Noelle Fitzpatrick describes her first-hand experience of St Ignatius-inspired weekend immersion programme for young adults, run by Slí Eile.
One Friday evening last March, fifteen young people gathered after work at the offices of Slí Eile, The Jesuit Centre for Young Adults on Gardiner Street. They came to take part in a St. Ignatius-inspired weekend immersion programme for young adults on the theme of ‘Homelessness’. This is a programme involving practical action for social justice, followed by reflection, sharing and prayer.
Once we had gathered we headed out to take part in the ‘Teach Mhuire’ night-time soup run, helping people living homeless on the streets. It was a busy Friday night, when young people might be expected to be preparing to go out and socialise. We did in fact socialise, but in a different and more challenging way.
Having broken into small groups, we grabbed tea, sandwiches, and some extra clothes to distribute to those we met. Each group followed a different route around the city, most of us walking, some driving. We were amazed at just how many people are living homeless in the capital. We hadn’t noticed this before, probably because we hadn’t been looking. Within hours we’d already begun to see our city and our society through different eyes. ‘Seek and you shall find’.
Some of us were a bit fearful, anxious about what to say to those we met, a little embarrassed at approaching the stranger, anxious also that our small offers of support and solidarity might be rejected. We were nudged out of our comfort zones. It was not easy.
We found ourselves deeply challenged by this experience, not least because we didn’t expect to find intelligent, articulate, funny and some very ordinary people living on the streets. How could this be? Later in the night during a group reflection, we considered the story of the ‘Good Samaritan’ and how it might be relevant to what we’d just experienced. We contemplated the busy travellers on the road to Jericho who’d passed by the man who’d been attacked and left for dead. They didn’t do anything wrong as such. They just didn’t do anything! They failed to act. Which, we wondered, was worse?
Finally, at 1.00 am we rolled into sleeping bags and finished the evening with a brief Examen prayer – reflecting back over the day, being grateful for all the experiences and opportunities that it brought, noticing the shadows, asking God for help in understanding them and doing better. Some found this a new and positive way to pray, and an inviting way to find God at work in the small details and encounters of their day.
The immersion weekend continued on Saturday morning. Some hadn’t slept well because they were cold, or were disturbed by the snoring, or couldn’t adjust to the hard ground! This discomfort was part of the experience of trying to empathise. A warm, quiet, comfortable and safe environment in which to sleep is something many of us take for granted.
Later, with very little money, each person went out, alone, to walk aimlessly for hours around the city. During this time we were to notice people begging, notice personal reactions, both thoughts and feelings. We were also encouraged to stay out of public places where we felt a person who is homeless might not be welcome. This exercise awakened in some of us a deep gratitude – for family, for the security found in our own homes, for the sense of purpose and orientation we have in our lives. While some experienced anger, others felt compassion for those on the streets. Still others struggled with boredom, listlessness and disorientation. Some felt the beginnings of an ability to empathise, but others could not. All of this was honest and powerful, and provoked further thought and discussion in later group reflection.
In the afternoon, we paired up, to walk different routes in the city, and distribute information on homeless services to people we met. The information sharing was a small practical thing. The bigger gesture lay simply in taking time to acknowledge the people we met – as human beings, with dignity and presence.
Next morning we broke into groups and visited four hostels catering to the homeless around the city. There, we learned what supports are available, and shared cups of tea and conversations with people who left a deep impression. Fr Peter McVerry SJ, and Fr John Guiney SJ, both with experience of working for many years with marginalised people in Dublin and overseas, shared valuable insights and experiences with the group later in the day.
Before breaking up to go home on Sunday evening, we were invited to take time, during the week that was to come, to notice the things from this weekend that lingered – in our heart and in our head. It had the effect of taking us outside of our usual orbit and nudged us to glimpse the world and our relationship with it from a different angle – almost from the outside. Might those things be nudging us toward further growth in awareness of self, of relationship with society and of relationship with God?
When we gathered again two weeks later to debrief, it was clear all had been affected by the experience. Some very deeply. A strong feeling of community emerged. Can we turn that sense of community outwards and light a stronger flame under our Social Spirituality? Will we breathe new life into this, a spirituality that takes its focus beyond ‘me’ and how ‘I’ feel, and looks sideways, downwards, upwards toward society, and the world, and all its gifts and all its injustices?
This weekend encouraged a deeper understanding that it is not the breadth of experience and stimulus that matters, but the depth of that experience.
We talked long into the evening. At the end of the night some of the group returned to Teach Mhuire to help out again with the Friday night soup run in the city.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (August 2009), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
