Katie is a Loretto Volunteer serving as an AmeriCorps Wellness Coordinator at Family Care Health Centers in St. Louis. The St. Louis volunteers road-tripped to Denver for their spring break. This is Katie's dispatch.

Driving across the entire states of Missouri and Kansas during the beginning of a snowstorm might not be the first image that pops into your head when you hear “spring break.”  But when Kathleen had days off from school, Jill and I just HAD to rearrange our work schedules so we could take a trip.  Since the Lorettos have a center in Denver, we knew it would be a great opportunity. 

As we drove across the 400 plus miles of flat Kansas the whole day Friday, we caught the beginning of a snowstorm that would keep us snowed in on Saturday.  We were immediately welcomed into the Denver community, with lots of questions and conversations with the friendly sisters.  The group of sisters made us feel so at home and so comfortable! We took a much needed relaxing and reflection day while watching the snow fall outside the windows.  We attended mass with the sisters, ate delicious meals and participated in the Saturday movie night.  Saturday was very comfy and cozy.

On Sunday, Jill and I started out the day refreshed with a tai chi/yoga session with Natalie - a sister in Denver.  The snow finally stopped and another sister, Mary Kay, took us for a drive to see Georgetown, a little mining town with a quaint main street.  We finally got to see the mountains clearly, and they were breathtaking! From the Center, we could only see the “foothills”, but they looked pretty big to me!  It was about a 45 minute drive through the Rockies to get to Georgetown, and it was absolutely gorgeous, with freshly fallen snow on the trees.  Later in the day, we took a tour of the Coors Brewery, and I checked off another box on my American brewers list.

On Monday, we visited Southwest Improvement Council (SWIC) to help out Loretto co-member Jan.  Kathleen got to put her lunch lady skills to use as we served the seniors their daily hot lunch.  It was great to sit and chat with some people of the community and learn about their lives. We also helped with some rearranging of the food bank and were happy to help out.  SWIC is a significant part of the community with so many great services.  We visited downtown Denver and walked around the shops and got frozen yogurt. 

As I was riding in the backseat of our car on the way home, I wrote in my journal about how grateful I was that I was able to have this experience.  I got to visit a beautiful place and meet more wonderful members of the Loretto Community.   I am still so happy that I decided to join the Loretto Volunteer Program, and each week brings something new and special to affirm that.

Yesterday I joined with billions of people around the world in celebrating the start of the liturgical season of Easter, a time of fulfilled hope and new life. As I reflect on the meaning of this season in my personal life, I cannot help but consider my own position as part of a community. I have found many communities in my time as a Loretto volunteer this year. I have formed deep relationships with my co-workers and learners, and I have developed as part of the Loretto volunteer community, as well as part of the DC volunteer community. Finally, I have grown into a more profound understanding of my place in the Loretto religious community as a whole. The above quote from Loretto Life struck me as a reminder of the responsibilities I have to these particular communities as well as to the world I live in. As a result of my Lenten observance, I have had ample time to consider my personal relationship to sacrifice and responsibility, but this year I have been able to view these concepts in a way entirely different from what I have been used to. The members of my communities have pushed me to think much more critically about what these values actually look like in my daily life.

In order to give some idea of what service and responsibility mean to me, I find it helpful to state that I identify as a 2 on the Enneagram. For those unfamiliar with this personality type indicator, 2’s are Givers. We tend to place others’ needs before our own and show love to others through service. I know, I know, we sound like a pretty fantastic group of people, but we are far from flawless. A significant part of my individual growth this year has consisted of critically analyzing two things each time I ‘serve’ someone. I have begun being more intentional about considering 1) why I am giving/serving 2) if what I am doing is actually helping anyone. The answers to these questions do not always produce a portrait of myself that I expect or that I would like to see. Sometimes I have selfless reasons for my actions; other times I act in order to avoid conflict or to mask my own needs. In avoiding these things, however, I am not allowing myself or my community members the ability to give our own gifts or to experience growth. It is this realization that has inspired me to try to embrace the discomfort it seems we all inevitably experience around self-care and conflict at points in our lives.

Moving into the Easter season, the last quarter of this volunteer year, and keeping in mind a new lens through which I see myself and my service as a volunteer, I feel a deep personal urge to recommit to the values of Loretto in order to better serve the members of my communities. This recommittal includes finding a balance between being critical and aware of the intentions and reasons behind my work within these communities along with being kind to myself. I feel a need to lean into the tension that comes along with being vulnerable, living as part of an intentional community, and being honest with myself.

I am beginning to realize that sharing the gifts I have to offer does not come singularly from my willingness to interact with this tension. In order to really give to others, I need to make sure that I am also aware of (and making known) my own needs. Otherwise, I am not considering myself as a full member of my communities, which is a disservice to all parties involved. Being critical of myself has been the easier half of the work; acknowledging that I have needs as well as gifts to give has proved to be a significantly more difficult task, but one that is necessary if I have any hope of actually giving anything to anyone. In light of this undertaking, I am acknowledging that my recommitment to living as an equal and active part of my communities, although not being made for selfish reasons, grants me the support, love, courage, and strength I need in order to be a full member as well as a healthy person - and I am learning to be okay with accepting those things from those around me. Recognizing myself as an equal member in my communities and critically thinking about the ways in which I serve others have been difficult journeys for me to undertake, but I am determined to continue with the love and support of my community members. I am looking forward to these next months that I know will not always be easy, but that will bring me closer to the people I am serving, and maybe even teach me some new things about myself and what I am capable of as part of a community.

Living more intentionally as part of a community will also allow me to more deeply live out the values of spirituality, social justice, and simplicity that I committed to in the beginning of this program. It has certainly been difficult to earnestly delve into these values and how to live them out, but they are genuinely significant to me. It has been tempting to simply say it is too hard and to drop the subjects altogether, but growth emerges from challenge and difficulty. Being willing to recognize my own needs for support as well as my need to be continually challenged and encouraged to move forward, I can begin to tap into the strength that my community allows me to have and, in turn, offer more of myself back to it. This offering of myself will be sincere – I will be able to offer support, love, and humor to the members of my community, but I have also recognized my need as a community member to offer challenges to those around me. In being challenged, I have grown. It is only fair that I offer that same opportunity to those around me – and in order to accomplish this I must begin to recognize my own needs and my own place as part of my communities. Cycle after cycle of giving and receiving, of challenge and support, we can only get stronger, we can only have a deeper capacity for love, we can only have more courage to work for justice - and we can accomplish something great.

And we would not be Loretto Volunteers if we did not take some time to be “heartened by other’s humor”- so, inspired by the season of Easter, my last commitment is to try to be easier on myself, to try to remember not to take myself so seriously, and to remember that finding something to laugh about in spite of the difficulties I encounter is a revolution in itself.

Jill is a Loretto Volunteer at Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America in St. Louis.

The other night the Loretto Volunteers in St Louis invited Elizabeth Ann, aka E.A. Compton to join us for dinner. We knew she was an avid storyteller and were excited to host her in our home. For dinner I practiced a few Ecuadorian recipes for an upcoming Latino Dinner, and we ate llapingachos (a cheese stuffed potato patty), fried plantains, and a red onion salad.  The dinner was relaxed and the conversation naturally flowed as we shared different stories, thoughts, and reflections.

One of the questions I asked E.A. was why she joined the convent. She graduated from Nerinx High School in 1947 and many of her classmates went straight to the convent but E.A. decided to wait. She was not yet sure if that’s what she wanted and instead decided to go to Webster University to study music. Then one day during her second year she had the call, the specific yearning that determines the course of an individual’s life. As E.A. told us, she woke up one morning and knew in her gut that she wanted to be Loretto, and she did just that. After many years as a Sister, she has no regrets and her decision led to many blessed opportunities.

After dinner as I reflected on E.A.’s story and the stories of my friends, family, and even strangers who told me of their “callings,” I couldn’t help being impatient and wondering when I was going to receive mine. I always knew I wanted to help people, and as long as I was helping others I would be happy, but I had not yet received my life’s purpose. The more I thought about it, the more I worried that I would never obtain my call until I realized that life is a series of decisions that we are called to.

If you told me a year ago I’d be a Loretto volunteer, I would have no idea what you were talking about. I never heard of the Lorettos until this past October and I was a semi-reluctant and definitely unconventional volunteer. I graduated in August, as the rest of the volunteers started their year of service, and began looking for work opportunities in September. Interested in immigration and extractive industries, I contacted Marilyn Lorenz from the Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America about a job and she responded. I applied for many jobs this past fall but IFCLA was the first that made me feel truly excited and energized. I even jumped up and down and danced across my friend’s living room after speaking with Marilyn on the phone but there was a catch- Marilyn wanted me to work with her but did not have the funds to pay me. That’s when the question was asked: have you ever heard of the Lorettos? My response was a resounding no but I was curious to hear more.

After a quick visit to St Louis that included meetings with Marilyn, Sister Claudia Calzetta, and the two St Louis volunteers, Katie Hughes and Kathleen Fox, I was very impressed by the opportunity but also fearful to make such a large life change. Things became muddier after I received a job offer in Chicago a day later. Called to make a decision, I could not shake off the feeling telling me to join the Loretto community.

Two weeks later I packed up my things and moved to St Louis, and I am so thankful that I did. Since becoming a Loretto volunteer I have had so many opportunities to enhance and learn new skills with my job, I have become so close to my roommates, and I’ve been able to learn so much from the gals next door. While I am not sure what the future holds for me, I know that I will soon be called to make a decision and I am excited to see where I am led.

by Molly Butler

Molly is serving at Community of Hope in Washington, DC, in a family shelter where she runs an after-school program for the shelter's children and manages in-kind donations, among other things!


The following is a letter that I would give to myself if I were to go back in time to August 2012, just pre-Loretto.  I offer this advice not only to provide reflection on my work experience over the past six months, but also to conceptualize my goals as I begin the latter half of my volunteer year at Community of Hope.


Dear Molly,

Congratulations on the beginnings of what will be a very formative experience at Community of Hope; you have a lot to look forward to!  As someone who has done this work for a bit of time now, I want to offer a few pieces of advice for this journey.  These tips are ones conceptualized in retrospect, and will maximize you growth and happiness in this position.

First of all, throw your job description out the window!  Well, wait; don’t do that just yet because you are going to be responsible for the important tasks on that sheet.  But do not mentally compartmentalize these bullet points into one narrow expectation that meets category: “Activities Coordinator.”  Start by opening yourself up to the array of possibilities that comes with working at a family shelter, to working with youth, to creativity, collaboration, community; YOU NAME IT!  Leave room for this fluidity, it is key.  Non-profit work moves quickly and you need to be ready to adapt.  Every day is different and you can only plan to a certain extent.  You will have the opportunity to connect with the families in ways that you cannot yet anticipate.  Take advantage of this.  You can’t facilitate a meaningful afterschool program, or any program for that matter, without first assessing the needs of the community, by listening, and establishing relationships with those who are a part of it.   These things take time.  It’s a continuous process.

Recognize your strengths.  Use those strengths. It’s more productive to build on these capacities than to fixate on your weaknesses.  You are kind and creative, both qualities that are central to your position.  Continue to build on these and you will gradually learn strategies to aid in the areas where you could use some growth.  You are going to have a lot of freedom to develop the enrichment program for youth living in the shelter – don’t let this be too daunting.  You’ll have the opportunity to see your ideas materialize and to adjust them when the outcomes are not what you had hoped.  This kind of autonomy is liberating!

LEARN.  Ok, this one is totally inevitable, but you do also need to beintentional about it.  Take the time to research policy, statistics, history, etc.  Homelessness is a super complex issue with impacts that vary from person to person, family to family, neighborhood to city to country.  There is no one size fits all type of solution and it’s important to be critical of those policies and to keep up to date with the current changes.  Seek out trainings, panel discussions, workshops; all of these contribute to your knowledge base and help inform the ways you engage with your work.  Don’t be afraid to ask for help from your colleagues; communal support is what it’s all about, right?!

LEAN IN TO THE DISCOMFORT!  Seriously, working in a shelter setting is very challenging.  Working with youth is challenging as well.  It doesn’t matter that you’ve worked in these contexts before, the reality is that every child is different; every family is coming from a different place.  You will feel completely lost and disillusioned at the sight of cyclical poverty.  But as your heart continues to break open, leave room for joy.  There is nothing like celebrating with a family who just found out they will be moving into permanent housing; or that moment when a kid asks you for help writing a rap about earthquakes!  Often times the most difficult days are the ones where you learn the most. And sometimes they are just the days when you go home, vent to your community, drink tea and go to sleep wishing for tomorrow to be a better day.  Both will happen.  Both are ok.

Tap in to those emotions.  It’s normal to be a little emotional sometimes.  This work will make you feel all kinds of vulnerable so it is essential to process these feelings outside of the work space; no shame in that!  Practice self-care so that you will have the energy and motivation to continue your work.  Love what you do, because even though it may be different than you had imagined, you are faced with an opportunity to grow in ways you did not even know you have always wanted to grow.

“When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.” ~W. Dyer

Love,

Your future psyche

“When we get there we'll discover
All of the gifts we've been given to share
Have been with us since life's beginning
And we never noticed they were there”

--Emma’s Revolution, “Swimming to the Other Side”

Volunteering, a year of service, a break, the gap year. Call it what you will, taking a year off between undergrad and grad or professional school is now a staple buzzword among recent college grads. It’s most frequent victims are the overly motivated resume builders, the social justice kids unapologetically obsessed with systemic inequalities, and the just plain confused. I entered the Loretto Volunteer Program as a combination of all of these misfits. I expected to see some poverty, to finally figure out what a vegan was, and to have late night conversations peppered with the jargon of power, privilege, and oppression now ubiquitous among humanities majors and aspiring hipster radicals. This year was supposed to be another bullet point on my resume, a stepping stone, free time to write personal statements and to study for the GRE. But here’s a shocker: It hasn’t been any of those things. Insert any sappy simile here about life being like a road, a path, a highway. This year has been about growth: personal, spiritual, and social. Now midway through Loretto, I’m not the Nick that I was when I entered.

I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty details of my work. I know it’s hard to believe, but entering stats into spreadsheets and combing through medical records with bad penmanship is not that interesting. Clients are though. Whether it’s the grandmotherly woman who calls me every few weeks just to shoot the breeze or the man living with mental illness who asked me why he can’t just be “normal,” it’s the clients that make me want to come to work every morning. Like most liberal kids who took a sociology class in college, I thought I knew what poverty was. Combine two parts capitalism, one part racism, a hint of mental illness, and a dash of gentrification. And presto! You have cyclical poverty. But that’s not the whole story. Living in poverty isn’t about recognizing that you live in an unjust society. It’s about feeling depressed that you can’t get a job and then self-medicating with alcohol. It’s about being tearful and thinking you’ve failed when you have to pawn your children’s Christmas presents to pay the electric bill. It’s about constantly waking up during the night, worrying that you’ll be evicted the next day. This is poverty. This isn’t a sociological theory or an amorphous conversation about structural violence. It’s real life. Somehow to my amazement, people survive. They smile, they laugh, they live. Poverty is people. It’s resiliency in the face of suffering.

Lose your faith in humanity. Cry. Get a hug from a client and see that the work you’re doing really does matter. Rinse. Repeat. That’s a day in my work life. In my personal life the challenges are no less daunting. Yeah, this is about to get personal (sorry, not sorry). Anxiety, self-loathing, and messed up self-images. Cry me a river, Justin Timberlake. These have been the defining elements of myself since before I can remember. Self-love? What’s that?!

Now take a melancholic man from the Midwest who looks like he’s one of the weirdo underdogs from Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” music video. Place him in a supportive community. Add a hint of optimism, the terrifying realization that he’s a human being deserving of love, respect, and happiness. Stir in some progressive nun goodness and you get me: the kid who is learning to assume best intentions, leans into the discomfort, and cries when he feels sad. Yes, to the outside world this combination of emotional instability and social worky aphorisms is a hot mess. But inside, I’ve never felt better. In fact, this is the first time in my life that I’m actually allowing myself to bash back, to get angry, and to feel like something other than a worn out doormat.

Being in a community where I’m forced to think about myself and my needs and being around co-workers and friends who want to know the real me (whoever that is or isn’t) is just one of the many unexpected benefits I’ve encountered this year. I walked into this year thinking it was a cop out, a way of hiding from the fact that I always do what other people expect instead of what I want. But Loretto isn’t a wonderland for the tragically wayward and emotionally confused (though they will most definitely find a niche here—“all are welcome” as the song goes). It’s not a stepping stone, a new chapter, or a bridge. It’s real life. It’s where you learn to love and be loved, where you see that you’re not messed up, unworthy, or damaged beyond repair. It’s where you realize that all these gifts you never knew were there were always there…hidden behind anxiety and feelings of never being good enough (to borrow from the ridiculously sentimental epigraph to this reflection). Yes, my friends, this is indeed real life.

You better cue the cheesy music, cuz this is about to get real. Forget about everything that you thought about the gap years, the service work, the time off, and the education grant. This isn’t about liberal do-gooding, resume building, non-profit networking, or thinking about social service versus social change. It’s about finding yourself, confronting those parts you hate, and re-discovering the parts you love.

At risk of sounding sappy: I love myself, I love life. This is finally my chance to flourish. LET LORETTO BE LORETTO FOREVER.

It is incredibly difficult to find a moment of solitude and silence in a middle school. And while the bustle of Marian is exciting and fun, it can occasionally be overwhelming. When it came time to take a four-day weekend and head to Rehoboth Beach for winter retreat, I couldn’t hop on the plane fast enough.

I was looking forward to walking along the beach and writing in my journal, a past time that I have let slip away during the busy school year. Although I was excited for our “Saturday of Silence,” it is the conversations I had with my fellow volunteers that made the retreat worthwhile.

Our group gathered as a whole for the first time since August, and yet we were able to discuss serious topics as though we’d never parted. I found comfort chatting about the difficulties of education with Molly and Caroline. We each work with education in unique ways, yet we face similar challenges such as classroom engagement and boundaries.

I was able to spend quality reflective time with my roommates. As a small community of only three, we face a unique set of challenges. We don’t have to schedule time to be together, but we have to remember that some of our time together should be more than social. We reignited our community light and refocused our community nights.

Most importantly, the retreat rekindled my desire to get up and go to work in the morning. Talking about the difficulties of work, whether it is as an educator or as a volunteer in general, reminded me of all positive things that can sometimes be overshadowed. I’d gladly take a four-day weekend, but I am happy to be well-rested and back at work.

Going into WATER for the first time, I had a very vague picture of what my work was to be. Not for lack of trying. I had spent a great deal of time on WATER’s website, and I had talked to a few former and current WATER interns to ask them what their work was like. Since arriving at WATER, I now understand their challenge, having been asked the question, “What do you do?” by friends, family, and prospective interns. Part of the challenge stems from the variety of WATER’s programs and work: teleconferences, rituals, a contemplation group, articles, courses, conferences, counseling, and a library. The medium of this work is also highly varied. We offer some programs in person, others by phone, and some in both forms. Some of our work is in classrooms or at conferences, while some of our work is online or in books. And then you have to throw Facebook and Twitter into the mix. It’s sometimes hard for me to keep up with it all, but listing these programs is simple enough.

Describing the work that WATER does, however, is more difficult. WATER’s mission is to use feminist religious values for social change. Of course, how a person defines “feminist religious values” or “social change” varies widely. I think it is the lack of preciseness of these words that makes WATER’s work to be as exciting, although sometimes elusive, as it is. For example, the first teleconference that I participated in at WATER was with Judith Plaskow, a retired professor of Jewish feminist studies in religion who shared with us an autobiographical narrative theology that reflected on her changing understandings of God and feminism throughout her life. The last teleconference we heard from in 2012 was on the subject of “Translating Womanism into Pedagogical Praxis” with Katie G. Cannon. Dr. Cannon talked about the ways she incorporates and embodies womanism and her own history in her teaching practices. The discussions of the teleconferences were equally varied with professors, students, and religious leaders from across fields shared their thoughts and questions. 

I think WATER’s teleconferences demonstrate the kind of work that WATER seeks to do. The teleconferences create virtual spaces where divergent and intersecting voices of feminist, womanist, mujerista, and queer works in religion are shared and made accessible to wider audiences. While I still struggle to describe what “using feminist religious values for social change” means, I can at least point to examples like WATER’s teleconferences as one example of such work in action.

This November, six of our ten Loretto Volunteers road-tripped from DC and St. Louis to attend the annual School of the Americas Watch Vigil in Ft. Benning, GA.  At this annual gathering, people vigil to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHINSEC (formerly the School of the Americas) - a military training academy that uses U.S. dollars to train Latin American military leaders. Graduates have gone on to perpetrate some of the worst human rights abuses in the world, including counterinsurgency against people's movements, torture and disappearing of labor activists.  Below are reflections from our volunteers who attended.

Molly:
This time last year I was in Bogotá, Colombia on a service immersion trip with DePaul University ministry.  This experience not only opened my eyes to the role of the SOA and the United States in the region’s violent conflict, but also to its various contexts and harmful effects on innocent communities caught in the crossfire. I had the opportunity to engage with families living under the shadow of this violence, many of whom had been displaced and forcefully separated from loved ones.  Although the two weeks I spent in Colombia could hardly expose the complexity or entirety of these issues, it challenged me to re-conceptualize my own relationship to Colombia and consider how I can stand in solidarity with the victims and survivors of these atrocities.  I cannot attempt to speak for the people of Latin America, but I will continue to speak with them; advocating for peace and for shutting down violent institutions such as the SOA.  It was an incredibly powerful experience to be there as a Loretto presence, to stand at the gates of Fort Benning with my fellow volunteers and connect with thousands of other communities advocating for a similar cause.  As I solemnly walked away from the cold chain fence packed with crosses attached to thousands of memories, I heard the words of Emma’s Revolution echoing from the stage behind me.  “Gonna stop these wars together….gonna keep on moving forward…”  My heart is heavy, filled with the memory of all those innocent lives that have been affected by senseless violence.  I move forward, however, with a sense of hope that together in solidarity we can recognize the humanity of all and put an end to U.S. militarization of the Americas. 

Nick:
The people on stage began reading names—name after name after name. As “presente” rolled mournfully off the tongues of those ambling through the procession, I found myself lost in my own head. Those names weren’t just words. They were people; people who had been living and breathing; people who had been mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, lovers and fighters. Their lives had been violently taken. And now the only memory of them that remained was their names, those almost arbitrarily assigned pieces of language that distinguish us from one another. This was injustice. This was what was wrong with the world. As my body marched on, saying presente in autopilot, all I could think about was what was my role in all this messiness that we call life. How was I going to work for justice and act for peace? Of course, I reached the procession before I could even begin to fathom an answer. I placed the cross I had been carrying on the fence of the SOA. I felt helpless. This wasn’t justice. This wasn’t solidarity. This wasn’t peace. These were pieces of cheap wood carelessly jammed into the links of a fence. Life could never be reduced to a material. No made thing could ever symbolize, capture, or stabilize the unquantifiable value of a human being. 


Kathleen:
From the Denny’s parking lot, Columbus, Georgia seemed like an average town. Is it really possible that the notorious School of the Americas is hidden behind suburbs and a college campus?

Unfortunately the SOA is very real and very well hidden. So well hidden that I never even saw the school, but instead a large barbed wire fence with armed men walking nearby. Rundown apartments lined the street filled with protesters. Children from these homes walked the streets trying to sell water to protestors. Their homes looked hardly inhabitable, yet right down the street was a multi-million dollar military complex training future assassins. 

All I could think of were the middle school students I work with at Marian. How is it that the government can spend so much money funding future assassins, but not our future leaders?  I am ashamed that the government has chosen the interest of corporations over the interest of people in Latin America and the US.

Although I am disappointed I am not discouraged. For as long as we say no, more voices will join, and we will be heard.

Katie:
Her name was Maria Dolores Amaya Claros and she was 5 years old when she disappeared.  As I held an index card with her name on it that a stranger had given to me to leave in the fence, the seriousness of the SOA weekend hit me.  It was Sunday, and I held the name of a real child who had disappeared and been killed.  A little girl whose family still misses her and the woman she would have become.  The day before the protest had been almost like a festival, with tables of information, food stands, and a stage full of singing.  However, the atmosphere on Sunday was very somber.  During the procession, hundreds of names were spoken over the microphone, while we walked up to the fence of Fort Benning.  As I slipped the index card of Maria Dolores in the fence, I was blown away by the cluttered fence that was full of wooden crosses and slips of paper.  I stepped away, thankful for the experience that the weekend brought me, and said a prayer for Maria Dolores and all of the disappeared and their families.   

Jill:
At the SOA, many people presented stories of their home county, of violence and bloodshed, and of love.  Musicians performed songs of critique, protest, and of hope.  The main message of all the presenters was that the SOA had to be closed because of its connections to human rights abuses, its relationship to brutality and continuing impunity, to its dark history and potentially harrowing effects on the future.  But underlying this main message laid another: love and incessant hope for change is necessary to fight against the SOA.

The funeral procession on Sunday, November 18th, illuminated this for me as I spoke to a man from Guatemala.  We began speaking to each other after I joined him in his solitary response to “we are all America,” “todos somos America.”  He asked if I was Latina, if my parents were Latino, where I was born, etc. and he was shocked when I said that I was not of Latin descent.  “…Pero todos somos America, todos somos humanos, no?”  I asked.  To that he chuckled and responded, “si, si. Todos somos hermanos y hermanas bajo la Madre Tierra.”

He told me he was from Guatemala and has been living in the United States for six years.  His entire family was disappeared in the 1980s.  We discussed the need to recognize a shared human condition and form relationships of equality and solidarity with one another in order to enact lasting change in our society. Through this conversation the love of the other and an unnerving hope for a better future was born in me.    

Bob:
For college freshmen, the initial quest to find one’s niche leads many places. The politically savvy do best in DC, but others fare well, too –cushioned by sizeable activities budgets almost every student finds a lucrative niche to fund their fun. 

Hence, when I found myself bundled amid freezing rain at a campsite in Georgia, sleep-deprived and fed largely by rest stop delicacies, it demanded reflection. I mused why this trip to the SOA Vigil was so important. The reasons convinced me to fervently return four more years in pilgrimage to the gates.

This year, I again caught myself forced to decide why attending is important. This time it was not personal discomfort that paused me, it was the Vigil itself. In my first year, crowds neared 20,000 of all stripes, but the event overflowed with Catholics – the Jesuit students, religious communities of sisters, assorted priests, and the rest of us laity. 

This year, 2,000 attended -- and Catholic identity deeply waned, giving way to an unclear alliance. From my limited perspective, the Vigil’s moment as a powerful light for justice and witness for peace seemed passing. My thoughts ping-ponged. Anxieties about returning and the movement’s future shared space with uneasiness about the lack of Catholic identity, clarifying a few ideas:

Within me, there is an unwillingness to overlook the people of Latin America whether I return to Fort Benning’s gates or not. 

Within me, there is a blossoming willingness to walk aside Dorothy, Ita, Maura, and Jean for the Gospel always. 

Within me, there is an unwillingness to cede finality to clerical actions, like the Jesuit’s withdrawal from the Vigil, reacting to “scandalous” woman who assume their rightful place at the altar.

Within me, there is a willingness to co-create a Catholicism broad enough to welcome the full prophetic visions of Monseñor Romero, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, and the Latin American Church that gifts us liberation theology. 

So how do I answer the question of why the Vigil is so important now? 

Exact answers elude me, but my confirmation into the Church as ‘Romero’ daily compels me joyfully further into this justice niche now. And maybe for now all I am enabled to see is that the Spirit alive in that pilgrimage renews me to go forth and set the world on fire for another year. 

And maybe that is enough.

When I began working at Academy of Hope two months ago I had no idea what to expect. I knew that as an intern instructor at an adult education facility I would be leading classes, advising learners, and doing other office tasks like scheduling. What I did not know was that I was walking into a wonderfully vibrant community that exuded caring, creativity, and love. My short time so far at AoH has brought to light and subsequently dispelled many stereotypes about adult education that I was not even aware I had. At first I was terrified at the thought of trying to teach adults in a classroom setting, but after having finished a full term, I can honestly say I have never had a richer or enlightening teaching experience. As the first cycle of classes has come to an end, I am realizing how excited I am to begin a new one, refreshed and energized. I go to work every day with a smile on my face and an eagerness to see the people I work with. The community that has been built in this space is inspirational to say the least, and it all has to do with the one word we find most important in our work – hope.

The environment at Academy of Hope each day reminds me of a family reunion. The day starts out quietly. Although work does not start until 8 a.m., I arrive around 7:00 each morning. I really love this time because it has a unique mixture of calm and anticipation for the upcoming day. A few learners trickle in around 8:00 to chat or to get some extra tutoring. The real party starts around 8:30 when learners begin to arrive for their 9:00 classes. From my office I can hear the growing murmur of people asking about each other’s lives, families, weekends, classes or any number of random topics – bed bugs being one of my favorites. Each day begins in this way. At first, I assumed that this energy would wind down as the term went on, but every morning I walk in knowing that in two hours I will be surrounded by a group of people full of joy, determination, and a genuine passion for learning. 

As I reflect on my first few months here, I am motivated by the determination of both the staff and the learners. In what has been one of my favorite classes this term, my writing class, I handed out a list of twelve writing topics for learners to work on throughout the term, one for each class period. The next day, a learner stopped by my office and handed me a stack of twelve papers, each with a paragraph written about one of those topics. She explained to me that she had written them on her work break and while she was waiting to attend a parent-teacher meeting. I could barely find words to say as she told me that she wanted me to come up with more writing topics. Afterwards, all I could think about was how frustrated I was with the half an hour of grading I did the night before, and yet this woman was asking for more homework on top of all of her other responsibilities. It is such a humbling and moving experience for me to work with someone so actively involved in all the areas of her life. This sort of thing, however, is not by any means unusual at AoH. Every learner I have worked with has an incredible drive to succeed. Their goals are not only to get a GED or a diploma, but to inspire their children to learn, to get job promotions or to prove that they are much more than just a test score. They set out to prove every day that they are capable of overcoming obstacles they have faced throughout their lives and to disprove the stereotypes that surround adult learners. 

This brings me back to my original point – hope. We say that we are the Academy of Hope, but what does that mean? I think it means we try to integrate hard work, humor, community, and more into adult education. Hope requires determination. It’s not always (if ever) easy to achieve the things for which we hope. We have to work hard; sometimes we work hard just to make time in our lives for our jobs, learning, and friends all at once. Sometimes we work against entire systems of oppression in order to pursue happiness and to try to make the world a place in which those systems do not exist. I am proud that Academy of Hope works to help individual learners as well as to initiate important reforms in the adult education system. One without the other cannot achieve the goal of making quality education accessible to everyone regardless of social or economic status. Hope is about humor. There will be (and have been) days when something goes wrong – maybe a low test score or a personal or family emergency. Even in those times, it is reassuring to know that we can find something to smile or laugh about, and, more importantly, someone to smile and laugh with us. 

Lastly, hope requires community. When it comes down to it, as a part of this world, we are all connected and constantly in relationship with those around us. Being in a community that actively supports its members as they work to achieve their goals and cares about the people both inside and outside of it is something that I cherish deeply about Academy of Hope. It is both refreshing and comforting to be in a space in which each individual is assured that they are not alone in whatever it is they are undertaking. I am proud to be a part of a community in which I can give hope to others, and I am thankful to the community for the hope it has given me even in these two short months.

As we sat in the Loretto Motherhouse and discussed community, one of the four pillars of our volunteer program, I wondered how I would fare in a two person “community.”   I felt a little jealous that the DC house would have 5 members (plus one at the satellite campus!).  I knew that myself and my roommate Kathleen in St. Louis and also our fellow member Shawna in New York City would definitely have a different experience with community in our daily lives.  I knew that community meant support, and collaboration, but I was still unsure about how it would play out for me in my new surroundings.

As Kathleen and I have settled into our routine, I have come to know my own version of community.  First, I have a wonderful roommate with whom I more than get along with.  Kathleen and I have bonded over a shared love of cupcakes and belting songs on the way home.  We are supportive of each other, and we know when to listen and when to vent.  We also have the support from our local coordinator, Claudia, who is a great resource to have and is the best at showing support and love in little ways. 

I have also found community from the sisters living nearby.  We first met many of them at a welcoming party, and they have been supportive and hospitable ever since.  I always make sure to check my mail every day, because I never know who I will run into and get to chat with.   This past Friday, I stumbled upon a pizza party that some sisters put together to watch the Cardinals game.  They insisted that I stay to eat, which was a great way to end the work week.

There is also community outside of Loretto.  Kathleen works with two volunteers from different programs in the St. Louis area.  We were invited to a potluck dinner at one of their houses, and we got to meet almost everyone in the programs.  It was nice to get to know some fellow volunteers who are going through the same experiences as we are.   A housewarming party at our place is in the works!

I have found that my definition of community living is not limited to the place where you reside.  For me, it is a feeling of support and love from the sisters that I interact with.  It is bonding and finding solidarity with my roommate and other volunteers.  That being said, we are lucky to add one more to our wonderful community very soon! Jillian, we are so excited to have you join us in St. Louis and be a part of the Loretto community!