[Announce] Invitation to apprentice as a "stranger and guest"

[Robert Waldrop]

>From our neighbors in Malloy, Iowa.  RMW
----- Original Message ----- 
From: brian terrell

An Invitation to "Apprenticeship" on the Land

Winter/Spring, 2007

In 1986 a few people with mostly urban Catholic 
Worker
experience moved to far-off Maloy, Iowa, to found 
the
Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker Farm. A few
years later some of these had left, some remained 
and
some others came and our little community sent to 
our
urban counterparts an invitation to join us for
informal courses including weaving, vegetable and 
herb
gardening, rural politics, cheese making, 
nonviolent
direct action, community based ecumenical bible 
study,
dairy goat management, living without television 
and
preparing for the outbreak of peace. In response, 
we
had many takers coming to our house for days, 
weeks,
several for months or even years. Peter Maurin 
said
that truth needed restating every twenty years and 
so
we are offering our invitation again.

Peter Maurin always intended the Catholic Worker
to be a rural, land-based movement; an 
agricultural
revolution from the dominant urban, acquisitive
economy and society toward a village, farm and 
craft
economy and society, one based on "creed not 
greed."
Peter stressed not only the duty of hospitality 
but
also the need to "return to the land" as a 
requirement
of justice. He hoped that our houses would be
"agronomic universities" as a means to that end.

Things have not turned out that way, somehow.
While Dorothy Day respected and was inspired by 
Peter,
she was a North American urban dweller, like most
Catholic Workers, and it is doubtful she ever 
fully
understood the concept of the farming commune as a
practical remedy for the ills of the modern 
industrial
world as preached by Peter, the European peasant.

Dorothy (and most Catholic Workers past and
present) tended to accept Catholic Worker farms as
dependent branches of city houses, serving as 
retreat
and conference centers or as plots for vegetables 
for
the soup lines, existing to support the real work 
of
the movement, which takes place, of course, in the
city. When the Catholic Worker views its farms as 
a
means to bring cheap organic produce to our houses 
in
the cities and as places of retreat and recreation 
for
burned-out urbanites, is our movement is 
abandoning
its roots, its radicalism, joining in the 
exploitation
of the land and its people? When farms are owned,
directed and disposed of by urban Catholic Worker
communities for the needs and purposes of city
dwellers, are we participating, even in our 
"little
way", in the deadly process that leaves the land
desolate and poisoned and crowds the cities with 
the
landless, homeless and hopeless?

In our original invitation, we had proposed the
idea that in order to find our roots and to make
active steps toward creating "a new society in the
shell of the old," the CW needs to shift its 
balance,
to change from an urban movement with a few farms 
and
become a rural movement that has a presence in the
cities. In the mean time, much discussion has 
taken
place and the Catholic Worker has, we feel, grown 
and
matured. Dorothy noted way back in 1942, "Our 
Houses
of Hospitality are scarcely the kind of houses 
that
Peter Maurin has envisioned in his plan for a new
social order. He recognizes that himself, and 
thinks
in terms of the future to accomplish true centers 
of
Catholic Action and rural centers." Perhaps that
future time that Peter looked to is here.

In the interest of clarification of thought, the
Strangers and Guests CW in Iowa invites Catholic
Workers and fellow travelers to visit us to 
discuss
these ideas and pick up some rural living skills 
in
the process. We encourage you to come for a week, 
a
month or a season for an apprenticeship on the 
land.
While our life in Maloy offers more space and 
quiet
for reflection and prayer than most Catholic 
Workers
enjoy, this is not a retreat house and we are not
inviting you to make a retreat with us. Far from
retreating, we are fully engaged in the struggles 
of
our time. Working for land reform here on the 
border
of Iowa and Missouri is as urgent as it is 
anywhere in
the world. We join with friends here, around the 
U.S.
and abroad working for peace and justice.

We especially encourage those who see the
Catholic Worker as a life commitment for the long 
haul
to accept this invitation or to seek out another 
rural
CW house to know this essential aspect of the 
Catholic
Worker program.

We will look forward to hearing your reactions to
these ideas and hope we can arrange a working
sabbatical with some of you here in Maloy. Come
visit, even if it is to talk us into moving to
Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles.

Brian Terrell and Betsy Keenan
Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker
108 Hillcrest Drive
Maloy, IA 50836
641-785-2321

The Catholic Worker believes
In the establishment
of Farming Communes
where each one works
according to his ability
and gets according to his need.
The Catholic Worker believes
In creating a new society
Within the shell of the old
With the philosophy of the new,
Which is not a new philosophy
But a very old philosophy
A philosophy so old
That it looks like new.
Peter Maurin