Many years ago, when my friend Ed Shurna and I began giving retreats to men living in emergency shelters in Chicago, it didn’t take us long to realize that we had something special. I decided to write an essay for America to report about our new endeavor, which came to be known as the Ignatian Spirituality Project. In my draft, I referred to three men who had attended our retreats and were living in hope of recovery.
I checked with each man to see if it would be OK to share their experience anonymously for the story. They all agreed, but one man also asked if he could write a sidebar. I didn’t know what a sidebar was, but he told me it was a shorter essay. So I said, of course. This man was new in his recovery and living in a halfway house. Within days, I sent both my essay and his sidebar to America. In less than a week, I received a note saying, “Thank you very much for your essay, Bill. We’re sorry we’re not able to publish it; however, the sidebar we will publish.”
The young man who wrote the short piece had been driven onto the streets by anxiety and had used alcohol, drugs and sex to quell the interior tumult. Then in his third attempt at recovery, he had suffered the terror, the aimlessness and the struggle for survival on the streets for many years. When I told him the good news about his article, his face lit up. The acceptance of his story helped him to feel that no matter his failures, there’s always hope. And here was a concrete example of hope.
[I used to live on the streets. Then I found the Spiritual Exercises.]
That young man is no longer a single young man. He is happily married with full-time employment; he feels a part of society and is a truthful and loving human being. He is one example of many people I.S.P. has helped over the years to reclaim the gift of life and their inherent dignity as a child of God.
This year, the Ignatian Spirituality Project celebrates 25 years of bringing hope and healing to women and men struggling with addiction and homelessness. Here is how the program works: I.S.P. welcomes 12 women or 12 men to gather for an overnight retreat based on their personal experience. The retreat combines the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. It uses an adult model of personal witness by someone with lived experience of homelessness and addiction as well as quiet personal reflection and small group sharing. Follow-up retreats and regular spiritual reflection circles at shelters and recovery centers foster community and help participants continue to heal and rebuild a relationship with God, themselves and others. Twenty-five years later, I.S.P. is active in nearly two dozen cities across three nations.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That’s often the story of life on the streets, especially when someone suffers from mental illness or addiction. But these repeated efforts can exhaust a person, even as they find signs of hope.
‘Because You Love Me’
The second story I want to share involves a 17-year friendship with a man who affected my life quite deeply. He was in his 30s when we met. Though his illness was pervasive and his addiction to heroin longstanding, he worked with I.S.P. several times between his bouts with drugs and incarceration.
I remember when early on in our relationship, he showed up at my front door on a hot summer day in August, barefoot and clearly in trouble. He took a shower, had a meal and stayed overnight with us. The next morning I asked him what he wanted. He asked me to drive him to the police station. I did, and he turned himself in and served a sentence of several months. After his release, he was sober for several years. The cycle of anxiety, addiction (and stealing to get money for drugs) and incarceration became a pattern for him. Once released, he would live a life of discipline, self-care and self-giving—until he didn’t.
My friend was sober for five years, then became lost on the streets and incarcerated, then sober again for six years. Still, ours was a relationship of support and love. We were both Chicago baseball fans; he a Cub fan and I a White Sox fan. We enjoyed the camaraderie that sports fandom entails, as well as a lot of teasing. And then I didn’t hear from him for a while. When I checked the prison system, I learned he was again incarcerated in a prison four hours away.
I started visiting him every month. After six months, he wrote a note to me saying, My family doesn’t visit, no friends visit. You’re the only visitor I’ve had and I want you to know this Christmas is special because I know you love me. And because you love me, I know God loves me.
I was deeply touched. As I continued to visit him, I witnessed him getting in touch with his inner self, and the sparkle in his eyes returned. When he was released a year and a half later, I picked him up at the bus station and brought him to the halfway house where he continued to recover. While there, he was employed full time, became reconciled with his family, earned a master’s degree and was thriving.
And then, one day, his sister called to say that she hadn’t heard from him in a couple of days. I called the place where he was staying, and the landlord checked his room. It was Good Friday. He was found lying on his bed with drug paraphernalia around him. He had had a bad dose of heroin and fentanyl and was one of six people who died in the neighborhood that day because of a tainted drug supply. I grieved. I was angry. I was sad, but I was also grateful for the good times we had together helping others. I learned a very difficult lesson: Some stories don’t have a happy ending. I also learned to savor what was good from our time together.
‘I’ve Got Plans for You’
As I’m writing this, I’m looking forward to meeting soon with another friend I met through I.S.P., whom I have known for more than 20 years. His is also an extraordinary story. His grandparents raised him. When he was in fourth grade he asked his grandma about his parents and was told: “Your momma died of a brain hemorrhage. And your father is in prison.”
Days later, he repeated to his grandpa what his grandma had said, asking “How did that happen?” His grandfather replied: “Your father swung the bat.” Years later, as a young man on the streets feeling very low, he put a gun into his mouth and heard a voice saying, “I’ve got plans for you.”
He phoned a shelter, got into rehab, made our I.S.P. retreat and eventually became a retreat leader. In fact, he went on to serve as one of I.S.P.’s first witnesses, traveling far and wide to open I.S.P. programs across the country. From his first retreat 23 years ago, he has been sober and has dedicated himself to helping people who are homeless.
Today he is in a leadership position in a citywide organization. My friend is honest, has a deep-down goodness and accepts his vulnerability with courageous love. He is a poet at heart, with a soul as deep and as broad as any holy man or woman I’ve ever known.
As I’ve been reflecting over these past 25 years, I could have shared more about numbers: the hundreds of retreats we’ve held, the tens of thousands of homeless men and women we’ve welcomed or the thousands who have volunteered with the I.S.P. movement. But the power of I.S.P. is in recognizing the beauty and dignity of the one person in front of us.
Getting to know these three men has been a privilege of a lifetime. I am so grateful to have been part of this hope-filled ministry. Along the way, I’ve learned that hope is deeper than optimism. Hope leans into the future without certainty of outcome but with trust in God, in others, and in one’s deepest self.
