC they came to see this was the greatest need in their new home town. “As we’ve gotten older I’ve realized more and more how much we were formed by that experience of working at the Open Door,” reflected Jodi on my visit. “We probably would have never started offering showers if we hadn’t already seen how to do it, even if we’d known that was a huge need.”
“The bottle will still smell of the liquor it once held,” as Dorothy Day quoted Augustine.
Breakfast is talked about almost as a secondary project on shower mornings (there are more places in KC to get a meal than there are a decent shower) but it's loved by the people that come there almost as much (more people are able to eat than shower too!). If you don’t want to come in you can find coffee and donuts outside under their car ports (an addition made necessary by covid when the number of folks in their “cafe” was even more severely limited than it is now) but if you want to come in you’ll find a hot, home cooked meal fresh made by a CB community member.
Folks enter and after the same covid entry protocols as the showers find a spot at any of the dozen or so tables (approximately 6 feet apart) where one of the CB volunteers will ask them what they’d like to drink that morning, “Coffee, water, milk, juice?” and if they want a plate of food with everything on it. During my visit there were homemade enchiladas made entirely from scratch (sauces included!) by Luis one morning, sausage, eggs, hash browns, and biscuits and gravy provided by Lois on another, and Tammy’s special beef stroganoff the third, all served hot from the oven with a side of salad.
Thursday evening also features an open meal. Originally a more family style affair, covid caused a shift in how its served and now looks a lot more like thrice weekly breakfast. Some weeks a team of nurses operate a mobil health clinic out of the old barber shop at the same time.
Showers and breakfast aren’t Cherith Brook’s only project. Keeping with Catholic Worker co-founder Peter Maurin’s vision that we should “grow what you eat and eat what you grow” CB has the most extensive urban garden of Catholic Workers that I’ve yet come across. Dozens of garden beds fill their property, aided by 10 or so bee hives and a flock of chickens. There's fruit trees too; cherry, apple, pear, peach, jujubee, as well as black berries, raspberries, and strawberries. Looking for herbs? They grow their own parsley, lovage, cilantro, dill, basil, and a variety of mints dot the property.
What’s a Catholic Worker without a little resistance to the filthy rotten system? At Cherith Brook that often involves working besides local groups organizing with and for the working class; The Poor People’s Campaign, Stand Up KC (Fight for 15$), and the KC Tenants Union. The latter of which we protested alongside while I was in town pushing for better legal representation for tenants facing eviction.
Kansas City is also home to one of the US nuclear weapons industry’s most important sites, a huge plant operated by Honeywell producing non-nuclear components for The Bomb. Cherith Brook has been there since the beginning, hosting the Midwest CW Faith and Resistance retreat when it was still under construction back in 2011 (more than 50 CWs went to jail for that action!). I happened to be there for Memorial Day and tagged along with the community as they joined Peace Works KC in their annual protest at the front gate. A handful of folks with the gathering were arrested.
While my schedule didn’t allow me to sit in on their weekly business meeting (referred to by the Cherith Brook folks simply as “Agenda”) I was lucky enough to participate in some of their community time. My first evening fellow CW visitor Brian (in town for the nuke protest and on my list of CWs to visit later this summer) and I were welcomed with an informal happy hour featuring local beers and camp fire roasted kabobs. Tuesday evening dinner is shared together as a potluck meal and followed by evening prayer. CB uses The Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, a kind of justice oriented take on the more traditional Book of CommonPrayer for their prayer times throughout the week.
-----
I did have a day to go exploring the city on my all too quick visit. After Sunday mass at Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, known colloquially as “The Gold Dome” for its distinctive, locally famous architectural feature I spent a few hours just walking the streets of KC.
After a short stop at the long defunct castle like prison known as the “Kansas City Workhouse”, eventually I meandered over to Arthur Bryants for lunch, getting there just in time before the lunch rush pushed the line all the way out the door. I grabbed my food to go, forgoing the hot crowd of their dining area and sitting in a park adjoining my next stop, The National Negro Leagues Museum.
I was glad to see this place of learning was so well appreciated by folks seemingly from all walks of life, including a couple little league teams in their entirety. The crowd grew from the time I first went in to the point of challenging my covid comfort level, but I methodically made my way through the entirety of the exhibit. One of my favorite displays taught me that not only did the Negro Leagues provide the opportunity for black men who had been excluded from pro ball the opportunity to compete, but they also allowed women to play at a proffesional level. It was also fun to see that the Klan had lost their challenge to the Wichita Monrovians.
My visit with Cherith Brook was a bit of a reunion. Having lived there for most of 2014, there was a bodily sense of familiarity to see the huge mural adorning the shower house. The benches I slowly constructed 8 years ago are still around, though quite the worse for ware.
For 16 years now they’ve owned their two buildings. One a large brick house occupied by Eric and Jodi and their family and Catholic Worker guests just passing through, the other features 2 apartments used by CB community members above 2 store fronts. One of those ground facing spaces was rented out by a barber who preceded the community until his recent passing away. It’s now under renovation for use by the community.
The main work of Cherith Brook is providing showers. Each morning a list of 15-20ish folks is made, first come first serve, and when the time comes they are invited to enter two at a time to bathe. Guests are welcomed in after a temperature check and asked to wash their hands and grab a mask. The first stop is the clothing closet where they're welcome to peruse CB's big collection of clothes, separated by size and gender. They have it all (when they have it donated that is); t-shirts, collared shirts, pants, shorts, sweatshirts, jackets, shoes, socks, underwear.
They operate on a kind of ~take one leave one~ policy. Did you get a new shirt today? After your shower throw your dirty one in the laundry basket to be washed and put into the clothing room for tomorrow. Your shoes too small? Feel free to find a better pair but turn in the old to be washed. Its their way of making sure the clothing room stays stocked. Don’t have a sweatshirt but need one? That's ok too. No need to turn anything in in that instance.
Over where clean towels and washcloths are available you’ll also find a number of hygiene items; individual sizes of bars of soap, toothpaste shampoo, and conditioner, razors, toothbrushes, ibuprofen, lotion, hair ties, combs, sewing kits, reading glasses, and more. But there’s no need to worry for folks who don’t have an extra hand to carry all that, the showers are already stocked with large bottles of body wash, lotion, shampoo and conditioner.
Next guests head on over to their own private shower room. Maybe one is already open, or maybe they’ll need have a sit down on one of the chairs or couches in the waiting area. When its their turn, guests have 15 minutes before they'll hear a knock on the door warning that there's only 5 left. Folks spend that time as they like, its a full bathroom with toilet, shower, sink and mirror. After guests are all clean they can help themselves to use of the hair clippers in the waiting area (some days students from the barber college give cuts too) or to the use of the sink if they still need to brush their teeth or shave. The showers are cleaned by volunteers after each and every use to make sure they’re ready for the next person. This cleanliness is what separates CB’s showers from the rest.
CB anchors Eric and Jodi learned the art of providing showers as hospitality in their time at the now defunct Open Door Community in Atlanta. When they started up in KC they came to see this was the greatest need in their new home town. “As we’ve gotten older I’ve realized more and more how much we were formed by that experience of working at the Open Door,” reflected Jodi on my visit. “We probably would have never started offering showers if we hadn’t already seen how to do it, even if we’d known that was a huge need.”
“The bottle will still smell of the liquor it once held,” as Dorothy Day quoted Augustine.
Breakfast is talked about almost as a secondary project on shower mornings (there are more places in KC to get a meal than there are a decent shower) but it's loved by the people that come there almost as much (more people are able to eat than shower too!). If you don’t want to come in you can find coffee and donuts outside under their car ports (an addition made necessary by covid when the number of folks in their “cafe” was even more severely limited than it is now) but if you want to come in you’ll find a hot, home cooked meal fresh made by a CB community member.
Folks enter and after the same covid entry protocols as the showers find a spot at any of the dozen or so tables (approximately 6 feet apart) where one of the CB volunteers will ask them what they’d like to drink that morning, “Coffee, water, milk, juice?” and if they want a plate of food with everything on it. During my visit there were homemade enchiladas made entirely from scratch (sauces included!) by Luis one morning, sausage, eggs, hash browns, and biscuits and gravy provided by Lois on another, and Tammy’s special beef stroganoff the third, all served hot from the oven with a side of salad.
Thursday evening also features an open meal. Originally a more family style affair, covid caused a shift in how its served and now looks a lot more like thrice weekly breakfast. Some weeks a team of nurses operate a mobil health clinic out of the old barber shop at the same time.
Showers and breakfast aren’t Cherith Brook’s only project. Keeping with Catholic Worker co-founder Peter Maurin’s vision that we should “grow what you eat and eat what you grow” CB has the most extensive urban garden of Catholic Workers that I’ve yet come across. Dozens of garden beds fill their property, aided by 10 or so bee hives and a flock of chickens. There's fruit trees too; cherry, apple, pear, peach, jujubee, as well as black berries, raspberries, and strawberries. Looking for herbs? They grow their own parsley, lovage, cilantro, dill, basil, and a variety of mints dot the property.
What’s a Catholic Worker without a little resistance to the filthy rotten system? At Cherith Brook that often involves working besides local groups organizing with and for the working class; The Poor People’s Campaign, Stand Up KC (Fight for 15$), and the KC Tenants Union. The latter of which we protested alongside while I was in town pushing for better legal representation for tenants facing eviction.
Kansas City is also home to one of the US nuclear weapons industry’s most important sites, a huge plant operated by Honeywell producing non-nuclear components for The Bomb. Cherith Brook has been there since the beginning, hosting the Midwest CW Faith and Resistance retreat when it was still under construction back in 2011 (more than 50 CWs went to jail for that action!). I happened to be there for Memorial Day and tagged along with the community as they joined Peace Works KC in their annual protest at the front gate. A handful of folks with the gathering were arrested.
While my schedule didn’t allow me to sit in on their weekly business meeting (referred to by the Cherith Brook folks simply as “Agenda”) I was lucky enough to participate in some of their community time. My first evening fellow CW visitor Brian (in town for the nuke protest and on my list of CWs to visit later this summer) and I were welcomed with an informal happy hour featuring local beers and camp fire roasted kabobs. Tuesday evening dinner is shared together as a potluck meal and followed by evening prayer. CB uses The Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, a kind of justice oriented take on the more traditional Book of CommonPrayer for their prayer times throughout the week.
-----
I did have a day to go exploring the city on my all too quick visit. After Sunday mass at Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, known colloquially as “The Gold Dome” for its distinctive, locally famous architectural feature I spent a few hours just walking the streets of KC.
After a short stop at the long defunct castle like prison known as the “Kansas City Workhouse”, eventually I meandered over to Arthur Bryants for lunch, getting there just in time before the lunch rush pushed the line all the way out the door. I grabbed my food to go, forgoing the hot crowd of their dining area and sitting in a park adjoining my next stop, The National Negro Leagues Museum.
I was glad to see this place of learning was so well appreciated by folks seemingly from all walks of life, including a couple little league teams in their entirety. The crowd grew from the time I first went in to the point of challenging my covid comfort level, but I methodically made my way through the entirety of the exhibit. One of my favorite displays taught me that not only did the Negro Leagues provide the opportunity for black men who had been excluded from pro ball the opportunity to compete, but they also allowed women to play at a proffesional level. It was also fun to see that the Klan had lost their challenge to the Wichita Monrovians.
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