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When it comes to community—especially the anarchist-y kind—”authority” can raise some awkward questions. If there’s no hierarchy, and we’re all just volunteers, who decides whether we give that extra coat out? Where to turn when a conflict arises? Are we serving seconds???
It’s a tension that Catholic Worker communities have struggled with from the very beginning. Dorothy Day once remarked that “I am a dictator trying to legislate myself out of existence.” She would lament the difficulties in finding anyone fit for authority at all, quipping that the more eager, conventional leaders “like to talk rather than to do.”
When I first wandered into Cherith Brook, over a year ago, amid the blur of new faces, a clear authority stood out, and in someone who did as much doing as talking. (And when she did talk, it normally involved a laugh that filled the cafe.) Commanding the kitchen with no one particular role, navigating whatever the evening brought, Lois embodied Dorothy Day’s later revelation that “The person who just by his very ability takes over the situation is the authority.”
Throughout the past year especially, this kind of authority—unwavering, adaptable, consistent—has steered Cherith Brook through the change and uncertainty of the pandemic.
Of course, Lois, who has been at Cherith Brook since 2013, describes change and uncertainty as simple facts of life at Cherith Brook. Indeed, in her seven years here, she’s gone from simply volunteering, to serving as a Cherith Brook Elder, to leading and participating in organizing efforts for social justice, from KC to D.C. With her changing roles came a change in perspective, as Cherith Brook shifted from a place to “make friends” to a place to “voice my opinion.” She even recommends that volunteers frequently change roles, at least every several months, in order to avoid getting too comfortable.
Change, yes. Uncertainty, sure. But the pandemic brought something different.
“It was scary,” she says. “Just thinking about our guests not being able to get medical attention, or knowing where to find resources. I’m just so glad that we stayed open.”
“We just banded together,” Lois says.
According to Lois, staying open meant adjustments, the most significant being new faces among volunteers, as well as new logistics for meals, such as limited seating in the café and the addition of outdoor tents. Much of this was the result of new collaboration between the Elder’s Circle, of which Lois is a member, and the house community.
“That was a big challenge,” Lois says. "We were like ‘ok, we can do this.’”
On the whole, Lois considers the year a success. “I think we surprised ourselves,” she says. But for all that the year has brought, the story of its toll, to Lois, is told in the seats that go unfilled each week, once occupied by guests taken from the Cherith Brook community by the year’s turbulence.
In the wake of that turbulence, Lois is taking a breather. She now (at least formally) volunteers two days a week, rather than three. During Thursday meals she's come out of the kitchen to sit down at the table.
“I’m liking it,” she says with a grin.
This reflects the way Cherith Brook keeps the boundaries between guest and host vague and permeable.
She’s also looking forward, though is careful not to say anything too detailed. For Lois, Cherith Brook’s vision—and her role in it—is all about staying grounded in the community, continuing to serve and be served by whoever happens to walk in the door.
And as those faces, new and old, wander in, she’ll continue serving as an authority to everyone in her own, unconventional way.
“I just try to help out in whatever way I can,” Lois says.
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