Harmony, Hope and Healing

“Good morning, family. My name is April.”

“Hi, April,” chimes the group of about 20 women. They’re sitting in a circle inside St. Martin de Porres House of Hope, a shelter in Woodlawn for female substance abusers in recovery.

“I’m reading [a poem] from Praise and Glory [titled] “Little Things,” April, a 51-year-old recovering alcoholic, announces.

Low affirmations of “mhmm” and “yes” from the other women punctuate April’s verse thanking God for the small things in life. When she’s done, the women—most of whom are recovering alcoholics,though a few have dealt with crack and heroin addictions—launch into an a cappella rendition of the Serenity Prayer.

Welcome to a rehearsal of the Harmony, Hope and Healing choir, a group that’s giving a voice to dozens of women looking for a new start.

Marge Nykaza calls the happening a “morning music meditation.” A trained opera singer, Nykaza founded the choir in 2000. She was finishing a master’s in pastoral studies at Loyola University and needed just six more credit hours to complete her degree when she showed up at the door step of St. Martin. “I said, ‘I can do anything you need, but I’m a musician/singer,’ ” Nykaza says, smiling. “I thought it would be for the summer, but it changed my life.”

With Harmony Hope and Healing, Nykaza says she is on a musical mission from God: therapy and spiritual healing through song for the homeless and underserved. The choir is just one component of a music program that holds classes in four other shelters in the Chicago area.

At the Mantle in Canaryville on the South Side, for example, music classes double as English lessons for the Spanish-speaking adults who come to the center. But St. Martin is where the majority of choir members live, and they’re the ones who perform in local venues like the University of Chicago’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration.

Morning music meditation sessions, held every Wednesday, are rich with affirming language. Every woman receives warm applause after saying her name, and women who share personal anecdotes or read biblical passages address the group as “family.”

Nykaza, in many ways the archetypal New Age mother hen, explains why the women are so positive: “It’s about dignity. Many people have been silenced in their lives and don’t know how to use their voices.”

Vocal talent is actually the least important component of the choir; thus, its repertoire consists mainly of easy-to-learn gospel standards like Hezekiah Walker’s anthem “I Need You to Survive.” Women with a passion for music often work as interns for Harmony, Hope and Healing when they leave the shelter.

Jolie Perryman, once an intern, is now a musical assistant at St. Martin and one of the choir’s four other sites. “This is one group where you can leave your troubles at the door,” she says. “And some days we forget to pick them up on the way out.”