Our Newest Member, Becky: Living with Thankfulness Every Day (Fall 2007)

If you happen to be a youth minister or a high school teacher and you wonder if what you do makes any difference in young people’s lives, you should talk with Becky Lambert, the newest member of our Catholic Worker live-in community.

According to Becky, her youth minister at a suburban Chicago parish introduced her to the most life-changing experiences. “Our group went to help at Nazareth Farm in West Virginia in my junior year. It was my first experience with poverty and its impact on families,” she says. The farm in Appalachia was a support and resource for the local people, who were desperately poor. “It completely changed everything for me. After that, I wanted to be involved in some kind of service for the rest of my life.”

Under the guidance of her youth minister, many service trips and opportunities followed—food pantries, soup kitchens, a shelter for homeless people that rotated among the local churches. And when Becky’s own family endured hard times for several years due to her father’s serious illness, the youth group was there to support her. Many neighbors and friends pitched in with food and other necessities to help them get by. “What really got me was the realization that if not for all those people who helped us, we could have been in a similar desperate situation as those folks in Appalachia,” she says. “I wanted to be thankful from then on—to give as much as I could with my life.”

Besides her youth minister, Becky’s sociology and history teachers in the public high school inspired her. “They brought up things that no one else did. They caused you to question things, like why people in the inner city were poor, why there were no jobs for them, why some turned to drugs.” More and more, Becky found herself challenging the way things “had to be” in society.

After high school, she spent a year and a half at a community college close to home, but soon she realized she needed a broader experience. So for seven months, she worked with a group of four nuns in Davenport, Iowa, helping out with a soup kitchen and a shelter. The sisters were “totally radical,” and they invited her to join them in weekly peace vigils, which she did.

Becky came to Saint Mary’s University on the recommendation of her friend and former youth group member Kendall Marsden. There, she, Kendall, Diane Leutgeb, and Mike Munson (the latter two now our live-in couple at Bethany House), grew in their commitments through the SMU Peace and Justice group and by volunteering with the Winona Catholic Worker. Becky volunteered weekly at Dan Corcoran House for the next three-and-a-half years.

After graduating, “I felt a strong calling to join the CW community. I had never before had a sense of God calling me to something in particular, but this was it—and it still is. My faith has grown so much, and the community here has been a wonderful support in that.” Now, with the community, she begins each day with prayer. “The meditation and reflection start out my day like I’ve never experienced. It helps to know that God is with me all during the day.”

A couple of challenges confronted Becky when she decided to join the community. First, she wanted to live and work at the Dan Corcoran House, where she had visited with so many families throughout college. But because that house could not be opened with just one volunteer living in it, instead she joined Diane and Mike at Bethany House, where the guests are single men. How did it work out? “I went in with trepidation,” she remembers, “but after I met everyone I felt just fine. I feel comfortable relating to the men. They’re open and accepting of me, and we respect each other.”

The other challenge was the reality of living in community. “I couldn’t imagine how I would fit within a community. I thought I was more solitary, and I’ve always lived alone, even in college. But now I can’t imagine living without a community.”

Becky is a willing worker. “I love working with my hands,” she says. She digs right in, whether with gardening, tackling a huge stack of dishes, or working on the “green” straw-bale house that the Freids and others are building outside Lake City.

So what advice does a young woman who has been inspired to join the Catholic Worker have to offer to other young people? “Be open, and realize that your life is not just about you. The world is filled with people who are struggling and trying to just get by. Whatever path you choose, don’t let it be a solitary one. There’s so much more to life.”

We’re grateful that Becky has chosen the Winona Catholic Worker as her path of community and solidarity at this point in her life. Welcome, Becky!

Barbara Allaire