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| Past and current live-in volunteers at the Sugar Creek Midwest Catholic Worker gathering, September 2010. |
What is the Winona Catholic Worker?
The Winona Catholic Worker is a small, intentional community in the tradition of the Catholic Worker movement. We practice the Works of Mercy named by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me” (25:35-36). In particular, we offer hospitality to those in need of food, shelter, and a friendly word. Our work embodies our commitment to community, voluntary poverty, hospitality, stewardship, nonviolence, and faith. These commitments lead us to challenge and work to change systems of injustice.
What is life at the Winona Catholic Worker like for live-in volunteers?
Members of our community who live in the houses of hospitality make those houses their home and the “center of gravity” of their lives. They have their own bedroom, but share common living spaces with guests and other members of the live-in community. Simply being a friendly presence is perhaps the most basic element of providing hospitality to our guests. But to be a friendly presence requires being present, so our live-in volunteers spend a lot of time at the houses: preparing meals, cleaning up, doing maintenance and other household chores, and simply hanging out. In the midst of all this, live-in volunteers socialize with guests and the many people from the wider community who stop by to visit.
Members of the live-in community typically meet once a week to plan out the week’s schedule; they also meet with the core community (which includes members of the community who do not live in the houses) once a week to plan the work of the community and to make significant decisions that affect the mission of the community. Our community follows a consensus-based decision-making model. This means that we discuss an issue or decision until we all basically agree on a course of action--or at least, no one disagrees strongly enough with the rest of the group's decision to block that decision.
At times, members of the community have made it a practice to meet for morning prayer. We also have a weekly prayer service (Mondays at 5:15 p.m.) and community meal that is often attended by the people who make up our wider community of support.
Members of the live-in community make time for their personal lives as well. They might hold part-time jobs, have hobbies (dancing, gardening, demolition derbies), participate in other faith communities and organizations, attend social events, or take extended trips. There is no set rule for how much time someone spends away from the houses, although it is understood that the work of hospitality is the primary focus for any community member choosing to live in the houses.
We’ve had several dozen community members live in the houses over the years; each brings his or her own gifts to the community and the work of hospitality.
What kind of work do members of the live-in community do?
Community members who live in the houses of hospitality do a wide variety of work:
- Hospitality to guests: Taking phone calls from people seeking food and shelter (and sometimes turning them away when there are no beds available); greeting guests and helping them settle into the house; talking with guests, and sometimes hanging out with them (game nights are popular); making sure guests have their basic needs met, and sometimes advocating on their behalf. The work of hospitality is the work of fostering a personal relationship. Live-in volunteers are not social workers, and do not take responsibility for finding permanent housing for guests.
- Household chores: This includes dishes (we don't have a dishwasher), laundry, cleaning floors and bathrooms, storing our many food donations, dishes, cleaning out the refrigerator and freezer, gardening, light maintenance, managing the compost, and even more dishes. (Doing dishes is a good opportunity for good conversation!)
- Community outreach: This may include speaking to local organizations and college classes, helping to put out our occasional newsletter, hosting community events such as roundtables and celebrations (e.g., our annual Halloween party, Epiphany party, etc.), and participating in events in the community on behalf of the Winona Catholic Worker.
- Resistance: Our faith calls us to resist systems of injustice. On occasion, the Winona Catholic Worker community decides to take action on behalf of justice. The nature of these actions has varied over the years; they have included prayer vigils, protest demonstrations, letter writing, leafleting, and events to raise awareness of injustice. Individual members of the community sometimes take action on their own, such as volunteering for an extended time with another organization promoting justice through direct action (e.g., Christian Peacemaker Teams, No More Deaths) or risking arrest in an act of civil disobedience.
What type of qualities are helpful to people in the Winona Catholic Worker live-in community?
Members of our live-in community have had a wide variety of backgrounds, personalities, ages, and religious practices. We have had Catholics and Quakers and Evangelicals and Mormons and people with no religious affiliation at all. We've had live-in community members range in age from the late teens to the early seventies. (We've also had two children as part of our live-in community!) And we've had people with a wide variety of political leanings, although we do tend to be an apolitical bunch, on the whole. (That would be our Christian anarchist bent coming out.)- An openness to our core commitments: community, voluntary poverty, hospitality, nonviolence, stewardship, and faith. We recognize that none of us have fully realized these values in our lives, but we strive toward their ideal.
- An openness to the work of hospitality. At a minimum, live-in volunteers must be comfortable with greeting new people and living in the same house with people they just met. The ideal we strive toward is being able to welcome the stranger as an "ambassador of God." We try to see the good in all we meet, and serve them as we would serve Christ (Matthew 25:35-36). We recognize that hospitality can be especially challenging when we're tired or when our guests' needs are great.
- A willingness to be available for hospitality at any time of the day or night--while also respecting one's own limits, setting appropriate boundaries, and taking enough personal time to stay healthy over the long term.
- An ability to handle conflict with honesty and respect. Conflict is inevitable in any community. We are committed to handling conflict with honesty. This means not avoiding problems or raising those problems with others; it also means taking responsibility for our own role in those problems. We are also committed to respect for one another. This means that we try to stick to the facts in a conflict rather than personalizing it. This also means that we assume the best about one another, even in the midst of conflict.
- A willingness to work. See above.
- A sense of humor and a sense of fun. If you have these, then you'll be totally comfortable at the next Zack Barnes Memorial Demolition Derby event.
- A spiritual grounding and a willingness to respect the diversity of spiritualities in the community. We pray together regularly; prayer is part of what sustains us. At the same time, we respect one another's religious heritage and spirituality. One does not have to be Catholic to join our community (many of our volunteers are not). However, the Catholic Worker movement is grounded in the Catholic faith tradition; an openness to this heritageis helpful to understanding our work.
We like to discern long-term live-in volunteer arrangements over an extended period of time. If you are interested in mutually discerning the possibility of offering hospitality with us, here are the steps we usually follow:
- Send us a note by e-mail or regular mail stating your interest and describing a little bit about yourself. (Find our contact information here.) Why are you interested? What is your background and current situation? What questions do you have for us about volunteering? This can really be a very informal, casual note. Don’t sweat over it.
- We’ll respond with a short note answering any questions you may have raised in your initial letter.
- We will arrange for a phone conversation. This isn't aninterview or anything, just a more personal way to get to know you (and for you to get to know us), and an easier way to cover lots of ground quickly.
- Reflection questions. If you're still interested, we'll send you five reflection questions that we ask all prospective members of our community. These questions are designed to help us in the process of mutual discernment.
- Come visit! If everyone agrees to continue discerning, the next step is for you to come for a short overnight visit; usually this ranges from three days to a week. During this visit you get to see the house and meet core community members. This is a time for informal conversation (no formal interviews, we promise!) and getting to know each other better so we can figure out whether the Winona Catholic Worker is the right fit for you, and vice versa. We sometimes offer financial assistance for travel expenses, if there is a need.
- Go home and think it over. We have found that some time for mutual reflection after the visit is helpful for everyone involved. This "rest" period may last a few days or a few weeks, depending on the need.
- References. After your visit, we'll ask you to supply us with three references: someone you've lived with recently (a roommate or members of a community), someone who has supervised you for a job or volunteer position, and someone who has known you for a long time.
- 30-day trial period. If everything works out, you would move to the house with the intention of serving as a live-in volunteer for an agreed upon period of time. After arriving at the house, you would start doing hospitality on a trial basis for thirty days. This trial period gives both you and the community time to continue discerning in the real context of the daily life of the house. At the end of the thirty day period, you and the core community would decide whether to stay on for the full time period or to part ways. It is rare that a long-term arrangement doesn't work out after this 30-day period, but it has happened.
Winona is a community of about 27,000 located on the Mississippi river in southeast Minnesota (45 minutes east of Rochester, two hours south of the Twin Cities, and about 30 minutes north of La Crosse, Wisconsin). In many ways, it's a great place to live: