Theo's article in the December 2022 edition of The Catholic Agitator

So you're like the guy from the TV program Kung Fu, who is always travelling. You ever see that show from the 70s?” 

I had not.

“Well basically it is David Carradine as a…what do you call those guys…like a monk, and he just travels around town to town helping people all over the place. That’s kind of what you’re doing?” Matt asked sincerely. Matt lives in his truck on the streets of Columbia, Missouri, but comes to St. Francis House most days to get some dinner and take a shower. His cultural reference remains lost on me, I have yet to check out the TV series Kung Fu. 

After many months on the road visiting Catholic Workers around the midwest and northeast, maybe I have actually been helpful in some of the places as Matt’s Kung Fu comparison suggested. 

I guess I arrived at St. Isidore CW Farm in Wisconsin at a time when they were fretting about having enough firewood for the winter and I left them with a full stack. Pounds of produce and a couple dozen freshly mulched trees could testify to my time at Mustard Seed Farm in Ames, Iowa. I was run through the gauntlet doing intake at Philly's medi- cal clinic. My hands have graced dish water in New York City and Kansas City and weeded Catholic Worker garden beds all over the country.

But if I am honest, though, some- times I have not been so helpful. Sometimes I am just watching, seeing the many ways of doing the Catholic Worker. Learning about Chicago’s jail support network from Hope did not require much more of me than setting up some folding tables and chairs and letting folks know they can help themselves to snacks after they had been released from the Clark County Detention Center. There were other times when the work was literally just hanging out with the person “on house” or chatting with the folks showing up for food.

In these moments I have wondered if what I am doing is worthwhile. By capitalist calculations my time was not producing much when I sat there watching a house shift go by, feeling the rhythm of the community I am visiting that week.

But these internal doubts have come with encouragements all along the way. “I think what you are doing is GREAT for the movement,” Brian Terrell told me repeatedly during my visit to the Strangers and Guests CW Farm in Maloy, Iowa. “Really it is kind of inspiring,” suggested Eric of Cherith Brook in KC, MO. “It has been really nice to follow your CW sojourn,” Kateri messaged me from her home in Detroit as she kept up with the Catholic Worker travel blog I started. “It is definitely a dream of mine to have a few months of CW hopping.”

That my travels might be meaningful to other people was not even on my radar. After some time away from day-to-day Catholic Worker life I knew, I wanted to get back into the movement but I was not sure what or where that might look like. So I figured that in my time of transition I would take an extended trip, catch up with old friends and see some new places. It had been a long couple of pandemic years and I figured I was due for a little fun. 

It turns out a lot of people like to have another Catholic Worker visiting their community. It gives them a chance to hear about what is going on elsewhere in the movement and to trade old “war stories” (or anti-war stories as is often the case). I have been able to deepen relationships with many people. I have supposed that spending a week living with a Catholic Worker friend gives me insight and builds relationships equal to seeing them at seven Catholic Worker gatherings. 

I came of age at the Los Angeles CW, a “destination CW” I sometimes jest. It was not unusual for us to have individuals coming through, both new and old to the movement. Stick around a place like that long enough and you will make some CW friends from elsewhere eventually. But not everyone’s making the trip to rural Iowa to learn about the Catholic Worker, though more of them should.

It’s not just the people I have known for years that I have enjoyed spending time with along the way.  There have been people new to the movement and interns who have not met a Catholic Worker from outside their own community. They are curious about how the work is done elsewhere and about different aspects of the movement that are not empha- sized at their current CW. At times that curiosity is philosophical, perhaps the CWs at their house do not talk a lot about Christian Anarchism or radical interpretations of scripture or differing views on nonviolence. Sometimes it is more nuts and bolts like food donations or meeting structure and power dynamics or what it looks like when Catholic Workers get together to protest. I am a huge Catholic Worker nerd so it’s always fun to share knowledge about the movement and its tradition.

At some point, Catholic Workers I had never met started reaching out via email or at gatherings asking if I would visit their house. I began assuring other communities that they should not feel jilted by my (as of yet) lack of visit. There are so many CWs and so little time!

The more Catholic Worker houses I visit the more I am asked the ques- tion, “Which is the best one?” or sometimes the more subjective “Do you have a favorite?” The honest answer is that I really have loved visiting everywhere I have travelled!

Looking back at the past seven months, I have realized I have visited CWs in the biggest of U.S. cities and in the tiniest Midwestern towns (Maloy, Iowa has a population of 24). I have visited new communities and the most historic of communities. I have seen huge communities and I have seen CWs run by just one  married couple.

Every Catholic Worker House is quite different. This one grows tons of food. That one offers showers to folks. This one over here has the best  snacks, but that one over there serves pasta for dinner almost every night. Some of them have goats!

Every community emphasizes different aspects of the Catholic Worker movement. Some might not spend much time protesting and some are  
not interested in the farming commune vision. But that is part of the beauty of the CW movement. We can look around at the needs where we are and start addressing them in the ways we know how, with the talents and skills  
we possess. This diversity makes us adaptable and dynamic.

When Eric and Jodi moved to Kansas City to start a CW, they saw that there were plenty of places to get food but not many options for a good shower. At the St. Isidore Farm when they heard of an Afghan refugee family who just relocated to the area they started sharing fresh milk and yogurt and eggs and veggies with them. The Mary House's front door in New York City started seeing large numbers of migrants sent by bus from Texas without warm clothing as the season changed cooler, so they put out a sign asking for donations and the clothing came in. Casa Maria in Milwaukee saw women struggling with Child Protective Services and set up a long-term hospitality space where they could stably live while navigating that system. In Philly, Mary Beth and Johanna use their skills as medical professionals to provide healthcare to those without it.

It is not just the specifics of the work that varies from community to community, but the tone and the char- acter of the communities themselves Some communities have long orga- nized meetings while some have short disorganized ones (some also have long disorganized ones). Some communities attend Mass every day while others have set aside any devotion tothe Catholic Church, seeing it as morally questionable. Some have strict chore schedules and others clean things (or don’t as the case may be) when they have the time and energy.

I have started thinking of the move- ment as a kind of big jigsaw puzzle. You will not be able to tell the whole picture from looking at one piece. Is that blue piece some sky? Water? A sweatshirt? An iris? Some pieces might tell you more than others, but still need to be situated within the whole if we want  to know what the picture is about. 

I guess that is what I have been re- ally fortunate to spend my past seven months doing, and in a less concen- trated way my 12-years’ involvement with the Catholic Worker movement: Getting a better idea of what the movement is about, collecting more and more of those puzzle pieces. 

Sometimes people only see one or two pieces and are sure they know what it is all about. Sometimes they believe they can rigidly tell others what the movement is or is not (those desiring a more stringent Catholicism are perhaps the biggest offenders). Sometimes a lot of those folks’ knowledge of the movement comes largely from books and not a relationship with the real lived CW movement. Reading, even the works of founders Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, will only provide a few pieces to the puzzle. 

It is too bad when that happens. This variety, the contrasts are what make the movement beautiful and adaptable, bigger than and able to survive its well-revered founders. 

As the list of Worker communities I have visted grows, so have my aspirations. While I started out hoping for something like a working vacation, I am now hoping I have been able and can continue to share some of what I know about that Catholic Worker picture, to show folks the handful of puzzle pieces I have gathered. 

Dorothy wrote, “It is good to go around and visit the houses and talk of the work to be done, and bring news to each other of the work go- ing on all over the world.” 

Sometimes as Catholic Workers we can get so bogged down by the things that need to be done day to day and the enormity of the task before us that we can forget that there is indeed “work going on all over the world.” Sometimes when it’s only our small handful of comrades doing the work in our communities we can feel alone. 

In a certain way this discourage- ment can seem warranted, the task ahead of dismantling the imperialist-extractive-carceral state and helping it's growing number of victims is enormous. We Catholic Workers are often admired and studied, but much less often imitated. 

I think that is why we enjoy Catholic Worker gatherings so much; it reminds us that we are not alone and there are other people who are trying to live differently than the craziness of the world. 

Hosting Theo is not the same as going to a full-on gathering, but perhaps I have brought a small dose of the same medicine: friendship, gossip, clarification of thought, an excuse to cut loose, tidings of joy, as well as the strange comfort of shared hardships and stories of survival. 

Finding the Catholic Worker and the beautiful people who comprise the movement has been one of the great gifts in my life. I have been taught loved, challenged, and inspired by this gang of rascals my whole adult life. It seems daunting to think that I could ever give as much as I have received.

But I think maybe I have stumbled into a weird niche to fill at this specific time in my life, a unique way to share with others the love of the community of communities that is the Catholic Worker movement. The  
only solution really is love. 

There is much work to be done but, beautifully, there are also many wonderful people, by little and by little, making a start.

 check out the entire December 2022 edition of The Catholic Agitator here