Founded about 10 years ago, Trinity Sober Homes is the only lay-driven, Catholic sober house organization in the nation that offers spiritual coaching, said Tim Murray, its executive director. While its post-treatment recovery rate is high, about 29% of men relapse. Murray said staff discovered two reasons: Men relapsed in their first six months in the program, not a big surprise, he said. And they relapse on a Friday or a Saturday.
People who can moderate their alcohol intake can probably relate with drinking more on the weekends, Murray said. That can be true as well with alcoholics who may be managing or struggling with their alcoholism during the week. “But come about noon on Friday, it’s a big green light,” he said.
Tim Murray stands outside a farmhouse he is restoring to create a retreat center for men in recovery from addiction called St. Isidore Farm. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT
“And so, imagine doing that as a 50- or 60-year-old recovering guy, your first time maybe being sober in decades, and you’re busy during the week. But all of a sudden, you’re now sitting alone in your sober house on a weekend.”
Recalling the saying, “Idle hands are the tools of the devil,” Murray said that in the recovery world, “we would say something similar, which is ‘an alcoholic alone with his own mind is in a very bad neighborhood.’”
Murray recently joined “Practicing Catholic” radio show host Patrick Conley to discuss how Trinity Sober Homes is addressing weekend relapses.
In thinking through what the organization could do to help men look forward to the weekend “rather than white-knuckling it,” Murray discussed with staff and mentors the idea of acquiring a cabin or farm where men could stay on the weekends. The organization bought a 5-acre piece of heavily-wooded land near Mankato, which it is renovating. “It’s just beautiful, serene,” Murray said.
The approximate 90-minute drive from the Twin Cities provides the right amount of time to decompress and arrive in a contemplative state of mind, he said.
Near a statue of the Blessed Mother on site, a walking path for saying the rosary is being developed. A statue of Jesus with a bubbling fountain underneath is there to represent the “living water,” Murray said, and it includes a welcome sign. The idea is “come here to rest your weary soul,” he said.
Eight individual bedrooms are available, with capacity to add more. “We’ll see how interest is,” Murray said.
The weekends are expected to range from silent retreats to “guided weekends,” topical weekends and perhaps what the Franciscans call a “working retreat weekend,” he said, “similar to the Trappist monks who find great solace in both silence and doing hard work like chopping wood and maybe using a chainsaw and doing other sorts of historically manly things.”
To learn more, visit the organization’s website: TrinitySoberHomes.org. It includes a link for donating time, treasure or talents, and a link to a recent article in The Catholic Spirit about the rural retreat center, which is named St. Isidore Farm.
During the interview, Murray said that Trinity Sober Homes has the highest post-treatment recovery rate in the nation. To learn more about the numbers and to hear the full interview, listen to this episode of the “Practicing Catholic” radio show. It airs at 9 p.m. Oct. 8, 1 p.m. Oct. 9 and 2 p.m. Oct. 10 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes interviews with Barb Ernster from the World Apostolate of Fatima, who describes how Catholics can grow in their rosary devotions, and Archdiocesan Synod readers Alejandra Chavez Rivas and Melina Arguello Sotro, who discuss young adults’ involvement in the Church.
Listen to all of the interviews after they have aired at:
soundcloud.com/PracticingCatholic
tinyurl.com/PracticingCatholic (Spotify)
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