Roomin' House Blues

Today I temped, four hours of very hard work putting door hangers on door knobs.  I worked in a team with a young recent college graduate who had just gotten a degree in graphic arts, and was dissatisfied that he had not pursued fine arts instead.  He observed that much of what they prepare you for in graphic arts today is computer generated graphics. often for games. And this wasn't what the young man was interested in.  But he didn't have the money to pursue a second degree in fine arts. Walking up and down hills and stairs my feet, once young and strong, took a beating.  I was surprised at the toll the work took out of me, not only the feet but other parts of my body. Not a job for a sixty year old. On the way back to the business we were fliering for, the young man and I began to talk.  He was from Oregon and I told him a funny story about hitchhiking through Oregon when I was 19.  My tied feet and body and my brain working to tell stories...

I love water fountains, not only because I get thirsty, but because they are a visible symbol of shared humanity.  A water fountain says that someone is going to come this way and say I thirst, just like Christ did on the cross and I have provided for this person I never met.  I planned it when I built this building, or when I paved this sidewalk. The right of everyone to drink from a water fountain regardless of color became a battle line in the Jim Crow South at the peak of the civil rights movement. It was a central point of humanity that everyone had the same need for water and to deny it was to deny human dignity. I got upset at Seattle's Mayor Greg Nichols when he had the water fountains in Seattle's downtown shut off to save money on the city budget.  It made downtown a little less human.  It said I don't care if another human being is thirsty.   When Seattle's new Mayor, Mike McGinn had the water fountains turned back on I was happy.  I ma...

Today we is the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which for me is one of the most important feast days of the Virgin  Mary.  It is important to me because it reminds me of the incarnational nature of Christianity. When the Son of God became man be took on permanently, the stuff of this earth, and redeemed it.  And that stuff was not only physical flesh but the culture of man.  Everywhere that Christianity has gone it has adopted or adapted everything good from the culture that was there before and used those things to point to God. When Christianity arrived in the Americas the cultural shift, the adoption of culture was even more radical.  Here a culture was born of the fusion of various Indian peoples with imported African slaves, pure Castilian Spaniards and Moreno Spaniards.  It was a culture that was European, Indian, African and Arabic. It was mestizo culture. The Virgin of Guadalupe became the common denominator...

Today, December 12th, is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of Mexico and patroness of the Americas.  She is also venerated by Native Americans. As it is Sunday this year, it will not be celebrated at mass, although it may be mentioned in the homilies.  However, a few days ago, the Feast of Juan Diego, provided a second feast commemorating the events around the miraculous appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The origin of the tapestry showing the Virgin of Guadalupe, according to Catholic tradition, starts on December 9th, 1531, when Juan Diego, an Indian peasant, saw a vision of a young woman, who told him to have the local bishop build a church in that spot. The Bishop, a Franciscan demanded proof, and three days later he returned to the spot where he found flowers blooming in winter, itself miraculous. The Virgin instructed him to pick these and wrap them in his clock.  She herself...

For many years the soup Kitchen in the Cathedral School kitchen at St. James Cathedral was run as the Family Kitchen which was a Catholic Workers project.Kathleen O'Hanlon supervised the kitchen and greeted the guests personally.I was privileged to volunteer there of and on.  The Kitchen had a tremendous sense of community between the volunteers and the guests.  Sometimes after serving I would grab a plate and go sit with the guests, many of whom I regarded as friends. And the volunteers I worked with were great people.  One woman and I were talking about our Fathers who had both gone to O'Dea High school and the Cathedral School.  We discovered they had been there at the same time, but her Father was deceased.  When I checked with my Father I found out they had been great friends.  As Kathleen always pointed out , the Catholic Workers were all about building community. Due to other commitments in my life I drifted off and lost contact. The...

Prayer for the Intercession of Servant of God Dorothy Day G od our Creator, your servant Dorothy Day exemplified the Catholic faith by her conversion, life of prayer and voluntary poverty, works of mercy, and witness to the justice and peace of the Gospel. May her life inspire people to turn to Christ as their Savior and guide, to see his face in the world’s poor and to raise their voices for the justice of God’s kingdom. We pray that you grant the favors we ask through her intercession so that her goodness and holiness my be more widely recognized and one day the Church may proclaim her Saint. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. Prayer composed by Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, Executive Director of The Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York If you would like to submit the prayer requests of the results of your prayers to the Dorothy Day Guild, they can be contacted at:    ddg@archny.org   If you live in the New York area ...

Thanks to my blog follower Spambot3049.q5fjksr.t90.tja.ji0yj, who maintains his secret identity, and surprisingly, leaves no spam.  He pointed out that I was an interesting writer for a former parking attendant. Mr Spambot was pointing out how easily overlooked the talents  or character of an individual maybe, until circumstances change.  I noted then that many of the parking attendants I had worked with had another side to them that the public did not see.  I am sure the same is true for bus boys, dishwashers and bike messengers alike.  So I am going to tell a few stories of people I worked with, leaving out their names, who showed another side of themselves to me, be that intellectual, moral or an interesting personal history. If anyone has a story about a service or blue collar worker who secretly rises above there rank, please leave it in the comment section. One of the persistent images of a parking attendant in Seattle, and in certain...

Today,  a little after 4:30 I took my umbrella and braved the Seattle rain and early dark to walk to church.  Seattle's dark and wet winters have been my challenge since I returned to my native city after years in California. And yet somehow  braving the foul weather adds a sense of purpose to my walking to Blessed Sacrament. The church is a beautiful brick neo-Gothic Cathedral like structure that has been restored to it's original design in recent years-in time for it's Centenary last year. I entered while most of the lights were still off, an extension of the dark contemplative mood of the green Seattle streets and the wet deep clouded sky. I sat in the dark wood benches and looked at the wood trimmed back drop to the altar.  The brick has been restored to original condition, except for traces of paint in some places that would not come off. Red predominates the brick, but some of the bricks are light brown or chocolate. The ceiling is bare...

Eric Gill, 1882-1940, Catholic convert, Lay Dominican, artist,writer, typographer, influential person in the Arts and Crafts movement.From his youth on he had a tremendous interest in social justice.  Gill rejected the tepid Anglican conversion of his family and created his own system of religious thought.  Later he realized that his system was essentially Catholic, so he converted. A stone carver, he soon acquired apprentices and the association of like minded artists.   They owned some communal equipment, including a printing press.  They felt there should be a spiritual order as well so they joined what was then known as the Third Order of St. Dominic, now the Lay Dominicans. The group founded itself as a guild and became known at the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic. This group was essentially modeled after the medieval guilds, but with some influence of religious organizations in it's constitution, and definitely...

A blog I follow, , A Reluctant Sinner has a few things to say about the rioting going on in Britain.  http://areluctantsinner.blogspot.com/2010/12/les-miserables-and-westminsters-student.html#comment-form

My squirrel  friend that I have been writing about--the one I feed every day, is getting a paunch. The Dream Act has passed the house, only to be temporarily shot down today in the Senate. The Republicans were planning to filibuster the house version in the Senate and with the clock ticking on the current session, Harry Reid forced a vote to table, winning 59 to 40.  That allows him to call back the same bill before the end of the session.  Senate Republicans have been firmly against the bill, ruling from the minority on the matter.  Another way to get the Dream Act passed might be to make it a rider on the Agricultural Bill, forcing some of the Senate Republicans to vote for it.   For those of you who want to read up on immigration there is the classic "The Uprooted" by Oscar Handlin copyright 1973, showing how we are a nation of immigrants. The Uprooted won a Pulitzer Prize.  And on immigrants as agricultural workers, "Work...

The Dream Act has passed in the house, a baby step towards a baby step into a rational immigration policy, but never the less that step has been taken.  The Senate votes at  11 AM tomorrow on the Act. As a young boy I always heard stories of when various people in my family immigrated.  Maybe that is why I never was afraid of poor Catholic farmworkers crossing a border to work and feed there family.  Or maybe it was because of the Mexican family my sister befriended when we were young, who went to our parish. As I grew up and studied history I read about the Know-Nothing Party, the briefed lived anti-immigrant movement that coupled electing people to Congress with burning down Catholic Churches.  And I heard of the signs that said "No Irish Need Apply."  I always thought that anti-immigrant sentiment was an anti-Catholic prejudice.  I identified with the immigrant. And because I grew up in Seattle I also heard the st...

The rent party is a tradition that started in Harlem in the 1920's.  As the Great Migration out of the south moved into Harlem and added jazz and swing to the rural blues and folk music, the rent party became a way of using those blues and jazz to pay the rent.  Even before the Great Depression rolled in and brought hard times to the urban main stream, large parts of the rural and non-white urban work forces were already suffering.  Having recently migrated north in many cases, many of the black workers had not dug in roots deep.  They pitched in to help each other out.  And the rent party was one of those ways.  And maybe it's a cultural phenomenon whose time has returned. In the rent party someone who didn't have enough money for their rent would invite their friends and neighbors to their place, or another larger place sometimes.  Tickets would be sold and extra for the food and drink. Sometimes more was collected by passing the hat. Jaz...

We live today in a capitalist society and few of us ever think to question where did this economic system come from, how did it evolve?  It obviously replaced earlier economic systems.   As Christians we have to ask what is good and what is evil in it so we may know what to approve and what to condemn. Capitalism happened because of the explicit permission of the church, but for certain reasons and with certain conditions.  The church had always taught against usury, the loaning of money at interest or charging of interest in financial transactions. It ran against the ancient Jewish traditions and the Gospels teachings to lend freely.  Usury was perceived to leverage someones sufferings, someones necessities against them. By borrowing at interest to meet todays needs we cause future sufferings. Today much borrowing actually benefits the borrower, because it allows them to acquire property, or else to start an...

 I've been looking in this blog at different means of changing the social order, creating greater equality and less poverty other than the traditional massive federal interventions or classical state socialism.  I'm not opposed to all federal intervention, but the principle of subsidiarity indicates that other means should occur first. A lot of the things I have looked at are easily described with convenient labels like consumers cooperative or credit union, or municipal socialism, trade unions, etc.  But I heard an idea expressed in simple terms once by an old black woman in West Oakland who had grown up in Louisiana.  I was a community organizer there around the time of the 1989 Bay Area earthquake and it's aftermath. I don't remember her name, but I remember her house, which I had been too.  It was a large old house with a long flight of front porch steps.  The house sat on a high foundation and I imagine, although I had never seen it,...

Tomorrow is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Catholic Church.  The Feast celebrates the state of Mary, that she was conceived, by a singular grace without sin, just as the Ark of the Convenient, in which the Hebrews carried the Word of God, was covered by the most precious metal, gold. The doctrine means, in effect, that Mary was prepared for being the Mother of God, the mother of Jesus, God incarnate, by being left pure, and not predisposed to sin. This feast is in the first week of Advent, the period of preparation for the coming of our Lord, the period of hope, expectation, prophecy and trial that gets us ready for Jesus.  It is followed on the 12th by another feast of Mary, the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, one of my favorite feast days in the church.  Advent is a time of repentance of sin, like Lent, but unlike Lent, it is a period that looks forward from the time of Genesis to the birth of Jes...

Tomorrow I  to a Worksource orientation on the steps needed to try to get into worker retaining on the unemployment ticket. (see prior post: http://roominhouseblues.blogspot.com/2010/12/banging-your-head-against-wall.html ).  Pray for me please, and for all the unemployed.  And if you would, make that through Dorothy Day, Servant of God so she can get her first miracle by getting someone a job or reschooling in this economy and there by get beautified.  If she gets two of us jobs then she is a Saint! Governor Gregorie has deserted Catholic social teaching on more and more things.  First she deserted it to the left by supporting the Washington Death with "Dignity"  initiative, under which disabled and elderly can be manipulated into killing themselves. Now she deserts it to the right.  She is planning to call a special session of the legislature for one day to get an up or down vote on her budget proposal.  It's kind of the bums ru...

According to University of California Santa Cruz sociologist, William Domhoff the top 10% of U.S. population  now controls 85% of the wealth in the United States and the same is true globally.  The concentration of wealth in the United States is now higher than at any time since before the New Deal and World War II.  See Domhoff at  http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html . Domhoff in this essay shows us some obvious correlations between wealth and power.  The more wealth is concentrated in the hands of very few people, the less power the rest of us have to change anything.  Witness how the union movement in America has grown weaker. Let me ask for comments on something here.  If the top 10% control 85% of the wealth and control power as a result, doesn't this become a sort of indirect violence against the 85% that do not have those economic levers of power?

I learned recently that the most common topic in the bible is economics.  Read the bible carefully.  It is full of advice on money and land and full of injunctions to be kind to immigrants, to free indentured servants every seven years, to take care of the poor and the widows, to to fair in economic transactions. This much weight on economic justice and yet we ignore that to often in our Christian life.

Bartholomew de las Casas O.P. or Bartolome de las Casas O.P. 1484(or 1874?)-1566, "Protector of the Indians" or "Shepard of the Indians" , first Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico has an important place in the history of the church in Latin America and in the relations between the Spanish and the Indians.  His works inspired Simon Bolivar.  He has been called, (probably somewhat of an exaggeration) the Father of Anti-Imperialism and of anti-racism. His family, of French origin, originally named Casaus, settled in Seville.  His father accompanied Columbus on his second voyage and brought Bartolome as Taino slave as a trophy. which at that point in his life did not concern him.  Bartolome obtained a law degree and sailed to the Indies on the third voyage of Columbus 1n 1498, acquiring slaves and land under the  encomienda system.   But by 1510 he had become a secular priest, without yet giving up his possessions.  He did however oppos...

Recently a friend of mine sent me an email with a link to a U-Tube posting from something called "Real Catholics" on the subject of justice.  I watched the U-Tube because a friend of my wished me to, and replied to him about what I thought.  I could only agree with some of the content, which I felt to be a one sided application of Aquinas that made one fundamental mistake in the definition of justice. It was also a one sided condemnation of Catholics who it classified as Peace and Justice Catholics, whom it held to not ever really be pro-life and the cause of abortions.  That is quite a charge, since very  few Catholics are involved in providing abortion services or actively encouraging it.  And many progressive Catholics are actively against abortion.  I myself have prayed rosaries in front of abortion clinics with my friend who refereed me to this site.  In fact once we were the only two. Here is what I said to my friend. "Than...

When I was 14 I began to write poetry andI was  not terribly good poetry at that time in my life either not being a Rimbaud enfant terrible of poetry. When I was 15 I decided to submit my terribly not good poem to a high school literary magazine and in an exercise of parental love my father volunteered to type said poem, as I had not yet acquired that skill. Not long after enduring the transcription trial my Father asked me what did I want to do with my life.  I replied that I wanted to become a poet.  After turning a somewhat paler shade of white --iceplant white I believe is the correct shade--and stammering something about making a living he finally said, "Well then, you had better learn to type." My high school literary magazine did not publish my poem and I did not see print until a senior year journalism class. Over the years, with the exception of one long period, I continued to write poetry, with almost no attempts at publication. A poetry te...

A item in the latest issue of Peace & Life Connections from consistent life, along with some great material on the evils of abortion, lead me to a radical Christian community called "The Simple Way", modeled in many ways after the Catholic Workers.   They have a small intentional community, a sort of urban monasticism, in the middle of a low income area in Philadelphia.  They run a neighborhood park and provide some social help for neighbors. They have worship get togethers at there house on Fridays, but otherwise go to the nearby church.  They run a magazine called Conspire. They have a list of the 12 marks of the new monasticism including, " Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire". That is quite a statement.  Having lived and worked in some of the abandoned places of Empire, I know it's not always easy.  From the little I have been able to read, they seem to be an ecumenical off shoot of the Catholic Worker movement and worthy ...

These blog is about all those who suffering in the margins, just like those of us who live in rooming houses, are unemployed, etc.  Well that isn't just in the United States. That's all over the world--for example in Rabinal Guatamala  Fr. Tim Conlan is a priest I know who is a missionary in Rabinal.  He works in the oldest church in Central America, built by Bartholomew de las Casas, a Dominican priest who was famous for his defense of the native peoples of the America and his opposition to slavery.  De las Casas went back to Spain for a while and obtained laws stopping the slave trade from the King --orders often ignored.  Fr. Conlan, like De las Casas, is a Dominican, and is dedicated to the people he serves.  I get emails from time to time from Fr. Tim and I have one to share with you.  I hope you can help his work. Dear Friends, As we approach a new liturgical year of 2011 and prepare for the coming of the Lord of Life this Christmas, I greet...