In my first year at the CSTM a group of us started asking the question “what kind of community do we want to cultivate here?” One of my favorite practices that we tried as a response to that question was to invite professors to our homes for dinner and conversation. One of these meals left a lasting impression, when someone asked our professor, Sr. Meg Guider: “What is your hope for your students?” She responded promptly: “My hope for my students is that they never lose the questions that call them to study theology and ministry.”
“All these things that happened to me: God must hate me,” my client said, through tears, as we sat in my cubicle and she shared her story of horrific violence, fear, and abuse at the hands of powerful leaders in her home country. I was a Jesuit Volunteer in Houston, TX, working with asylum seekers to record their stories and help them find legal representation. As she wept, my eyes were drawn to the cross around her neck: a crucifix, a mirror to the one I wore every day, and my heart broke open. This woman, my sister in faith, had been told by our church that God’s love was finite, easily withdrawn, just for a few. I heard the questions she had not articulated aloud: Do my experiences mean God has abandoned me? Does God judge me for all that has been inflicted upon me? What does God have to do with my suffering? In response, I found these words rising up within me, demanding to be spoken: “God loves you. God is with you. God weeps with you.” Perhaps that God-talk was inappropriate given my role as her legal assistant, but in that moment, and in reflection after, I heard a vocational call to be a voice that proclaims this simple truth: “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” (Rom. 8:38-39) It was her questions, and similar ones that threaded to my story and the lives of those I encountered, that called me to pursue a degree in theology and ministry, as I began to ask: How could I be part of building a church where everyone knows how deeply God loves them, in ways that carry them through every part of the journey of life and leads to deepening transformation?
Sr. Meg’s invitation to remember our questions engaged my memory and captured my imagination. Throughout my time at the CSTM (and since), I have continued to pay attention to the questions. These questions, and the communities that posed them, are what I must remain accountable to in my ministry, for they have called me into my vocation to love and serve God’s people. I might have once thought that the goal of my education was to find the right answers – the perfect theological explanation to solve all the puzzles and problems of the world. Through my pastoral formation and practice I learned that God’s love is not about the right answers, but rather about listening deeply and tending to the questions of every heart with curiosity and compassion, so we might all live more authentically and courageously into the way of Christ. For Jesus encountered people with compassion in the midst of the questions they asked, and also posed questions that transformed their lives and our world.
So how do we cultivate curiosity and compassion so we can pay attention to the questions? As I look back on my time at the CSTM, one of the most formational opportunities that helped me foster these virtues was the CSTM Dialogues, an annual student-led tradition which began in my second year. The Dialogues aim to create a brave space that brings to life people’s sacred stories of their faith journeys. The premise is simple: members of the community submit poetry or prose that reflect their stories, and other members of the community perform them in a live showcase. I served as both a performer and writer for the Dialogues. I found the practice of listening deeply to the story of others, prayerfully engaging with and bringing to life another’s story on stage, and learning to share my own story with courageous vulnerability, all helped form me into a more compassionate and curious minister, committed to the dignity and sacredness of every story. The Dialogues inspired in me the questions: How can I seek out and cultivate spaces of vulnerability, authenticity, and courage? What needs to transform in me so I can listen more deeply to the stories of others?
The CSTM’s diverse and international community of faith and learning also helped form me into a more curious and compassionate minister, attentive to the questions of the global church. As an international student at the CSTM, I was grateful for celebrations like International Nights, where we shared culture, food, and talents and celebrated liturgy in ways that centered the diverse stories and gifts of members of our community. My encounter with the CSTM’s international community and our daily liturgical life sparked questions in me: How can we create spaces in our church where everyone is able to show up with their whole selves to share their gifts and receive nourishment? How can the way we celebrate liturgy reflect the lived reality of those who gather to pray, and offer us all a horizon of hope?
Since graduating from the CSTM I have served as Campus Minister for Liturgy at Seattle University. Our team often describes our work as accompanying young adults as they live the big questions of life. My work demands that I pay attention to the deep questions at the heart of each student that I meet, and that I tend to these questions with curiosity and compassion. It also means inviting young people to listen to the questions of the world, to what breaks their heart or energizes them with hope and joy. I am graced and honored to be a witness to the sacred stories and questions of every person I serve. Some days I hear the same questions that my client asked me years ago echoed in my students’ hearts: Is God with me? Does God love me as I am? How do we make sense of and respond to suffering? I, too, now hope that my students never forget their questions. I still carry the questions that called me, and new ones I’ve encountered, and I strive to live into them in my current context. Some current questions are: How can my ministry more prophetically communicate God’s abundant, unending love? Do the liturgies and programs I host offer courageous spaces for authenticity and diversity? What does our prayer and practice say to the suffering of the world? How can I tend to the sacred stories and questions of every person I meet?
While I no longer work directly with asylum seekers and refugees, I remain accountable to the folks I served then and bring their questions, joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties to my prayer and my practice. I still dream, hope, and act for a church and a world where every person knows and believes that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God.
Wherever you may be on your journey of discernment, I invite you to reflect on the questions and communities that have called you, that capture your imagination, and that invite you more deeply into love of God and neighbor. Spend some time in gratitude for these questions and the formational role they have had in your life, and ask where they may lead you next. Consider what might help you to continue cultivating the posture you need to listen attentively to the questions. I hope you do not lose your questions. I hope that we never stop tending to the questions with curiosity and compassion. May we live the questions now, so that someday, as Rilke wrote, we may live ourselves into the answers.