Editor’s note: Emily Martin wrote this account of a Street Retreat which took place March 31-April 2, 2006, during the first weekend of spring break.  

The idea began with a Christian minister in New York City, who found that many of his colleagues were eager to work with the homeless, but had no idea how to interact with them or what their day to day lives were like. So he began taking seminarians on a weekend he called “Taking the Plunge.” For a few days, they would become homeless. No problem, thought the young seminarians—the church will help us. But when they went to the churches for help, nine times out of ten they were turned away. Needless to say, it was a sobering experience, and the memory stayed with them as they began their own ministries.

Since then, a number of people have been inspired to take to the streets for a variety of reasons: to bear witness to homelessness, to confront personal fears and dependencies, to break down barriers between the affluent and the homeless, to experience groundlessness and practice self-awareness and loving compassion, to raise awareness and money… I was introduced to the idea by a Buddhist friend who was leading one in Montreal in the spring of 2005. I was petrified just thinking about the idea of spending two nights in a strange city with no money, even with six other people. I’m the kind of person who always carried in her purse or backpack money, a phone, pen and paper, a book, a water bottle, a snack, tissues, etc. I don’t like big cities, and was afraid of homeless people. And I didn’t speak French. But the experience broke open my fear in a way that was freeing, and I received grace and hospitality in unlikely places, from unlikely people. I began to see and interact with the homeless, as one human being to another.

Inspired by the original vision of “The Plunge” and my own experience, as well as the interest and experiences of Sarah Cooper Searight and Chuck Campbell, I began working with them to organize a street retreat in Atlanta. Although we flew in Stephen Clarke, my Buddhist friend, for his twelfth street retreat, it was mostly a group from Columbia Theological Seminary: Chuck and Dana Campbell, Karen Miller, Chris Henry, Jeff Lee, Sarah Cooper Searight, Ani Goodenberger, Insook Lee, Margaret Rivera, Will Shelburne, and myself. There were twelve of us the first night. Coincidence?

Each participant was asked to raise at least $110 to cover the cost of Stephen’s airfare, to have something to give back to the homeless community we’d be spending the weekend with, to give others an opportunity to be part of what we were doing and to be generous, and to practice humility and begin to confront our own money issues. Participants were also asked not to shave or wash their hair for five days prior to the retreat, which was set for the first weekend of Columbia’s spring break, March 31-April 2. We could bring a water bottle, an old backpack, a plastic bag, raingear, and a plastic tarp, but we had to have our IDs and two Marta tokens.  We were advised to dress warmly for cool nights with no blankets.

In preparation for the retreat, Ginger Kaney (Faith in the City) arranged for us to eat dinner with a few homeless men who slept in the doorways at Druid Hills United Methodist Church. We chatted over dinner, but an awkward introduction of the group “from the seminary” to the other church members who were there made the boundaries between us and the homeless men painfully obvious. After dinner we had a more directed conversation, and the homeless men told us a little bit about what life was like on the streets and gave us some advice. I, who was hoping this discussion would convince some people who were on the fence about coming, was more than a little nervous when they began to talk about how dangerous it was, especially downtown, and how often homeless people were harassed by the cops. Listening to them talk about the police, reminded me how different our every day experiences were. I associated the police with safety and protection (and speeding tickets); they associated them with unwarranted harassment, cruelty, and arrest. Then someone asked the question that was on everyone’s mind, “What do you think about a group like this wanting to do this?” They turned the question back on us. “What are your intentions?” People talked about wanting to overcome fear, ignorance, apathy. They correctly reminded us that one weekend was not enough for us to really know what homelessness was like, but they also said, “If you really want to know what it’s like, come and see.” It was hauntingly similar to Philip’s words to a skeptical Nathanael in John 1:46—“‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said, ‘Come and see.’”

We began the weekend sitting in a circle on the freshly manicured grass of Columbia Theological Seminary, joking about the possible effects of chemicals recently sprayed. After an introduction and a brief time of meditation, we shared our initial thoughts and feelings going into the retreat and about past experiences and associations with homelessness. We used a Native American practice of passing a “talking” object around the circle with the following guidelines: be spontaneous, speak from the heart, listen with the heart, speak only for yourself, and keep confidentiality. Obviously I can’t divulge the details of our discussion. What I can say is that between us, we had myriad reasons for being there, experiences with the homeless, and fears or anxieties about the weekend. It was clear that we would all probably have very different experiences of this weekend. Many of us questioned the ethics of what we were about to do. I was feeling anxious and responsible for everyone else’s experiences. But there we were, some of us for one night, others for two. We used the bathroom one last time, and headed to the MARTA station.

Aware that a number of homeless people hung out in the vicinity of Little Five Points and along Ponce de Leon, our first stop was Druid Hills Methodist Church. We said hello to some of the guys we had met a couple of weeks before, and to our surprise Rocky was free that night and offered to hang out with us and let us sleep in his doorway at Druid Hills. In some ways, I felt this was “cheating,” since normally you had to sign a contract with the church to be allowed to sleep there, but I was not about to refuse his hospitality, especially since I didn’t have any better ideas about where to sleep. We began our evening trying to find something to eat. We followed a lead to a nearby center for Hare Krishna worship, but unfortunately they were no longer financially able to offer meals like they once were. It was worth the trip though—most of us had no idea there was a Hare Krishna temple on Ponce, and some of us (me) had no idea what a Hare Krishna temple was at all.

Next, we stopped at Little Five Points and spent quite a bit of time talking with people who were hanging out there, many of whom were homeless. We heard some fascinating life stories—one young man in particular was the son of a deeply religious man, an activist/evangelist of sorts. He offered us cigarettes and cookies, and several of us gratefully accepted the latter. It was the only thing we ate that night. An older gentleman, when we asked him if he knew of anywhere we could get food, said no one was serving on Friday nights, but he gave us the names and phone numbers of social workers to call on Monday, and told us where we could get showers. He also said we were welcome to sleep at the Eckerd’s on Ponce, where he and a few others spent the night once it closed.

A couple of guys told us about the IF coffee shop behind the Star Bar, which served cheap coffee and allowed people to sit down, even if they didn’t order anything to drink (in other words, a homeless-friendly place). Often they had live music on a Friday or Saturday night. A few of us left to check it out, and the rest of us stayed for a while longer, talking and waiting for Insook and Dana to join us (they had to miss the first few hours). Before we left to join the others at the IF coffeehouse, someone suggested that we pray. We stood up and held hands with the homeless men with whom we’d been chatting, and Chuck offered up a prayer of gratitude for the hospitality we’d experienced so far, and a pray of safety for all of us. At the end, we all raised our hands and shouted, “Amen!” We must have been an odd sight, even in Little Five Points. As we were leaving, one of the men who had been staring at me told me again how cute I was and started to get a little too touchy feely. I was glad to be in a group and moving on.

At the coffeehouse, we found that they also had bathrooms, chess, and checkers. It felt a little like a cop out, though, to stay too long. And I wondered if our big group was keeping some homeless people from coming in. Already, I felt so much more conspicuous than I had in Montreal, mostly because our group was bigger and younger. The homeless people we encountered tended to be older, and rarely traveled with more than one or two other people.

At this point, many of us were thinking a lot about food. We stopped by the Open Door at 910 (on Ponce), in hopes that someone there might take pity on us and give us some sandwiches. Once upon a time, homeless people had been allowed to sleep in relative safety (from the police) in their backyard. We didn’t get sandwiches, but Chuck got to reminisce with some folks about the Open Door and the women were allowed to use the restroom. I was staring hungrily at the restaurants across the street and imagining all the leftover being thrown away. A few nights later, I was eating at one of those restaurants myself, unable to shake the memory. Part of me was eating a burrito on the balcony of La Fonda’s, and part of me was staring hungrily from across the street.

We heard that sometimes Papa John’s brings some left over pizza by the Eckerd’s around midnight, so we headed back to Druid Hills UMC around 10:30 p.m. with the thought that some of us might walk back down to the Eckerds. Luckily a group was playing volleyball in the church’s gym, so we could use the bathroom and fill our water bottles. Maybe this seems like an unnecessary detail, but for me it was a noteworthy blessing. We wouldn’t see another toilet until we passed a port-a-potty at a construction site the next morning on our walk downtown. There are some advantages to being male.

As we were checking out the available doorways, the temperature was steadily dropping. Then it began to rain. No trip to Eckerd’s for us. I thought our adventures for the evening were over, but another homeless man, Louis (who was also not part of the Druid Hills doorways program) joined us from the park across the street. We made room, and he asked Jeff where we were from, what we were doing out here. Jeff explained, and Louis began telling him what it was REALLY like to be homeless. How hard it is to even turn in an application for a job, when you haven’t had a shower and your clothes need washing. How you can waste quarter after quarter on the pay phone on fickle would-be employers. After a while, though, the conversation turned toward Louis’ theories of creation and the origins of the word “library” (lie + berry), I’ll admit, I tuned out. Not that it mattered much. I had not dressed warmly enough, and even snuggling up to Margaret wasn’t enough to get decent sleep. Plus at least three people in our doorway were snoring. And there were young people hootin’ and hollerin’ at some ungodly hour, plus the trucks that whizzed by on Ponce. I maybe got two hours of sleep. Two hours and some bruises on my hips from the concrete. Things being as spread out as they are in Atlanta, we hadn’t thought to pick up any cardboard while we were in Little Five Points.

The next morning, we were slow to get moving, and it was still raining. I was wishing I had worn my waterproof boots and rain pants like I had in Montreal. Only someone of privilege would assume she could be prepared for every  kind of weather or occasion. A false assumption, I hate to admit. A few of us walked to the gas station to see if they had a bathroom we could use. By the time we got there, the rain was really coming down hard. We ran into a young man hitchhiking, and he took shelter with us by the pumps (the gas station was closed, and the bathroom out of order). The young man was wearing jeans that seemed too big for him and a thin white tee shirt. He was soaking wet. Before long he began telling us about his life, but the words seemed to tumble over each other in a kind of desperate plea. He was from Georgia originally, but lately had been staying wherever he could. Usually he was fine, but last night, he’d had a rough night. He seemed to me like a frightened, cornered animal, but I also thought he was probably addicted to cocaine. We invited him to walk with us downtown to get breakfast. He walked with us a little ways, but once we got to Freedom Parkway, he decided he’d rather hitch a ride than walk in the rain. We kept walking. I felt a piercing sadness; he seemed so vulnerable.

It was quite a walk downtown, especially in the rain. I couldn’t believe Rocky, our host from the evening before was still keeping us company. His generosity was humbling. So was the hunger. By this time, I was getting a little lightheaded, but in a way it was a good reality check. In Montreal, we’d had plenty to eat. It was a friendlier city for the homeless (apart from the weather), and there were plenty of people serving meals, at least when we were there. We were lucky; I realize that now. But Friday night notwithstanding, we had done our homework and had a list of places serving meals around the city. Unfortunately, it’s much harder to get accurate information about ministries to the homeless than it is about the nearest Starbucks or Verizon store. There are fewer incentives to provide reliable, well advertised services and there is little accountability. The breakfast we were headed for did not exist, at least on that day. We should have tried for the earlier one in Woodruff Park.

Our next best option was a lunch being served at 10:00 a.m. at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Rather than wait outside in the rain for an hour, we got our tickets, filed into the cathedral at the invitation of the ushers, and sat in the back. Without bulletins to follow, it was hard to follow every part of the service, but I recognized enough to feel vaguely comforted. Until we got to Communion. The Lord’s Supper takes on a whole different meaning when you haven’t eaten in 20+ hours. So does knowing you’re not welcome at the Table. No one said it explicitly, but we were clearly outsiders in this worship service. And yet, I was grateful to be inside, out of the rain, worshipping God. I was also hoping I wouldn’t fall over. One member had to go sit down in the hallway.

After the service, we stood in line with the other homeless folks. The demographic in downtown Atlanta was a lot different from what it had been in Little Five Points and along Ponce. There, most of our encounters had been with white folks, though not all (Louis, for example). Here, we stood out like sore thumbs. The vast majority of those standing next to us in line were African American men, and a few Latinos. I was envious of other people’s ability to speak Spanish, until I realized that it sometimes came with unwanted advances. I hovered protectively around my Spanish speaking female friends, once again grateful to be in a group. We were moving soon anyway, as women and children got to eat first, and I wondered if I should consider that some sort of institutional apology.

But there’s nothing like a bowl of soup to bring you to life again. We were not denied access to the Table after all; we were just directed to a different one. And I have to say, given the choice, I’d pick the one with soup. Plus we were served by eager, polite youth with name tags so we could thank them by name. I’ve never had a better bowl of soup in my life. We could have as many helpings as we liked, but I couldn’t manage more than one bowl with bread. The sandwich went into my backpack for later; though, given my feelings about baloney and mayonnaise, I was hoping I wouldn’t need it. They even had dessert for us on the way out. I felt like a new person.

In my Easter oblivion, I almost missed the white street preachers shouting about sin to the African American men who were still waiting in line for food. Chuck didn’t. He asked how come they didn’t ever preach about sin in Buckhead. They responded by grabbing his shirt and shoving him, shouting insults. Clearly they were modeling the love of Jesus Christ.

I admired (envied?) Chuck’s courage, but the violence of their response surprised me. Is confronting the powers—knowingly provoking confrontation—consistent with a practice of nonviolence? Where is the line between verbal aggression and violence? Which is the lesser of two evils, to pick a fight with other Christians or to leave bad theology and oppression in the name of Jesus Christ unchallenged? Is there a third way?

We spent a good chunk of our day in Woodruff Park. After meditation and another round of discussions, we said goodbye to two of our members who had prior commitments. They graciously offered their extra layers for our second night. Understandably, a couple of others decided that they would not be able to spend a second night either. Few of us anticipated the toll that even twenty-four hours on the streets would take on our bodies. I can’t imagine doing it day after day after day, for months or years. It’s no wonder that most of the homeless people we met seemed to me to be old.

A few of us waited in another food line for what we hoped was a bag lunch we could eat later, but it turned out to be a hamburger, baked beans, coleslaw and chips. I gave my coke away, but kept the water. But I couldn’t finish my burger. Guiltily, I wondered what to do. I offered it to the others on the street retreat. Eventually, I just threw it away, provoking anger in another person in the group. I understood his anger, but I also felt like it would be insulting to offer my half-eaten burger to the others in the park, only some of whom were homeless and all of whom had the same chance as I did to wait in line for food. Hindsight is 20/20.

We had quite a number of conversations with people at Woodruff Park about what we were doing. By this time we were getting accustomed to listening to all the reasons we would never truly know what it was like to be homeless. I actually didn’t mind these conversations. They were right, after all. Two days is no comparison to six months or five years. For once, I was ignorant, and they were wise. And often, once they saw that we were not going to argue with them, they softened, and we had some really interesting conversations. Even a man who seemed convinced that all Christians were hypocrites—and he went to great lengths to prove that we were not different—even he seemed fascinated by what we were doing. He almost seemed to be arguing with himself, rather than us. He told us he wasn’t going to give us any money because we’d just spend it on alcohol—that’s what people had told him when he was down on his luck. But he did give us fruit. The apples were so big, we had to share.

One place I didn’t expect to spend so much time at was the public library. But it was one of the few places to offer public restrooms and water fountains, not to mention books, computers, seating and indoor temperatures. I had never thought about a public library as a place for homeless services, but that’s definitely how I experienced it. I must have gone there three or four times while we were downtown. I could relax about how much water I was drinking. Outside the library, we ran into one of the homeless men we knew was staying at Druid Hills UMC. We hadn’t seen him the night before because he works a late night shift, but this time we said hello. He talked to us about the stress of trying to keep the peace between estranged family members after the death of an uncle. I realized that I had assumed that because he was homeless, he didn’t have any family connections. He also told us that he usually spent the weekend at his girlfriend’s place. Assumption after assumption proved false. To top it off, he showed us the materials he’d just gotten from the volunteer training event for AID Atlanta that he’d just attended. He said they’d asked him to volunteer because of his connections with the homeless community (i.e., he himself was probably HIV+). He said he didn’t mind, since it was to help people out. My own excuses for not following through on plans to volunteer at a local AIDS organization wilted. Then he gave us directions to a place that would be serving dinner. Should I really have been surprised to find an example of Christ-like service among “the least of these”?

A few minutes later, a few of us got to talking with some homeless men sitting out side of the library. One of them had a face that seemed to glow with elation and serenity at the same time—yet I also got the feeling that he was laughing at us (my own paranoia?). Another seemed disinterested, and the third had clearly spent a lot of time studying the Bible and different religions. As we were leaving, he pulled Stephen aside and asked him for money. Stephen told him we had none, and his response was, “You’re the most sincere person I’ve ever met. Will you pray with me?” Stephen told the man, John, that he’d be honored if John would pray for him. John prayed one of the most beautiful prayers Stephen had ever heard.

By the time we made it to the Safehouse for dinner, we were down to seven. And there was John, chilling in the parking lot. We sat down near him, and I spent the next 45 minutes talking with him about scripture and homelessness. He could quote the Bible with a range and a sophistication that I have rarely heard. Everything he said, he backed up with Scripture, and most of the time I found it hard to disagree. The key to an appropriate Christian response to a homeless person, according to him was a combination of hospitality and discernment (he agreed that a single woman should not open up her home to a homeless man). The problem, of course, with relying on discernment is that we often get it confused with our fears. The answer? Prayer. I should probably go ahead and start with that one. The husband and the extra room will come in their own time.

By the time they let us inside, I was hungry again (it was around 7 p.m.), on the verge of a headache, and my feet were starting to blister from walking so far in wet tennis shoes. So you can imagine my disappointment when, upon entering, instead of tables, I found rows of chairs packed in a not-so-big room around a stage with a drum set, a keyboard, electric guitar and base, and microphones for everyone, plus three back up singers. They let us know in a number of ways that if we loved the Lord, we would remain on our (tired, aching) feet and praise the Lord. The problem (besides the growling stomach, growing headache and protesting feet) was that I wasn’t familiar with the songs they were singing, and there were no words for me to sing. After a few minutes it became clear that we white folks were at least half of the people still standing (in a room of about 80?). I decided Jesus would still love me if I sat down, and several others did the same. The only white people in the room were the volunteers and us.

I don’t want to be too hard on the service. The worship team was clearly sincere, even if they didn’t make eye contact with any of us in the chairs. And I did know the chorus to one song: “Here I am to Worship,” and I enjoyed singing along to that. There were a handful of people, ecstatically praising the Lord in the front row, and I’m sure some others doing the same more quietly from their seats. But I couldn’t help but feel that there was a huge disconnect between those leading worship and the majority of African Americans in the somewhat captive audience. Part of this was likely due to the fact that worship teams came from different churches each week, so little effort was made to build relationships between the volunteers and those who came week after week. Partway through the service, John left, saying he’d be back in a minute.

The sermon was a grab-bag theologically. Some of it sounded like gospel—there were some real stories of transformation in the lives of the worship leaders, but some of it sounded like “repent of your sins, believe in Jesus, and all your problems will go away.” I also thought a more contemporary translation of the Bible might have been helpful. It was hard, even for me, to join in the condemnation of those who expect “soft raiments,” especially when those were compared to “those fancy three-point sermons they teach in the seminary.” Clearly they had never been to a preaching class at Columbia. But what do homeless people care about three point sermons or seminary? I was confused until they gave us our food at the door to the parking lot. There was John, fuming.

Apparently they’d told him that if he went outside he wouldn’t be allowed back in, which meant no dinner. He argued with them about the ethics of that, and then told them that he had 8 seminary students with him—is that the kind of example they wanted to set? They stood their ground, but I think I know now why we got the jab we did in the sermon. As we came out, they asked us who we were, etc. Once they found out that we were seminary students, they made a big show of introducing themselves to us (and only us), giving us their pastor’s card, saying how much they’d like to hear our thoughts and how our “little experiment” turned out. Never mind that they were interrupting conversations we were having with the other homeless folk to introduce themselves. I, for one, was listening to John’s interpretation of Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees in Matthew. The people who can give you the best advice, we said, are the ones all around you who come every week. We’re just doing this for a weekend. But it was like they didn’t even see the homeless people all around them. It was getting late, and we’d decided for safety reasons (our group was now mostly young women) to walk back to Druid Hills for the second night. So we said goodbye to John (from whom I’d take a Bible class any day), and started the trek back.

I definitely didn’t feel safe walking through downtown Atlanta on a Saturday night, and I was relieved that we weren’t spending the night there, at least not that night. The rest of our time together was relatively uneventful. Our seventh member left us when we got back to the church so she’d be up for her responsibilities in worship the next day, another left at 6:30 a.m. the next morning for the same reason. I didn’t sleep any more the second night than the first, and was still freezing, even with the extra jacket. We caught a bus back to Avondale first thing, and went our separate ways to shower, eat, sleep, etc.

©2006 Emily Martin.