The Journey Continues!

A lot has changed since Chrissy and Mary Grace founded the Rose of Sharon Catholic Worker back in 2018. Mary Grace passed away in June 2019, and we still miss her warm, loving presence and lavish hospitality. Thanks to a growing extended community (which, if you are reading this, includes you!) the Catholic Worker continued to offer hospitality, rescue food, raise chickens, and even expanded its work to include food distribution and direct action.

Over the years, our work has helped us to discern God’s continuing call in our lives. We supported and have continued to be informed by the witness of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, who deliberately situated their courageous, sacramental transformation of nuclear weapons infrastructure at Kings Bay Naval Base within Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s formulation of the “giant triplets” of “racism, extreme materialism, and militarism,” aka white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism.

Following the teaching of Angela Davis that “all prisoners are political prisoners,” we have increasingly structured our common life around communication with people locked up in NC state prisons, whether they self-identify as “activists” or not. The George Floyd uprising has only increased our sense that God is calling us to open, spiritual warfare against a state and a society whose basic nature is defined by the capacity to enslave, to torture, and to kill not just with impunity but as a matter of routine—that is, by what Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil.”

Our obedience to the biblical injunction to “turn swords into plowshares” has taken on a very literal meaning, as we have continued to provide housing and have grown, rescued, and distributed food on a mutual aid (aka “solidarity not charity”) basis while, at the same time, we have engaged in concrete acts of resistance aimed at amplifying the voices and support the struggles of those who have been kidnapped, tortured, and locked in cages by the white supremacist state.

It has been while beating swords into plowshares—which, for us, means combining direct action aimed at disrupting the carceral state and mutual aid aimed at carving out spaces of freedom where we can relearn what it means to be neighbors to one another—to the best of our ability, that we have discerned God’s call to make a big change in our community: the Rose of Sharon Catholic Worker is moving!

We have realized that in order to do the work that God has called us to do, we need to be located in a more urban part of Durham—specifically, on a bus line and within a reasonable commute to the jobs and social services that many of those who have lived with us over the years need to access on a regular basis. We also need a different kind of physical space. We will never forget or stop being grateful for 3164 Rose of Sharon Rd. That being said, we have discerned that the architecture of a single-family house does not lend itself to the kind of egalitarian community we are trying to build. We need a physical layout that allows everyone to have privacy in a living space that is truly their own and, at the same time, also allows shared infrastructure (e.g. kitchen, showers, laundry, garden) to look and feel shared and not like “its my kitchen, I’m just letting you use it.” Ideally, we want this kind of shared infrastructure to be available to our whole community (again, if you’re reading this email, we mean you!) whether someone lives on site or not.

So here’s the plan: we have sold 3164 Rose of Sharon Rd. and used part of the proceeds to buy three vacant lots in Bragtown—specificaly, 615 and 617 Hoyle Street and 3712 Wiggins Street—where we are living a converted cargo trailer.

The remainder of the money from the sale and the money we save from not paying rent will go towards building our infrastructure: a “community building,” a number of tiny houses and tree houses, and space for people to camp. We also hope to start a community garden and, of course, it wouldn’t be the Rose of Sharon Catholic Worker if we didn’t have our beloved dog and chickens with us!

Once it is built, the community building will be available for cooking, showers, and laundry, as well as a place where people can gather for prayer and meditation, to sort and process food they have rescued and grown, to hold workshops and skill shares, to paint banners (or make art that doesn’t have to have anything to do with politics!) or to plot their next super-awesome direct action. We want this to be a space that can both provide for our community’s (again, if you are reading this, that includes you!) immediate needs and offer a platform for making “good trouble.”

Meanwhile, the tiny houses and tree houses will allow us to continue to do mutual aid work around housing. This also includes welcoming people who are currently tenting or living out of their car to do that on these properties where they are less likely to be harassed by the cops and can have access to the community building. We hope to make all of our building sustainable (both in an economic and an ecological sense) by building with cob, doing shed-to-home conversions, and making ample use of passive solar (as well as the photovoltaic kind).

As always, we need you! You can contribute to us financially by clicking on the Donate button in our header and footer, as well as on Zelle, Ca$h App, PayPal, or Venmo. More than your money, though, we need YOU! We need people of good will to join working groups, sit in meetings, and help make decisions. We need you to share your skills in workshops and research good ideas for the project. And, of course, we are going to need you to come out with hammers and hoes to physically beat swords into plowshares with us.

We love you and we hope to see you soon.

In Solidarity,

Chrissy, Greg, Iris (the dog), Abbie (the kid), #AllTheCatholicWorkerChickens, and the two orange cats on Hoyle St who invited us to come and live with them