Current Donation Needs

The first time I celebrated the Christmas season at Cherith Brook was in 2018. During our morning reflection, we read and reflected on the song, "The Canticle of Turning." I had never heard the song before and was struck by the powerful way Mary announced what would happen - at the end o f each stanza, she says," for the world is about to turn." At Cherith Brook, we get to witness the world turning - light crowding out the darkness, showing us a way forward. This time reminds us that a new kind of community is possible: where everyone belongs, and everyone's needs are met.

The world turns in tiny moments, like a mother and her three rambunctious kiddos coming i n for our Thursday evening community meal. Mom was stressed, had no place t o go that night, and was fleeing a violent situation.

It was Fall 2017 when we asked her to live with us. Winter was coming, she was new on the streets, and we were worried she wouldn’t survive. We never expected her to say “yes”, but to our surprise, she did.

She introduced herself as “Grace” but we never figured out her real name. Even after two years of asking, sometimes pleading, she kept her story secret. At one point, I confess, it even became a kind of game: me trying to coax her into divulging her identity and her sending me on numerous rabbit trails. While we were never quite certain how to parse out fact from fiction, I suspected her stories  held kernels of truth—her truth. Like mixing the pieces of two puzzles together, these stories became her new one.

Dorothy Day once said, “We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it.” One thing is clear in the U.S., poverty, racism, militarism, ecological devastation and other critical issues are plaguing our communities whether we choose to see them or not. And since society is constantly telling us to climb the capitalistic ladder at any cost—even at the expense of the poor and disenfranchised—it’s no wonder many in our society choose to forget those who suffer and insulate themselves from the community pain on their way “up”.

My name is Micah Chrisman and I first came to Cherith Brook four years ago as a summer intern. During my time away, I worked for