It is the social Gospel, the Catholic Social Teaching, that gives life to this kind of work.
At the end of more than one mission trip, I saw students linger when it was time to go home with their parents and heard them confess "I don't know how to explain this trip to them - it changed me." I prayed with students in the Arizona desert at a makeshift shrine to those who died fleeing poverty in the summer heat. Once, while at a city dump in Tijuana where we were bringing a meal to those rummaging the dump for food, I saw one of my students take off her shoes and give them to a girl who was barefoot. In the course of my 21 years as a Campus Minister, I have been part of some amazing sacred moments with students. That is my real vocation - to mix my love of my faith with my joy of teaching to daily be able to share the Gospel with students through prayer and service and make faith relevant. I have also been witness to many moments of discovery in my work as a Campus Minister on retreats and mission trips. I have been a part of some of those awesome learning moments in the classroom - like when my students are skeptical of a plot line that is too good to be true or when they despise an author's cliché ending to a novel.
I am the teacher who hopes to create moments when light bulbs go on for students - and that means I am a teacher who is in it for the long haul. I am the English teacher who loves to hear students dig into literature, form their own opinions and support their thoughts with solid reasoning. Because, almost as much as I am Catholic, I know that I am a teacher. It seemed only natural that, when I finished college, I returned to teach at my alma mater, Immaculate Heart of Mary High School. Later, in college, my faith led me to the Catholic Newman Center at the University of Illinois - singing in the church choir and leading Koinonia retreats with and for my peers. When I think about my past as a Catholic, I think about the saints, my First Communion, praying the rosary, saying Confession, reading Biblical texts at Mass, Confirmation, participating in handbell choir, wearing school uniforms, and celebrating feast days. We played sports there, we found our friends there, we grew up there. Our lives revolved around the church and school. My mom was a volunteer, helping with fundraisers and field trips. My dad served the church's pancake breakfast and coached the grade school basketball team for as long as I can remember. My family lived two blocks from Divine Providence, the Catholic church and school which we attended. I grew up in Chicago, a very Catholic city. That richness has colored my entire life. There were a lot of unknowns in the days that followed, so I began making a list of what I know for sure.Ĭatholicism has specific rules and ways, specific sounds and smells, and a richness all its own. It is a long story, and nothing I really planned to make happen, but, suddenly, after 18 years at Totino-Grace High School, I was fired. In August of 2013, I was fired from my job as a Campus Minister at a Catholic high school in Minnesota when I told the staff, at an opening of school workshop, that I was in a relationship with a woman.