The work for systemic justice is hard. Do you want to make a specific, meaningful impact right now?

Buy your church a washing machine and dryer. Let people who need to, come do their laundry at the church.

Wanna go bananas on the corporal works of mercy? Buy multiple machines.

Many affluent Americans have never had to worry about where they're going to do their laundry... or how they're going to pay for it. This is a very real, daily experience for low income people in your community. The laundromats near me cost $4 to wash, $4 to dry, per load.

Laundry has always been one of the myriad challenges faced by low-income Americans, but it's about to be a literal life or death thing in the era of COVID. People are going to need to wash their clothes, their kids' clothes, way more often—that is going to be incredibly expensive

"Essential" workers in grocery stores, restaurants, and helping professions? Gotta wash clothes every single time. Kids going back to some version of in-person instruction? Can't reuse those shirts.

The ability to do laundry is an economic justice issue.

If you're a church, why would you not want to be able to help people in the community do their laundry? You could even have hospitality set out. Some beverages and snacks. Videos on the saints for the kids. Toys. Great volunteer opportunity for teens who need service hours.

And also, it's one small way churches could facilitate face-to-face accompaniment and encounter. Members of the community could listen to each other's stories, learn more about their daily realities. And struggles. And joys. And everything in between.

Who knows? Maybe people doing laundry would even want to pop into the church for private prayer time. Maybe they'd want to go to confession. Maybe volunteers from the church could provide childcare. A small break for parents.

Pope Francis installed showers at the Vatican so the homeless could have soap and water the human dignity pervasively denied them. What if U.S. churches did that?

But let's start with washing machines and dryers. Parishioners could purchase and donate them.

[This thread brought to you by the fact that, for the past few years, I put my laundry in a rucksack and walked a mile to wash my sheets in the church basement, and now that I've been terminated by the new pastor, I've gotta find a place to do my laundry.]