H.O.M.E. Word – A blog from Project H.O.M.E.

During this Easter week, we share this spiritual reflection, written several years ago by Will O’Brien.  Will has been a member of the Project HOME for over twenty-three years. A version of this article was originally published in Sojourners magazine.

It was Easter Sunday, and I was in the mental ward.

I had been battling a serious depression for several years.  I had struggled with inner demons who sought to foist on me the lie that I was shameful, guilty, unworthy of love.  I fought back on a variety of fronts – therapy, psychiatric care, medication, support groups, intercessory prayer.  There were very dark times when I hovered on the brink of not wanting to live.  There were times of breakthrough, especially through prayer, when I began to feel somewhat free from the worst clutches of the depression.

The past few months had actually been a time of stability.  But for reasons not altogether clear, I began to slide dangerously.  It may have been a simple matter of medication starting to wear out – a not uncommon phenomenon.  But whatever the cause, it landed me in a situation which I had never experienced: a psychiatric hospital. 

For years, I have worked with persons who are homeless, a great number of whom suffer from serious mental illness.  Frequently, folks I know have needed to be hospitalized, often through the traumatic experience of an involuntary commitment.  Often I have visited my friends in a mental health hospital, and I almost invariably have left with a heavy and even depressed feeling at the often bleak and dismal environment of those psychiatric wards and the relentless oppression of the disease of mental illness.

Now, there I was, in that very environment myself.  Now it was me who was nonfunctional, disabled, in need of drastic intervention.  As the insensitive parlance of popular culture might put it, there I was, in the looney bin, one of the crazies.

Fortunately, this particular hospital was a relatively comfortable place, and most of the staff were caring and competent.  I was in a ward for persons with less acute symptoms (though several folks were on suicide alert.)  Nonetheless, during the first days, I was prey to feelings of deep discouragement.  It seemed as if I had crossed some line, that this was a turning point in my life.  From this point on, I felt, I must acknowledge definitively that I am mentally ill.  My life will always be diminished and difficult.  I will always need medication and mental health care.  I will always be a burden to my wife.  I will always be a potential threat to my children.  It was a dark time.

Feeling all this, I recognized a profound irony at work:  For years, in my professional life, I had been in the role of offering support, services, and advocacy for persons with mental illness.  Now here I was on the other side.  I had long been an advocate for the dignity of persons with mental illness.  For years, I have fought against the stigmas that marginalize and dehumanize persons with mental illness.  Now here I was succumbing to a sense of shame being a mental health consumer.  I was victim of the very stigma I had fought against, that mental illness is somehow diminishing of our humanity and our dignity and worth.

In fact, most of my life I had yearned for an experience of that freeing unconditional love of God, but coming from an alcoholic family and prone to depression, my sense of self was always fragile and vulnerable.  Rarely had I been able to extend to myself the compassion and mercy I so often showed toward others.  Now, in the mental health hospital, I was feeling pretty miserable about myself and far from God’s love.

I can’t say for sure how much the hospitalization helped, but at the very least, it provided me with plenty of time to pray.  My prayer life been sloppy and sporadic, in part because of the hectic demands balancing work and family – though I suspect it was also a casualty of my depression and my lack of energy and focus.  But during my days in the hospital, I did plenty of praying.  And I came to prayer with a rawness and honesty, never feeling so broken in my life. 

And something happened.

In the midst of this painful experience, I sensed God saying to me, “None of this matters – I love you, I have always loved you with an everlasting love, and nothing will change that.”

My being in a mental hospital didn’t matter.  My disability, my need for medication, my inability to function well, all my flaws and shortcomings – these didn’t matter.  But the other thing is that my gifts, my talents, my accomplishments, my qualities and strengths – these didn’t matter either – at least, they weren’t the measure of God’s love for me, or of my deserving love.  In fact, we most fully recognize grace when all of it is stripped away. 

Part of our human sinfulness is an alienation from God’s grace.  We are distant from God’s love, trapped in our own ego, deeply insecure and needy.  Our families are often broken and strained, and we lack the nurture that assures us of our goodness and value.  Those most responsible for loving us often scar us, and we bear those scars all our lives, sometimes scarring others.

Most perniciously, we live in a society that promulgates a great and terrible lie:  that our worth and dignity as persons depends on our productivity and our success.  We idolize the rich and famous and powerful.  We put them on magazine covers and television shows.  We aspire to be like them, because, we assume, they have great worth and value.  Meanwhile, our society denigrates those who are in any way weak, unproductive, unsuccessful.

These values dehumanize all of us.  Obviously, they dehumanize those who are poor, struggling, addicted, mentally ill, or somehow otherwise broken in obvious ways.  But they also dehumanize those who are successful and powerful, by seducing them into believing that their worth is based on things that are false, things that are not lasting or eternal, things that could easily be stripped away.

This value system is one huge lie, but we so easily succumb to it.  What I have had to painfully learn is that through much of my life I have succumbed to that lie.  I too had staked my sense of worth, dignity, and value on my gifts, my strengths, my accomplishments.  I deserved God’s love because I was an advocate for the poor and homeless.  I was worthy because of my good values and my talented writing and teaching and political organizing for justice. 

It didn’t work.  No matter how good a student I was as a child, I could never fully earn love from my alcoholic father.  And no matter how perfect a disciple of Jesus I was as an adult, I could never fully earn God’s love.

At Project HOME I have begun to experience and envision something close to my conception of what church ought to be:  a place where we gather to remind each other that we are all God’s precious, beloved children.  It is to be a place where we accept and embrace each other’s brokenness.  It is a place where we proclaim that the social values outside are a lie.  God loves us in all our flaws and defects and shortcomings.  God doesn’t care whether we are a CEO or a drug dealer, whether we reside in a mansion or a mental health hospital.  Grace embraces all of us.   In fact, the mystery is that it is precisely in the acceptance of our brokenness that we can know this amazing grace.

Thinking back, I try to comprehend my time in the hospital as a key chapter in my spiritual journey – particularly given the odd fact that I was there during the season of resurrection.  I wonder if God loved me so much that God put me through an experience in which I was stripped of all the trappings in my life that hindered the work of grace. 

Another gift happened the day I returned to work.  One of our residents, who is formerly homeless and lives with a mental illness, came up to me with an air of deep concern.  She noted that I had been gone for awhile and wondered if I was OK.  I shared with her what had happened.  Without a word, she embraced me.  She had known the streets.  For years she had cycled in and out of mental hospitals.  She suffered through a barrage of medications and even electro-shock treatment.  In that moment, she welcomed me into the blessed community that Jesus spoke of, those who know their poverty and their poverty of spirit. 

In that moment, I felt loved.  I felt blessed.  I felt a little bit risen.

Project H.O.M.E.'s Volunteer Stories Project aims to collect the unique experiences and motivations of the people who heed the call to help others and share those stories with our larger community of friends and supporters. All pieces will be written in a Q&A style to ensure the volunteer's experiences are conveyed in their own words.

Steve Lozowski volunteers at St. Columba, a safe haven for chronically homeless men who suffer from severe mental illness. Steve helps provide meals, comfort, and – perhaps most importantly – companionship to the residents.

Project H.O.M.E. (PH): Tell us a little about yourself.

Steve Lozowski (SL): I am a product architect for a healthcare information solutions company.  I am also married with one grown child.  In addition to my wonderful wife, I live with two dogs, one cat, one rabbit, five chickens, and a handful of fish in a pond.

In the past, I have volunteered in different settings, including a homeless shelter close to my home.  I have also tutored children at an after school program, and spent weeks doing home repair in West Virginia and working at a summer camp in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

(PH): Why do you volunteer?

(SL): I have known about Project H.O.M.E. for years, as my church supports them through a poor box program.  A few years ago, my wife and I had the pleasure of touring 1515 Fairmount and the Honickman Learning Center and Comcast Technology Labs with Ed Speedling.  So when I had the opportunity two years ago to commit to a weekly volunteer effort, Project H.O.M.E. was my first choice.

I signed up to help with dinner at St. Columba, but initially I didn’t completely know what my volunteering would include.  It did not take long for me to look forward to seeing the guys I had met and meet new ones.  Serving dinner and cleaning up has become the foundation for what I really enjoy, which is just talking with some of the guys.  Even though they are struggling with their own challenges, they express concern for me and my family.  All I really have to offer is listening and sharing our lives, but that seems worth it.

(PH): Why are the issues of homelessness and poverty relevant/important to you?

(SL): Since I was young, I have felt the injustice of some who would never have the chances I do, just because of the luck of where and when they were born.  Later I came to see how mental health issues or addictions can seriously compound a person’s challenges.  I know that I cannot fix things for any one person, but sharing our common humanity increases the dignity of both of us.

Since volunteering with Project H.O.M.E., Sister Mary’s prophetic witness has touched and disturbed me.  I am disturbed when she mentions the structural violence underlying many of the issues of homelessness and poverty.  Not because I don’t agree with it, but because it can be easy to overlook it.  But I am encouraged by the vision of Project H.O.M.E. of a more just and loving society.  (Loving is my term, because that’s how I think about things.)

(PH): Anything else you'd like to add? Any stories or experiences?

(SL): There is one experience I’d like to share.  Last year, two college students from St. Joe’s were also volunteering on the nights I was there.  Toward the end of their school year, one of the residents ended up giving them hugs.  I turned to the other guys on the benches outside and asked “Where’s my hug?”.  As expected, one burly guy shot back with “I don’t hug guys!”.  But another guy jumped up and said that he’d give me a hug.  When we hugged I realized how frail he was.  Talking to him in the following weeks, I found out that he was dying from cancer, and he shared with me some of the dreams he had hoped to accomplish.  Not too long later, he passed away.

At our volunteer celebration, I was telling this as a fun story, expecting to end with my hug.  But as I told it, I realized that I might have been one of the last people to hug this man before he died.  So I felt doubly blessed at having shared a short amount of time with him.

For more information on how to volunteer with Project H.O.M.E., please contact Volunteer & In-Kind Donation Coordinator Carly Ianuzzi at carlyianuzzi@projecthome.org or 215-232-7272, ext. 3015. You can also visit us here for more information, including our volunteer orientation schedule.

(Beginning second from left) Amy and Sharlene Goldfischer, seated with several members of 1515 Fairmount's resident knitting club.

Project H.O.M.E.'s Volunteer Stories Project aims to collect the unique experiences and motivations of the people who heed the call to help others and share those stories with our larger community of friends and supporters. All pieces will be written in a Q&A style to ensure the volunteer's experiences are conveyed in their own words.

First up is the mother/daughter duo of Sharlene and Amy Goldfischer. The Goldfischers facilitate the popular knitting club at 1515 Fairmount Avenue where our residents – many of whom are already painters, sculptors, and illustrators in their own right – hone their knitting skills with an eye toward crafting items for personal use or to sell at local craft shows. 

Project H.O.M.E. (PH): Tell us a little about yourselves.

Sharlene Goldfischer (SG): I am a special education teacher and consultant by training and background and homeschooled my own children for the past twelve years, along with providing support to other homeschooling families.  Most of my teaching career was spent helping children and teens whose behavior and emotional challenges were interfering with their learning.  I bring with me many, many years of working with children and adults to help them fully realize their true potential….doing whatever it takes to get that to happen.

Amy Goldfischer (AG): I am a homeschooled student in the Philadelphia area. I am interested in the arts, including handwork.

(PH): Why do you volunteer?

(SG): My son, Eric, who is now entering his senior year in college, volunteered at Project H.O.M.E. during his high school years and became extremely passionate about working to end homelessness in this country (a passion and focus which has continued through his college years).  My daughter, Amy, became interested from hearing about Eric's work and volunteered in the art program several years ago.  One summer day, there just wasn't enough room in the art program for Amy due to summer interns, so, she was asked to help out with the knitting program.  I came along to join her for her first visit with this group.  Shortly after this visit, we received a call that the person who was currently leading the club was being relocated for her job and asking if Amy and I could take over running the knitting group.  Of course we said "YES" without any hesitation!  That was about two years ago now.  It is so inspiring to me to help others learn a new skill and watch them feel so good about it…and then use it to express their creativity.  This, as well as the deep and caring relationships that are formed from the work together are what motivate me.

(AG): I like connecting with the people at Project H.O.M.E., sharing a common interest and sharing my own skills with new knitters. I also enjoy learning from the experienced handworkers at Project H.O.M.E. They inspire me.

(PH): Why are the issues of homelessness and poverty relevant/important to you?

(SG): All of the issues related to poverty and homelessness are important to me.  I believe that each and every one of us brings special gifts to the world and if an individual is living in poverty and/or is homeless, it is very difficult for those gifts to be realized.  I also feel that it is the responsibility of every citizen to be involved at some level in helping to end poverty and homelessness.  Sister Mary and Joan have done such an amazing job of getting that message out there and of doing something about it. Bravo!

(AG): I believe that even the small things that someone does can make a difference. I want to continue to be involved, even in small ways, with organizations that are working to end homelessness because I think that ending homelessness is a goal that should be reached as soon as possible. These issues are important to me because it disturbs me that homelessness and poverty are still so common in Philadelphia and that most people do not realize that it is within their abilities to change this situation.

(PH): Anything else you'd like to add? Any fun stories or experiences?

(SG): My favorite stories and memories relate to watching new knitters "get it" and get over their fear of failure and of making mistakes, which absolutely everyone makes when learning to knit.  It's been exciting to see the items crafted by the knitting club members be so well received at area craft shows and to experience the generosity of local crafts people who have donated yarn and supplies.  I am also really enjoying watching my forty-two year old portable sewing machine get a workout!

(AG): People in the knitting club inspire me with their dedication, creativity and skills. It can be funny being the only person under age 40 in the group. I loved going to the First Friday event in Narberth with the group and selling our handwork and art.

(PH): Thanks so much for your time – and volunteer service!

For more information on how to volunteer with Project H.O.M.E., please contact Volunteer & In-Kind Donation Coordinator Carly Ianuzzi at carlyianuzzi@projecthome.org or 215-232-7272, ext. 3015. You can also visit us here for more information, including our volunteer orientation schedule.

Erika Slaymaker is a Philly Fellow working this year with Project H.O.M.E. on implementing our sustainability initiatives and programs.

What is sustainability?

The first ideas that often come to mind when hearing the word “sustainability” include living “green,” recycling, eating organic foods, and other environmental concepts.  These are all certainly related to sustainability, but sustainability can be more general as well, encouraging us to think holistically and with a long-term perspective about our actions. Sustainability is a useful larger framework for our vision as an organization.

The United Nations, in 1987, defined sustainability as the ability to “meet present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”  This is an idea that Project H.O.M.E. knows well. Project H.O.M.E. has lasted for more than 20 years, in part, because it has been responsible with its resources and has had an enduring vision.

For example, our mission that “none of us are home until all of us are home” demonstrates this well.  It’s about making sure people’s needs are met in ways that don’t get in the way of other people’s needs being met.  It is about understanding the larger context and consequences of our choices and the impact they have. It is about the world we want to live in, recognizing that we are all connected to one another.

In this way, sustainability as a framework already fits within Project H.O.M.E.’s work.  Therefore, one next step is to incorporate intentionality about how we interact with the environment into our organization.  We are thinking about the resources we use, about the waste we create, and our ecological footprint as a whole.  As a part of the most recent strategic plan, we have included environmental concerns as a strategic and important aspect of our work.

Working towards environmental sustainability at Project H.O.M.E. is not new – we have been thinking about our environmental impact for many years now.  This is evidenced in the strides we have made, including using Philly Car Share, implementing a recycling program, green building within our home ownership program and our new residences, especially Connelly House, and teaching our students about gardening, nutrition, and local food at the Honickman Learning Center and Comcast Technology Labs.

Even with these major steps, we want to do more.

I believe sustainability has to be a community process in order to have meaningful impact. I look forward to having more conversations throughout Project H.O.M.E. to learn what sustainability means to us and developing a plan together for what our organization can do to take responsibility for our impact on the environment.

Our whole community is committed to envisioning a Project H.O.M.E. that is truly sustainable.  We seek to tap our collective imagination to come up with more possibilities and concrete steps for Project H.O.M.E. to express its important commitment to sustainability.

All of us at Project H.O.M.E. want to move together towards more a more sustainable future.  We welcome ideas and input from all our friends and supporters.  Please comment on this blog, or contact me with answers and ideas at 215-232-7229 ext. 4063 or erikaslaymaker@projecthome.org.

Peak Johnson was a long-time participant and leader in Project H.O.M.E.’s  Teen Program at the Honickman Learning Center and Comcast Technology Labs and is a current staff member of our H.O.M.E. Page Café.  He is also a great writer and has a very thoughtful article in the Tri-State Defender (one of the oldest African American newspapers in the country) analyzing the current problem of flash mobs in Philadelphia.

You can read his piece here:

http://tri-statedefenderonline.com/articlelive/articles/6561/1/Can-the-acts-of-a-few-damage-an-entire-race/Page1.htm

Kim Covello is a volunteer for Project H.O.M.E. who previously blogged about her experience doing street outreach with Sam Santiago of our Outreach Coordination Center. 

It was Sunday, May 15,and I was driving from my Main Line home into Center City Philadelphia, excited and a little nervous.  I am a 52-year-old retired attorney and suburban mom. I model for QVC and local commercials part-time and am really into health and fitness.  I had pulled my hair back into a ponytail, put on my jeans and sneaks, and picked up four Villanova University students, and was now heading to Broad Street Ministry for three hours of training that would equip us to head out to the streets with over 200 other volunteers in the wee hours of the morning.

I was volunteering with an initiative called the 100,000 Homes Campaign, a national grassroots effort to place America’s most vulnerable, long-term homeless individuals into 100,000 homes by July 2013.  Philadelphia’s participation in the campaign was beginning with a week-long effort of surveying persons who are homeless on the streets.

I was happy to have the company of the students from Villanova.  They had just finished their final exams and had that drawn-out, exhausted look of too many all-nighters in the library. I was touched by their volunteerism.

We arrived at the Ministry that Sunday afternoon, found our teams amongst the crowd of volunteers and settled in for the three-hour training session. Each team was assigned to a specific area of the city and once there, our goal was to survey as many homeless people as we could in two hours, to find out who were the most “vulnerable.” The most “vulnerable,” we found out, were those people “most likely to die on the streets within a year, if they didn’t receive help.”

Once identified, then the City Support Services would have the necessary information to follow up with the individuals surveyed and offer help.  So we looked over the Survey. It contained bullet-type direct questions about the living situation, physical and mental health, and incarceration and military history of the individuals. We received sheets of instructions, including the “Do’s and Don’ts of Surveying” and “Outline of Surveying Shift” which included the requirement that we “Report to the Ministry on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings no later than 4:00 a.m.!” (No emphasis added)

So a few minutes before 4:00 a.m. on Monday morning, I greeted Carol Thomas, our team leader. She and I acknowledged that we knew each other from somewhere…but we come from different worlds, so from where…? It didn’t matter really, I had an instant affinity for Carol.

Carol and Kim prepare to head out to the streets for the survey.

I’m sure she felt like swatting me away at times, but she was so “hip” and gently respectful at the same time. I felt lucky to be part of her team, so I stuck by her side and followed her everywhere. I learned so much from her about engaging people on the street.

That first morning, our team climbed into the van and headed to University City, the area around Penn and Drexel. The streets were dark, chilly, wet with rain, and eerily quiet. Then we saw him, a dark blur seated under cover of a bus stop. Carol, sitting in the front passenger seat, hopped out. I followed her with my clipboard, holding the survey. His name was Markus; he was sleeping in his wheelchair. Carol gently woke him, and he spoke to us in slurred tones at first. I squatted in front of his chair, looking up at him, and began asking the questions on the survey. Markus was a daily heroin user and had been on the streets for ten years. This past winter, he lost the toes on his right foot to frostbite. He told us he spent five days in the hospital when that happened, and then was released to the streets. At first, his parka hood covered most of his face but as we conversed, he started to pull the hood back a little, a small welcome sign into his world. I could see that Markus was a handsome man. Even Carol agreed that he was “nice looking.” After that meeting, Carol and I knew that Markus was most “vulnerable” and needed help to get off the street ASAP.

As part of the survey, we would request a picture so that we could better identify our people and go back out and find them. Markus answered all of our questions honestly but bristled when I asked to take his picture. In the end, he refused. We pushed it as far as we could, but gave him his $5 Wawa card and slowly left him. As I turned my back on this man, in a wheelchair in the dark, rainy bus stop, I felt hollowness in my heart…but Carol said it was a good interview, where we got important information. I felt motivated to find more people and do more surveys. We continued on, in the darkness.

The rain didn’t help our efforts. We circled the corner where the Green Grocer and the McDonalds are located. Members of our team noticed a man with a hoody pulled over his head, slumped in a small booth in McDonalds. The van parked and we all jumped out, pairing up and heading out in different directions. Team members Jasmin and Keesha left to interview the man in McDonalds and I followed Carol over to the Green Grocer. After talking with an African American man in front of the store, Carol grabbed me and we headed over to his red truck to interview his girlfriend.

It was really raining now and my survey papers were getting soaked. So Carol graciously asked if I could sit in the truck with Doris, the girlfriend. I looked at Carol bug-eyed, but she just smiled at me, so I climbed in confidently next to Doris. Doris and her man were obviously living out of this truck for quite some time. There was no available space to place my feet, so I just rested them on the trash heaps on the floor. I ignored my surroundings and began “So Doris, how long have you been homeless?”

We learned that Doris and her man were kicked out of their rooming house not too long ago and that they had no money left because the landlord kept the rent after kicking them out. Doris spoke so fast and eloquently that I was only a little surprised to learn that she had a post-graduate degree. But after the interview, I asked Carol, “What went wrong there? Doris was not a substance abuser and was an educated woman…?” Carol surmised that Doris had some mental health issues that she did not admit to us.

Driving rain greeted us the next morning, which meant it would be even harder to find people who needed help. We drove around for an hour squinting our eyes against the foggy wet view out the van window. We parked near a Wawa, and Carol and I plopped ourselves down on the pavement next to an African American woman who was groaning and prostrate on the ground. She said she was cold and started to get up and walk away from us. Her clothes were filthy and she was in dire need of immediate care, so Carol called for outreach services. Chris from Outreach arrived within minutes and began talking to her, trying to see what services were needed immediately. She told us over and over about her boyfriend who had died. She said she had been on the streets for 23 years and she looked like that was the truth. We pulled away in the van as we saw Chris escort her to the car. We all breathed a sigh of relief, in the belief that she would get some respite at least for one night…

As the dark night yielded to some light of the day, we saw a woman standing alone in the center of a vacant lot, in the rain. Again, I followed Carol out of the van with my clipboard. Stephanie’s only protection against the rain was a little blue sweatshirt, so I pulled an umbrella from my bag and held it over her as Carol spoke. Stephanie was suffering from alcohol withdrawal, shaking from head to toe. She was a 45-year-old white woman who had graduated from a Catholic high school. Stephanie was in the throes of a psychotic episode and in between her ramblings about “the rats eating the dogs and then the cats,” she returned to reality and answered our questions clearly. When she spoke to us, she looked through us with the most amazingly beautiful blue eyes…

Carol and I were relieved when Stephanie agreed to go to the emergency room of the closest hospital. When Carol tried to direct us to a shortcut to Presbyterian Hospital’s ER, Stephanie refused and stayed the course on the sidewalk – she knew where she was going, despite her condition. We no sooner checked her into admissions than they were calling her name to take her away.

But Stephanie has remained with me; she has been my companion in my thoughts and in my soul, since that night…she drives me with the desire to do more…more stories, more outreach, just more…

Rosie Dillon is a Haverford House Fellow who works with Project H.O.M.E.’s Employment Services program. 

My mom was my home. She was my roots, my role model, my protector, my friend. She was the bearer of truly unconditional love in my life. When I lost my mom seven months ago, I was set adrift in the world with nothing to anchor me. I came back to work at Project H.O.M.E. because I didn’t know what else to do, and because I knew that my mom had been proud of the life I was embarking on.

At first, I just muddled through. Sometimes I cried in stairwells or bathrooms. Often I was numb. Then someone pointed out to me that if you cry at Project H.O.M.E., if you are having a rough day, if your gratitude at the Thanksgiving Day service is tempered by sorrow—people will understand, and you won’t be alone. Over time, I came to need my work, and not just for income or to fill my time.

We all know the rhetoric of recovery, but what I found was more than that.

Wendy Dillon, Rosie's mother, was captured in this newspaper photograph showing her fighting spirit.

A woman known to our community as “the maestro” played me Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, a song my mom had chosen for her memorial service. One woman told me: “I stopped drinking so that I would never have to go back to A.A. and hear all those people talk about how blessed they are.” Her irreverent sense of humor in hard times reminded me of my mom’s attitude toward her breast cancer support group, and really, toward life in general. My first trip to a hospital after my mom’s passing was to visit a Project H.O.M.E. resident. It was awful to be inside hospital walls and to see someone once full of life so diminished. But I remembered that she had found me crying in my office one day and comforted me. A woman about my age told me that the piece of myself that I lost will not be replaced, that the hole will never be filled. What a relief to know that I did not have to try to be healed.

Their resilience taught me, not that there would be an end to my sadness, but that there would be more to my life than sadness. The strength of others, starting with my mom, was the only proof I had that humans could survive and surpass terrible things. James Baldwin wrote: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” The people that I met at Project H.O.M.E.—not just those who live there, but everyone—became my connection with all the people who had ever been alive and, by extension, had ever experienced heartbreak.

Of course, not all are equally put upon by pain. The inequalities of circumstance are obvious. It is easy to say that we cannot understand or share each others’ struggles, that our lives are just too different. This is why it is truly visionary to understand that, in Sister Mary’s words, “We can no longer pass by and piously say, ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ – but rather ‘There go I.’ ”

I found in this understanding a home that encompasses but transcends both my mother and the Project H.O.M.E. community. Because we are interconnected, the refuge that I have given and received and the human connections that I have made remain, no matter what tomorrow brings.

Will O'Brien

Will O’Brien

has been part of the Project H.O.M.E. community for over twenty years.  He is editor and coordinator of “H.O.M.E. Word.”

Awhile back, I was asked to speak to a group of college students about the work of Project H.O.M.E. and the crisis of homelessness.  Joining with me in the talk, to share his personal testimony, was one of our alumni, who after years living at one of our residences, is now on his own, working and contributing.  After the talk I drove him back to his home.  In the flow of our conversation he talked about how now that he was working a legitimate job, he was making more money than he ever had, and certainly more than he needed.  In the spirit of “giving back,” he shared that he recently helped one of our current residents by paying his monthly rent for him, because that resident was going through tough times but didn’t want to lose his housing.

A couple of weeks earlier, one of our former residents stopped by my office, as he does on occasion.  We have known him since our earliest days, and he had been through the ringer many times.  Even now his housing was tenuous, and he was living with a fatal disease.  On this visit, he was laden with several large shopping bags.  He had come into some money, and went on a shopping splurge at our thrift store, Our Daily Threads.  He took his various purchases out of the bags to show me, with evident pride at his fabulous bargains.  “Guess what this pair of pants would cost you in the store?  Forty bucks.  I got it for two bucks.  And look – it’s as good as new.”  But none of it – the pairs of pants, sweaters, jackets, all, as he insisted, in great shape – was for him.  He had bought it all for the guys who lived in the residence with him.  All like him on severely limited incomes, possibly on the brink of returning to the streets.  “I don’t need much myself, and I got plenty.  But the guys will appreciate these.”

I also think of another long-time member of our community, who came into our first shelters twenty years ago.  He too is living on his own now, but poor health and years on the streets have taken their toll.  Not even fifty, he walks haltingly with a cane.  Practically as long as I have known him, he has taken a portion of his meager disability check to sponsor a poor child in a developing country.  At one point, he had relapsed and was back on the streets, but when he restabilized, he immediately restarted the sponsorship.  He usually carries a photo of his child with him and is glad to talk about him.

At Project H.O.M.E. our work, like that of many nonprofit organizations, is enabled in large part by what is traditionally called “charity.”  We use the word to describe the act of voluntarily making a gift of a portion of our assets to support a cause or to help persons in need.  And we are exceedingly grateful for and amazed by the generosity of the thousands of charitable donors, whose gifts, small and large, come to us each day.

My experience of being part of Project H.O.M.E. for many years has given me cause to reflect on this business of charity and generosity.  One paradigm of charity presumes it is those persons with means who share with “the less fortunate.”  But I have been challenged as I have witnessed remarkable generosity by our residents, those who have known utter destitution or who live on extremely modest means.  I see them sharing their resources, however slim, with an astonishing ease, without counting or calculation, without ego or need for accolade.  They have “been there.”  And they know others are still there.

For some persons, certainly, the struggle for survival can create a hardness, a close-to-the-bone instinct of grasping and hoarding.  But for others, that same struggle seems to have birthed a very different response, a radical freedom that includes an amazing spirit of generosity.

Perhaps we need a larger vision of charity and generosity.  I am coming to believe they mean more than the discrete acts of gifts or donations.  What I have learned from our residents is a kind of generosity that is a fundamental orientation of our lives toward empathy and solidarity.  It embraces the truth of our own struggles and connects it to the struggles of sisters and brothers.  The sharing of resources is a free and natural instinct, one expression of this deep empathy.  And this empathy, I am convinced, makes us more truly human.

Our outreach worker Sam Santiago (who was profiled in the two part series by Kim Covella on H.O.M.E. Word) recently recieved this message via Facebook.    It says a lot about why we do the work we do each day.

Edwina Grant works in the After School Program at Project H.O.M.E.’s Honickman Learning Center/Comcast Technology Labs.

March 1, 2006 was the worst day I ever had in my life. On that day my nineteen-year-old son Samir was shot and killed on our block by a fifteen-year neighbor boy, for no reason.

No family should ever have to go through what my family had to go through. My husband died a year later, partly because he couldn’t bear the terrible grief. Also, no family should ever have to go through what the other family is going through – they’ve been affected, too, knowing the terrible crime their child committed.

People don’t understand the devastation that is caused when someone picks up a gun and uses it to kill. I believe people have the right to protect their families, and guns in the right hands can be OK. But I know a fifteen-year-old shouldn’t be running around a neighborhood with a handgun. We’re supposed to be a civilized country. My neighborhood is full of guns, just like neighborhoods across the city and state – and I know for sure there aren’t deer hunters or gun collectors in my neighborhood.

That’s why I am grateful to Lynne Honickman for starting Moms Against Guns. This viral campaign has given me and others a way to organize against illegal guns. We need your help. Right now, Project H.O.M.E. is partnering with Moms Against Guns and CeaseFire PA to collect signatures on a letter to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett. The letter urges the Governor to support laws that keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people, and to increase affordable and supportive housing to help end homelessness.

In memory of Samir and other victims who have died, I am asking you to go to the online letter and sign it – and encourage friends and colleagues to do the same. Together, we can build a stronger grassroots movement to end gun violence in our communities across the state.

Just the other night in my neighborhood, another young boy was shot in the head. Two more families were destroyed. We’ve got to do all we can to stop this horror. You can make a difference.

To sign the letter, click here.