Jeremiah Rose. I wish I could give him a pseudonym, but no other name can properly conjure his image: skinny, six feet tall; a thick beard and ponytail, and pale, roving eyes like holes cut in a mask. He wears casteless ripped jeans and T-shirts, but his backpack, with a hardhat clipped and dangling from a clasp, gives him away as something other than a suburban dissolute. He is young, yet somehow old. His age is indeterminable and unnecessary. When I learned that he was only twenty-two, some things made sense; others did not.

I met Jeremiah at our church, which meets at a homeless shelter in a gentrifying quarter of Washington, DC. The small congregation includes a rotating cast of shelter characters, many of whom attend the shelter’s free drug and alcohol treatment program. At first, I didn’t realize Jeremiah was an “overnight guest”—one of the homeless men who drops in at the Mission for a meal, a bed, and connections to local construction jobs. Although there was something uncommonly tender about his demeanor, I simply assumed Jeremiah belonged, in every way, to our church’s clan of overeducated, idealistic white kids.

“Where do you live?” I asked, sitting down next to him one night at a church potluck dinner.

“Around 14th Street.” He barely met my gaze.

“Where do you work?”

“I don’t really have a job right now,” he said.

In typical D.C. form, I think I asked him to email me his resume. He replied politely, noncommittally. He picked at his curry and tamales. Our conversation stalled. He was not rude, yet he was not forthcoming. We finished our meal in silence.

Jeremiah was the only man from the shelter to join us at last spring’s retreat to a church camp on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. He lurked lonesome at the edge of the group, and I hung back with him for a while. I learned that he had grown up in a small town only ten miles from the camp; his family owned a vacuum cleaner repair shop there. He was the youngest of three brothers, and he was the only Christian in his family.

Over the spring and summer, he ended up at our home fairly frequently: sharing dinner and playing Wii, creating an avatar (an on-screen gaming persona) that we all jokingly referred to as the “Jesus Mii,” thanks to its striking resemblance to the overly portraitured Anglo Christ. But he was reticent to discuss himself and his life. In truth, we knew very little about him.

A couple of weeks ago, when hurricane rains threatened the Eastern seaboard, Jeremiah ended up staying at our house. All of the local shelters were full or closed on Friday evening, and when I learned that his only option was the street, I made a unilateral house decision that he was welcome to stay on our futon. That night, it stormed violently. In the morning, the downpour turned to a drizzle and rain echoed pleasantly down the crooked drainpipes.

Inside, our house was quiet. Most of my roommates were out of town; my husband Ben was working at the hospital. I made breakfast for Jeremiah and myself, and we ate it in near silence. Slowly, it became clear that he did not want to spend the day on the street, in the rain. I was not sure what to do with an all-day houseguest, especially one with whom conversation was sparse, so I made him come to yoga with me. Then we came home and had lunch.

Sitting in the living room, eating cold pizza at the coffee table, we finally talked fairly easily, and his life came into sharper focus. Inspired by a book about the spiritual discipline of poverty, Jeremiah had chosen homelessness in Washington, DC in an attempt to truly identify with the poorest of the poor. I listened as he spoke frankly about this decision, describing none of it with the touristy pride of other young men his age I knew who lived in borderline neighborhoods, biked everywhere, and dreadlocked their hair while their parents paid their monthly cell phone bills. Jeremiah owned nothing but his backpack, two shirts, a pair of jeans, and the flip-flops on his feet. He slept on the streets when the shelters had no room, and he ate what was given to him at open tables across the city. I thought of how paltry our church’s own social justice commitments seemed compared to this full-body immersion.

But it seemed a part of Jeremiah’s homelessness was also meant to spite his parents, who wanted him to finish his degree at the local community college and get a real job. Talking to him was almost like sitting before Jonah in the belly of the whale: speaking with a prophet who was quietly and completely on the lam, who had perhaps mistaken the belly of the whale for Nineveh, the crucible for God’s place of calling. And yet Jeremiah was on his way: searching for God, for refuge, and for a way out of the cell of his own rebellion.

When he finally left, he lingered at the door. It was hard for me to believe that between now and when I saw him on Sunday, he was not sure what he would eat or where he would sleep. Hoisting his backpack, he seemed to accept this uncertainty with equanimity, as if it were a kind of calling.

“Thanks for letting me stay,” he said.

“Thanks for staying,” I said. I watched him walk down the front steps and head off for downtown, and I waited, like a mother or a sister, until I could not see him anymore.