Category: Spiritual Life

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This Summer: Learn to Pray, Read Slowly and Spiritually, and/or Explore Nature

This week’s Mission in Motion responds to Rabbi Rachel Gartner’s invitation to reflect in the summer by suggesting three spiritual practices that put reflection into action. 

A few weeks ago, Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Pastoral Care, invited us into the summer months with a spiritual challenge for how we can spend this season of the year. Rabbi invited all of us to ponder the deeper significance of the summer by cooperating with the season’s unique rhythms and opportunities for rest. She wrote: “Now, as the summer arrives, and time opens and slows, perhaps you too might slow down and open up. We wonder whether returning to some of these ideas might help you do so. We humbly and prayerfully hope they might.” Rabbi Rachel’s post ended with some reflective questions that might help us take advantage of the summer’s opportunities for uniquely long, loving, looks at the real. 

In this week’s post, I would like to revisit some older posts on the Mission in Motion blog that might help you put Rabbi’s invitation into spiritual practices that meet your desires. I would like to focus on three past posts and their three distinctive practices as a set of suggestions for how to make your own long, loving, look at the real come to life in the next few months. I draw your attention to these three suggestions: “This Summer: Learning to Pray,” “This Summer: Read Slowly, Spiritually,” and “Exploring Nature: A Healthy (and Holy) Response to Zoom Fatigue.” 

Learning to Pray: Inspired by the recent book of the Jesuit Fr. James Martin, S.J., Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone, I encourage you to commit to some set of interior prayer practices. Fr. Martin’s book recognizes and affirms a diversity of spirituality and religious understandings of prayer that can all offer insights into this interior practice. One particular suggestion is to try out the Ignatian Examen, a method of daily self-examination and reflection that can help a person live out their deeper calling. If you’re interested in the Examen, consider signing up for the SCS Daily Digital Meditations which take place Monday-Friday at 12 p.m. ET. The final weekly meditation every Friday is reserved for an Examen. 

Reading Spiritually: We often assume that spiritually significant texts are limited to the holiest books of religious traditions. And while texts like the New Testament, the Torah, the Quran, etc. carry special meaning, it is possible to read other texts in spiritually meaningful ways. I suggest that you find something to read this summer that enables you to read more with your heart than with your head. Read in ways that allow you to be moved and stirred by the words, facilitating potential transformation of your mind and heart. 

Exploring Nature: One way to read the world is to read the natural environment that surrounds you. I invite you to take some time this summer to simply sit in awe and wonder of the natural world. Grow your awareness and attentiveness to the majesty of the world around us. This habit of attentiveness can both grow our gratitude for the gifts of nature and motivate us to protect it from the threats it faces. 

I hope this manageable list of spiritual practices, inclusively presented in a way that can register across our diverse community, adds some depth to the rest and relaxation that summer often affords.

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A Reflection on Summer to Carry Through All the Seasons

In this week’s post, Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Pastoral Care, remembers the milestone moments of this past year and invites deep reflection on the summer to come. 

Over the course of this academic year, Mission in Motion has aspired to provide insight and inspiration to enhance your experience in the classroom, energize you in your work, and empower and uplift you in your life.

As the year began, we invited you to consider making time — in what we knew would be a very busy year ahead — for contemplation, or what Jesuit Walter Burghardt calls “taking a long loving look at the real,” and to consider what it might mean for you to live in greater alignment with what you see.

As December arrived, we invited a deepening of the joy of the winter holiday season, through poet Joan Stephen’s call to “sing with fun in the winter,” and to reflect on what in your life is worthy of your greater praise.

At that season we also shared insights from the Prisons and Justice Initiative winter retreat where we reflected that the candles at Hanukkah, and lights on a Christmas tree teach: that there is warmth and radiance even when days are at their shortest and nights at their coldest; that it’s important not only to pursue a perfected world but also to affirm all the perfect moments in life along the way; and, that there’s tremendous value in hearing the little harmonies that arise amidst life’s cacophony and seeing the many sparks of light amidst life’s darker times.

In a post on Teach the Speech, we took lessons from Dr. King’s spectacular speech, The Drum Major’s Instinct, in which he told us how he wanted to be remembered: “I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.” We reflected on the fact that in his words are an implicit teaching for us: “A life of professional significance should be assessed on the basis of how one shares their gifts with others and helps realize a more just and inclusive community … and [serve] a higher purpose in life.”

In the spring, we encouraged you to consider, as we did on the student retreat, the “why” of your work, and what it might look like to make a slight change, either internally or in an external action of some kind, that puts one in closer touch with the why of their day-to-day life.

Now, as the summer arrives, and time opens and slows, perhaps you too might slow down and open up. We wonder whether returning to some of these ideas might help you do so. We humbly and prayerfully hope they might. We wonder too how summer might color the lens through which you read these questions. 

  • What are the particular gifts of summer that might be worthy of your greater praise? 
  • What does it mean to live in alignment with the aspects of your life that summer shows you? 
  • How might you bring the light and joys of summer to those in our communities struggling through dark winter nights? 
  • What insights into the “why” of your work and of your life does summer uniquely offer up to you?

May taking a long loving look at the summer days ahead yield you many meaningful insights that carry you through all the seasons, that strengthen the work of your hearts and hands, and that ultimately bring benefit and blessing to all.

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SCS Student Retreat Steps Outside of the Ordinary into Rest and Reflection

 This week’s Mission in Motion highlights the 2023 SCS Student retreat, “Stepping Outside of the Ordinary.” 

With the 2023 Commencement in the books, Mission in Motion turns this week to another celebrated annual SCS milestone, the overnight student retreat. In early May, over 20 SCS students from more than 13 different degree and non-degree programs ventured out to Georgetown’s Calcagnini Contemplative Center for an overnight experience entitled “Stepping Outside of the Ordinary.” Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Pastoral Care, and I led the retreat and journeyed alongside the students as they nourished themselves spiritually and developed strong community bonds. 

The SCS student retreat featured talks, small and large group conversation, meditation, and relaxation in the outdoors. 

Two talks framed the 24-hour experience. I gave the first one, which encouraged participants to take a Long, Loving Look at the Real in their lives by using the Ignatian contemplative practice of the Examen. Invited to slow down and notice more closely the nitty gritty details of daily life, retreatants had the opportunity for both personal reflection and larger group conversation. Modeled on the dynamics of Ignatian spirituality, the ideas and practices of the talk anchored the experience in the University’s Jesuit heritage. Small groups met in the cozy spaces of the picturesque natural setting at Calcagnini. Unlike last year’s spring retreat that took place in the snow of early March, this year’s retreat fell on a sunny and breezy early May weekend. The weather conditions encouraged more outdoor enjoyment and relaxation. 

SCS students made the most of their time on retreat by exploring the natural surroundings of the Calcagnini Contemplative Center. 

The retreat’s second talk explored in depth the Jewish tradition of Shabbat. Rabbi Rachel presented rest from work as a spiritually significant commitment arising from religious tradition. Retreatants engaged contemplatively with Rabbi’s reflections and also interacted with Jewish texts as part of their exploration. Presenting from Judaism’s teaching tradition as a launching point for deeper personal and communal reflection is a hallmark strength of Georgetown’s Mission and Ministry approach. Students interiorized the lessons of the talk as they were being invited in the second day of the retreat to consider how they wanted to take their weekend experience back with them as they returned to campus. In addition to actively listening to these short talks, retreatants had the opportunity to take individual and group reflective walks in nature, eat delicious meals in community, and enjoy unstructured time for play and rest. 

Like past SCS student retreats, I marvel at the ways that students so quickly adjust themselves to this unique experience. Most students begin the adventure as strangers and end up as friends. I hear the delightful chatter of the newly formed network of Georgetown friends as the bus makes the journey back to the SCS campus after a remarkably short 24 hours. I also observe students making new commitments to more regular habits of reflection, prayer, and meditation that can remind themselves of what they learned on retreat. 

More than any other indicator, retreatant reflections on the experience provide the best evidence that formal retreats are effective. Georgetown’s Campus Ministry is committed to helping students “lead lives of deeper meaning, belonging, and purpose.” The following sample of student testimonies about the 2023 SCS student retreat affirm that this objective is being realized through this yearly event:

  • “I feel that I have resources now to help take a step back in my day-to-day routine to ground myself in my life.” 
  • “I am returning home more connected to the Spirit of Georgetown and thankful I could strengthen my own path through the diversity of others.” 
  • “I feel called to continue my spiritual journey at Georgetown.” 
  • “I am returning more grounded and I take away with me healing, conversation, and diversity.” 
  • “I feel peace and happiness as I return and I desire to share this experience with others.”
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SCS Students: 3 Reasons to Consider Signing Up for Upcoming Retreat

The SCS student retreat, “Stepping Outside of the Ordinary,” is taking place May 6-7, 2023. This week’s Mission in Motion makes the case for why students should sign up for one of the limited spots on retreat. (Photo: SCS students at the 2022 spring retreat.) 

The annual SCS overnight student retreat has been announced: from Saturday, May 6 to Sunday, May 7, current SCS students are invited to get away, relax, recharge, and reflect at Georgetown’s Calcagnini Contemplative Center in Bluemont, Va. 

Framed this year as “Stepping Outside of the Ordinary,” this annual milestone has become a celebrated and anticipated event in the life of the School community. Current students are encouraged to sign up early as space is limited and the RSVP deadline is April 28, 2023. The cost is $50 and includes food, lodging (comfortable individual cabins at the retreat center), and transportation (via University-provided bus to the retreat center from the SCS campus at 640 Massachusetts Avenue, NW). Current students can RSVP here.

This year’s retreat takes up the theme of contemplation in action, a Spirit of Georgetown value that invites all of us in this community to reflect deeply on our relationship with time and productivity. Inspired by Georgetown’s multi-faith commitment, this experience will be a welcoming space to people of any faith tradition or none at all; everyone is welcome. The retreat will be led by Jamie Kralovec, SCS Associate Director for Mission Integration, and Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Pastoral Care. To gain a better appreciation of what the weekend will entail, check out reflection posts in the SCS Mission and Motion blog like Rabbi Rachel’s on “Seeing and Tasting Life’s Goodness,” Jamie’s on “Becoming a Contemplative in Action,” and a summary of the 2022 student retreat.  

If you’re on the fence about signing up and taking the risk of spending an overnight like this, I offer three reasons for you to say Yes. 

  1. Retreats are a gift! I often begin a retreat experience by inviting participants to give themselves permission to treat themselves to the experience. Sure, retreats are not vacation or a time for total leisure. But the experience of time away from work, home, and other daily obligations, for even 24 hours, is a welcome chance to renew your body, mind, and spirit. Calcagnini is a beautiful slice of earth with excellent accommodations and a setting conducive to fun and lightness of being. So often, participants leave the retreat weekend with a sense of self-renewal. In the course of a year, one might look back at a retreat weekend and continually savor the memories, the self-development, the community-building, etc. Retreats are gifts that keep on giving. 
  1. Connect with community! SCS students are busy with coursework, professional commitments, and obligations at home and in the world. Many of our students finish their programs in a relatively short amount of time. One common refrain I’ve heard from our graduates is this: I wish I had taken even more advantage of my time at Georgetown. Going on retreat with a mix of students from across programs is a rare opportunity to get to know the fullness of the Georgetown community. And venturing out to Calcagnini, the University’s reflective home away from home, is a great way to feel even more connected to the larger enterprise of Georgetown. One of my great joys from co-facilitating this retreat over the years: watching SCS community members make meaningful friendships outside of their program areas. 
  1. Take a chance on your inner life! Georgetown is not shy about proclaiming its mission and values. We are understandably proud to share the Spirit of Georgetown with every generation of Hoyas. Across our traditions and within those traditions is a call to the inner life. All of us need to nurture this dimension of our full selves. Too often, however, the tendency towards activity, productivity, and time-taking works in the opposite direction of prayer, meditation, and quiet pause. All students – regardless of their age and existing religious or spiritual experience – can benefit from the welcome opportunity for contemplative presence that a one-day retreat invites. There is also well-established evidence that interior practices like mindfulness meditation, prayer, and other forms of spiritual activity can benefit your health by reducing stress and anxiety. 

I could go on with more reasons to join the retreat but I will leave it at three. If you are a current SCS student and want to learn more, do not hesitate to reach out with questions about this invaluable experience. 

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Coming Together in Times of Challenge and Loss

This week’s post shines a light on the importance of processing grief and loss as a community. A reflection circle in the SCS interfaith chapel took place this week in response to a loss of life. 

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare so many social realities that had remained below the surface for so many observers. The fragility of our society, already experienced by so many people marginalized and excluded by oppressive social and economic structures, was exposed in profound ways for all to see. Communities across the country and throughout the world suffered immeasurable loss of life and livelihood as a result of a public health event that felt at some point like it would continue indefinitely. Georgetown was no stranger to this suffering, as many in our community of students, faculty, staff, community partners, and alumni endured significant losses during this period and continue to recover the broken pieces. 

The Mission in Motion blog has attempted over time to tell the story for readers about how Georgetown SCS lives out the University’s Jesuit mission and values. What is it about the Spirit of Georgetown, the 10 values taken from our Jesuit heritage and lived out in our multi-faith and interreligious way of proceeding, that brings this diverse, multi-campus community together? So often telling this story brings to the surface instances of great joy and celebration, whether they be student achievements, faculty innovations, university-wide ceremonies like Commencement and Tropaia, or promising examples of being People for Others through community engagement, service, and social justice. But sometimes, the most poignant expressions of mission and values are actualized during times of adversity and loss within the community.  

This week featured such an expression when SCS students, faculty, and staff from Mission and Ministry came together to process as a group the profound feelings, memories, and hopes following the passing of a student. In moments like this, words alone are not sufficient to help a community move through its feelings of grief. It is critically important to create nurturing and supportive shared spaces in which community members can be together in their grief. The bonds that tie a group together depend on mutual trust, reciprocity, and kinship. 

This week’s circle event demonstrated that there is something deeper and bigger, even transcendent, that animates this community of learners. The community circle that gathered did not erase the grief or cease the difficult feelings of loss. But the effort did help the healing process, one that so often takes a very long time. Theological traditions offer insights and resources for how to understand death, but, ultimately, this human experience is such a confounding mystery. In the face of this truth, we might feel consolation in the invitation to confront this reality of loss as a community. 

At Georgetown, students should reach out to Counseling and Psychiatric Service (CAPS) and faculty and staff should reach out to the Faculty & Staff Assistance Program for support in a grieving process. You might also visit the University’s Human Resources website on grief in general. 

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Georgetown Muslims Enter Ramadan, ELC Students Meet with the Imam

May be an image of 17 people and people standing
 In this season of Ramadan, Mission in Motion shines a light on the Muslim community at Georgetown. This past week, Georgetown dedicated a new Masjid on the Hilltop campus. 

Georgetown more than welcomes different faith traditions to practice at the University; it invites these communities to flourish with the support of a chaplaincy director and staff from Campus Ministry. This longstanding commitment to interreligious dialogue and multifaith chaplaincy is a characteristic feature of how Georgetown lives out its mission. As Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Pastoral Care, laid out in a previous post: “In the context of diversity, community that invites authenticity doesn’t just happen. It has to be carefully constructed.” At Georgetown, Muslim Life is a carefully constructed community under the care of Imam Yahya Hendi, who has been leading Georgetown Muslims for over two decades of service. 

A few weeks ago, the English Language Center (ELC) at SCS hosted a special “Pizza with the Imam” lunch. Primarily intended as a space for Muslim students, this casual lunch provided a welcome opportunity to connect with Imam Hendi over food in a comfortable communal setting between classes. Students asked questions and the Imam was generous in providing his perspective to the students, most who are new to education in the United States and navigating cultural and religious differences as they go about their study. Imam’s partnership with SCS and ELC has been invaluable over the years and has included leading dedicated Muslim prayer for SCS students. Muslim Life at Georgetown offers an array of spiritual programming for students, faculty, and staff and all are encouraged to participate. 

May be an image of text that says 'Georgetown MSA and Muslim Life would like to wish you... GEORGETOWN MSA Ramadan KAREEM Swipe for all your Ramadan 2023 info'
For more information about spiritual programming for Muslim students, faculty, and staff at Georgetown, check out the Muslim Life homepage. 

In this season of Ramadan, a time of profound dedication for Muslims around the world, it is fitting that Muslim Life at Georgetown celebrated a major milestone this week that affirms the contribution that this community makes to the university. With President DeGioia and a host of other university officials on hand, Georgetown dedicated a new Masjid on the Hilltop that honors Yarrow Mamout, a devout West African Muslim, tradesman, and homeowner in the neighborhood of Georgetown, who achieved his freedom in 1796 at the age of 60, after 44 years of enslavement in Maryland. The beautiful new worship space speaks to the vibrancy of this religious community and the continuing need to attend to the needs of Muslims across Georgetown campuses. 

I wish “Ramadan Kareem” to all Muslims at SCS and across the university. 

For more information about Muslim Life at Georgetown, please visit the Campus Ministry homepage. To sign up for the Muslim Life weekly newsletter, or any of the other religious life newsletters at Georgetown, please complete the chaplaincy newsletter form.

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A Week of Welcomes: SCS Opens Its Doors and Its Heart

This week’s post shines a spotlight on two events of hospitality this week at SCS: the prospective student open house and a Valentine’s Day rose giveaway sponsored by GradGov. 

This week, the SCS community opened its doors for the first in-person prospective student open house in more than three years. The well-attended event featured dedicated program staff and faculty sharing insights about SCS with everyone who made their way to the downtown campus. With festive music and a generous spread of food, visitors experienced first-hand the hospitality and mission commitment of the SCS community. 

A recent Mission in Motion post explored the School’s biennial marketing campaign, themed this year as “Be continued.” As I walked around the open house, I noticed how prospective SCS students manifested the energy of the campaign. As they waited in line to talk to a particular faculty member or made spontaneous conversation over food with fellow prospects, these visitors to the SCS campus displayed an eagerness and an enthusiasm about their professional futures. And this future-directed energy from potential students was received warmly by friendly and informative staff and faculty. Conversations were more than interactions that transacted information. I noticed meaningful conversation occurring on multiple floors of the building. 

The culture of an organization is reflected in its people. In this way, the community of SCS faculty and staff are the living embodiment of the Spirit of Georgetown. A student’s enriching experience of meaning, belonging, and purpose at SCS arises from the tremendous efforts of the faculty and staff community working in a coordinated way to deliver on the promise of a Georgetown education. The scale of this enterprise and the many parts involved is not always visible to students. But the open house revealed how the SCS staff and faculty community work together to make the mission come alive. 

This poetic prayer, “Falling in Love,” is a fitting message for the care and support that students, faculty, and staff extend to one another as part of their shared work of teaching and learning. 

Later in the day, the SCS community again put the mission into motion. SCS GradGov members, the elected students who represent the School on the university-wide graduate student governance body, passed out free roses in the late afternoon preceding evening classes. Everyone was invited to take some flowers as a token of appreciation. I even noticed that the students purposefully placed boxes of roses in staff office areas with a note of: Thank you for your work! I observed how fellow staff members embraced this gesture of gratitude on Valentine’s Day. The dynamic of mutuality required in a well-functioning structure of relationships between students, staff, and faculty points to the deeper meaning and purpose of a Georgetown education. 

This GradGov initiative coupled with the open house on Valentine’s Day brought to mind the poetic prayer, “Falling in Love.” Often attributed to former Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe, this prayer reflects the ways that having a durable and abiding purpose in life and work, anchored in a dynamic relationship with God or whatever one names as the transcendent Other or mysterious ultimate in their life, is the motivation that sustains everything. I like to think that events taking place on this Valentine’s Day reveal the loving commitment and deeper sense of purpose that students, faculty, and staff bring to the shared endeavor of professional and continuing education at Georgetown SCS.

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Cherishing Moments of Redemption: Rabbi Rachel Gartner Reflects on Hanukkah and a Retreat with the Prisons and Justice Initiative

In this week’s Mission in Motion, Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Pastoral Care, reflects on a recent retreat with students from Georgetown’s Prisons and Justice Initiative (PJI) Paralegal Program seen here at their recent graduation. 

It’s just over a week since I had the distinct honor of facilitating SCS’s Prisons and Justice Initiative’s (PJI) Mayor’s Office on Returning Citizen Affairs (MORCA) Paralegal Fellows’ Retreat. Tonight, I’m sitting near my hanukkiah* and, as I write, I find myself reflecting on Hanukkah and the retreat in light of one another.  I can honestly say that the remarkable fellows on that retreat taught me things that will deepen the way I experience Hanukkah – and so many other things – for the rest of my life.

I am so grateful.  

Every night of Hanukkah, many Jewish households light the hanukkiah and place it in our windows, as the tradition requires.  On the windowsill, the lights act as:

  • symbols of resilience
  • offerings of light 
  • statements of both faith and pride 
  • a testament to the miracle of Hanukkah

The miracle of Hanukkah is in part a miracle of triumph and redemption in the face of great odds.  Hanukkah recalls a time when powerful rulers sought to permanently suppress Jewish traditions, teachings, and practices; to humiliate and frighten Jews into abandoning our sense of peoplehood; and to “choose” full-on assimilation.  In sum, to extinguish our light. 

But Hanukkah reminds us – with God’s help, the Jewish people didn’t let that happen.

The word “hanukkah” literally means “to dedicate.” On the first Hanukkah, Jews rededicated our holy Temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by a tyrannical ruling class. Every Hanukkah since, Jews are meant to rededicate ourselves to bringing about a future time when the entire world is redeemed from tyrants and oppression.  We recommit to the active pursuit of a time when peace, justice, righteousness, and love will reign supreme.  We rededicate ourselves to bringing about a time when every single human being is free, secure, resourced, and cherished just as they are, with their full identity and full dignity fully intact. Every Hanukkah we rededicate ourselves to the holy task of bringing about a fully perfected world.

Which brings me to the retreat.

Among the many spiritual gifts I received from the fellows that day (and days since) was the reminder of the importance of not only pursuing a perfected world but of also affirming all the perfect moments in life along the way.  

One fellow shared that their confidence in God’s providence came from those moments when they were able to access deep calm amidst what they described as their life’s nearly unbearably chaotic turbulence. Another named as holy the many times in life that they’d discovered patches of solid ground amidst violently shifting sands. 

I know I can be so focused on getting to the promised times that I am often unable to see the moments of redemption along the way, to hear the little harmonies amidst life’s cacophony, to 

see the many sparks of light amidst life’s darker times.

This Hanukkah, thanks to the fellows, I’ll see things a bit differently. This year, I’ll be rededicating myself to staying open and attuned to catching the holiness that life offers up all around us and within us every day; the holiness of resilience, of calm, of fortitude, of insight, of transformation, of growth, and of contribution.  This year, I aspire to cherish the small but significant moments of redemption, even amidst today’s serious social, emotional, political, and environmental challenges.  Even as we seek to transform the world into the one we wish to live in.

May the lights of the season guide our hearts and hands towards actualizing that world, bimheriah b’yammeinu – speedily in our days.

And please, consider joining us on a future retreat.  You’ll be amazed at how much warmth and light a little rest and reconnection can bring!

*For the record: Menorah simply means candelabra!  The eight-candled (plus one) menorah we use for Hanukkah is called a hanukkiah.  If you really want to show all you know, call it a “hanukkiah,” but it’s not a problem in the least to call it a menorah!  Either works.

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Savoring the Season: Scenes of Joy from the SCS Student and Faculty Holiday Party

 This week’s Mission in Motion savors the scenes from the SCS student and faculty holiday party that attracted hundreds to the 640 Massachusetts Avenue campus. 

Psalm of Praise 

Sing for joy in summer

When earth is bright and green.

Sing with fun in winter

When snow is velveteen. 

In spring sing out with gusto

For the life to soon unfold—

And sing with zest in autumn

For the woodlands colored gold.

  • Joan Stephen 

In another first in a year of firsts since 2019, SCS hosted a student and faculty holiday party this week in the atrium of the 640 Massachusetts Avenue campus. With hundreds of revelers and a bountiful spread of food, drink, and good cheer, the party was a joyous gathering that felt even more so because of the absence of such an event in over three years. The occasion of merriment would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of the SCS Events, Communications, and Operations teams.  

Joan Stephen’s “Psalm of Praise” comes to my mind and heart as I reflect on this experience. Every season of the year holds for us some special gifts. This wintertime, we anticipate closing the books on another busy fall semester just in time for a meaningful break for the Christmas and New Year holidays. Stephen invites us to “sing with fun in winter.” While I did not detect any audible singing in the atrium, I did observe the sparks of spontaneously arising affection, warmth, and excitement as students ran into faculty members they did not expect to see and staff members celebrated with one another as another successful semester comes to a close. 

The spirit of praise was detectable throughout the space. A gratitude wall invited guests to name the notable gifts they wanted to publicly appreciate about their experience at Georgetown. A festive card-making station offered a welcome opportunity to amplify the spirit of holiday in a colorful and creative way. And melodious tunes and delicious small plates added to the chorus of conversation and laughter. It felt to me, one week after the SCS faculty and staff retreat, like another important milestone on the road to journeying back to each other as a community bonded together by the Georgetown journey. 

The holiday party invites deeper reflection about how to enter into the joys of the season. As you approach the coming holiday break, how will you take time for rest, renewal, and gratitude?

Holidays, and especially this one, can be difficult for people. And there is a need to be gracious and understanding about the burdens that many carry in their silence at a time of year that brings to the surface much sadness and despair. But at the same time, this season can be a time to welcome the gifts of ourselves and each other. The celebrations of this season can become meaningful occasions to savor the goodness that we encounter in the people around us. The joy of this season also resides in the expectation of the coming rest. 

In the spirit of the holiday break, I invite you to rest and reflect during your brief but welcome time away from study and work. I invite you to consider: How are you going to find time in the next few weeks to pause and reflect on what in your life is worthy of your greater praise? How will you mark the occasion of rest from work and school in a way that helps you savor this season? What is stirring in you as a possible course correction or transformation in your inner life or external actions as we approach the new year?

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SCS Faculty and Staff Retreat Invites Reconnection, Relaxation, and Reflection

This week, members of the SCS staff and faculty community made their way out to Georgetown’s Calcagnini Contemplative Center for a day retreat. Nestled between the gratitude themes of Thanksgiving and the joyful anticipation themes of the coming holidays, the day-long retreat offered a welcome bit of pause from the demands of daily work.

I co-led the retreat with Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Pastoral Care, and we began the day by inviting the group to open themselves up to the experience. While the day retreat might feel like a limited window for meaningful reflection, we encouraged everyone to allow themselves to fully experience the transformative potential of a few short hours away from campus. 

 This week’s Mission in Motion is about the SCS Faculty and Staff Retreat, “Reconnection, Relaxation, and Reflection,” that took place at Georgetown’s Calcagnini Contemplative Center this week. 

In a circle, retreatants reflected on the meaning of work in their lives and how that meaning has potentially shifted over the years of pandemic, transition, and return. Offering wisdom from the Jewish tradition, Rabbi Rachel invited the group to consider the joys, the challenges, and the so-so of work life. 

Rabbi Rachel’s series of questions invited deeper reflection on each person’s “why” at work. This open-ended question led to a final question about the possibility of making a change, either internally or in an external action of some kind, that puts one in closer touch with the why of their day-to-day life. The group grew in its understanding, empathy, and kinship by listening to what individuals anonymously named as their own thoughts and feelings. Within an hour of arriving, the group had already begun to develop some significant communal bonds. 

In the afternoon, I offered a short presentation on the examen of consciousness and then led the group in the practice. By taking stock of each component of the “long, loving, look at the real,” we can appreciate that taking time for pause and quiet in our day, reflecting on the meaning of our daily experience, is possible even without a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains. A daily examen can happen anywhere and its practicality reflects the Spirit of Georgetown value of Contemplation in Action.

Like the retreat offered for SCS students last spring, this was the first in-person retreat of its kind for SCS faculty and staff in over three years. The desire to be reconnected to one another in person, in a community-building setting, was evident throughout the experience. I noticed the joys that are possible when colleagues, some who did not know each other, come together in a relaxed and reverential setting with the explicit purpose of slowing down and savoring the particular details of our daily lives. I noticed myself feeling deep joy overhearing laughter and energized conversation at lunch. I also noticed the formation of deeper relationships between co-workers and a deeper appreciation of the possibilities of living out the Spirit of Georgetown. 

The retreat focused on practices intended to spur deeper individual and communal reflections about the meaning of work.

We left Calcagnini with a renewed sense of how we can serve Georgetown’s mission as individuals and as a community. And we left the retreat with an energy about the need to pause every day to notice and savor the world around us and the world within us. 

Rabbi Rachel ended the morning session with Rumi’s poem, “The Guest House,” which is a fitting affirmation of the need for retreats like this one. 
​

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.