Center for Faith and Vocation

by Ben Martella 

My internship with the Center for Faith and Vocation was the first time that I had the opportunity to sit down and dissect the term vocation. I had always thought of the word and the concept of vocation as a solely religious term that would have no value in my agnostic philosophy of life. My internship through Catholic Charities challenged that thought and has since open my mind and heart to many things in the world. The CFV provided me with insight and guidance in navigating this vocation. I can say with conviction; I have gained many valuable lessons ranging from professional experience to spiritual exploration as well as community building with my internship through the CFV as a whole.

My internship experience centered around the work of Catholic Charities under the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. I want to be frank in saying that I do not agree entirely with the Catholic church, nor do I agree with some actions taken by the Archdiocese. Nonetheless, the experience sincerely changed my view of religious affiliated NGOs as well as the people that work for them. The people are undoubtedly some of the kindest and hardest working individuals. They devote hours of their time in a career that values service over everything. My contribution was working with refugees in education and acculturation. Essentially, I taught English as a New Language (ENL) classes as well as helped to develop curriculum for refugees in connecting to American culture and adapting to the community. It is an understatement to say that it was easier said than done. This proved to be one of the greatest gifts and challenges of this internship. I have developed an even deeper sense of love for the world and the people that derive from it.  I have realized that once we take away commonalities like language and culture, there is still so much humanity we can use to connect with one another.

My experience this semester has caused me to reflect on my goals and aspirations for the near future. I have always been serious about Peace Corps and have since set my mind to applying and realistically going as soon as graduation commences. It is something that I feel as though I must fulfill and have identified it as an opportunity to help to foster what will ultimately become my vocation.

by Alaina Hanke

Working at the Expungement Help Desk for the Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic has been a very positive and eye-opening experience. I work face to face with people who have experienced the injustices of our criminal justice system, looking for a second chance to change their lives around. The system does not give people this opportunity because, although they served their time, the punishment continues on as they are unable to find jobs, apply for housing, apply for welfare, and much more. The vast majority of people coming to get their records expunged are grateful, positive, and happy, even when they had a challenging life story or an unjust experience. The hopeful attitudes of the people who come for expungement has stuck with me the most because of their ability to persevere and remain positive through such tough and unimaginable circumstances. This has caused me to really reflect on my vocation because it has shown me what my true interests, motivations, and passions are. It has led me to realize that I want to take my future in a direction that helps people, specifically with mental health within the prison system and with prisoner reentry. I have learned that doing direct work within the community and with people is something that is important to me because I want to be there to listen to someone’s story when other people may not have listened, I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, I want to help people change if they are ready to change, and I want to be a support system for those that need it. This internship has shown me how so many people’s lives have been ruined by our criminal justice system, rather than repaired, but expungement gives them the chance to repair it. At my internship, we created a poster that poses the question of “What will you do with your second chance?” We laid out cards so that people can write what they want to do with their new shot at life since their record won’t hold them back anymore. The responses are great and so many people have big plans for their futures. It is such a great thing to see every day when walking into work, knowing that I could help someone live the successful life that they deserve.

by Grace Langford

I worked at First Congregational United Church of Christ as the Just Peace intern. First Congregational Church passed a covenant last January to become a Just Peace church but wanted to know how to fully embody their Just Peace covenant better. Therefore, they decided to hire a Just Peace intern. In August, I decided to make the challenging career decision to change from actuarial science to management consulting. When I started my internship, the lead pastor, Pastor Sarah Lund, was so kind to allow me to set up my internship like a management consulting engagement, thus allowing me to have hands-on experience in my new field. I read many books about management consulting as well as about just peace while attending church and meetings with the First Congregational congregation.

One of my favorite parts of the internship was conducting informational interviews, a fancy management consulting term used to describe getting to know and gather information from people. I enjoyed coffee and lunch with many incredible people with fascinating life stories and a genuine heart for people. In addition, I collected data from surveys and spent ample time at the church getting to know the ins and outs. On my last day, I presented an hour presentation to the congregation with three actionable changes that reflect the feedback and church’s desires.

Another highlight of the internship was attending the Interfaith Network on Drone Warfare Conference at Princeton Seminary. Eighty religious leaders gathered to be educated and to learn how to educate others on the injustice of drone warfare. I so enjoyed the opportunity to talk to so many people from different religions, faiths, communities and geographic locations in the United States. While we were all so different, we united on justice and advocating against drone warfare.

This internship allowed me to look at vocation in a new light. For one, I had the opportunity to test out a new career and discover my love for it. At the same time, it allowed me to see the multiple facets of vocation to discover it is not just tied to the job title of our employer. Instead, it is a lifelong commitment to work and to bettering the world around us. I saw this beautifully displayed in so many retired members of the congregation who had different careers but work dutifully for the church and to serve the Indianapolis area. Overall, this internship has been integral not only in my liberal arts education, my career, but also my personal growth this semester. Thank you to the CFV and First Congregational for your support and engagement!

Last Thursday, on the last day of All in Week, the CFV partnered with the Center for Interfaith Cooperation as well as the Spirit and Place Festival to screen the latest film in the New View Series, “Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story.” 

This film explores the life of one of the most important religious figures of the 20th century, Howard Thurman. Thurman was the grandson of slaves, and eventually became a spiritual leader for the Civil Rights Movement. He also inspired many influential Civil Rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr.

The film also discussed how Howard Thurman was a Mystic, and had a great respect and interest in nature, non-violent social action, as well as learning about other religious traditions. He famously traveled to India in 1936 in what was known as a “pilgrimage of friendship.” While there, he visited Mahatma Gandhi who was also advocating for nonviolent action.

In the spirit of Thurman’s interfaith work, Thursday’s event began with three prayers from Butler students of different religious traditions: Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu.

After the event, the audience was treated to a panel of two local religious leaders who knew Howard Thurman himself, Reverend Brown and Bishop Roach. They discussed Thurman’s hypnotizing, slow, and deliberate way of speaking, and how he was such an important figure in influencing the Civil Rights movement.

Audience members joined the discussion to reflect on Thurman’s influence, and how his ideals and values can be applied to social justice issues today.

Thank you to everyone who attended the film screening and participated in the discussion! We hope to see you at our next film, “The Many Storeys and Last Days of Thomas Merton—By Morgan Atkinson” on January 23. The film director, Morgan Atkinson, will be attending our event and will be hosting the discussion afterwards.

Taking care of your health and well-being is often challenging for college students. It’s hard to prioritize wellness when there are so many other things going on.

The CFV Communications intern is launching a new podcast called “College Well” with the goal of exploring the question: “how do I take care of myself in college?”

Wellness does not end with eating healthy food and getting 8 hours of sleep. It also can involve your spirituality, relationships, self-reflection, and how you make your decisions.

For the introductory episode, we interviewed Beth Lohman from the HRC about BuBeWell’s mission, and the importance of being conscious of your mental and physical health as a college student.

Each of the next episodes will be related to the topics of Mind, Body, Spirit, and Vocation. Stay tuned!

Listen here:

By Julia Bluhm

On Thursday, September 5th the Center for Faith and Vocation kicked off its annual “A New View Film Series” with the film Dakota 38. Dr. Courtney Mohler, who is a professor of theater and a person of Native American descent, began the evening with a land acknowledgement and also lead the discussion following the film. The discussion after the film was particularly memorable– a diverse number of community members shared their reactions and engaged in thoughtful conversation.

The film Dakota 38 addresses issues of injustice within the Native American community both historically and in the context of present day. The film is named for a tragedy that occurred in 1862, under President Abraham Lincoln. 38 Dakota men were hanged in what is still the largest mass execution in American history.

To honor those killed in this tragedy, there is an annual 330-mile horseback ride from Lower Brule, South Dakota to Mankato, Minnesota to arrive at the hanging site on the anniversary of the execution. The film follows the men, women and children who participated in the ride, from showing the harsh blizzard conditions they rode through to the kindness they experienced from local inhabitants who housed them on their journey.

Another big part of the film’s focus was the institutional genetic depression and epidemic of suicide among the Native American community. Native Americans are 10 times more likely to die of suicide than any other population. This epidemic is caused by the historical attack on Native American culture, suppression of Native American identity, and theft of land. These factors lead to extreme poverty, drug addiction, and mental health problems. For decades, Native American children have been sent to boarding schools that prohibited them from practicing religious rituals or displaying any part of their culture. This is just one example of the nation-wide attack and suppression of their culture.

One especially impactful part of the film, which came up a lot in the discussion, was that at the very end of the film it was revealed that several of the young men who had participated in the ride had died of suicide before the film’s release.

Community members compared the discrimination of Native American people to the deep-rooted discrimination of African Americans in this country. Several people also expressed surprise at the fact that Abraham Lincoln, a man celebrated for the abolishment of slavery, signed off on the execution of the Dakota 38. One community member, who is a Native American from Indiana, shared his personal experience with the epidemic of suicide in his community.

The film screening of Dakota 38 was educational but also incredibly eye-opening due to the emotional responses of the audience. If you feel inspired to help this cause, consider writing to your government officials and asking them to prioritize funding for mental health programming for Native communities.

by Maggie Kieffer

When I walked into the first day of my internship with the Project GRACE Help Desk, I was just kind of thrown into the work. Over the course of the semester I have had the privilege of helping some really patient, kind, wonderful people; and when I had to deal with someone who was less kind or less patient, I took a deep breath and realized how incredibly overwhelming that first day learning about expungement was for me. And I’m a college-educated adult who wants to go into this profession. I always try to think about the process from the perspective of the person on the other side of the desk. These individuals – often African American men and women or poor white individuals – made mistakes within a system that doesn’t always work in their favor. Often times, I have heard stories about men and women who were charged with crimes because of their economic status or race, rather than on the credibility of their character. I have even seen black men come in with the same crimes as white men, but charged with higher level convictions on a first-time offense than a routine white offender. I have been confronted with errors in the system I want to enter professionally for the rest of my life. And, now that my semester is over, I am faced with the fact that I am one step closer into being a part of the system. This mentality of looking at a legal problem from the accused persons’ or convicted persons’ eyes is something that will forever impact my life, and I have this internship with the CFV and Help Desk to thank for that.

by Rachael Jacobs 

Over this past semester I had an internship with Catholic Charities teaching English to refugees. For this blog post I have decided to talk about the part of my experience that was both the most rewarding and the most challenging. About halfway through the semester, as I wrote one of my journal reflections about my time at work so far, I thought that my biggest accomplishment was, both at that time and what I thought would continue to be, watching the academic growth of my students. I could not have been more wrong. While being able to watch my students become more fluent was rewarding, it was nowhere near as rewarding as noticing the differences in the way my students looked at me day to day. It was nowhere near as rewarding as picking up on the ways in which our conversations about life outside of class evolved day to day. It can be hard for me to make connections like this with people within my own comfort zone, let alone those from another culture and language. But the barrier that I thought would be ever-present between us got knocked down after the first day. That is what was so rewarding for me: not only being able to impact their lives outside of class time, but the ways in which they impacted my life as well. The largest lesson that I learned from this was how similar we all really are. All of us want to be loved and accepted, no matter where we come from, the color of our skin, or what language we speak. This is not to disregard the differences that exist, however – those are just as important. It is through these differences that we are able to learn more about the world and the ultimate experience that everyone both shares and holds uniquely at the same time. In this way I was successful and in this way my experience was the most memorable.

by Julia Bluhm

My communications internship at the CFV this semester not only helped me build my communications skills, but it helped me better understand my own sense of vocation and what kind of career I’m interested in.

Aside from gaining tons of experience in graphic design, social media marketing, and making continuous social media campaigns, I also learned a lot about interfaith cooperation. In preparing for the film discussion I hosted for The Heart of Nuba, I researched about conflicts in Sudan and had the opportunity to meet with Mastora Bakhiet, the director of the Darfur Women Network. It was eye-opening to hear more about life in Sudan from Mastora, a Sudanese Muslim woman, and to hear about all the struggles the Darfur people have been through. While we talked over pizza, I offered to help her with a video she was making. A week later, I was sitting in her living room and transcribing Arabic translations for the video. I know that if I hadn’t been an intern at the CFV, I probably would not have been so inspired to research conflicts in Sudan, and I probably never would have ended up in the living room of a woman who’s culture and background is so different from mine. I am extremely grateful that I did though, because this is just one example of how my internship helped me become a more open and educated person.  Interfaith and cross-cultural conversations can be slightly uncomfortable at first, but they are essential. I have put myself out of my comfort zone several times through my internship at the CFV, and every time I felt grateful afterwards for the experience. I want to keep doing this as a part of my future career in the non-profit sector.

Luckily, I have been given the opportunity to return in the fall as the CFV’s communications coordinator, so I will be able to stay involved. I look forward to continuing some of the social media campaigns I have started, such as featuring student leader profiles on Instagram and making our social media more photo-based. I also look forward to continuing to expand my interfaith understanding and to be as involved in CFV programs as I can.

Students and Speakers at the Pre-Seminar Supper

Last week the Butler Seminar on Religion and Global Affairs on the topic of Sacred Places: Intersections of Religion and Ecology, held its final session, titled “Greening Indiana: Theologies and Ethics of Sustainability.” For the past year we have approached the work of ecojustice from a number of religious perspectives – Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu – and methodological angles – sociology, biology, film, literature, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology, among many others. In this last session, we trained our focus on local efforts toward sustainability and ecojustice right here in Indiana, with the guidance of three fantastic speakers: Lisa Sideris, Dori Chandler, and Jessica Davis.

Lisa Sideris is Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington and her research and teaching focuses on intersections of religion, science, and ecology. Dr. Sideris emphasized the need for a “public theological conversation” in which multiple perspectives (religious and secular) are welcomed in order to expand our vision of the health and wellbeing of the planet and what we can do in our local communities to address the environmental crisis. Dr. Sideris invited us to consider how our roots in a particular place and community have shaped who we have become; these roots provide our entrée into the work of ecojustice. However, as a culture we have a collective case of “environmental amnesia,” as each generation becomes accustomed to the status quo as “normal,” despite the environmental devastation we observe all around us. Paying attention to the history of our places and the changes that have occurred over the generations reminds us that human activity sometimes drastically alters a place and its ecology, compelling us to marshal every resource available to us – scientific, political, economic, social, historical, and religious – to address the environmental crisis, which is the defining issue of our time.

Dori Chandler is a board member of Hoosier Interfaith Power and Light, a member of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, and Director of Interfaith Programming and Advisor of Hillel at the Butler Center for Faith and Vocation. Dori draws inspiration from the rabbinic notions of tikkun olam (“repairing the world”) and bal tashchit (“do not destroy”) to inform her environmental activism. Together with Dr. Sideris, Dori shared some startling statistics about the environmental crisis here in Indiana: Indiana ranks #46 in air quality in the US, #48 in overall quality of life, and #1 in the number of coal ash ponds and super-polluting power plants. Dori’s work with the Citizens’ Climate Lobby and Hoosier Interfaith Power and Light brings together Hoosiers of diverse backgrounds and religious and ethical commitments to lobby for legislation to address these environmental problems and to forge a new path toward sustainability and ecojustice in Indiana and beyond. Almost 80% of Hoosiers identify as religious, which means that any substantial change of course must include religious voices in order to be effective. HIPL is on the front lines of organizing religious communities to make the connections between religious faith and environmental activism, with inspiring results.

The last speaker was Jessica Davis, Director of Sustainability at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Jessica works with students, faculty, staff, administrators, and community partners to adopt and implement sustainable practices on the IUPUI campus and in Indianapolis. For example, IUPUI is a certified “bee campus” and “tree campus,” has seven LEED-certified buildings (and is constructing three more), has a student-run effort to combat food waste that in one year salvaged 30,000 pounds of food, and recently hosted the first Olympic trial in history that produced zero waste. IUPUI is doing good and important work on sustainability and is training its students to be environmentally-conscious citizens. In her talk Jessica took time to define some common terms for the audience. She defined sustainability as meeting the needs (not wants) of the current generation while at the same time allowing future generations to meet their needs as well. She further suggested that the key to successful sustainability efforts is meeting three related needs: successful sustainability efforts will be environmentally-friendly, socially just, and economically feasible. Her work at IUPUI embraces each of these goals with impressive results that are an inspiration to other institutions in the region.

The environmental crisis is urgent and it is doing real and lasting damage, here and now. We are in the midst of an existential crisis that will require drastic measures to address. In this session we were invited to find hope, empowerment, and energy for the work that lies before us. There is good and important work being done here in central Indiana in myriad ways, large and small, to address the environmental crisis and to create a better, more sustainable, more just future for us all.

The full video of the lectures and the Q&A with the audience is available here:

Brent Hege

CFV Scholar in Residence and Lecturer in Religion