Dorothy Day in a still from the film“Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story.” (CNS photo)
VIEW FROM THE PEW
Familiar words about fostering peace, justice and human rights spoken at a recent church service held a crowd enrapt and silent, and later exuberantly noisy when those sentiments were reflected in historical spiritual songs. It was only fitting that we focused on the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. since it was the King holiday we were celebrating.
We were gathered beneath colorful banners with words whose author we know well: “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the peacemakers.” What Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount would have resonated with the late Baptist preacher who became a leader and martyr in the fight for civil rights as much as they reflect the spirit and dedication of that particular church, a center of activism for justice and peace from the 1920s to today.
Wally and Kay Inglis received the Hawaii Peacemaker Award at the annual event at Church of the Crossroads, a United Church of Christ congregation which, since 1986, has honored island people for their grassroots actions that exemplify King’s ideals for America. They are not the first Catholics on the list of honorees, people who have helped the poor and victims of violence, prejudice and injustice, advocated for housing, worker rights, an end to nuclear weapons, many the righteous cause.
When Wally Inglis spoke to the packed church to share the honor with “our wider ohana of usual suspects,” it was a glimpse at the many community initiatives that have benefited from Inglis energy for nearly 50 years.
Among those he praised were the interfaith organization that became Faith Action for its relentless lobbying efforts for government action in affordable housing and a living wage, and the Coalition for Specialized Housing which developed a 500-unit low income housing project in Pearl City.
The most touching praise for the honorees that night came from their son Stephen Inglis who said he thinks of King in two words “living example. My parents are living examples of peace.” He teasingly recalled being a child seeing each parent arrested for their acting out their beliefs. His father was one of 18 people arrested in 1983 at Hale Mohalu after leprosy patients and supporters “occupied” the Pearl City care facility for five years holding off state plans to demolish it. His mother was arrested in an anti-nuclear weapon protest with a group who celebrated Ash Wednesday 1981 by smearing ashes on the walls of the Camp Smith nuclear war policy office. Federal Judge Sam King dismissed the charges against those peace perpetrators who included Msgr. Daniel Dever, superintendent of Catholic schools in Hawaii, but they were banned from military bases for five years.
Charges were also dismissed in the Hale Mohalu case but the supporters were victors in the long run. The 500-unit housing which Wally Inglis mentioned above was built at that site of the former hospital for Hansen’s Disease patients and the coalition that built it was the epitome of long-term commitment. The last of four towers was opened in 2016.
Long-term commitment
Speaking of long-term commitment: even though most of us just accept — or are resigned to — living in the 21 century society that accepts war and nuclear weapons as our reality, there is a core of people who haven’t given up on peace. When the civil defense sirens are tested at 11:45 a.m. on the first weekday of each month, they demonstrate near the Father Damien statue at the state capitol. You’ll see Inglis and Inglis among them.
Wally Inglis continued the back-in-the-day memories a week later at their latest project. The couple met in California while he was a Maryknoll priest for six years and she was with the Sisters of Mercy, teaching for 14 years in California Catholic schools. They were inspired by Latino civil rights leader Cesar Chavez’s efforts for decent wages and living conditions for mostly migrant farmworkers in California and Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan’s opposition to the Vietnam War. When they changed vocations from religious to married life and moved to Hawaii in 1974, they brought along their passion for living out the beatitudes. Somehow, using the cliche “grassroots” just isn’t adequate.
They both were hired to teach at Maryknoll High School. Wally for one year, then it was on to jobs with community groups and legislators staffs; Kay continued to teach for 40 years. “It was the time when the Hale Mohalu issue was heating up and that became our community,” Wally said. “Father Ed Gerlock, a Maryknoll priest evicted from the Philippines by the Ferdinand Marcos regime, would say Mass and we would stay there together with the patients and friends.” It was a five-year encampment in a deteriorating old building where water, electricity and gas had been shut off by the state, a bonding experience for all involved, and a launching point for engagement in community causes. Their children are Stephen, a professional musician; Daniel, a special education teacher on Oahu, and Katherine, a small business owner in California.
That’s history, but what the couple would rather talk about now is their current activity, a support center for homeless people in the Honolulu inner city. It was opened nearly two years ago in a small house on the grounds of St. Elizabeth Episcopal Church on North King Street, Father David Gierlach, pastor, offered the former rectory for the purpose. It is now a haven which houseless people can give as their address and pick up their mail, find donated hygiene items, take a shower in a clean, homey bathroom and leave their clothes to be washed overnight in the single washer-dryer laundry room.
Catholic Worker house
It is the first Catholic Worker house in Hawaii, one of 200 such “houses of hospitality” to be opened in the model created by Catholic writer Dorothy Day in New York City in 1933, a time when the Great Depression had left thousands of people poor, homeless and jobless. The woman who’s been described as the most radical Catholic social activist in American history challenged government, the Catholic Church and society to change, from her first arrest outside the White House in 1917 among suffragists demonstrating for women’s right to vote, to her last arrest in 1973 at age 75 while demonstrating with Chavez and the United Farm Workers in California. She died in 1980.
If Wally Inglis had his way, I would fill out the rest of my space talking about Dorothy Day! Let me just tell you that a new one-hour PBS documentary on her life will be shown in March. I couldn’t verify when the local station will carry “Revolution of the Heart: the Dorothy Day Story,” but stay tuned.
The Archdiocese of New York launched a sainthood cause for her in 2000, not unanimously supported because she worked with communists and anarchists and ruffled church bureaucrats’ feathers with her vision of what living the Gospel should be. The cause is still dawdling along through the process and a November 2019 article at the Crux website of non-official Catholic information covers the subject. I learned that my alma mater Marquette University in Milwaukee holds the treasury of her papers and that, in his 2015 address to Congress during his apostolic visit to the United States, Pope Francis named Day along with Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and Thomas Merton as “great Americans.”
When he accepted the award, Wally Inglis told the congregation that “Dorothy had a saying: ‘If you want peace, feed the hungry.’”
He described the Catholic Worker house, which has been dubbed “Wallyhouse” where non-perishable food is distributed every day but Sunday and a hot lunch is served every Tuesday to all comers in an open room called “Kay’s Cafe.” And he invited people to come as volunteers or visitors. Monetary support would be welcome and they’d really like to get a church group or more to commit to serving a meal longterm.
More paper plates
When I visited on a Tuesday, the church grounds were dotted with people eating plate lunches, surrounded by an occasional pet dog — they are welcome — or feral chicken — they are NOT. The workforce for the day included regular volunteers from the Honolulu Quaker society and Clarence Liu, retired Hospice Hawaii chaplain. It was the first day that hospitality space was expanded to a shaded 15-by-30 foot deck with picnic tables. About 100 people arrived and they had to send out for more paper plates.
Three members of the Third Order Society of St. Francis are the live-in staff at the house. They are Barbara Bennett and David Catron, professed members, and Niambi Mercado, a novice, all with the Anglican branch of the Franciscan society of lay people. Bennett and Catron came from the Catholic Worker house in Oakland, California, after serving for 12 years in a similar place in Brazil. The three answered Father Gierlach’s email plea to Franciscans for volunteers willing to commit to the venture.
“We want to make a place where people can come and be comfortable,” said Bennett. She will begin teaching an art class there soon, but that day was eager to show off the newly finished garden, a series of raised beds full of fresh topsoil and a hydroponic pond, all intended to help feed the hungry if those pesky chickens can just be curtailed. A chain-link fence at the back of the garden separates the church property from a city street that was formerly lined with tents and as many as 100 homeless occupants.
After numerous government “sweeps” to clear the unfortunate crowd away, the city invested in paving a wider roadway to welcome parking by nearby housed residents. There’s no price put on the services. No one has to listen to a spiritual reading or homily or join in a prayer to eat. The same is true at the hot breakfast provided every Saturday by the St. Elizabeth congregation at the parish hall.
As Niambi Mercado said when she was introduced in the Wallyhouse newsletter: “Jesus is needed here, so here is where I will be.”
I typically cast my eye on several sources to seek a fitting quote on the subject at hand. Wouldn’t you know, Pope Francis has done it again. He began a series of talks on the beatitudes Jan. 29 in his weekly general audience.
The pope said the beatitudes are a path to joy and true happiness mapped out by Jesus for all of humanity, as reported by the Catholic News Service. It wasn’t a case of giving his followers rules to follow but rather, Jesus was showing a path to choose. Pope Francis urged people to read the simple list of beatitudes so they “may understand this very beautiful, very secure path of happiness that the Lord gives us.
“It is difficult not to be touched by these words,” he said. “They contain the ‘identity card’ of a Christian because they outline the face of Jesus himself, his way of life.”
