Author: Jamie Kralovec

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The City’s Role in Advancing University Mission

The post reflects on the city, motivated by this article in the most recent SCS Dean’s Report:

Caring for Our Common Home: Advancing Sustainability and Faith-Based Community Development

Image: L’Enfant’s Plan for the City of Washington, Source: Museum of the American Revolution

Jesuits have made cities a primary site of missionary activity since their founding in 1540. The religious order’s relationship with the urban is not an accident but represents the founder’s vision of Finding God in All Things. St. Ignatius believed urban communities were advantageous to mission because of the concentration of people and places. Cities are not only places of great opportunity but also of great need and Ignatius located the order’s early apostolic ministries in urban sites because Jesuits could help address the concerns of the poor living there.

The urban significance of the Jesuit educational mission is perhaps most evident today in the preponderance of Jesuit schools located within city boundaries. Georgetown is no exception to this and its urban location has multiple meanings as both a local metropolitan community and a global city whose civic relevance has always been tied to the university’s public service commitment to the common good of the nation and the world. But despite these deep historical roots, I have found, both as a professional urban planner and a trained Ignatian mission integrator, that there is not enough discussion and reflection about the connections between Jesuit educational mission and the city.

When you begin to consider this relationship at a deeper level, what comes to mind as a member of the Georgetown community? What role should the city play in how Georgetown and Jesuit schools like it attempt to live out their 500-year-old tradition of education and spirituality? How does engagement with the city, its people and places, factor into your experiences at Georgetown?

As SCS prepares for the next phase of the development of the Capitol Campus this year, perhaps the most significant urban investment in Georgetown’s history, I think it would be helpful to encourage more thoughtful reflection about these questions. This motivation led me to author this article in the most recent SCS Dean’s Report, “Caring for Our Common Home: Advancing Sustainability and Faith-Based Community Development.” This piece takes a detailed view of several SCS initiatives that have engaged with the mission opportunities of contemporary urban life. Both the Master’s in Real Estate and the Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning have addressed the needs of faith-based organizations in ways that are consistent with Georgetown’s commitment to Care for Our Community Home and the integral ecological vision of Pope Francis. Beyond these academic efforts, the School’s urban sustainability vision is further realized through staff-led community service programs, which include a river clean-up with an urban non-profit.

Pope Francis has offered deep insights about the moral implications of fostering just, equitable, and sustainable cities. This feels like an opportune moment to catalyze more discussion, research, and action about engaging with the city as a matter of our mission. I hope the article in the Dean’s Report and the leading examples highlighted in it spark more reflection about the relationships between Georgetown’s Jesuit values and the challenges of our contemporary cities.

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Dean’s Report Emphasizes How Mission Animates the Work of SCS

This week’s post highlights the new SCS Dean’s Report and its emphasis on the role of Jesuit mission and values in the life of the School. 

An anticipated annual production, which involves a lot of careful planning and execution from a dedicated team of staff, is the release of the SCS Dean’s Report. This year’s effort, which covers 2023-2024, sheds an important light throughout the document on the central place of Georgetown’s Jesuit mission and values in how SCS engages in curriculum, partnership development, student life, and service to the world. A quick glance at this year’s article titles makes this connection to mission abundantly clear. As Dean Otter notes in her introduction to this year’s report, mission animates the entire enterprise: 

“Our School is rooted in a 500-year-old tradition of Catholic and Jesuit education that compels each and everyone of us to ask tough questions of themselves and of their professions, rethink traditional solutions, and ultimately seek something greater than themselves.”

This year’s report shows how SCS students, faculty, and staff have done these things with an orientation to realizing justice and the common good. 

The inspiration of Jesuit mission at SCS comes through several articles in an explicit and intentional way. In “Empowering Veterans from Service to Scholarship,” Miranda Mahmud describes how the example of St. Ignatius, himself a wounded warrior, guides the School’s efforts to meet the needs of military-connected students. We learn in this piece about how military-connected students bring many of the Spirit of Georgetown values to life, including being People for Others and helping realize a Community in Diversity. These students find Georgetown’s emphasis on life-calling, mission, and purpose in academic programs to resonate with their military experience. 

Another article in the report, “Georgetown Explores Ethical Uses of Artificial Intelligence,” demonstrates how Jesuit education’s humanistic origins, including a heavy emphasis on ethical reflection, are being integrated into curricula that address the most pressing contemporary challenges presented by machine learning. Lawrence Hardy shows how SCS has embraced artificial intelligence as critical subject matter and has begun offering an array of courses and other learning experiences that challenge SCS students to grapple deeply with the moral and ethical implications of these new technologies. 

In “Caring for our Common Home: Advancing Sustainability and Faith-Based Community Development,” I share a few concrete ways that SCS is helping put into practice a distinctly Ignatian urban vision modeled on the ideas of Pope Francis. Through particular efforts by the Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning and Master’s in Real Estate, as well as a volunteer program coordinated by SCS staff, the School is supporting environmentally sustainable approaches to meeting global challenges, like the affordable housing crisis. These novel efforts, which include an academic partnership with area churches to support the development of affordable housing on underutilized land as well as mapping the environmental performance of faith-based organizations’ global real estate, bring to life the value of Care for Our Common Home. SCS is innovatively engaging these pressing issues with programs that are flexibly designed to meet the world’s greatest needs. 

There are many more mission-aligned accomplishments in this year’s Dean’s Report to share, but I think you should read them for yourself! I hope this annual publication helps readers better appreciate the intentional care with which the SCS community preserves and animates Georgetown’s Jesuit mission and values.

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SCS Program in Humanitarian Crisis & Emergency Management Addressing Critical Global Need

This week’s post highlights how SCS recently launched an Executive Master’s Program in Humanitarian Crisis & Emergency Management. The need for such a program is demonstrated by the recent wildfires in California. The Georgetown community is encouraged to assist Loyola Marymount University as it responds to this crisis. 

The recent devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area have highlighted a tragic reality that the world will continue to face devastating weather events in the coming years. Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice has directed our community to focus its relief efforts and assistance by supporting Jesuit university colleague Loyola Marymount University during this challenging time. This is a good example of how Georgetown exists in a mutually supportive global network of Jesuit Higher Education. 

The wildfires demonstrate the fragility of a warming planet and our duty to protect and preserve it. This commitment is at the core of “Care for Our Common Home,” the 10th value in The Spirit of Georgetown. Pope Francis has written passionately about the moral and spiritual crisis of environmental degradation, particularly in his landmark document Laudato Si’. The pope’s attention to this issue and the urgency of responding to the environmental crisis is shared by leaders across religious traditions.

The School of Continuing Studies has answered the call to address the crisis of ongoing environmental disasters and their impact on human populations by recently launching a new program, the Executive Master’s in Humanitarian Crisis & Emergency Management. This 12-month program, which features residencies around the world and engagement with leading national and global emergency management organizations, prepares students to address the world’s greatest challenges as a result of climate change, political forces, or economic hardship. The program’s hands-on learning approach reinforces that human solutions are needed to address human problems. A recent SCS e-story, “Emergency Managers Facing ‘Continuous Response’ to Chronic Disasters,” gives even more detail about the real-world human impact of these programs. 

In announcing the program, SCS Dean Kelly Otter emphasized how Georgetown’s mission to be “People for Others” comes through in the program’s design. Professionals educated in this Executive Master’s will end up helping communities around the globe, according to Otter: “Our Students will emerge as leaders who can drive positive change in humanitarian crisis management, equipped with both practical skills and a global perspective.” Such a values-based orientation is consistent with the School’s intentional efforts to integrate Georgetown’s Jesuit values into new program design. 

At a time of immense sadness and suffering over the loss of life in California, it can be difficult to locate evidence for hope. The emergence of the Executive Master’s in Humanitarian Crisis & Emergency Management, and Georgetown’s commitment to addressing the environmental and humanitarian crisis posed by climate change, is one reason for hope. Consistent with the university’s mission, academic programs like this help Georgetown realize its aspiration to educate women and men “to be reflective lifelong learners, to be responsible and active participants in civic life and to live generously in service to others.”

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2025 Dr. King “Teach the Speech” Offers Lasting Reflections on Movements for Social Justice

This year’s Teach the Speech features a 1967 interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in which he offers reflections about the challenges faced by the Civil Rights Movement.

Every year, Mission in Motion reflects on Georgetown’s selected speech of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and invites some considerations for how its content and themes might be incorporated into courses and other activities at SCS. The 2025 Teach the Speech selection is a 1967 interview given by Dr. King with Sander Vanocur at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. You may also view the full transcript. What is especially remarkable about this text is that the interview occurs 11 months before Dr. King’s assassination and the conversation, unlike a traditional speech, reveals subtle insights into Dr. King’s reflective assessment of the Civil Rights Movement and his own role in it as he nears his death.

This annual event of disseminating an MLK Jr. speech to the entire Georgetown community presents manifold possibilities about how to incorporate the ideas of the speech into learning activities. Such an effort reinforces the spirit of the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm, which invites instructors to discern how to animate the deeper meanings of knowledge areas for the sake of encouraging students to make more generous, loving, and just choices in their lives and professional careers. Regardless of the particular discipline, each field of study and practice at Georgetown can discover ways to integrate the speech in a course or other learning engagement to inspire plans of action for justice in the spirit of Dr. King. Instructors at Georgetown are encouraged to utilize this set of teaching resources to support whatever plans they develop.

As an urban planner and an educator in several different SCS programs, I think there are several ways that this speech can be meaningfully incorporated into professional studies coursework. First, the entire conversation takes place within the context of Dr. King’s own personal reflections about the effectiveness of the Civil Rights Movement. He is modeling a spirit of reflective evaluation, the final stage of the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm, and reinforcing the importance of continuous reflection. Whether it is a social change movement or a particular strategic planning process, reflective professionals should regularly reflect on the effectiveness of their work and its larger impact. What is missing? What barriers are impeding success? What additional data do I need to improve my practices and contributions to a larger effort? These reflection questions seem to be animating Dr. King’s perspectives in the interview. 

Second, Dr. King’s speech makes an important distinction between obvious and more subtle social challenges. He describes how the manifestations of racism in obviously racist laws and forms of racialized violence are more evident to the public. But Dr. King cautions that other areas of social, political, and economic life, like the state of housing affordability, present less visible racism but nonetheless exist within structures in which race has a determining impact on life outcomes. These more subtle forms of racism, so often reproduced spatially, are more difficult to inform the public about and often less supported than more manifestly racist acts and intentions. Instructors might consider how this dynamic is playing out in one’s respective industry. Where are the manifestations of racism products of larger social, economic, and political structures that need to be addressed with more comprehensive, integrated, and systematic ways? Housing, employment, and education are all areas of life where these dynamics continue to play out in the U.S. and have an effect on all of the industries represented in SCS programs. 

Third, the speech presents opportunities to challenge students to consider how major macro forces are impacting the particular subject matter of their professional industries. For instance, Dr. King describes how the Vietnam War made it more difficult to focus the public’s attention on the ongoing Civil Rights Movement. Instructors might invite their students to conduct similar analysis. What larger dynamics in the world are positively and negatively impacting the state of your professional industry? What are strategies for addressing these macro forces in ways that ultimately improve the effectiveness of your particular work in a chosen field of study? 

I hope our community directly engages with Teach Dr. King’s Speech and I encourage you to attend an event in Copley Formal Lounge on the Hilltop campus and online from 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. ET on Friday, January 31. 

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Welcome to the Spring Semester!

Preparing for Inclement Weather | Office of Emergency Management | Georgetown University
This week’s post invites a reflective pause at the beginning of a chilly and snowy spring semester. As you enter this new period, what are your desires for this semester? How are you taking time to pause and reflect?  

The spring semester is upon us! It is a funny time to enter a “spring” season when the weather in Washington, D.C. feels pretty far away from the delightful summer temperatures of May. As is customary in the life of an academic institution, however, the changing of the semester is an opportunity to reflectively transition from what came before to what comes next. The life of a university seems to stop between semesters but the world obviously does not. We enter a 2025, both filled with hope and possibility and mired in despair and suffering, evidenced by the devastating wildfires this week in California. Such an event reminds us of the mission of Georgetown for which we are all responsible and calls us to transform our education into a generous force for justice and the common good.

SCS is a dynamic and diverse learning community whose students operate within a range of program formats, meeting times, and modalities. However, every semester at SCS welcomes new members to our community. So whether you’re a new SCS student beginning your first semester, a continuing student, or a member of our faculty or staff, this opportunity to slow down, catch your breath, and prepare your mind, body, and spirit for the coming semester might be a welcome invitation. Here are three ideas for how to meaningfully enter into quiet before a new semester begins. 

Renew. As you prepare for a new Georgetown semester, take some time to get in touch with your motivation for being here. What drew you to Georgetown? What inspired you to take on your particular program? What are your desires for your experience at this University? As you begin to reflect on these questions of your “why,” it might help for you to familiarize yourself with the deeper purpose of Georgetown as an educational community. You can spend this time with this Mission in Motion post: New to SCS? An Introduction to Georgetown’s Mission and Values in Four Points. 

Review. Spending time renewing your commitment to your Georgetown education might lead you to consider your future and where you are heading. But it is also important to take stock of where you have been and how you arrived at this current moment. Reviewing your past for the sake of reflecting on how your prior lived experience might inform your present and future is at the heart of the Jesuit spirituality that animates the mission of Georgetown. New members of our community might benefit from better understanding how Georgetown lives out its Catholic and Jesuit mission by reading through the most recent Mission Priority Examen self-study report. One of the core practices arising from the Jesuit tradition that helps in this review process is the examen of consciousness. You might consider signing up for the SCS Daily Digital Meditation sessions, which include a weekly examen that occurs every Friday. In whatever ways you construct a practice of review, I invite you to explore how your present self reflects the authentic fullness of your entire journey of life. 

Recharge. Taking up “rest” as a meaningful practice of spiritual wellness is a challenge in a culture that values constant activity and valuing one’s life choices on the basis of utility or value maximation. Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Pastoral Care, reminds us that the Jewish tradition of “Shabbat” requires that we “leave behind the regular flow of time and the productivity we imbed in it. We do this not in order to escape life, but in order to enter into it more deeply.” My hope is that you can find some intentional ways to truly rest in the time as this busy semester gets underway. Take lots of walks and try to transform your walks into spiritual experiences (you can even try out a Walking Examen!). Take time for silence. Truly enjoy the company of others. Give yourself some space to unplug from the daily distractions. Your soul will thank you! 

One of the great joys of working at Georgetown is welcoming new members into our community multiple times in the year. There is so much anticipation as a new semester begins. The anticipation at SCS is even greater in this new year as we plan for a move to 111 Massachusetts Avenue this summer and the creation of an ever more cohesive Capitol Campus. My hope is that you can savor these chilly days and arrive most fully in the early weeks of this new semester. 

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A Reflective Review of 2024: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going

This week’s post is a reflective Examen about 2024. 

Since Mission in Motion began nearly five years ago, the blog has posted a year-end Examen that reflects on the most mission-significant occurrences of the past year. My intention, like a classic Examen practice, is to take stock of the experiences of greatest meaning in our collective life as a university and reflect on how these events have shaped us as members of the SCS community. Such a review brings up moments of both consolation and desolation, inviting each of us to reflect on how we have been transformed by our shared experiences and how we desire to journey into the year ahead. This practice is an opportunity to name gratitude for the multitude of ways that students, faculty, and staff live out Georgetown’s mission and values. A look back at 2024 can be especially helpful as SCS prepares in 2025 to move from its current location at 640 Massachusetts Avenue to its new 111 Massachusetts Avenue home on the Capitol Campus.

2024 featured some standard Mission and Ministry programming that brought together students, faculty, and staff to experience the resources of Georgetown’s Jesuit and multi-religious heritage. A newly designed oversight retreat in March 2024, “Journeying the Good life,” encouraged students to more deeply consider what daily practices help them flourish and live out their deeper purpose in life (see “SCS Retreat Invites Students into Reflection on the Meaning and Practices of the Good Life”).  Staff benefited from a new workshop about managing conflict through effective dialogue skills and greater emotional awareness (see “Becoming Spiritually Grounded Strategic Thinkers and Discerning Leaders”). Some of the learning from this new staff-focused program was incorporated into the inaugural “Strategic Thinking & Leadership Academy” offered by SCS as a non-degree certificate. 

This was a year in which SCS helped contribute to national events. In July, the Association of Jesuit Colleges & Universities (AJCU) held its tri-annual assembly on faith, justice, and reconciliation at Loyola University Chicago. SCS work on Ignatian pedagogical strategy for online course development that resonates with adult learners was featured in a national AJCU commission dedicated to Ignatian Pedagogy (see “AJCU Faith, Justice, and Reconciliation Assembly Brings Together University Colleagues at a Critical Time”). The presidential election provided another opportunity for mission resources to help the university community pause and process a mix of emotions (see “Civic Examen Helps Georgetown Community Reflect on the Emotions of Election Season”). 

2024 was another year when the blog featured the diverse voices of SCS students, faculty, and staff as presented in a range of interviews. Dion Thompson-Davoli, a May 2024 graduate of the Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning, reflected on his historic achievement: running down every single street in Washington, D.C. (see “Recent SCS Graduate Accomplishes Major Feat, Running Down Every Street of Washington, D.C., and Discovering More About Himself and the City Along the Way”). Another graduating student, Mary Delaney Fox, won the Spirit of Georgetown award at the SCS Tropaia ceremony and shared about her transformative efforts to promote organ donation (see “2024 SCS Spirit of Georgetown Winner Reflects on Gifts of Life, Family, and Georgetown”). And Haroot Hakopian, SCS assistant dean of student affairs, was highlighted in a Georgetown Faces profile about the many ways he brings a spirit of belonging and inclusion to the work of the summer programs (see “Shining a Storytelling a Spotlight on a Key Member of the SCS Summer Team”). 

More attention was paid on this platform to the evolution of a Capitol Campus and the initial plans for developing a more coherent culture and community among the different units and schools, including SCS, that will bring this campus to life. A dedicated overnight retreat in Fall 2024 for graduate, professional, and law students, with a special focus on students on the Capitol Campus, previewed more efforts to create reflective spaces for this mix of students (see “Fall 2024 Graduate, Law, and Professional Student Retreat Emphasizes Listening to the Voice Within”). Two new spirituality programs for the Capitol Campus brought together students, staff, and faculty to experience this new university reality through the lens of Ignatian spirituality (see “Walking Examen of the Capitol Campus Contributes to Jesuit Heritage Month”) and multi-faith dialogue (see “New Mission and Ministry Program on the Capitol Campus Explores ‘Practicing Pluralism’”). Also, the inaugural Mass of the Holy Spirit for the entire Capitol Campus, which is always celebrated on the Hilltop campus, established a solid foundation for the future of communal worship in this area of the city (see “Capitol Campus Mass of the Holy Spirit Encourages Openness to the New (and Old)”). 

2024 was a momentous year for Georgetown SCS for all of these reasons and more. As we journey into the next year, I invite everyone to take some time to reflect. What are the moments that stand out the most from this year? What experiences brought you the most joy and closest to your truest self? What led to the opposite, draining you of energy and your deeper purpose? How are you being called to renewal and recommitment in the coming year? 

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Walking Examen of the Capitol Campus Contributes to Jesuit Heritage Month

This post is about the inaugural Walking Examen of the Capitol Campus that took place during Jesuit Heritage Month. 

The Examen, a cornerstone spiritual practice of the Jesuit tradition, is flexible and can be adapted to many different settings and contexts. Mission in Motion has covered the range of applications of the Examen and similar Ignatian approaches to prayer, meditation, and reflection through retreats, workshops, and pedagogical strategies. As part of November’s Jesuit Heritage Month, a team of Capitol Campus Mission and Ministry colleagues innovated this spiritual practice by offering a “Walking Examen of the Capitol Campus.” This event, broadcasted to the entire university community, brought together students, faculty, and staff to experience the growing and evolving Capitol Campus through the lens of Ignatian spirituality. 

The invitation to this experience made clear that participants would be engaging with the physical reality of the Capitol Campus in a reflective manner unlike most traditional building or walking tours. While the latter might be associated more with the orientation of a tourist or onlooker, this reflective walking experience was intended to promote deeper consideration about the meaning and implications of Georgetown’s growth in this area of Washington, D.C. Ultimately, the organizers hoped that this engagement with the Capitol Campus would lead to discernment about how members of the Georgetown community are called to engage with the campus through their work and study in the years ahead. For several participants, the walking Examen was their first time on the campus and a welcome opportunity to gain a comprehensive overview of the campus footprint in the city. 

As a trained urban planner with deep roots in Ignatian spirituality, I have always found particular resonance with the “Composition of Place.” This is a meditation that St. Ignatius encourages throughout the Spiritual Exercises, his lengthy guided retreat, to help retreatants enter more imaginatively into the inner experience of prayerful encounter with the characters of the Gospel scenes. According to the Exercises, the path to union with the Divine occurs not only in cognitive experiences of mental processing of words and ideas, but also in the affective or emotional experiences of imaginative wondering. There is great spiritual potential when we facilitate creative encounters with the nitty gritty realities of the scenes depicted in Scripture. This kind of exercise invites the retreatant to notice the particulars of the setting, with emphasis on the contextual elements of the place.

In urban planning lingo, I see much similarity between this Ignatian “Composition of Place” and the standard planning practice of existing conditions analysis in which practitioners survey a setting or situation, grow in awareness of its reality through observation and other data collection, and then reflectively assess needs and opportunities in relation to the planning process being considered. Both processes similarly require imagination, creativity, engagement with reality, and attentiveness to data of various kinds –  both the small and large details of data. 

Fr. Mike Lamanna, S.J., and I co-led the experience, stopping at five locations on the Capitol Campus and inviting deeper reflection and discussion about the meaning of the University’s growth in this area of the city. 

This walking Examen featured many of the elements of a classic Ignatian meditation that one might experience in the Spiritual Exercises. Fr. Mike Lamanna, SJ, a Jesuit priest and law student in Georgetown Law’s Class of 2025, and I alternated in leading each stage of the Examen. The experience began in St. Aloysius Church on the campus of Gonzaga College High School. This initial station provided the invitation to the experience and oriented the group to the spiritual dimensions of the walk. This transitional moment helped participants move into a reflective rhythm. The walking Examen consisted of five locations on the Capitol Campus, with each stop organized around a core theme related to Georgetown’s history, mission, and values. These locations and themes were: 

  • St. Aloysius Church/Gonzaga College High School (“Gratitude for our History and Desire to Rewrite it”)
  • 55 H Street Dorm (“Home”)
  • 111 Massachusetts Avenue (“Care for our Common Home”)
  • Eleanor Holmes Norton Green of the Law Center (“Justice and Reconciliation”)
  • McCourt School of Public Policy (“the Common Good”) 

Participants were invited to reflect in pairs between locations, sharing ideas and reactions to prompts provided by the organizers. Like a classic Examen, the activity ended with a resolution to act: 

“As I prepare to end this walking Examen, I turn to God with gratitude for this experience – both the joyful insights and whatever challenges it surfaced. I might begin to discern a decision to convert my reflections from today’s walk into some concrete choices. What do I want to learn more about? How would I like to share what I experienced with others? Is there something I am called to do at Georgetown or in the city related to the Capitol Campus? I sit with these possibilities for a few moments.”

The event formally concluded with fellowship over lunch and participants had the opportunity to engage in conversation about their time together. I sensed that this inaugural program would not be the last, and many others at Georgetown would benefit from such a reflective encounter with the Capitol Campus. 

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English Language Center Hosts Annual Panel About Thanksgiving Traditions

This week’s post is about the annual Thanksgiving panel and potluck organized by the English Language Center. 

The Thanksgiving holiday presents an invaluable opportunity to reflect on the diversity of the Georgetown community. The annual Thanksgiving panel hosted by the English Language Center (ELC) is one of the ways this diversity is honored and celebrated. Each year, ELC invites SCS faculty and staff as panelists to reflect for the ELC students about the meanings of the holiday. This conversation elicits laughter, cheers, and curiosity as students, most of whom are newcomers to American life and culture, learn about some differences and similarities in how Thanksgiving is observed in the United States. The panel is followed by a potluck in the atrium, with staff and faculty contributing home-cooked delicacies that give students a real-world taste of Thanksgiving customs. Embodying the themes of the panel discussion, the active hospitality of a Thanksgiving meal brings life to the authentic experience of the holiday. 

Mission in Motion has written before about how Thanksgiving observance has obvious resonance with the Ignatian spiritual emphasis on gratitude, which is primarily expressed and practiced through the Examen. This daily practice invites honest and realistic awareness of one’s inner movements of emotions, feelings, thoughts, sensations, etc., both the consoling and the desolating, for the sake of discerning how one is being moved to make choices. The focus of awareness in the Examen is intentionally about small details, the kind of things that often escape our notice when we are moving too quickly through our days and weeks. Savoring the small stuff of our experience can increase the likelihood that we notice more opportunities to give thanks. The data of the day, both the big details and the smaller ones, invite us to ponder with curiosity how we are being moved to act more generously in the world. An attitude of gratitude can lead to the disposition of loving kindness. 

This year’s panelists affirmed the centrality of gratitude in their experiences of the holiday by pointing to both the small details and larger significance of their observance of the holiday. I heard Thanksgiving gratitude expressed on the panel in many ways, including: much-needed rest from work and school at a busy time in the semester; the annual occasion of being with family and friends often dispersed around the country; and the longed-for opportunity to be in a safe space with trusted people who can disagree (sometimes vigorously) while maintaining the bonds of affection. Others named gratitude about the opportunity to shape the holiday in ways that reflect particular cultural identities and expressions. For example, Frances Bajet, SCS Senior Director of Communications and Events, reflected: 

“It was wonderful participating in ELC’s Thanksgiving event because it was an opportunity to share a few of my Filipino family’s holiday traditions. For instance, we always have some type of pancit, i.e. a Filipino noodle dish in addition to turkey! Although Thanksgiving is known as a very American holiday, my favorite aspect is how we’re able to tailor it to our own family’s traditions and culture.”

I believe the students walked away with a clear impression that there is no single way to live out Thanksgiving and this diversity adds to the holiday’s richness as a cultural ritual. As we contemplate how we desire to enter into the upcoming holiday season, I hope this Thanksgiving helps us grow our awareness for the gifts (small and large) of our lives.

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New Mission and Ministry Program on the Capitol Campus Explores “Practicing Pluralism”

Rabbi Rachel Gartner, seen here at last year’s SCS Student Retreat, helped co-facilitate a new staff series offered this fall by Mission and Ministry on the Capitol Campus, entitled “Practicing Pluralism”

Recently, Mission and Motion has devoted increased attention to the evolution and growth of Georgetown’s Capitol Campus, a unified anchor of academic programs seeking to leverage the experiential learning opportunities of proximity to the U.S. Capitol. Over the next years, the consolidation of different Georgetown schools and units on the campus will mean increased opportunities for collaboration and coordination. 

To foster more cross-unit community building, Mission and Ministry offered a staff-focused program this fall, entitled “Practicing Pluralism.” Co-facilitated by myself and Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Spiritual Care and Co-Director of the In Your Shoes™ Research and Practice Center, the four-part series was organized to address these questions: 

  • How can I maintain my authenticity as a person and the values that matter most to me while serving others whose viewpoints and perspectives conflict with mine?
  • What does it actually mean to realize a Community in Diversity?
  • How to acknowledge our real differences while striving for meaningful unity that respects our identities?
  • How can I remain centered and focused when I hear things that are very difficult for me to hear, particularly when leading others through hard conversation? 

The series, offered for staff on the Capitol Campus, was an intentional effort to more deeply explore the meanings and applications of being a “Community in Diversity,” one of the core values of The Spirit of Georgetown. It was also presented as an opportunity to build more relationships between staff members from across the campus, such as from the McCourt School of Public Policy and SCS, to name a few 

With a particular emphasis on the Ignatian and Jewish traditions, “Practicing Pluralism” began with the foundational commitments in religious traditions that affirm the case for pluralism. The Jewish tradition of reading texts in pairs and engaging in critical interpretative engagement with Torah affirm the need for pluralistic perspectives and views on the same source material and shared traditions. The Ignatian tradition, animated by the Post-Vatican II spirit of the Catholic Church, has made pluralism a guiding principle of Jesuit institutions. At a 2022 conference, organized by Georgetown’s Berkley Center, Jesuit Superior General Arturo Sosa affirmed the modern Jesuit embrace of pluralism when he said: “I prefer to speak of cultures in the plural in order to highlight one of humanity’s greatest riches: cultural diversity. Cultural diversity offers one of the most wonderful ways to participate in the creation is born in God and his Word.” The series invited participants to consider these foundations but also to assess their own trusted sources for positively engaging with pluralism. 

“Practicing Pluralism” was deliberately designed not as a seminar with a large reading load, but as a space for discussion and practice. All involved were invited to consider what is both energizing and challenging about a commitment to embodying pluralism in our work. Some skills introduced include practicing receptivity by resetting the table and asking questions that follow the meaning. Other practice-oriented suggestions included ways to create safety in situations of conflict by reinstating good intentions (this is a skill emphasized in “Crucial Conversations,” a book that this Mission and Ministry has used to help units in SCS work constructively through difficult conversations). 

This inaugural offering presents much promise for the future of the series’ stated goal to help build community on the Capitol Campus. All of us at Georgetown are encouraged to reflect individually and collectively about the gifts and talents we bring to realizing a true Community in Diversity. 

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Former Georgetown President, Fr. Leo O’Donovan, S.J., Reflects on “Coming Home”

This week’s post reflects on the Sacred Lecture given by Fr. Leo O’Donovan, S.J., during Jesuit Heritage Month. 

A signature event of November’s Jesuit Heritage Month at Georgetown took place this week in the Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart. Organized as a Sacred Lecture (which Mission in Motion has written about before), the event featured former Georgetown President, Fr. Leo O’Donovan, S.J., reflecting at length about “Coming Home.” The intention of the lecture was to promote deeper consideration about the various meanings of the word “home,” which can be opened up with questions like: “Is ‘home’ the place we can always return to? How does the Gospel call us to respond to ‘the homeless’? Is ‘home’ an appropriate image for heaven? And what practical effect does our understanding of home have on how we live our daily lives?” In an hour’s time, Fr. O’Donovan gave the audience plenty to think about in response to these questions. 

The lecture provoked some deeper pondering about how “home” can be understood both as a particular place in time with material reality as well as a more cosmically-significant reference. Fr. O’Donovan had in mind the person of Jesus who was incarnated, in one sense, into the material history of human existence at a particular place in time but also, on the other hand, is a living, present reality according to Christian Theology in the wider cosmos. In this way, God is both very particular and very much totally complete in a way that no finite person, place, or thing can be. This might seem like a very philosophical observation, but I think that the duality of “home” as particular and universal has much relevance for us at Georgetown. 

A panoramic view of Dahlgren Chapel during this week’s Sacred Lecture. Dahlgren is the spiritual home of the University’s Catholic community. 

Recently, Mission and Motion has increased explicit reflection about the meaning of the Capitol Campus’s evolution  in downtown D.C. I found myself making some concrete connections between the various meanings of “home” presented in the Sacred Lecture and our understanding of the Capitol Campus as a growing “home” for Georgetown. Fr. O’Donovan talked about how beauty can be uncovered in the “always new, always surprising.” In so many ways, the Capitol Campus, a project very much still in progess, reflects this potential. So much is new and so much is and will be surprising about this experience. But the Capitol Campus is also already a home to so many: both the existing academic units that inhabit the spaces of the Downtown East neighborhood, but also the student residents who occupy the rooms of the 55H dormitory. This literal home will grow to become more of a home to more students as the Capitol Campus enlarges. 

As we reflect on the meaning of the Georgetown “home,” we are invited to consider the many ways that the University is a home. In the religious sense, Georgetown is a Catholic, Jesuit home for all faiths. In the disciplinary sense, Georgetown is a home for a wide array of humanistic, professional, and graduate programs. In the geographic sense, Georgetown is a global home for many different campuses, institutes, and experiential learning opportunities. And in the urban sense, Georgetown is a “home” within the home of Washington, D.C., a physical reality becoming more and more evident as the Capitol Campus emerges in new buildings and facility renovations. In these ways, there are both particular manifestations of Georgetown as a physical home but also ways that Georgetown is a more universal home in light of our mission. 

Fr. O’ Donovan shared that “home” is at one level the places where we most learn to be ourselves. This process is only realized if we give our time in a “home” to patience and fidelity to our truest selves. As we end this week and prepare for the months ahead, I invite you to consider where you are finding your “home” these days. How might you be called to grow in self-awareness and self-actualization about who you most authentically are in the places you call home?