New on the Block

The ride to work is a bit different now. It used to be we boarded the bus a block away and rode past streets that descended in alphabetical order down the 14th Street "riot corridor," a section of Washington that exploded after Martin Luther King was killed 14 years ago. At T Street we passed the heroin dealers; at N, the prostitutes; and getting off at L we walked along the margin of the pornography district.

But urban redevelopment, beginning at Pennsylvania Avenue and spreading out past the construction of a new multi-block convention center, had begun its assault on L Street. Our small office building was being swallowed up by mammoth office complexes, modern esplanades, and gushing fountains, which appeared almost overnight where gas stations and family-run businesses had been. The owner of our building offered to let us buy it--for three-quarters of a million dollars.

Across the street from us, the half-block-long Secret Service building stood like a fortress. The protectors of ambassadors and presidents and foreign dignitaries watched us come and go. One day one asked us, "Who are you anyway? You walk around in regular street clothes, and go in and out all day long with ice cream cones." Perhaps we didn't fit in after all. So we moved.

Exorbitant real estate prices and the lack of facilities there continue to frustrate our dream of moving our office building, which contains the magazine and our peace ministry, to our neighborhood. We still hold on to the hope that someday we can work alongside those in our community, Sojourners Fellowship, who work full time with our neighbors, organizing tenants and providing services.

But we take a new ride now--across town instead of down. It's a longer ride, taking a 10-minute swing through a medical complex that includes the Children's Hospital, the Veterans Administration, and Washington Hospital Center. Though it doesn't give us quite the reminder of the city's sufferings we used to get, said Danny Collum on his first ride to the new office: "At least I can take care of two Christian virtues at once--going to work and visiting the sick."

There's no Secret Service across the street; instead we have what I've been told is the smallest national park in the country. It consists of a rock that holds a plaque describing the Civil War fort that once stood there, surrounded by a square block of woods. While the weather is still warm, it's an ideal place for a lunch break.

The neighborhood has a small-town feel, with all the offerings folks like us thrive on: a thrift shop, a secondhand bookstore, a Chinese carry-out and Italian deli, a bakery with the largest donuts I've ever seen, a repair shop that fixes everything except lawnmowers, and of course an ice cream store, without which we would not have considered the move.

The move itself was less than uneventful. Like our days on earth, each of the hundreds of boxes we packed up was numbered, but the movers seemed to have difficulty getting them to the proper rooms.

A minor fiasco was created by the fact that Jim Wallis was scheduled to fly to Sweden on the evening of the move. He, Joe Roos, and I had just pulled up to Dulles airport (an hour and a quarter's drive from home in rush-hour traffic) an hour before his flight, when Jim discovered he had forgotten his passport. He called the new office in the hopes that someone could jump in a car with it in time for the flight. He reached the man installing the phones, who put him on hold to try to track down David King, who with Scot DeGraf had valiantly overseen the move.

Joe and I heard only a despairing sigh from Jim that made us think the passport was lost forever. Then Jim moaned, "There's Muzak on this thing." We passed the phone around. Sure enough, it sounded like a Bach xylophone concert. So as not to give our callers the impression that they have reached Amtrak, our first act after the move was to unplug the xylophones.

David checked Jim's new office, but his boxes weren't there. We concluded that the passport was in a box on a truck parked somewhere between the old office and the new while the movers took a break for dinner.

With the thought that maybe the passport had been left behind in Jim's old desk, Rob Soley drove to the L Street office and hunted in vain. He came outside to find a police officer writing out a ticket: "You can't park here during rush hour." When Rob explained the story, the officer gave him a blank stare and kept writing.

Even a call to the State Department for an emergency passport didn't help. Jim rebooked the flight for the next evening, resigned to calling Sweden during the wee hours of the morning--a reasonable hour on the other side of the Atlantic--to tell them he would be late.

Jim and Joe went to the new office to wait for Jim's boxes to come off the truck. Box after box was unloaded, but Jim's were not among them. Finally at midnight they started looking throughout the building. The passport was discovered in the basement sometime after one in the morning, in a box among 498 cartons of Sojourners back issues and reprints.

Our new office building was formerly a novice house for Consolata priests; we're thankful that our rent is supporting their mission work. It contains a simple but beautiful chapel, complete with hand-carved Italian altar and pulpit.

The 17 tiny offices that hold our editorial staff, peace ministry, and community outreach were once dormitory rooms. We may not make minimum wage or have health insurance, but we have one fringe benefit I doubt any other organization can boast of: a sink in every office.

We're still ironing out some of the kinks. Our mailboxes are in a former phone booth, and the line forms down the hall at lunchtime waiting to get in. Part of the photocopier was lost for a few days, so that copies were shot out across the room as if from a cannon. And we have yet to find a pencil sharpener.

When a loud, continuous ring went off in the building our first day, we weren't sure whether it was a doorbell, Danny's pipe setting off the smoke alarm, or our new and unusual phones ringing. It being the first week of school for kids in Washington, Scot rescued the moment by shouting, "Okay, everybody report to your homerooms."

It will take us a little while yet to feel completely settled in. We appreciate your patience.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.