Opening the Doors of Hospitality and Creating Community with Folks without Homes
Listen to This Conversation
In today’s conversation Rob and Ken are joined by Elizabeth Sparks from Tacoma, Washington USA where she lives and works with the Catholic Worker community for the past seven years.
Since 1983, the Tacoma Catholic Worker seeks to build community defined by deep respect and mutual belonging with their houseless neighbors. They do this by providing a place to stay for houseless folks as well as folks who have been previously incarcerated so that they can work on their goals towards stability.
Join us as Liz shares her remarkable story of providing radical hospitality and how living in community with folks who don’t have a place to call home has impacted her.
About Liz:
Liz and her partner & husband Paul, have lived in this community for 7 years and in Tacoma for over 20 years. She works with guests, volunteers, neighbors & staff to maintain the home on their block with different programs & purposes as well as a garden in the center that hosts their hospitality. Paul and Liz together have enjoyed putting their energies in relationship with their neighbors in the downtown and hilltop neighborhoods. Through the years living in this community, she has learned to mediate projects to maintain the homes & land. Liz finds purpose in being of support to her community and wants to continue to find ways to live in a thriving place for everyone there.
About the Catholic Worker:
The Catholic Worker Movement traces its beginnings to 1933 when Dorothy Day and three others distributed a newspaper called The Catholic Worker in New York City. It sought to bring attention to the plight of the poor and marginalized.
As distribution of the paper swelled in the following years, Dorthy Day and others attempted to live out the ideals they wrote about by starting “houses of hospitality” for the poor and “farming communes” for the unemployed. Thus a worldwide movement was born and continues to this day.
For more info about the Catholic Worker and the Tacoma Catholic Worker community, visit the following links:
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Intro/Outro music by skinfiltr8r.