LACW, a love letter

Heaven is a banquet with a crust

25 years ago Meridith and I met while serving breakfast and washing feet at a Catholic worker in Atlanta called the Open Door. We reveled in its liberation theology Bible studies, Pete Seeger sing-alongs and eclectic cast of characters. Sadly, the Open Door in Atlanta no longer exists. The old mansion was sold and town down, its neighborhood subsumed by gentrification. Thinking that version of Catholic Worker was gone, we were surprised and delighted when—in 2022— we found its sister ministry in Boyle Heights, near Skid Row, in LA.

For the last 4 year I’ve alternated taking a family member each year to visit the LA Catholic Worker (LACW) for Easter, so my family might know me and this movement a bit better. Each trip has been different but the common denominators include the foot washing service at Dolores Mission Jesuit parish, Good Friday communing with the beautiful saint tapestries at the Cathedral, a Stations of the Cross vigil in Downtown LA, serving at the skid row “hippie” soup kitchen on Saturday, and Easter mass back at Dolores Mission.

During this year of health interruptions there were some things I was fine foregoing: Christmas, school conferences, cooking… but I was pretty determined to keep my Easter in LA and to bring Meridith with me. Annie also got to come for the second time, because she’s good company, and to make a visit to Loyola Marymount University.

It's always shocking to me that the LACW rolls out the shag carpet for us when I request to make this annual pilgrimage. They have their soup kitchen and protests and arrests for civil disobedience and community life, but they still manage to put chocolates on our pillow and make beds for this Cincinnati crew, greeting us with enthusiastic hugs and suggestions that we make our next trip longer.

When we arrived last Thursday I was especially touched to find my name on their small altar and to learn from their matriarch, Catherine, that they have been praying for me. Those prayers come alongside their prayers that a homeless woman, Gypsy, find housing and that the mental health workers assigned to skid row would do their jobs, prayers to end war in Iran and that spiritual care would be allowed for immigrants in detention. Needless to say the LACW has plenty to pray for but they’ve joined a formidable crew of Christians that includes the Pentecostals of Arkansas and the Bruderhof of Pennsylvania in praying for me. (I have to say, should cancer take a turn for the worse, it will not be for lack of heaven being stormed from every theological angle.)

Aside from the fact that they love me and mine, which is really an honor, I love so much about the LACW and their ministry. I love that their house is painted the color of an Easter egg, that their meals may be broth or may be feasts, that they serve tea and offer Shakespeare classes in their soup kitchen. I love the smell of bleach mixed with the aroma of fresh flowers that makes the signature scent of their residence. I love their careful attention to hospice patients often cared for in their spare room, their ability to make the soup kitchen bean dish different and delicious each day, the fact that a conversation is always available around the cooking island while washing dishes. I love that their house is on a hill from which you can watch the sun rise and set and see the Hollywood sign and that people who’ve lived on the street share this view with people who’ve published books. I love that they have volunteers that they met while protesting Vietnam who still come to butter bread at the kitchen, that they have a signature artist who gives her art away and that you might discuss liturgy or you might discuss comic books over breakfast.

The view from our bedroom at 6am Saturday morning

Susan and Annie at the stations of the cross

Over 200 people joined the LACW to walk around the federal building and pray on Good Friday

Catherine at her tea station

Really, the last year has been such a good one for me, and mostly that’s because of the chance to connect and re-connect with the cast of characters I’ve accumulated over the past quarter century. The clarification that keeps getting clearer as I reflect on how I want to live out the second half of life is this: it’s about the people. The work is to find and kin-keep people that love well, that share faith and willingness to fight the good fight, that sacrifice for each other and for strangers. Maybe the showers are luke-warm, the shifts are very early, and the coffee is instant. No one stays or goes because of these details.

Dorothy Day said it like this:

“We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love each other we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship... We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

Thanks LACW for another lovely celebration of Resurrection, demonstration of community, and chance to love in both word and action. You all are a banquet with a crust.

We, seriously, ran into our former Lydia’s House volunteer Molly at the Dolores Mission Holy Thursday mass. She said, “I’ve been asking for a sign from God if I should go back to Cincinnati for law school and then Annie Eilerman got up out of no where and washed my feet.”

Annie pulled out the stash of many things from the cupboard and whipped up an Easter cake for the house

Since the last time i stayed in this room, an intern painted the closet door facing

And some other LA photos, for good measure

Annie got some solid clothes donations from the CW stash and the Mormon thrift store

We used our spare time to take advantage of LA foods, including my favorite bakery, Tartine