history lesson
getting in touch with our roots
Birthdays — mine is this week—make me think of where I’ve come from. I revisit the past and stitch it all back together into a new present: my grandmothers, family traditions, photos of our changing hairstyles through the years, favorite texts, essential words, writers, and places that have been home. I’ve been thinking of apartments past, forgotten shrines, and New York City.
I’m not the only person who has been digging into the past. My community member Daniel has been rummaging through the file drawer in St. Francis House’s office and looking for scraps of the story of this house to puzzle back together into a new portrait. If you’re interested in learning more, sign up for our house newsletter (email me your address — we believe in paper editions).
Last night at our Monday night dinner (6 pm — all are welcome), we sat in a circle on the front porch, with no physical round table in the middle, but you could imagine it there. And Karl Meyer, a Catholic Worker of a former generation, told us stories of our neighborhood, Uptown, when there were apartments available for $60 a month and when there was still a draft and it was still resisted. Karl lives on a farm in Nashville now, but he told us about buying houses of hospitality on Chicago’s north side —one for $8,000, another for $7,000, to which Dorothy Day herself contributed $2,000.
We asked ourselves: what are lay Catholic movements that are born in the United States? I’m not sure there is one—yet—besides the Catholic Worker. And sitting in a circle, listening to Karl’s stories, I realized this is what tradition means, this is what synodality means: it means sitting in a circle, having the important things passed down to you. Listening, asking the essential questions, learning about where you come from and what you’re rooted in. What you can grow toward.
Around this time of year, in 1974, three young people—Jerry Chernow, Leonard Cizewski, and Kristie Pirie—bought what Karl calls a “mansion” on Kenmore Avenue. St. Francis House feels like a mansion to me, despite the fact that in 1974 it was pushing 100 years old, and it’s definitely not in mansion-like condition today. But its nooks, crannies, and creaky stairs are a simple, beautiful memory palace.
I wonder which one of those young people sat in the room I sit in now in the back attic, in my little prayer nook I’m sitting in now, in my rocking chair. I wonder who has lived here in this white-washed, wood-paneled little sanctuary, and where they are now. A newsletter from May 1975, written by the house, hints that perhaps our stories are not so different then as now. They write:
Francis of Assisi House will soon be eight months old. In small ways we have been attempting to realize the philosophy of Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, by living and working to meet the immediate needs of the poor. During the past months, we’ve housed people from the street, some victims of fire, those displaced by the infamous Urban “Removal” programs, plus a number of mentally disturbed. This has often caused the “usual” problems of drug overdoses, suicide attempts, and just plain drunkenness.
Besides keeping up with the hospitality, our beautiful old house is in a continual state of disrepair. Plumbing leaks and faulty wiring are our major sources of aggravation. But, most discouraging, is the fact that any modest attempt at repair generally turns into a major production.
In addition, we have been short-staffed. Out of three people, one member has been in the hospital and ailing for over six weeks, and one of us has been working full-time. As of this writing, we are only housing two people, and will take in up to three more.
Friday night meetings for clarification of ideas, an old CW tradition, have been held sporadically. We have Mass at 6 p.m., potlucks supper at 7, and discussion at 8. Our talks have ranged all the way from friendly chatters to discussions of aid to drought to all.
In the Franciscan tradition of making our needs known, we are appealing for the following: we need help from plumbers, carpenters, and electricians: and most urgently, someone to repair the leak in the roof before it gets even worse.
If you aren’t skilled in a trade, perhaps you could come a couple times a month and prepare the 6 p.m. supper or how weeds in our garden. Friends are also needed to come on a regular basis, so our guests can have someone other than three of us, Kris Piereie, Jerry Chernow, and Len Cizeswski, to help sort our their problems.
Although this letter was written almost fifty years ago, not much has changed. We laughed in recognition at all the familiar — “usual” — problems. Human nature is a tale as old as time.
I’ve been in search of an honest plumber all week and we are about to launch a re-roofing project (start your St. Joseph and St. Francis novenas). The people who circle in and out of the house have their own unique tragedies that we’ve all heard many times before. We’re all a part of a story that gets handed down from one generation to the next. And we simply try to make this one house better and more beautiful and not let it get swept away in the greed or isolation of the world around us. We sit in circles and listen to stories and know that the world was once different than it is now and can be different again. And it is the same and always the same and we are a part of that too. We open our doors and the same Jesus comes in and challenges us to be the kind of people we want to be.
As Dorothy Day writes in her last sentences of The Long Loneliness: “It all happened while we were sitting there talking, and it is still going on.”