With umbrellas in hands and hoods covering heads, around 50 people came together on a soggy Saturday in May to walk through the streets of Augusta so that they might better learn about the hardships facing their unhoused neighbors as well as about those working to help them.

“Our goal really was that people would learn something about themselves, learn something about their unhoused neighbors, and really be impressed, which I think they were, with all the ways the community is trying to respond and to offer love, respect, and support,” says Elizabeth Keene, who served as emcee for the walk.

The Walk of Suffering and Hope was organized by St. Michael Parish’s Social Justice and Peace Commission and was cosponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Community Church, Temple Beth-El, and the United Community Living Center, all in Augusta. 

The walk included stops at nine places where unhoused members of the community might experience suffering or find hope.

“It’s definitely to spread awareness and to bring the community together because there are people we know who are serving in different capacities and at different times that maybe we’ve never interacted with before,” says Karen Jones, a commission member.

The walk grew out of the parish’s participation in a JustFaith Ministries program aimed at educating people about poverty, both locally and globally, and empowering them to fully live out their Christian spirituality.

“We wanted to create a space to invite more people in the parish to a deeper sense of spirituality and discipleship,” says Scott Klinger, a commission member. “It started with eight sessions, a group to think about all sorts of things: how we live our lives as Christian consumers, how we pray, how we encounter people who are different from us.” 

While parishioners already encounter members of the broader community by partnering with other faith traditions to offer weekly Saturday breakfasts and Angel Food Suppers, the walk was seen as a way to take that outreach a step further.  

“It’s partly to show gratitude for what we have and gratitude also for what we learn from the people we’re working with,” says Frank O’Hara, chairman of the commission. “It’s a connection between our Catholic worship and our Catholic service to the poor, helping to integrate that into our lives.” 

The ideas for stops during the walk came from a survey filled out by breakfast guests. Destinations included the Maine Recovery Access Project, Bread of Life, city hall and the police station, United Community Living Center (UCLC), LINC Peer Support Center, South Parish Congregational Church, which offers a warming center and is the site of the Angel Food Suppers, Lithgow Public Library, Kennebec County Jail, and Unitarian Universalist Community Church, which hosts the weekly breakfasts.

Kathy Brown, a commission member, says she hopes the walk raised awareness, both among participants and among those who saw the group pass by. 

“It’s evangelization that says, ‘Here is the Good News. These people care.’ We’re visiting places that really care for those who are on the outside, those who are marginalized in society, those who are poor, those who are struck with problems, whether it’s alcoholism or whether it’s drugs or sex addiction,” says Brown. “It’s the giving of witness, and particularly for those of us who come from the Catholic or Christian tradition, it raises questions about what gives [our struggling neighbors] hope in life, what gives them a sense of goodness.”

At each stop, the group heard a presentation, in some cases from people who use the services.

“It’s just a welcoming environment so that if you’re coming off the street and you really don’t know where to go, you can come here,” shared a client of UCLC. “If I was out of food before payday or food stamps came in, at least I could come here and eat lunch and not live on snacks.”

“What we try to do here is look for what are the gaps in the community, what are the gaps that folks need [to fill] to be able to move their lives forward. 

But mostly what we do is love people. We love them, and we accept them where they are,” said Betty St. Hilaire, director of UCLC.

Commission members say they were encouraged by the number of people who participated, despite the rain, and by the resulting conversations.

“It helps us talk more about the matters of the heart than what I watched on TV or saw on YouTube,” says Barbara Moss, a commission member. “I think the hope is that we can meet that inner space within each other, rather than just the externals.”

“It was eye opening to see what the community is doing but also eye opening for all of us to think about our own lives and the places where we experience hope and suffering,” says Keene. “The reality of our lives is that hope and suffering and joy and sorrow are all intertwined, and what we believe in our faith is that we already know the end of the story. We already know that love triumphs.”

St. Michael Social Justice and Peace Commission’s next effort is to offer cooking classes and supplies for people who are newly housed. 

The work of the commission is being supported by a grant from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.