Fwd: Counting Some CW Blessings
Catholic Worker
Date: Sun, Jun 23, 2024 at 6:06 AM
Subject: Counting Some CW Blessings
To: <kennedy...@gmail.com>
Counting Some CW BlessingsInside: a tribute to Marc Ellis, Jewish liberation theologian, and Eric Anglada on healing our spiritual ecology
Sometimes, the News Is Good
On Friday morning, I woke up to find this beautiful picture in my inbox: Hussain, one of the Afghan refugees that our refugee resettlement group here in Winona has been working with, reunited with his wife and two children after nearly three years of separation. Hussain ran a math tutoring program for both boys and girls in Kabul, and for that crime, the Taliban threatened to kill him. Like so many others, he left in a hurry without family members in August 2021, thinking that the separation would be a short one. It wasn’t. The video that one of our volunteers shot of the reunion shows Hussain being bowled over (literally) by his young son, the two of them embracing on the floor—and then getting up to embrace his wife and daughter, shedding tears of joy. And yesterday, I received the happy news that a young woman who had called the Catholic Worker website phone number looking for rent assistance had received help from a total stranger — a college student in fact — who paid for her rent, preventing her eviction. The day after she paid her rent, she found a job at a nursing home a block away from her house. When you are working to meet people’s needs day in and day out—needs all too often caused by systematic injustice—these stories with happy endings become even more important. They are truly like finding a treasure in a field, or a pearl of great price, rare but precious, something to hold onto. On a sadder note, this issue features a short piece on our website honoring the life of Marc Ellis, a ground-breaking Jewish scholar of liberation theology and author of My Year at the Catholic Worker, and Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century. Renée Roden shares a bit about Marc’s life, drawing from several sources, but not least of them an interview Rosalie Riegle conducted with Marc in 1988. We are delighted that Rosalie contributes her wisdom and expertise in myriad ways to our work. And speaking of our work, it has been fun collaborating this summer with our two college interns. You’ll notice our intern Joan’s excellent work in this issue’s Roundup, which includes items that she dug up from South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Montreal. (Joan is an international studies major, so we put her on the international CW beat.) Fittingly, Joan began the summer in Portugal before returning back home to Minnesota. But she’s not the only Roundtable team member on the move these days! I am going to Virginia to visit family even as I write this; Scarlett is in Rome on a ten-day journalism program to learn how to cover the Vatican (can we call her our Vatican correspondent?); and Joan has been on the road visiting CWs in Duluth, Minnesota. Fortunately, Renée was taking a rest from her travels and stayed home to bring this issue to the finish line when I ran out of time. Thanks, Renée! And I hope all our readers manage to stay cool this week. Jerry
FEATURESMarc Ellis, Pioneer of Jewish Liberation Theology, Dies at 71
Read the full obituary at catholicworker.org. ‘Wild Church’ at St. Isidore CWEric Anglada (St. Isidore Catholic Worker, Cuba City, Wisconsin) shares how the St. Isidore community is incorporating the concept of “wild church” into their spiritual life. Eric describes a communal liturgy they held on World Day of Prayer for Creation in his Embracing Repair newsletter:
Read the rest of the essay on Substack at Embracing Repair.
ROUNDUP
Susan Crane of Redwood City Catholic Worker (CA) is serving six months in a German prison for protesting U.S. nuclear bombs on German soil. “After she arrived at the German Air Base, she and others marched for days to the prison where she turned herself in for a 6-month sentence. She is tired and she made it. Not bad for an 80-year-old recidivist,” according to her community’s recent newsletter. “She too is ‘a prisoner of the Lord’…Her address is: Susan Crane, JVA Rohrbach, Peter-Cesar Alee 1, 555 97 Wollstein, Germany.” Most of the female political prisoners at the Correctional Institute for Women in the Philippines are currently serving a life sentence in a facility that does not offer all the necessities for living, reports the Eastertide issue of Magnificat, newsletter of Nazareth House (Manila, Philippines). As a solution, the house pays these women to make rosaries that they will then take to the United States to distribute at the U.S.-Mexico border. More updates from the newsletter can be found here. La Maison Benoît Labre Catholic Worker (Montreal, Quebec) temporarily reduced its 24/7 services earlier in June due to staffing shortages, according to its website. Drop-in and drop-out services were limited, while school corridor services, brigades, and resident support continued. See details on their website. The Tablet reported that The Catholic Worker Farm (Hertfordshire, UK) only has about four weeks of funding left. Read the full story here. “Do you know Helen Keller, a Socialist?” was the topic for the June 15 monthly Mass at the Dorothy Day Spiritual Center (South Korea). The event kicked off with Mass in remembrance of Helen Keller followed by Han Sangbong giving a lecture titled “Progress Without Spirituality, Church Without Progress.” A video trailer and details of the event can be found on their website. The West Papua Mini Film Festival consisted of “short documentaries from inside West Papua and Indonesia,” according to Dorothy Day House of Hospitality (Brisbane, Australia). The festival, held in April, hoped to promote peace, justice, education, and the prevention of harm to internally displaced persons in West Papua. A brief description of the event can be found here. The London Catholic Worker participated in a prayer vigil for migrants and refugees outside of the Home Office in the United Kingdom. The vigil marked the beginning of Refugee Week. Read more here. Martha Hennessy of Maryhouse (NYC) shares what the principles of the Catholic Worker are with readers of Aleteia. “We don’t support any wars as this is a theft of resources from the poor and spills innocent blood, and breeds hatred amongst brothers and sisters. It is also the biggest carbon footprint contributing to climate disruption,” Hennessy said. Read the full article here (and check out Hennessy’s talk at the National Eucharistic Congress below!)
CALENDARJune 24 | Virtual event, Maurin Academy July 19 | National Eucharistic Congress, Indianapolis August 10 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California September 6-7 | Chicago September 12-15 | Sugar Creek, Iowa
A FEW GOOD WORDSFrom “On Pilgrimage” in The Catholic Worker, November 1946 Every year, I like to make a real pilgrimage and visit some of our groups around the country. Usually, these visits are coincident with a speaking engagement which pays my carfare. A questioner at one of the meetings asked me once where I got the money to travel around. I don’t mind such questions because I lay myself open to it by talking about voluntary poverty. It to indeed a treat to travel, even by bus, one carries one's lunch of whole wheat bread, peanut butter and honey and bananas. To be suddenly free from all the cares of Mott Street and the farm. Though why I should let them weigh me down when others are in charge, I do not know. One is supposed to cultivate first of all serenity of spirit, according to Scupoli and Dom Chapman and others, but one cannot help grieving over the sadness of others and trying to help make things different. To be surrounded by the destitute, the shelterless, to visit the prisoner and the sick, to be living, as a leader, in the midst of misery when so many look to you for solace and appeasement of pain— this is a burden which becomes, at times, well nigh unendurable. To recognize the little one can do, to know oneself to be an unprofitable servant and to try to guard the peace in one's own heart,—it is necessary for this to go away once in a while,—to drop everything. Retreats serve this purpose. And so do trips. On a trip as a pilgrim, one brings from one group to another the news of striving and growth and encouragement. — Dorothy Day
Roundtable covers the Catholic Worker Movement. This week’s Roundtable was produced by Renée Roden, Rosalie Riegle, Scarlett Rose Ford, Joan Bromberek, Monica Welch, and Jerry Windley-Daoust. Roundtable is an independent publication not associated with the New York Catholic Worker or The Catholic Worker newspaper. You’re currently a free subscriber to Roundtable. You can support this newsletter and CatholicWorker.org by upgrading your subscription.
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