Mason Street Musings

Reprinted from The Catholic Radical, April/May 2007

“You people make me sick!” our guest screamed. “You call yourselves Christians! You’re a bunch of hypocrites! I’ll sue you for throwing me out on the street!”

Although it’s our preference to feature heartwarming stories of guests who are grateful for our hospitality and leave us for a better future, it’s not honest to sugarcoat Catholic Worker reality. Some of those who stay with us have life-long problems which we hardly understand, much less resolve. Some are prevented by addiction or mental illness from making healthy choices. Some steal from each other or from us. A very small number, thanks be to God, fly off the handle.

We had just about every type of challenging guest in February. Several got drunk and lied to us about it. One got up in the middle of the night to smoke in the bathroom. Another relapsed on drugs. An alcoholic former guest tried to sneak into the house at five in the morning to “use the bathroom.” During a previous restroom stop, he stole a guest’s leather jacket. Several guests lied to us about their income and housing plans. One of them told a story so ridiculous that I felt like saying, “Do yourself a favor. Before you tell me another lie, run it by someone else to see if they would believe you.” It’s disrespectful enough that someone lies to me without treating me as a complete idiot.
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Continuing our struggle, and remembering El Salvador’s

Today is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Óscar Romero, which happens to coincide with antiwar demonstrations across the country.

In honor of the former, here’s a prayer from Bob Waldrop.

As regards the latter, here’s a report from Bruce and I at the huge peace march in downtown Worcester, which drew as many as 250 people.


Click To Play

Much more coverage at Indymedia

Items, many about journalism

Thanks for the outpouring of support after I wrote I was sick! Some people would claim nobody reads this site, but I’ll tell you, at least my pals do. I’m feeling a little better today.

Binnacle of the week#
At Hooting Yard.

Tom Crouse watch#
From a rant about literacy:

There might not be a worse sign for country.

Zombies of Worcester#
I love the photo that illlustrates the Elm Park-Lincoln Estate Neighborhood Association’s article With Warm Weather Comes New Crime Concerns. What’s up with that guy’s hand? With warm weather comes—zombie attack!

elmpark.jpg
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The long, dark sickday of the soul

I’ve felt spiritually derailed this year, and the Lenten season just makes it that much more obvious. A day or two of prayer and fasting usually gets me back on track–in fact, I’ve never known it to fail. But I’ve been sick for a week and a half, and in no mood to take on any more spiritual disciplines till I’m feeling better.

Part of the trouble is that I haven’t lived in a Catholic Worker community for six months. For all the drawbacks of the Catholic Worker lifestyle, it does make it easy to integrate spirituality into the flow of your life.

When my life isn’t spiritually grounded, my activism isn’t grounded, either. When the rest of my life is going well, activism is a joy, or at least fun in a quixotic way. But these days, my projects have been a real chore.

Many radicals of vastly more experience than myself refer to their work as “resistance,” which is a word I don’t really like. As a Christian, I think that Truth and Love are the background of reality. I don’t want to stand up to Evil like a wall, I want my life to be sharp like a pin, so that when confronted with Evil I can make little pinpricks in it, letting Truth and Love seep through, eventually eroding it. But at the moment, my work feels like “resistance,” as though I’m standing against evil alone, rather than being a tool of God’s love.

“Your Right to Know” panel

I was honored to be on a televised panel about openness in government this week with T&G City Desk editor Jay Whearly, blogger/businessman Bill Randell, ADA Patricia Smith, and Vocero Hispano’s Jaime Flores. WCCA’s Mauro DePasquale was the emcee.

You can watch it on WCCA’s site or the Internet Archive.

whearly randell smith flores mauro
benedetti

I’ve had positive and negative feedback on the panel, but I gotta say it was the most interesting panel about open meetings law and governmental information requests that I’ve ever participated in. I had a lot of fun.

Indymedia lives! and other items

Worcester Indymedia: The new site is up! Let us know what you think.

CJR: “How TalkingPointsMemo Beat the Big Boys on the U.S. Attorney Story.”

“We have a readership of about 100,000 people,” [Josh Marshall] says, “and that means that in any city around the country we’ve got a bunch of readers who are reading the local papers. So we’ll often find out if something happens that’s only reported in some small paper — we basically have an intelligence gathering service that mainstream reporters don’t have because they don’t have the same kind of relationship with their readers.”

TPM is the only national partisan blog I read, because of journalism like this.

Vegan Outreach: I’ve got a post about some veg activism over at Worcester Activist.

Comments: Some staff at the Orange County Register find the reader comments on their website so crude that they want the whole comments thing removed. This brief T&G article once had a comments string complaining that the people were holding a Spanish sign. Those comments remained for a few days, but have since been removed.

March Madness: This year, I predict the finals will be Ray Kurzweil vs. Dennis Kucinich. And the Kooch will win it all. Mark my words.