Folding Chair Visions

I made a pilgrimage before I founded Thistle Farms to visit the site where Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, opened houses of hospitality in the 1930s.

I first went to St. Joseph’s and then on to the sister house St. Mary’s to see the chapel where Day was known to worship with the community.

The houses were made famous for the soup and bread served to long lines with radical hospitality during the Depression.

Dorothy and her co-founder, Peter Maurin, also founded a newspaper, the Catholic Worker, which they sold for one penny. Day and Maurin lived in poverty and awakened the social consciousness of people in the US.

When I got to St. Mary’s on 5th street, there were folks out front lingering with the familiar look of rough sleeping.

I walked into a musty and dimly lit chapel on the upper floor. A single candle sat on a thick wooden altar, with folding chairs arranged for seating. Behind the altar hung a picture of thirteen unrecognizable faces in a semi-circle.

Everyone recognizes the beauty of lofty cathedrals that celebrate the architects and artists who created them. But it is a huge gift when we can put on beatific lenses and see this same majesty in spaces like Day’s humble worship space.

No one in the forty-five years since Dorothy Day's death has built a golden shine in her memory. Instead, true to her beatific spirit, people have kept the soup simmering and people fed.

This year, after pastoring for a community called St. Augustine’s for 32 years, we have found ourselves without a place to worship. Due to construction at Vanderbilt Divinity School where we hold Sunday services, we have moved to a warehouse—the former manufacturing space for Thistle Farms—that is now the Center for Contemplative Justice. As we set up for service this week, I stood in the back of the space, and I wept at what I was seeing.

I am, by God’s sweet grace, leading a community in folding chairs.

I have gotten lost many times. I am sure you have gotten lost on the journey a few times.

It's confusing in this big old fancy world to live out the simple acts of love in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the prisoners, comforting the sorrowful, tending the sick, and burying the dead.

Folding chairs reminds me that if we keep trying, we end up found.

If I finish out my time as a pastor in folding chairs, it will remind me of what real worship looks like—an outward, practical expression of the doggedness of love.

-- Becca Stevens

Folding Chair Visions

Folding Chair Visions

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