Jim Eder (1940-2023): Conjurer of Community

This is Jim Eder, a remarkable man. Among other things, he was a Chicago school teacher who ran a soup kitchen in his spare time. He sponsored me when I joined the Catholic Church, and he became a mentor, a role model, and my dear friend. 

Last week, Jim passed away after suffering a stroke, and today his family and friends came together at St. Lambert’s Parish in Skokie for his funeral. Before the Mass began, I was privileged to deliver this eulogy. If you knew Jim, I hope you find that it captures something of his spirit. If you didn’t know him, maybe it’ll spark your interest, in which case I’d suggest you go help out at Soup Kitchen sometime. It’s still going on, every Tuesday and Friday night. Jim himself won’t be there, of course, but you’ll encounter his legacy in everyone you meet. 

Who knows? You might even become part of that legacy yourself.
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When I landed in Uptown in 1984, I had one goal: To find out about the Catholic Worker. I’d read Dorothy Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness, and I was determined to find out about this movement of people that took the Gospel so seriously. Houses of hospitality and soup kitchens, peacemaking and farming communes, all wrapped up with priests and Mass and saints and Rosaries. The Catholic stuff weirded me out, frankly (I grew up Evangelical), but the Worker stuff appealed to my twenty-something radicalism, so I started hanging around St. Francis House.

It wasn’t long before I discovered the Soup Kitchen up the street at St. Thomas of Canterbury, and that’s where I got to know Jim Eder. “I’m new – what can I do?” I asked him on my first day. “Here,” he said, handing me a mop, “go clean the men’s bathroom.” It was a practical step, concrete, and so welcome – I was part of the team, just like that!

Later, there was always Evening Prayer and pizza and beer. Sometimes music; always story-telling (and the stories never got old, no matter how many times you heard them, due in part, perhaps, to slight alterations of details with each retelling). And then there was the laughter – lots of laughter. The transition from mopping floors, wiping tables, and scrubbing pots to singing and joking and feasting seemed so natural, so…normal!

It was all an eye-opener, a shocker, an epiphany, really. It was my initiation into the Soup Kitchen magic, largely conjured by Jim – how’d he do it? Total strangers from all walks of life coming together to serve a free meal to those in need, but then receiving something else totally unexpected, something so lavish, so extravagant – authentic community.

Dorothy Day wrote that “Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.” That’s a good description of Soup Kitchen, a banquet on many levels – literally for the guests, hundreds of guests, who showed up every Tuesday and Friday, and a banquet for the volunteers as well, with post-Soup feasting and drinking on a regular basis, to be sure, but also a more profound banquet of camaraderie and joy.

And that camaraderie and joy? It was for everyone – everyone, everyone, without exception. Everyone was made to feel welcome and a part of things, integrated into the web of the Soup Kitchen society, just by showing up and pitching in. I experienced it; I know many of you experienced it, too. And it was largely because of Jim Eder. He had an uncanny knack – a gift, a super power, if you will – for reeling in outsiders and giving them purpose, giving them a sense of belonging and place.

What’s more, once you’d been reeled in yourself, you were inspired to do the same for others. You kept your eye out for newbies or those on the fringe, and then brought them into the thick of it all. In essence, you became an extension of Eder’s irrepressible hospitality; which was itself an extension of the hospitality of Christ. Soup Kitchen under Eder’s “temporary” direction – a temporary leadership role that lasted over 40 years – was the embodiment of Peter Maurin’s vision of a world “where it is easier for people to be good.”

Now, let me hasten to add (lest Eder in his otherworldly perch should scowl and scold), that our dear departed friend was no saint. He wasn’t perfect, of course, but he managed his imperfections in a way that I and so, so many others admired and learned from. He wasn’t a saint, but he damn sure wanted to be one, and he worked at it. Every day.

And that’s why I asked him to be my sponsor when I became a Catholic – to be my “godfather,” as I called him. Why wouldn’t I? He was Catholic, through and through; he poured out his life for others through service and sacrifice; he prayed regularly, got to Mass every day, and frequented the confessional. Yet he did it all with good humor, generosity, and just regular humanness. Eder was an ordinary guy with ordinary strengths and weaknesses who, with God’s grace, did extraordinary things – he lived an extraordinary life.

Early on – after meeting him, getting to know him, living with him – I determined to become like him. So, like I said, I asked him to be my sponsor, and, as my sponsor, he not only shepherded me into the Catholic Church, he demonstrated every day what it means to be a Catholic – or, to be precise, he demonstrated every day what it can mean to be a Catholic. That’s what I wanted: To be a Catholic like Eder was a Catholic, and I’ve been working at it ever since.

Although my time in Uptown ended after only a few short years, it was instrumental in shaping my worldview, personality, and character. The Worker, Soup, St. Thomas, the whole Kenmore “do-gooders ghetto” phenomenon was a crucible for so many of us, making us who we are, and Eder was at the center of it all for many of us – me included, obviously.

Even after I left Uptown, Jim and I stayed connected, albeit remotely – going on 30-odd years now. I’d visit him in Chicago; he’d come down to visit us in South Bend; often I’d meet him halfway at an Irish pub in Michigan City. He stood with me at my wedding; he actually became a literal godfather for my son, Crispin; and, for me, he became like a second dad.

Jim challenged me and encouraged me; held me accountable when I was screwing up; counseled me when I was losing my way. We’ve laughed much together, cried together, and bitched about this and that together. It seems like my entire adult life, I’ve been striving to emulate Jim in so many ways – in faith and devotion, in courage and prudence, in friendship and loyalty, and certainly in mirth. You could say we’ve been growing older together intermittently for decades. Only he had a couple decades head start on me, so we both knew that he’d likely be making his exit before me.

Yeah, I knew that, but I still couldn’t believe it when I got the word from Fr. Simon that Jim had suffered a major stroke – that he was unresponsive and unlikely to survive for long. Jim? Jim Eder? Dying? It couldn’t be. What will the world be like without Jim Eder in it? Oh my God, a much poorer world, at the very least, poorer and more melancholy, bereft of a major tributary of charity and good cheer.

Last Saturday, I got up to Evanston to visit Jim in the hospital – to tell him I loved him, to thank him for saving my life, shaping my life, enriching my life. When I got there, I was greeted by Don and Dorsey, Jim’s good, good friends; and there was Paul Shaheen and Alban, good, good friends from an even earlier vintage.

And then there was a fifth person, a young woman I didn’t recognize – Dani, I was told, a relatively recent addition to the Soup Kitchen community. Immediately, I felt a bond with her – and I knew nothing about her other than her first name, that she was a volunteer at Soup, and that she loved Eder enough to visit his deathbed. Then I saw her well up with tears as she got ready to leave, as she bade Jim farewell, as she thanked him profusely for his impact on her life. “Amazing, amazing,” I thought to myself. “Here is a sister, a comrade, a friend – and all because of our common connection with this dying man.”

Amazing, right? Even on his deathbed, he was bringing people together. Today we gather again, once again, because of Jim. We’ll grieve him; we’ll pray for him; we’ll bury him. We’ll commend his soul to God. But we won’t be done with him, for his manner of bringing people together and conjuring community, of eliciting smiles and joviality in the unlikeliest circumstances, of pursuing holiness as if it was the most normal thing in the world – his manner is now our manner.

No matter our state of life, no matter our profession, no matter our age, we can take a cue from Jim and work to create spaces in the world – little corners in the world here and there – “where it is easier for people to be good.” And the world will be all the better for it. And so will we. Thanks, Jim Eder, thanks. Thanks for everything.
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