Carolyn Green and Mike Choby were playing folk music in a Barnes & Noble Cafe in Schaumburg, Illinois the weekend after I moved to the city.  I hadn’t yet signed up with The Night Ministry, so when Carolyn took a moment at the break to talk about Emmaus Ministries, it sounded like an opportunity I had to explore. Her husband was the founding director of the program.

Emmaus reaches out to men in prostitution on the streets of Chicago, a group that is even more marginalized than most in the homeless community.  Through them I had the opportunity to actually walk the streets in the wee hours of the morning learning more about their mission, and meeting the men they serve.

Chapter 1 in Painted Black arose from this experience and reflects the world I found there–a world they are fighting against.  Here is Carolyn singing a song that I feel expresses one of the motives behind Emmaus and their participants.