Enabling All Of Us To Attain Our Potential
Sister Mary's Roots and Branches column appears quarterly in our News from HOME print newsletter. To subscribe, click here to provide your physical address.
Every Tuesday morning at our 1515 Fairmount Avenue site, we hold an Inspirational Meeting. One of our residents, David Brown, is up early to set up the room for 50-plus people, while resident Michael Oliveri regularly prepares a lovely spread of coffee, juice, and snacks. Residents and staff from many of our sites, as well as volunteers, friends, and guests, gather for a time of story-sharing, reflections on our community values, celebration of successes and accomplishments, and community-building. We take twenty minutes to re-ground ourselves in our mission and remind ourselves who we are as a community. We remember the struggles and gifts that we share as individuals and that we bring to this daily work. It is through this community that often, as our friend Fr. Greg Boyle says, “we are returned to ourselves.”
Most people who know about Project HOME are probably well aware of the first part of our mission statement: “to empower adults, children, and families to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty, [and] to alleviate the underlying causes of poverty.” What might be less known or understood is the next part of that statement: “and to enable all of us to attain our fullest potential as individuals and as members of the broader society.”
All of us. This is one of the strengths of our community. It is true of everyone in our community who shares gifts with each other—our staff, donors, volunteers—but in a special way, our residents embody this aspirational value each day. Whether it’s their participation on the Resident Advisory Board, volunteering at our Hub of Hope, working to develop a helpline for persons in recovery, or sharing their stories at—and helping organize—Inspirational Meetings, we witness how persons who have lived through profound struggle claim their power and use it to enhance the common life of all of us.
On Tuesday mornings, we gather—all of us—to support each other in attaining our fullest potential. We remember how much we need each other – and celebrate how much stronger we are together. And we dare to hope we are also supporting our society to attain its fullest potential—by embracing the diverse gifts of every person, especially those who often live on the margins.
You can join us at an Inspirational Meeting every Tuesday morning at 9:30 a.m. or watch videos on the Project HOME YouTube channel. Also, follow our Facebook page where we will announce occasional live broadcasts of the meetings.
