"troubadours for Christ"

In May of 1940, Dorothy Day wrote this:

Peter Maurin has been talking for the past two years of recruiting troubadours for Christ. More and more I am convinced that together with our purely material efforts of building up hospices and farming communes we need these fellow travellers with the poor and the dispossessed to share with them their poverty and insecurity and to bring them the reminder of the love of God.

I've been moving in this direction for quite a while now, often without understanding where I was headed. Yet I'm not close enough yet to those who need the gospel the most. I haven't enough direct experience with the poor and afflicted to feel confident and comfortable with them, and so to share God's love in a way they can feel deeply. This is my next step, I think.

[I found out that Dorothy and Peter concluded that the troubadour idea was impractical, since they couldn't imagine getting the extra money to pay for car and trailer and food for such travellers... I guess they assumed no one would be crazy enough to walk.]


Yesterday afternoon was fun. I went to a party for fathers, put on by the guests and volunteers here, mostly all Latino. The food was great (especially the refried black beans). And then many gathered around the TV to watch soccer, cheering and shouting in Spanish, with kids running back and forth the whole time. I couldn't understand many words, but it was fun.

Later I sat out on the front porch and watched the show. A bunch of young guys from the neighborhood played basketball with a hoop they set up in the street, slowing the occasional car that passed. Children circled on bicycles. A man on the porch next door was giving haircuts to some women; and a voice shouted from across the street, "I'm next!" A big, old dog lay in their yard. Watching it all, like me.