10 September 2003
COMMUNITY HOUSE
PROJECT REPORT
2002-3
KITCHEN
outreach & hospitality
A place for us to make food for visitors and ourselves we welcome to our home.
How have we reached out to the wider community? How have we nourished wider community and ourselves?
In this section I will focus mostly on hospitality. The information on our website has skirted away from this issue. This is to respect the privacy of people who have needed refuge in our home.
What I will share here is a reflection on some of the challenges and rewards we experienced when opening our home to others.
We had a number of different guests stay with us. Some were friends from out of town. Others were travelers one of us may have crossed paths with.
We kept in touch with the local Amnesty International group and an environmental group to welcome any speakers or activists they may have invited from out of town. We housed some people without homes in situations of dire poverty that we either crossed paths with or were friends with. At one point we assessed whether we were able to house a refugee family looking for permanent housing.
I really believe God calls us to be neighbours to one another. As a very simple but radical act, we never locked our doors. People knew they were welcome to drop by and use our space even if we weren’t home.
Jesus is an inspiring role model in that he welcomed strangers and took risks to advocate for those suffering in poverty. His birth into this world was itself precarious as his parents struggled to find hospitality in Bethlehem.
As a community we struggled to make decisions about hospitality. The most sensitive and volatile issue was to what extent do we house people in need.
Some of the challenges
- Why are we hesitant to let homeless people stay in our home when it is easy to welcome our peers, friends and family?
- What are we willing to risk?
- Under what circumstances might we need to turn someone away? Is it okay to set boundaries? What kind of boundaries should we set?
- How does hospitality fit into our vision as a house?
- What sort of stereotypes, assumptions or judgments do we harbor about people affected by poverty and homelessness?
- In our society whose responsibility is it to care for the poor and oppressed? Do we trust the government to act justly?
- How can we be a more welcoming home?
- What if we don’t have the skills to support someone staying with us? How can we support people with emotional, mental or physical disabilities? Are we equipped and prepared to deal with crisis situations?
- What resources exist in the city? How can we help people connect with these resources? [emergency shelters, women’s transition homes, food banks, soup kitchens, drug and alcohol programs etc].
- What if some people in the house aren’t comfortable living with strangers or people at risk?
- What do we do if we feel unsafe or threatened by a guest?
- What if it takes too much energy to have people live with us? How will we deal with exhaust or burnout?
- How do we make decisions as a group about these issues?
- What expectations do we have of guests? Do we expect them to live by the same standards we live by [respect for one another, intolerance for racism, sexism, homophobia etc]?
The gifts that have come from welcoming people into our home are invaluable.
I have learned so much about humility, poverty issues in Canada, the scripture messages, the Catholic Worker movement, privilege, risk-taking, communication, boundaries, relationship, responsibility and broader understanding of community.
One man that lived with us for a few months said he appreciated having a house to sleep in at night and a safe place to store some of his belongings but what was more significant was how we treated him. He liked how we sat down together to eat our meals and talked about things that are important to us like current events occurring around the world. He said he felt welcomed into a hopeful atmosphere unique to many of his troublesome life experiences.
We also struggled with how we talk about our hospitality to others. Do we negatively feed our egos or talk about housing poor people as a heroic act or some badge of honor while neglecting our shortcomings and biases?
We need to continually challenge and humble ourselves. We need to examine our motivations behind housing people. Do we offer hospitality to impress others or because it will sound good on a resume?
How can we be sensitive and respectful of people in need while still educating the wider community about the decisions we are making and outreach we try to do?
NEXT > challenges along the way
CONTENTS | Introduction
front entrance | how we got started
bathroom | owning the project
bedrooms | individuals within the whole
living room | ecumenism & community life
kitchen | outreach & hospitality
closets | challenges along the way
balcony | methods & details
dock | looking ahead
