by David DeMarco, SJ

Jim Hasse (left) and Lou Lipps (right), two of the residents of the new community, stop long enough to have their pictures taken.

"The upstairs bathroom floor may be rotted," warned Jim Hasse during the first meeting of Claver Jesuit Community, a new Jesuit community in a century-old home in Cincinnati. We're in the South Cumminsville neighborhood, home to mostly low-income African Americans.

"Whoever is showering up there could find himself riding that iron bathtub down to the basement?" I asked.

You heard exchanges like this those first days--along with the whine of the power saw as Mike O'Grady worked on the attic "suite" he was sharing with a few starlings.

"The smell is still pretty bad in here," said Tim Hipskind as he walked around the kitchen, eyeing warped vinyl flooring. We picked up our plates at our first meal together and headed for the front porch.

A community meeting of the Claver Community

Tim Hipskind, SJ with friends

Brother O'Grady working with some local help

A community organization offered us this abandoned house at low rent if we cleaned it up. But, you see, despite Louie Lipps's scrubbing, Bear's legacy lingered. Bear was a dog that had lived with few inhibitions in every part of our house. We spent days vacuuming dog hair from the heating ducts, pulling up stained carpeting, and painting urine-soaked floorboards.

Two dumpsters-full later we declared the place barely habitable, unpacked books, and began the hard work of community building.

"How do we live out our mission?" The question swirled around us. Claver is Chicago Province's idea of Jesuits living shoulder to shoulder with poor African-Americans. The people living in the neighborhood where we work are among the most marginalized in Cincinnati, inhabiting what appears to be an African-American "reservation" with only two potholed roads in and out, no grocery store, no bank, and no barber. A toxic landfill casts a shadow over the neighborhood's playgrounds. This is where we, in the Jesuit tradition, have "inserted" ourselves, living and working with our neighbors.

Our apostolic activities are evolving. Jim Hasse paints portraits of the members of Mother of Christ Church. During Black History Month he exhibited his art around the city, even hanging a striking portrayal of Martin Luther King on the picket fence outside our house. Lou Lipps, active in retreat ministry, also companions teens at the Hamilton County Detention Center. Tim Hipskind joined a neighborhood group and organized an effort to provide for the health needs of residents exposed to that toxic landfill. Mike O' Grady works at St. Xavier High, serving as liaison between the school's community service program and Cincinnati's service organizations. And I practice medicine at the Crossroad Health Center, serving African-Americans without health insurance.

Every Tuesday we gather to share the challenges and the insights we glean from our ministries, and then we listen with a communal ear in the Ignatian tradition for that soft sound--the Spirit's call. "Where is the Spirit leading us?" We don't know what our presence will mean to Cincinnati's African-American community. But we have opened ourselves to relationships with those whom our society has marginalized. We accompany, we listen, and we move toward an exchange of gifts. It is not an institution that we bring but rather our love. If anything else happens here in Cincinnati, it will flow from that love as it manifests in a desire to walk with Christ.