This week we will skip the usual Q & A session, but no worries. You will still meet not one, not two, but three amazing individuals devoted to nonviolence and peacemaking. Last week Molly Ryan, Amanda Griedl and Chris Jeske presented their projects as part of the Center for Peacemaking’s Szymczak Peacemaking Fellows Program.
The Szymczak Fellows Program allows students to create projects that put nonviolence into action. Students have the option to work for an established organization or to create their own project. Upon their return, the Fellows present their projects and showcase the different ways Marquette students are engaging in the struggle for peace through the practice of nonviolence. This year, the presentations were a truly inspirational experience which we want to share with you.
Molly Ryan is a Peacemaking student at Marquette University and a Photography student at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She presented on her fellowship at Contemplatives in Action, an Urban Jesuit Retreat Center in New Orleans, LA. While in New Orleans, Molly helped local children. The center’s devotion to Ignatian spirituality gave Molly an opportunity to think about life and understand it before she acts.
“Usually we do, do, do and then maybe think. This experience gave me an opportunity to think, think, think and then do,” Molly said.
Molly presented her photography exhibit “Grace”. The exhibit is named after her friend Grace, who showed her around the city. Not only did Grace show Molly around the city, but she also contributed to the exhibit with her writings.
Molly will always remember Grace’s words: ”New Orleans is so full of life that sometimes I swear the city itself is breathing and I can hear its heavy pulse underneath the roaring of traffic on the bridges and the cacophony of day to day life – the sirens and the gunshots and the vibrating bass of crappy stereos set out on front porches. Underneath it all, I can hear the sluggish beat of its ancient heart.”
The name of the exhibit has a deeper meaning and comes from the meaning of “grace”: “Grace is Christ is in our lives and what He enables us to do.”
Amanda Griedl is a Public Relations student with a minor in Gender Studies. She spent the summer in Cape Town, South Africa volunteering for the Social Change Assistance Trust. SCAT is an independent human rights non-governmental organization that was founded 20 years ago. It is a fund-raising and grant-making agency striving to improve the quality of life in South Africa, to prevent HIV/AIDS, to support local economic development and to create gender equality. The organization collaborates with over 60 communities. Amanda helped the HIV/AIDS coordinator with programs analysis, evaluation and research. She also did field work and helped with different programs such as condom distribution. Amanda explored the culture and examined how gender issues are related to the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Chris Jeske, whom you already know, studies Information Technology, Marketing and African Studies. During the summer he interviewed people in his hometown Kirkwood, MO about race relations after a racially charged shooting at the City Hall that left six people dead. He will make a documentary film about race relations in his home town. Although the documentary is not ready yet, Chris showed some of his favorite clips from the interviews and shared how the stories from the interviews still impact him half a year later. Chris told the stories of many different people from Kirkwood because “the world needs to hear your story to be complete.” He believes that stories make us come to real epiphanies, the ones that change how we think and act, as opposed to false epiphanies, which don’t change how we act.
Hopefully these three students inspired some real epiphanies. Hopefully they inspired you to find your “Grace”.
If you want to make a change in our world, apply for the Szymczak Peacemaking Fellows Program. The deadline is March 1. Hopefully next year we will listen about your actions in achieving peace and creating a better place for all of us.
Peace!
P.S. We will invite you to see the documentary.
