Sacred Shelter: Journeys of Homelessness and Healing

In Sacred Shelter: 13 Journeys of Homelessness and Healing, thirteen remarkable people tell their life stories. All of them were once homeless in New York City. They describe being children who loved their families, went to school, got jobs, fell in love, and had children of their own. They also describe experiences with poverty, systemic racism, sexual abuse, domestic violence, mental illness, substance use, and incarceration. The memoirists recount their joys as well as torments, and many share their deep belief in the restorative love of God. Sacred Shelter is also about the hope and healing that can develop in the presence of a caring community. Here, that community is the life skills empowerment program, a New York based, interfaith program for homeless and formerly homeless individuals, in which all of the book’s memoirists once participated. In addition to their life stories, Sacred Shelter includes brief reflections by the program’s directors and facilitators, clerics and congregants, mentors and volunteers. For them, like the memoirists, being part of the life skills empowerment program was healing and transformative. At a time when national homelessness is on the rise, and when the unequal, discriminatory and punitive social conditions that create it are getting worse, the voices in Sacred Shelter call out to be heard. They bear witness to the personal dignity and value of each and every individual and insist on our communal need to listen to each other.