A"Liturgy of Hope": praying, protesting war, serving at the soup kitchen, and hanging out
An interview with Catholic Worker and Founder of Dandelion House, Fumi Tosu
How do you grow in faith, hope and love and also confront the suffering and injustice in the world? Fumi Tosu, longtime Catholic Worker and founder of one of the newest houses of hospitality, Dandelion House in Portland, Oregon, has written about the “liturgy of hope” that he has found in the rhythm of the life of a Catholic Worker: “chop, cook, serve, then walk, pray, protest.”
For those who may not be familiar with the Catholic Worker Movement, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin founded the movement in 1933 at the height of the Depression in the slums of New York City. Its aim is to “live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ.”1 Day and Maurin began a “house of hospitality” where volunteers fed and housed the poor while also writing about and changing the political systems that created the poverty. They believed, as Day wrote, that “God meant things to be much easier than we have made them,”2 and that it was the work of Christians to be God’s merciful hands and prophetic tongue in the world. There are now over 200 houses of hospitality internationally. The movement is highly decentralized; there is no governing body and the movement has no formal ties to the Roman Catholic Church. Binding the communities together is their shared commitment to the “aims and means” of the Catholic Worker movement and the values of nonviolence, works of mercy, voluntary poverty, and manual labor.
I spoke with Fumi about how someone born and raised in Tokyo, Japan ends up founding a Catholic Worker community in Portland, Oregon; why he remains Roman Catholic even when he doesn’t agree with all of the church’s teachings; what it looks like to carry on the aims and means of the movement 90 years after its founding and in a highly secular context; and what advice he has for others feeling called to start a house of hospitality.
I was struck by the seeming paradoxes of Fumi’s life: his thoughtful and gentle speech and his getting arrested (and released) for protesting his local Catholic university’s support of ROTC; his commitment to voluntary simplicity and his freedom from worry about having enough money; and his immersion in the life of the poor and his faith in God’s love and care. I hope that you listen to this interview and something strikes you. If you want to learn more about Fumi, get involved locally at Dandelion House, or donate to their work, go to the Dandelion House website.
You can listen to the podcast below or find it on your favorite app via my website:
Helpful Links
The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker and the Catholic Worker homepage with links to all 200 communities, and information about how to access Dorothy Day’s writing
“A Time of Reckoning for (white) Christianity”, Fumi’s article following the January 6, 2021 insurrection
An article by Fumi about his arrest in Mass (and release) on the campus of Santa Clara University
A trailer for the documentary on Dorothy Day, “Don’t Call Me a Saint,” and the website where you can download it
This quote is from the Catholic Worker website. You’ll find links there to an archive of Dorothy Day’s writing