{"id":744,"date":"2014-04-22T17:13:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T17:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/you-need-to-check-this-place-out.html"},"modified":"2014-04-22T17:13:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T17:13:00","slug":"you-need-to-check-this-place-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/you-need-to-check-this-place-out.html","title":{"rendered":"“You Need to Check this Place Out”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
by Peter Gathje<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
R3 Contributor<\/span><\/div>\n

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A guest this morning asked me how long I had known him. \u00a0I said that I\u2019d known him ever since he started coming to Manna House<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

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\u201cBut how long is that? \u00a0How long has Manna House been open?\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cIt will be nine years this fall.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
We talked a bit about how he happened to come to Manna House. \u00a0Another guest had told him, \u201cYou need to check this place out.\u201d \u00a0So he did.<\/span><\/div>\n
This got me thinking about our \u201chistory.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

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So here\u2019s a little reflection.<\/span><\/div>\n

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When we first opened we didn\u2019t offer showers, we didn\u2019t even offer socks and hygiene. \u00a0We only offered coffee, and occasionally a sweet roll or cookies. \u00a0On our first day, Mary Katherine, one of Kathleen\u2019s daughters, stood on our front porch with a sign that said, \u201cFree Coffee\u201d and she loudly proclaimed to every passerby, \u201cFree coffee for sale!\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n

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A few curious folks came in and found the coffee to be hot and strong. \u00a0And before long the house was filling up.\u00a0<\/span>In a couple of months we had enough donations to start offering socks, a few travel size hygiene items, and a shirt. \u00a0During December, we had some renovations done so that in January we could start offering showers.<\/span><\/div>\n

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We were just a few people who had come together, and then talked with some folks on the streets that we knew to find out what kind of place they would like and find helpful. \u00a0Then we got a house, and with the help of some shared resources among us, we opened, and began the incredible journey into offering hospitality.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Our vision of hospitality came from the Catholic Worker Movement of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, and the Open Door Community in Atlanta, which stands in the tradition of the Catholic Worker. \u00a0We wanted to offer hospitality which respects the dignity of each guest as Christ who comes as the stranger, the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick (Matthew 25:31-46). \u00a0Since we were welcoming Christ in the stranger, we did not seek to impose some agenda on our guests, other than to offer them hospitality. \u00a0We still don\u2019t. \u00a0For us, hospitality is about loving those who come as they are.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

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From the beginning, like the Catholic Worker Movement, we were clear that we did not seek and would not accept government funding. \u00a0In the spirit of Catholic Worker personalism, we wanted to offer ourselves in loving hospitality, and not become a social service agency or bureaucracy. \u00a0We don\u2019t ask guests for identification or have them fill our forms. \u00a0We just get to know them and they get to know us. \u00a0We embraced the Catholic Worker approach of start small and stay small, of \u201clittle by little\u201d rather than envisioning or seeking to become some large scale program. \u00a0We also take seriously that efficiency is demonic and that too much structure is oppressive. \u00a0We like the Christian anarchism of the Catholic Worker.<\/span><\/div>\n

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We take seriously that we are a place of sanctuary, a refuge from the harshness and harassment of the streets. \u00a0In that spirit, we have not allowed the police to come and go freely at Manna House since unfortunately our guests have all too frequently experienced the police as problematic in their lives. \u00a0In order to have sanctuary, we have also been careful about maintaining boundaries in which we expect guests to be respectful with each other and us. \u00a0We\u2019ve asked guests to leave who engage in language or other behaviors that are disrespectful, violent, denigrating or demeaning.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

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Like the Catholic Worker, we also see connections between poverty, war, and the way the criminal justice system works. \u00a0So we\u2019ve worked with other organizations such as the MidSouth Peace and Justice Center, H.O.P.E., the Workers Interfaith Network, and Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty to try and create a world in which it is \u201ceasier to be good\u201d (in the words of Peter Maurin). \u00a0A few of us have gone to jail in protest of war, or because of our stance in resistance to police harassment of people on the streets. \u00a0It is helpful to go to jail; you learn a lot about a society by seeing who is in jail and who isn\u2019t, and how jail works to dehumanize those who are jailed. \u00a0You also learn to never serve bologna sandwiches because that is jail food.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Along the way we have made many mistakes, and we have had to painfully learn how to be better at hospitality. \u00a0We\u2019ve also prayed together and laughed together and cried together.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

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Offering hospitality requires a kind of vulnerability, the willingness to share the hurt of our guests, to get angry at how they are so often treated on the streets, to celebrate their joys with them, and to mourn together when a guest dies. \u00a0We\u2019ve done too much of that mourning this past year.<\/span><\/div>\n

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We\u2019re grateful for all of the support along the way in prayers, donations, volunteers. \u00a0It really is pretty amazing how it has all worked out so far.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Follow Pete on Twitter @petegath<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Peter Gathje R3 Contributor A guest this morning asked me how long I had known him. \u00a0I said that I\u2019d known him ever since he started coming to Manna House.\u00a0 \u201cBut how long is that? \u00a0How long has Manna House been open?\u201d \u201cIt will be nine years this fall.\u201d We talked a bit about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"You Need to Check this Place Out"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"by Peter GathjeR3 ContributorA guest this morning asked me how long I had known him.  I said that I\u2019d known him ever since he started coming to Manna\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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