Peacebuilder's Initiative

Hey Turtles! I spent the last week working with a group of young people as a part of the Peacebuilder’s Initiative. It is a program that identifies young people with leadership potential and educates them about Catholic Social Teaching and then empowers them to go out an make a difference in the world. The young people spent last week learning about CST and experiencing various different Catholic social services in Chicago. This coming year, they will be designing and implementing various peace projects throughout the area.

This past week we learned about dreams, biblical foundations for peace building, forgiveness and reconciliation, the seven pillars of social justice and the movement of God in the modern world. All of these sessions were taught by the faculty and students of the Catholic Theological Union.

In addition to attending these sessions with the kids, each day I accompanied a group of five students to the Peace Corner in Austin. The Peace Corner is a teen drop in center that is owned and operated by the youth of Austin themselves. My teens and I spent time sharing stories with the youth there, painting a mural, playing basketball and having a cookout. This was an opportunity for some cross cultural (my students were mostly suburban) dialogue and relationship building.

At the end of a very intense week, within the context of prayer, we asked the students to share with us the dreams that they had for the world. Their responses included:

“I envision a world without violence.”
“I envision a world of forgiveness and reconciliation.”
“I envision a world where no diagnosis is without hope.”
“I envision a world where nobody goes hungry.”
“... where children can feel safe and loved.”
“... where people choose dialogue and not war.”
“... where all live in harmony with the environment.”

I found myself choking back tears as these young people dreamed of their ideal world... a world that they would later dedicate themselves to building during our final commissioning service.

I relax knowing that our world in the the hands of these very beautiful young people. Thank you everyone for a great week! Peace turtles!