By Barbara Allaire
A few months ago, we were feeling what a hard year it’s been for the Winona Catholic Worker. While there never seem to be enough live-in volunteers, until recently we were usually able to have just enough to take care of two houses of hospitality. But this year things got pretty slim. Eileen and Becky were handling 24-hour hospitality for the homeless men at Bethany House and were coordinating and doing much of the work, with the help of our wonderful cooks and some volunteers, for the daily 4-7 pm hospitality and meal at Dan Corcoran House. With all the other good work they do besides, they were feeling stretched to the limit.
More than a few times, we found ourselves looking up at the bluffs and pouring out the words of the psalmist: “We lift up our eyes to the mountains. From where will our help come?” (Ps. 121).
And then, in a kind of miraculous way, the answer came tumbling down to us in the person of two women, Winona State University students. Nikki Fleck had been “hanging out” at both houses for several years, helping in myriad ways and becoming a friend and advocate for our guests. Last year her friend, Sarah Hanson, joined her in volunteering once a week. They knew we were at a dire point in our need for live-in volunteers, and they agonized over that because they loved the hospitality that flowed from both houses. They found the Catholic Worker house “out of my comfort zone,” says Sarah, but “I was really drawn to it. It was the most Christ-filled place I’d ever been.” What could they possibly do to help? They were college students: how could that role ever be combined with living in a Catholic Worker house?
God was working in the lives of these women. Each of them, Nikki coming from Catholic and Sarah from non-denominational Christian roots, had been on a spiritual journey during their years in college. Both had been through struggles and pain and had turned to God and their community of faith to sustain them. And they had found each other, becoming deep friends and living together last year, intending to move into a house with other spiritually grounded students this year.
“But something was missing from that plan,” says Sarah. “We really wanted to focus on serving God and serving others. We didn’t just want to do the usual college student thing.” Nikki and Sarah began to sense that, even as students, God was calling them to live a different kind of life, to fully embrace the somewhat wild and wacky life of “divine hospitality” entailed in living at the Catholic Worker.
Nikki had felt drawn to the community for a long time. “I never imagined myself living in the house, but I was always drawn back here. I found a lot of people here living out what I was searching for, but they weren’t preaching it at me. Their lives were a reflection of what I hoped to be some day. I was overjoyed to find this place, and I knew God had a hand in it.”
During the summer, Sarah and Nikki approached the WCW core community with a vision of living in the Dan Corcoran House, doing the works of mercy and reopening the house to overnight hospitality for women and children. At first they were hoping to do this together with two other similarly motivated friends, and among the four women to cover the needs of the guests and the household, even with their responsibilities as full-time students.
As the school year approached it became clear that the other two women had work schedules that would make it impossible for them to add 24-hour hospitality to that. So it came down to Sarah and Nikki. With great disappointment, they accepted the reality that they could not, between the two of them, handle full-time student loads with overnight hospitality. But they could coordinate and host the daily 4-7 pm hospitality at Dan Corcoran House, where they already had strong relationships with many guests who come to share in the fellowship each day.
But, says Sarah, “It’s so hard when we have to turn away women who call for a place to stay. I ask myself, Why can’t I meet these needs? I wonder, Why am I still in school? I could give it up and be doing hospitality all the time. But then I realize I have to find the balance between school’s importance to me now and this place. That balance is such a great challenge. We’re having to come to terms with our limits, that we can’t do it all.”
On not being able to offer overnight hospitality now, Nikki adds, with her quiet wisdom, “There will be a time for that when God provides it.”
Now two months into life at Dan Corcoran House, Sarah and Nikki find joy in the “daily bread” of doing hospitality. “The longer I’m here, the more I love it,” says Sarah. “When I’m away, I’m looking forward to getting back.” Adds Nikki, “The longer I’m here, the more it makes sense. It’s not easy, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
A social work major, Nikki’s experience with the social work model is that it emphasizes not crossing boundaries. “You’re supposed to be genuine and caring, but still somewhat closed off. Here it’s different. All I have to do is be here and develop relationships. We are here to provide people with an opportunity and a place to come with no expectations, no judgments, no rules. We just sit around the table like a family. It’s so refreshing to be able to do that. When I lived at home, even in my own family where we loved each other, we didn’t have time to just sit together at the table and share a meal. But now, I know what I have to do is just be here; be available.
Sarah loves “living like a family, really a family—hanging out with the guests. It’s good and fun. I appreciate just spending time together.”
Nikki and Sarah are onto something: There is a deep hunger in our rushed and goal-driven society for acceptance, for the luxury of having someone “waste” time on you just for the joy of it, without any expectation of a “return on the investment.” That is what the men, women, and families experience who come to Dan Corcoran House each day for a meal and hospitality.
There are challenges to this life they have chosen. One is giving up a lot of control. As Sarah says, “I was used to do everything for myself before. Now you’re not cooking for yourself, or buying the things you like for yourself. God provides for us here, with great blessings. But they’re not always what we would choose.”
Even lack of control can itself be a blessing. Each afternoon, as they prepare for the evening meal, Nikki and Sarah never know how many people will show up. Sometimes they end up stretching a meal meant for eight or ten into a meal for twenty. Then it’s a kind of “multiplication of the loaves and the fishes.” As Nikki says, “I love when we always have room for one more person. Everyone takes a little less. There’s always enough.”
And that is the lesson for the Winona Catholic Worker. God will provide, in due time. At this point in our community’s journey, the answer to, “We lift up our eyes to the mountains. From where will our help come?” is “Our help is from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth . . . and of Nikki and Sarah.”
Deo gratias.