Pressure Points

My room is a mess. Maybe it’s poor feng shui, or maybe it’s laziness. Regardless, my guitar sits in the corner gathering dust, carefully hoisted off the wooden floors the padded prongs of the guitar stand I purloined from the music closet. Beneath it lie dust bunnies, fuzzy pieces of lent sprawled about the floor.

On my dresser, my green Sigg water bottle and various cups stand like skyscrapers. A short glass, red wine dried in a ring on the bottom sits as a testament to a Thanksgiving mid-morning writing break. Next to it is an old glass peanut butter jar, gold lid and stripes of glue, that if opened would smell of vinegar and rosemary, an herbal infusion I use to condition my hair. A notebook brightly checkered in primary colors and cut to the exact dimensions of my back pocket hasn’t moved in weeks. I used to take it with me when we served, to write Spanish words taught to me by a short Hispanic man who says you only need three months to learn the language. Well, it’s been more than four months and I hardly know a thing.

Seashells collected from the tide pool and along the sandy shore of Redondo Beach wait for me to create something from them scattering tiny particles of sand every time my fingers bump against them. There sits my lime green toothbrush bought for a dollar at the 98-cent store, a small fleck of toothpaste crusted white below the bristles. A wad of dark gray fabric, torn and saved for future use from a pair of old herringbone pants that I altered into skinny jeans, cutting one thigh a little small and becoming another project I haven’t quite finished. My journal and sewing kit, library book, contact case and Chap Stick keep company, forcing my fingers to wade through my life’s artifacts every time I want something.

I can’t help but wonder if there is a pattern to the things we name and the secrets we do not. There is a power in naming things; our silences oppress us and render our existence in half-lifes.

Stacks of books decorate the low rectangle nightstand that sits exactly the width of my bed. A People’s History of the United States and its companion book, Voices sit stacked on top of Greek mythology and a book recommended to me by a former priest for whom I garden, called The Messiah Myth by Thomas L. Thomson. My Bible teeters precariously by an Enneagram book and the study on Mark that our house delves every Wednesday. It’s strange how the closer I come to living according to the Gospel, the farther away God feels. Loose pieces of song tabs are sandwiched between the heavy tomes. Earplugs to drown out loud Spanish party music and my tuner hang out waiting to be used.

My things are scattered about; meaningless items I’ve accumulated since being here, yet things that tell the story of my life. If I left for a while, if I went to jail like a member of our community who climbed the fence at the School of Americas in protest to the U.S’s oppressive foreign policy, and who received 6 months in jail, I wonder if these things would even matter.

I can’t help but to be struck by how we use happiness to measure our worth in life. As if our lives only matter when we are happy, when our things are ordered perfectly in their place. I could ask myself if I’m happy, perhaps I would say it doesn’t matter. The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know.

There are days and then there are days. This has been one of those days and it’s hardly half over! I’m on house, which means I cleaned the 6 bathrooms that populate our huge Victorian house and which help to create a harmonious atmosphere for 25 people. I also swept a large expanse of wood flooring, darkened by age and cracked on the third floor from a million footsteps. All in all, cleaning the house, washing dishes and taking care of the laundry takes about 3 hours.

Another element of our work involves hospitality in whatever form it takes. For me today, it was filling the cup o’ noodles with hot water that three Hispanic people, two men and one woman, brought. The woman returned later, holding a napkin to bloody lips and crying, begging us to call the police as one of the men punched her in the face. It wasn’t the first time, she said, and she was tired of it. He came in the house after her, approaching her even as she backed away. I got between them and luckily one of the house guests who spoke Spanish was able to ask him to leave and I followed him to the door.

As a rule, we don’t call the police since the police represent a huge oppressive force, and calling them leads to arrests, which only perpetuate the problem. Most of the time, we can diffuse tense situations with non-violent action. We also embrace elements of anarchy and don’t believe that we should surrender our call to faith to a state that works against our service to the poor. There was little we could offer the woman except an ice pack and some water and telling her she could stay for a little while. I also gave her 50 cents to use a payphone down the street.

Another way we give hospitality is to provide hospice to the sick and dying. Right now in our house, we have one man with cancer, cancer that has kept on growing despite chemo and radiation, cancer that will take his life. We take food to him, administer medicine and change bandages. It’s not easy, especially when it involves putrid, rotting flesh, but being a presence for the dying is significant and requires of us all to look our own mortality in the face.

It’s days like these when I feel like I’m able to do so little, like I’m watching storm clouds build, but they never bring rain, though the earth may be parched and dry. Yet we must reach out, we must trudge through the little things and believe that, as one of the founders of the LACW says, what we do might in some small way further the kingdom.