Sacred Streets is our newest expression of neighbor love first dreamed up in 2019 by Sparrow Carlson, co-founder of Aurora Commons and Awake, and now held together by a fabric of connection with other local churches and wise teachers with lived experience. As we’ve lived life alongside neighbors who sleep rough we’ve found people experiencing homelessness are constantly given a negative answer to the most important questions upon which our mental health depends: Who am I? What am I? We, as a society, as neighbors, as a church and as kin, must ascribe to the people we are attempting to “serve” the same kinds of complexities, nuances, kindnesses and curiosity that we ascribe and acknowledge within ourselves.

We grieve the state of the soul of our community, hardened by false divisions of “housed” and “unhoused”, treated mental illness and untreated mental illness, socially acceptable addictions and taboo addictions. Our unhoused neighbors feel the distance and often disdain on a daily basis. We educate and invite our housed neighbors to be curious about our neighbors on the street and trust the slow work of bridging across otherness to draw all of us toward a collective flourishing.

Learn more about Sacred Streets here.