Category : Uncategorized

by Beth Orchard, IPS Social Justice

Visions

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
Before you were born I set you apart…”
-Jeremiah 1:5[i]

The word ‘sankofa’ comes from West Africa. Literally translated from the original language it means, ‘it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot.’[ii] Essentially, what was left behind can be recovered, and what was lost can be found. This can also refer to how we review our pasts to inform our present and engage the future. ‘Sankofa’ also means there is always room to collect the ways and being which might have been forgotten to create a new mosaic composed of the old and the new.

It is easier to think of people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Gandhi and others as visionaries than it is to consider the same about ourselves. Although we herald them as modern day saints, each of these great leaders crafted their work over a number of years based on a vision.  This vision guided them towards the work they would do later in life and perhaps even adapted and changed over time as they looked back to bring the past into the present and future works they hoped to accomplish.

The question of ‘sankofa’ for me is ‘where have I been, where am I now, and to where am I going?’ Each day as I wake up, I quietly contemplate how great leaders craft their vision one day at a time, piece by piece. It is a great puzzle to look back and see pieces of myself and realize I can mold those into a newer, wiser, and greater vision of who I hope to be in the future.

I felt for the longest time before I began exploring faith, that I was a person without a name; just another person trying to create a life that made sense. As I began reading about visionaries, leaders and prophets like Jesus, I quickly realized that leaders are not born with vision. Vision is something which develops, is molded and shaped by our collective experiences. As I came to faith and developed a new vision and identity for myself, I realized I had not lost any of the insight or experiences I had previously. They merely became a part of a greater whole that God created me for. (more…)

Win “4” Eternity | Lake City Football

by Deacon Jim Siler, IPS MDiv student

“4” the Lake City Football program, winning has become so much more than just winning football games and winning the Highland Conference and State Championship. When one looks deeply in the eyes of these young men and the coaching staff “4” the weeks following the loss of their teammate it is to truly witness a spirit that goes beyond their physical presence and makes any and all of these team goals a real and optimistic reality. The tragic loss of teammate and friend Zach Peery #”4” on the morning of July 13^th has “4” ever changed the purpose, drive and motivation of the football program, the entire Lake City School student body, faculty, staff, the community of Lake City and beyond.

At Zach’s funeral in my message I said, “The pathway of faith has divine purpose, and we’re to obey, no matter what. But even when God’s direction is perplexing, we can count on the fact that if God allows something to happen he will make good come from it. Walking obediently with Christ doesn’t guarantee an easy life, which is obvious when we consider what we are facing today.”  One reality has already taken place in the Lake City Football Program. I have had the opportunity to experience first hand “4” the last few weeks the fire of the Holy Spirit in Coach Peterson, his coaching staff and the entire squad from the “4” year seniors down to the first year freshmen. They have given a new meaning to the reality of hard work and determination in the face of such real and painful circumstances.

I shared with the team after their final two a day practice sessions my appreciation to them by their example “4” helping me to strengthen the resolve of this entire community to live the “Gospel.” This is truly the purpose of our being created and the reality of how Zach Peery lived in his short but fruitful life. Like the principles in winning at football we must fight the good fight, keep running the race and never give up! We must daily pick up our cross, put on the armor of Christ and finish the race despite the pain and agony! (more…)

by Jerica Arents, M.A. Social Justice

I received an education Thursday.

I wasn’t in a classroom. I wasn’t laboring over a paper, strategizing in a small group, poring over a textbook or hustling across campus. I was sitting as a spectator in the front row of Judge Jansen’s courtroom in Clark County, Nevada.

Fourteen peace activists were on trial for trying to hand-deliver a letter to the base commander at Creech Air Force Base in April of 2009. Their letter laid out concerns about usage of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, for surveillance and combat purposes in Afghanistan. The Creech 14 believe that the usage of remote aerial vehicles to hunt down and kill people in other lands amounts to targeted assassination and is prohibited by international and U.S. law. Soldiers carrying M16s stopped them after they had walked past the guardhouse at the base entrance and a few hours later Nevada state troopers handcuffed the Creech 14 and took them into custody.

The next day, they were charged with trespassing on a military facility and released. The charges were later dropped, then reinstated. Defendants, upon learning of a September 14, 2010 court date, had ten months to plan for their trial. They decided to represent themselves pro se and to call, as expert witnesses, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Colonel Ann Wright and Professor Bill Quigley, the Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. What were the chances that a Las Vegas court that normally handles traffic violations and minor offenses would admit three expert witnesses to testify on behalf of defendants charged with a simple trespass? Slim to zero in the view of most observers. (more…)

by Maggie Hendrix, IPS Student, Religious Education

This video has been making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter in the past 24-36 hours. Comedian Michael Ian Black posted it to his website, commenting, “This is the most awesome and depressing thing I’ve seen in quite a while … Watch the guy’s body language as he’s doing this. I say this in all sincerity: this country has to get its s–t together.”

It’s funny how often we walk by the homeless and don’t bat an eye, but when they put on a show with puppets, we are moved. I’m no better. I found myself bawling after watching this video, but I’ve grown numb to the homeless that I see so often in Chicago.

It’s not about reaching into our pocket and handing over cash every time we see a homeless person. If you can, great. But there are things that cost nothing, but still fall into Jesus’s command to love. Dignity doesn’t cost a penny. Recognizing the humanity in the homeless with a smile or a kind word doesn’t require you to open your wallet. Friendship, too. Maybe it won’t be as filling as a turkey sandwich, but it’s a start.

In the book “Jesus Before Christianity,” Albert Nolan, O.P. examines Christ’s choices, and what they should mean to us. Nolan posits that Christ empowered those around him not by handing over money, but by treating everyone as his equal. He washed the feet of his friends. He touched lepers. He stood up for the sinning woman. He saw the dignity in every person he met, and treated them accordingly.

Perhaps Jesus would have seen the same beauty in this video that the internet has. Our call as followers of Christ is to not just be moved, but act in the same way Christ would have.

by Ryan Hoffmann, IPS Enrollment Advisor

When you visit a bookstore what section do you gravitate towards?

Fiction? History? Religion? Travel?

Where do you find yourself? What is it you enjoy discovering – that which you just can’t get enough? That which you can’t can’t not do?

While we all attend to our deepest desires and callings differently, there exist manifestations of where we lean in the everyday all around us.  What topics catch our attention? What issues or topics beg for expression in and through our work? What is it we dream about? Underneath the “have to’s,” what is it I want to do with this one life?

These may be helpful prompts.

• What are 5 things you used to enjoy doing?
• What are 5 silly things you would like to try once?
• What are 5 things you personally would never do that sound fun?

As the Enrollment Advisor at the Institute of Pastoral Studies (IPS) I’ve assisted prospective students who want to delve deeper into theology and ministry and sort out these types of questions.  Many speak of a restlessness, a burning feeling nudging them to explore where their “life trajectory” may be pointed.  To be sure, feelings of anxiety and fear abound.  If living into the depth of our questions, and trusting that something is out there calling me beyond myself were easy, it wouldn’t need attention or inner accompaniment.  Instead, we set out on a journey, like many before us, in search of meaning and purpose.

For those currently discerning a restlessness – something tugging and pulling and nudging – often times exploring who we are in community is helpful.  Seeing, hearing, touching, and just sensing in a supportive environment can “break through” the noise and confusion of what is lurking beneath.  At IPS we encourage those reflecting on ministry and theology, and a calling to work in these fields, to participate in an open house to “fill in” whether or not this is where your restlessness points.  It may.  It may not.  What’s important is gauging whether our questions are affirmed, perhaps even being able to acknowledge or identify a sense of consolation.  If the opposite happens you’ve discovered a lot about yourself, too. (more…)

by Beth Orchard, IPS Student, Social Justice

Ahimsa, or an expression of deep love and abstinence from causing pain or harm to others or self, was a large part of Gandhi’s practice. In his view, we must not punish those who do harm, but help them understand the injustice and transform them through love. Satyagraha was a large part of his movement for non-violence and simply means truth power, or the way of truth which brings us closer to what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the ‘beloved community.’

I think of this when I reflect back on a discussion we had in our Social Justice Leadership class about ‘living a non-violent life.’ I think ahimsa can be self-reflective of our love and tendency to cause ourselves harm or pain through our actions. When we are not mindful of what we say or how we act, the repercussions can be great not only for those around us, but ourselves as well.

Something that is difficult about living a life of non-violence is to commit with all one’s heart. It is not something that a person can only commit to half-heartedly, nor is it something which another person, say a partner, can just join alongside. It is a full commitment from both partners, or from a community as a whole, in order to be fully effective. Gandhi would never have achieved the success he did with his movement if nobody else believed in what he preached. Because he lived it, and it was a part of who he was, others also started to see how that could positively impact themselves and the world around them. This was his most powerful legacy.

Henry Nouwen wrote a book called ‘the Wounded Healer’ and spoke about how we must crucify ourselves in order to be like Christ. This sacrificial love is lived out in the life we lead of taking care of ourselves, and letting God be present within us. To live a life as fully and as loving as Christ was requires more than compassion, it requires releasing ourselves of all obligations to heal our own wounds and allow others to come alongside us in community to help each other repair the wounds the world bestows on us so we can thus go on to help heal others.

My life is about more than simply being present in the moment with those I’m in service to, it is about a lived experience of being a part of their existential crisis of faith, of despair, of lost hope and opportunity. It’s realizing the blessings we’ve been given in the midst of someone else’s loss. It is about carrying the cross and burden of sheltering the weak and shepherding the lost when nobody else will go near them. It is also about demonstrating a love that is so radical and life changing that it transforms hearts to a higher being of truly caring about what happens to others, and through that becoming cared for ourselves. (more…)

by Beth Orchard, IPS Student, Social Justice

Swami Vivekananda spoke at the first Parliament of the World’s Religions on Sept 11, 1893. His speech spoke to his hope for a world of inclusivity and harmony between people of all faiths. He reached out to his audience at that time to ask that they consider within themselves a spirit led by God to love one another as He sees us–a community of brothers and sisters.

Juxtapose that with September 11, 2001. That was a day everything changed. The impact of the planes hitting the Twin Towers reverberated the world over and 9 years later we are still reeling from this catastrophe.

Jitish Kallat designed an artistic expression of what began on that day as a search for peace and reconciliation. Using the color codes designed by the Federal Government’s terrorist alert system, Jitish imposes them upon the peaceful words of Swami Vivekananda. If you were to stand in the middle of the Woman’s Board Grand Staircase, you could look up from all sides and read the words as they ran from one stair to another, each word coded in a different color.

As I stood in the center of the staircase, I found myself feeling the weight of the decades since Swami’s speech. I see the words ‘bigotry’ and ‘fanaticism’ in bold colors alongside ‘welcome,’ ‘toleration’ and ‘hope.’ It was as if Swami Vivekananda resided in that very room where he spoke so many decades ago to implore us to look at the current context in which we live. (more…)

by Robert Ludwig, Ph.D., Director of the Institute of Pastoral Studies

The experience of Christ and grace in sacramental community is a path towards liberation–the liberation of individuals from their enslavement to all that is not God and God’s reign through a lifetime process of conversion, and the liberation of all creation from indifference, injustice, and violence through the patient witness of the sacramental community in solidarity with the unloved, the poor, the oppressed, the violated. These two dimensions of liberation go together–personal conversion and social transformation. One is set free from one’s small ego-encapsulated self and embraces the larger self, the whole self, the self that is imaged in Christ. The experience of liberation is a turning to others in compassionate service, identifying with the marginated other in one’s recognition of one’s own marginated status.

The origins of the Christian tradition, in fact, lie in a peasant movement for justice grounded in the compassion and wisdom of God active in life and history. Biblical historian Dominic Crossan has “[Jesus] had both a religious dream and a social program, and it was that conjunction that got him killed…. Indeed, if Jesus had been only a matter of words or ideas, the Romans would have probably ignored him, and we would probably not be talking about him today. His kingdom movement, however, with its healings and exorcisms, was action and practice, not just thought and theory. (The Essential Jesus, p.3). (more…)

Partial Mock-Up of Jitish Kallat’s Public Notice 3 on the Woman’s Board Grand Staircase of the Art Institute of Chicago

by Claire Esker, IPS Student

“As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”

– Hindu Hymn, as quoted by Swami Vivekananda

At times, a spirit of hubris dominates modern thought.  We like to think that we are more learned, more advanced, and more capable than those who came before us.  We like to think that we are wiser and that our ancestors, even our most recent ancestors, have made their contribution.  It is easy to overlook the fact that a contribution made does not exist within a finite moment, but, under the right conditions, can extend infinitely.

These were my thoughts as I looked at Jitish Kallat’s Public Notice 3, an immersive environment created on the Women’s Board Staircase at the Art Institute of Chicago.  A site-specific piece of art, Kallat’s work remembers both the terror of September 11, 2001 and the hope of September 11, 1893.  This hope is best exemplified by a speech given by a Hindu teacher, Swami Vivekananda, who would later become instrumental to the introduction of Eastern spirituality to the West.

Approaching the piece, the viewer passes through a hall lined on every side by artwork drawn from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions.  At the end of that room, the viewer is gradually faced by an amazing sight – and apropos sight: a monumental stone Buddha seated in front of a wall of illuminated text on a black background.  It is only on closer examination, though, that one realizes that the colors of those LED lights are the same as the Department of Homeland Security’s Terror Alert System.

The importance of the work, though, is not political.  Rather, it is spiritual and emotional, a unified work.  On the steps, children and young people stop to read the words of Swami Vivekananda, which begin with the ringing cry, “Sisters and Brothers of America,” as if it was a plea addressed to a very modern audience.  Young art students with cameras kneel to touch the work and feel the texture of the electrically-charged words; families sit on benches, surrounded by the text of the speech (interspersed with quotes from the Bhagavad Gita, Hinduism’s interpretation of God’s message to Man), simply meditating.  Public Notice 3 is a piece of such profound and quiet power, it is difficult not to cry at the realization of how much better a people we are called to be. (more…)

by Cathy Hampton, IPS Student

In the Fall of 2007, I interviewed on two separate occasions for the position of development director at Washington Theological Union (WTU) in Washington, D.C. I learned about the WTU community the prior year (2006) when I lived on Capitol Hill in N.E. DC, not too far from WTU and Catholic University of America. In 2006, I was development director at the Mosaic Foundation in McLean, VA, a private foundation established in 1998 by Princess Haifa al-Faisal, the wife of Prince Bandar bin Sultan who was the ambassador to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia, and the other wives of the Arab ambassadors to the U.S. My purpose in going for the WTU position was to begin graduate studies in theology while working with WTU’s president to raise funds for the Union and for interreligious programs.

The position ended up going to a Washington, DC native who worked for the Pontifical North American College. Although I did not get the job, the time was not right for me to become a part of the WTU community. God was at work on my behalf in this negative decision because WTU’s president ended up resigning in early 2008, after only 18 months in the position. The key fundraiser for any institution is the president which leaves the development director in limbo during a leadership transition, especially when the director is from outside of the area. Despite the setback, I persevered with my plan to do graduate work in theology and spirituality and instead began my studies at IPS in January 2008.

I never forgot how much I liked the WTU community and the Franciscan charism working in harmony with the special gifts of the Carmelites, Dominicans, Jesuits and other religious orders. There was something more that I needed to investigate while keeping in contact with my former colleagues in the DC area. In early 2009, I was accepted into WTU’s distance learning graduate certificate program in Franciscan Theology and Spirituality.

My first course was on the Spiritual Franciscans and The Struggle for the Soul of the Order and constituted the bulk of my 2010 “summer vacation.” The six-week course was taught by Dr. David Burr, professor emeritus of history at Virginia Tech who was the author of The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis. We read Dr. Burr’s work and the work of Angelo Clareno, a spiritual Franciscan, who wrote A Chronicle or History of the Seven Tribulations of the Order of Brothers Minor. In the course we were asked to identify the cross roads or turning points in the history of the conflict between the spiritual Franciscans, the Conventual community, the wider Church and the secular world at large. (more…)