the72: Colin Campbell - A Sense of Ministry

A couple weeks ago, at 6:36pm, I opened my phone and was met by a mysterious message…

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is simply – “how do you live your ministry?”

How do I live my ministry? Immediately I was hit upside the head with words and emotions and memories and impressions:

• Poorly
• Enthusiastically 
• Successfully 
• Half-heartedly 
• Joyfully 
• Humbly 
• With laughter 
• With tears 
• Accidentally 
• Instinctively 
• LOVE THEM 

Every day brings a different situation and every situation brings different answers to the question of how I live my ministry. But in the midst of that chaotic cloud of words banging around between my temples there was one unifying theme… I live my ministry. I (me, Colin Campbell) live (with my whole self) my (the specific role I was called to) ministry (vocation as a minister). I live my ministry with every part of my being.

Right now, my ministry is my life, and my life is my ministry. It’s not an easy idea to express and many times it’s not an easy life to live, but I don’t want an easy life… I want a life that fulfills me. And I know that that will only happen when I am following God’s call for me. God’s call for me right now: “Love them. Love them with your whole mind, heart, soul and body.” Three of those make sense… but how do I love them with my body?

This is my reflection on that question.

Eyes

They say a really good teacher can prevent 90% of classroom discipline with just their eyes. A look of disapproval, a look of love, a look of what are you doing, can do amazing things. But sometimes there are things that are seen that just can’t be ignored. This is one of those moments…

I was in my normal place outside the cafeteria when the bell rang and the stampede began. In the middle of the chaos a student of mine pulled his hand out of his pocket to give me a hey sign as he passed, but something else slipped out of his pocket at the same time. It was purple, and rubber, and open, and definitely not supposed to be in school. A condom on the floor in a high school can’t be ignored.

My eyes saw something and in dealing with it, amazing things happened. Who could’ve guessed that this student needed someone to talk to about his sexuality? He had questions that he couldn’t talk to his friends about. He had reservations about what he was doing. He needed something to start the conversation… and believe you me, a condom on the floor was a pretty unavoidable beginning. Was it uncomfortable, yes. But it was 1,000 times more rewarding.

Mouth

The things I say and the way I say them are an enormous part of my ministry. But recently I’ve realized that what I say out loud is only a part of the words that form my life of ministry. The words of my personal prayers are equally, if not more, important.

A Spiritual Mentor of mine, Fr. Ted Hesburgh, has a favorite prayer and it has quickly become mine as well. Many times every single day I find myself murmuring his (and now my) personal prayer –“Come Holy Spirit.” Come, give me the right words. Come, help me speak like you. Come, help me not to laugh! Come, be with this student. Come and join in the fun! In every moment in my ministry I hope that the Holy Spirit feels welcome, I just need to use my words to invite him in.

Nose

Loving with my nose. I guess it might be safer to say loving in spite of my nose in this case.

In my ministry at the parish we have spent the last 10 months dreaming about creating a space for our high school youth group and it finally happened! It sounds like a great idea to invite the young people to help until you have a room full of wet paint and shoe-less high school students… IT SMELLED! Seriously, there was something ripe happening in that room, but there was also something amazing that made it all worth it. These students realized that their parish cared about them. In giving them a place to call their own they realized that they have a place in the Church (a physical place and a proverbial place) to call home. If it takes a couple hours of a smelly room to make that happen then I would do it any day.

Touch

For good reason there are limitations on how a minister can physically interact with students, but a lot of ministry can be done with just a simple touch. And it can happen in so many ways!

A fist bump on the way into an exam. A high-five celebration for getting that GPA back up to a 2.5! Handing over a box of Kleenex at just the right moment. A hand on the shoulder during prayer. A touch of affirmation from a friend during a retreat activity. Holding hands during group prayer. All of these are ways of communicating love without a single word being spoken, and sometimes the message is all the clearer for it.

I once had a student tell me in an application to be a retreat leader: “...at that moment I was sitting there crying because I had never had a male role model in my life. I thought I was the last one in the room but someone stopped and put their hand on my shoulder and I knew it was Mr. Campbell. It seemed like he was telling me that he was there and that he cared about me. I realized then that I was surrounded by men who would be there if I needed anything.” I could’ve spent 15 minutes telling him that I would be there if he needed anything, but he got the message loud and clear in just a couple seconds of praying for him with my hand on his shoulder.

Ears

Maybe the most important skill in ministry is listening, and it’s the one that I needed to work on the most when I first started. Here’s one final story that shows that it isn’t always necessary to have the right words to say.

I was sitting there in my Campus Ministry Room, in my ugly green recliner when he came in. I had never had a real conversation with him but he started in nonetheless…

Student: “I need to talk to you”

Me: “Sure thing. Table or couches?” (an important and sometimes revelatory choice)

Student: “That table’s fine… So, I’ve been wanting to talk to you. What has happened was… A lot of stuff is happening at home… I haven’t seen my dad in a long time… my mom and stepdad really aren’t getting along… my stepdad mistreats me and my mom… he’s a lot bigger than me… it makes me so mad, but I can’t stop him… they’re getting a divorce but we can’t move out… the only thing I have left sometimes if my faith… I just pray that God is with us…”

Me: “Name that’s amazing that you still turn to your faith. It’s true that God is always there and sometimes that’s the only thing that keeps me going too. But I hope you know you’re never alone, a lot of people at school are here for you. What can we do to help?”

Student: “I don’t know… I just needed to talk to someone… (more that I won’t include)”

Me: “Let’s plan to keep checking in regularly”

Student: “That would be good.” He stands up and starts to stretch like he’s going into a boxing ring and with a little smile on his face, “Man! It feels good to just get that stuff out!” He smiles and leaves the room.
_____

So there are five little glimpses into how I live my ministry and how I love in every way I can. It can be exhausting at times, but when it does I always come back to my current favorite Bible passage… (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17) Always be joyful, never stop praying.

Colin Campbell graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2013 with a BA in Theology. At Notre Dame, Colin sang and played percussion in the Notre Dame Folk Choir, served twice as a Mentor-in-Faith for Notre Dame Vision, and worked as a campus tour guide. After graduating, Colin was accepted to Notre Dame's ECHO Faith Formation Program. ECHO placed him in Indianapolis, IN, where he serves both as the assistant Campus Minister at a Cristo Rey High School and as the Youth Minister at a nearby Catholic parish. Colin will take his comprehensive exams this summer for his MA in Theology through ECHO. He can be reached at ccampbell0203@gmail.com.

One Thing at a Time

I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning, laptop in lap, with my Sunday morning SportsCenter on the TV, kind of par-for-the-course multi-tasking. But I just turned it off, because I was hardly paying attention to most of the content and frankly it was letting me procrastinate from doing anything I really wanted to be doing and ought to be doing - in this case, on this Sunday morning, writing.

10-15 years ago, when laptops were just getting realistically portable, or when we still relied primarily on desktop computers, would we really have acted like this? How silly would it look to have an entertainment center with TV on adjacent to the desktop computer work station, both screens on and delivering information and input into your face? Yet today, it's commonplace for anyone sitting in front of a TV to have one or more of their laptop, tablet, and/or phone in use while the television blathers on "in the background."

I've become a lot more aware of my defaulting to multi-tasking, or multi-media-ing. I try to sort through the situations in which I default to it and really decide if I'm overloading myself or if it's fine and innocuous. Sitting down to check sports, news, social media, and email and pop on the TV? Too much. Setting up The Simpsons on my iPad while I cook dinner? Perfectly fine. Taking out my iPad to tool around while the live sporting event I sat down to watch is in action? Too much. Firing up ESPN Radio or NPR at my desk at work? Fine.

So far, I don't really have a clear sense of the reasons why I feel like it's more ok some times than others. Starting from instinct, I kind of ask, "is there any reason to have both going?" When my butt's on my couch at home, it's silly to put on ESPN since half or so of my internet dabblings will give me the same (or better) news and analysis the TV will provide. When I'm cooking, most of the time, I'm going off time-tested recipes and routine, so I'm not really focused on intricacies and enjoy the light-heartedness and humor of a funny show while I complete meal prep.

I think, for me, what it comes down to is whether or not I have a task at hand that demands, merits, or invites greater focus. What's the point of going through my go-to sites for stories to read if I'm only skimming them while listening to the TV and opening more tabs to stories I'm going to half-read? Why make a point of sitting down to a live sporting event if I'm going to compulsively check my email or social media feeds during the live action? I'm trying to be more conscious about reading stories through to their full conclusion instead of anxiously rushing to get to the next tab. I'm trying to leave my iPad closed until commercial breaks or at least until intermissions and halftimes.

And I see it in my peers, too. As a non-subscriber to Netflix, I remember being extremely jarred the first time I witnessed a friend put on a long-running comedy they said they were catching up on, only to find that they just let it play in auto-play while reading and doing other things. While sitting around the other day, two friends and I had completely tuned out the TV until I noticed a marginal college basketball game that none of us cared about was blaring on in the background - white noise to our overloaded senses.

And I think looking at the effect that multi-tasking has had on me shows me that the threshold for what gets one's full attention is getting super high.

DVR, streaming services, and pirate sites have made TV a bit too accessible; whereas before it was appointment viewing, now we take highly for granted the opportunity to watch a desired show. The proliferation of WiFi, hotspots, and cellular data has made the internet ubiquitous, and now we search for an endless stream of apps, games, and bookmarks to give us a steady inflow of material to scour all day long. The ever sleeker, thinner, higher-battery-life laptops, tablets, and smartphones allow us to perpetuate this plugged-in mode anytime, anyplace.

Rarely do we ever find ourselves anymore in a situation where we simply have to let whatever is going on around us be the focus of our attention. It used to be that these behaviors were reserved for waiting rooms, when you'd pick up a magazine and read whatever was there since you were held captive by the appointment slate behind the reception desk.

Now, we take the waiting-room mentality everywhere we go. We do the modern technological equivalent of magazine-reading-in-a-waiting room every time we get a chance, even when we're in a colorful scene outside, in the midst of watching a show we specifically put on, or even if we're in the company of friends.

We default heavily toward needing to personalize all aspects of what garners our attention, and it makes it difficult for anything to break into our preference shield. Basically, are we willing to take in the world around us? Are we willing to give a teacher our attention, on the chance that we might learn something unexpected? Are we willing to wait an hour, a half hour, even five minutes to refresh our social media feeds while paying attention to something outside our control?

Why am I attempting this scattered rant on a spirituality blog? This is a dangerous trend for our faith and spirituality.

People have always complained about Mass as being long and boring, but how much worse could that aversion get in this culture? Can people go 60 minutes? Will believers give the Scripture lections any attention? Will we pre-tune-out priests' homilies even worse than before? Will we slog through the Eucharistic prayer knowing it's the last part before we can bust our phones back out?

Can we sustain personal prayer with our hands empty and our devices more than arm's length away? Will we leave God enough open-ended-ness in our thought processes to speak to us?

Computers thrive on Random Access Memory (RAM), their ability to run multiple applications and keep the user's activity steady. I think it's a good thing for humanity to use, maximize, and increase its RAM. It enables us to maximize our gifts and talents to create, innovate, and serve one another. But more isn't always better. If we each have 8GB of RAM running through our brains and hearts, we have to be equally able to distribute our RAM across various tasks at once and to be able to focus our RAM on one particular task.

I'm trying harder to turn the TV off when I'm on my computer, to leave my iPad aside while I'm watching a show or game I made time to watch, and to embrace opportunities to focus 100% of my tasking on one thing, like writing a blog post or doing Sunday Mass.

Do you have enough space in your brain to give God and others the attention they deserve? Are you too busy watching Netflix while you surf Twitter and listen to music? What good is our multi-tasking ability if we can laugh at a TV show while texting friends and surfing the web but can't choose moments to focus all of it on our God who loves us?

the72: Bella Bianco - Strike a Balance

Finals are all consuming. For months at a time you cling to a never-ending to-do list of assignments that leads up to the dreaded finals week. Usually, it is a time of controlled panic: caffeine addictions surface; breakouts pop up from stress; dark circles take hold; and sickness often looms.

One can feel like he or she is drowning in material that must be studied. That feeling is only intensified if a particular final could make or break a grade in a class. For that week nothing else seems to matter, not even your health.

However, this finals week I was given the opportunity to step back from it all. My friend Amy and I had decided to take a break from studying for our bio exam to get some dinner. I was cursing my roommate for getting me sick at such an inopportune time, and Amy was stressing about a particularly challenging chapter in bio. We both wanted the week to be over as soon as possible.

Our trek back to the library took us by the front of the Golden Dome, and without speaking, we both stopped and looked up. Even with a grey backdrop, it was as beautiful as ever, and after a silent moment, Amy said something out loud that I had been thinking just a couple weeks earlier: “You know what, everyone is all stressed out about finals, but we are so lucky just to be taking finals at Notre Dame! Pshh even if I fail all of my finals I will be happy to have had the opportunity to take them here.”

With that remark I was pulled from my own head and my focus shifted from what had to be done in the future to the present. She was right. Not only did we have the opportunity to attend college, but we were attending our dream school. It was an opportunity I had fantasized about as a middle- and high-schooler, and I was so caught up in my grades and test scores that it was passing me by without notice.

What was even more scary was that I had vowed just a few months earlier not to let that happen and just a couple weeks earlier that I would remain grateful for the opportunity to take finals at such a great place regardless of how difficult they might be. I promised myself I wouldn’t lose sight of God and all that He had given me and yet I still fell victim to finals week.

I am thankful that, in an ordinary walk back to the library, God reached out to me through Amy and called me to be present and therefore also thankful and happy during a time that is filled with anxiety and stress. I was better off that week because of it.

This however was not a one and done occurrence. There will be more finals weeks, more times in my life when there doesn’t seem much to be thankful for, when looking forward seems like the only option. So the question begs, how can I be more attuned to God’s call to be present?

I think there is a way in which I can work backwards. If God’s call to be present opened the doors to being thankful then being thankful can lead one to be present. The act of giving thanks requires you to recognize that which you have already been given. Intentionally naming those things that already bless your life raises a greater awareness to their existence and lessens the chance that something, as simple as a sunny day for example, will be overlooked and taken for granted.

But God’s call to be present goes beyond just being thankful. Authentic presence to God, friends, family, and the like requires a giving of self. Naturally, I only have so much of myself to give away. If I spend more time and energy being truly present to a friend then I have less time and energy to devote to schoolwork.

In order to live out my ministry as a student and perhaps one day as a doctor, I must strike a balance between assignments and friends, family and work, patients and myself, in a way that is oriented towards God. My ultimate ministry is to be Christ-like, to give myself completely over to God. My human nature is that I simply cannot be present to everything all the time.

So as student, friend, daughter, doctor, etc. I must abstain from getting lost in any one of my other ministries in a way that detracts from my ultimate ministry. During finals week I had become so focused on my current vocation as student that I lost sight of my vocation to be Christ-like. And it wasn’t until the moment in front of the dome that I was able to reorient myself in gratitude towards God.

Bella Bianco graduated from Xavier College Prep in Palm Desert, CA, in 2013, where she was involved in softball, soccer, Mock Trial, Campus Ministry, and Student Council. A native of Indian Wells, CA, Bella is currently a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame. She worked this past summer as a Mentor-in-Faith for Notre Dame Vision and is a member of the Anchor Leadership program. Bella is double-majoring in Pre-Health Studies and Philosophy. Bella can be reached at ibianco@nd.edu.

the72: Katherine Jones - Wordlessly Communicating God's Love

I am blessed with many wonderful, wonderful friends. They are the kinds of people who have dedicated their lives to ministry, who tirelessly studied Theology in college, who overcommit themselves in the pursuit of bringing God’s Word to others. Somehow, most of my best friends are teachers at Catholic schools, campus ministers at Catholic schools, or parish ministers at Catholic churches.

And here I am, dedicating my life to a fully secular work, in which I could likely be fired--or at least heavily chastised--for openly speaking the Gospel. However, as I have learned, the workplace doesn’t have to have the word “Catholic” in it for the job to be ministerial.

My favorite time of day is roughly 0637. No, I'm not a morning person; the jaws of life pry me out of bed on a daily basis. But by 0610 I'm on the train (God willing), and by 0636 it pulls into my downtown Chicago stop where I hustle out of the carriage and into a crowd of commuters. The group glides up two escalators like highly intelligent salmon (I said it), and by 0637, it spills out onto the street.

And then I see it: a veritable army in scrubs, moving swiftly east on Chicago Street towards the two-block long cluster of hospitals on Chicago’s lake shore. We never talk or even make eye contact, but there’s always a sense of solidarity: even though we march amid the suits and business-casuals, our mission is different. And so at 0637, we shuffle off to battle.

And, let me tell you, it is hard on the front lines. As a Patient Care Technician at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, I am at the beck and call of my patients, my nurses, and my bosses. My allotted half hour for lunch frequently goes unused, and I never file for the extra pay that’s otherwise automatically docked. I am expected to transfer patients twice my body weight, to clean every dirty diaper (even if I had changed it a mere minutes previously), to keep track of how much each patient drank and how much they peed, and to make sure that they are comfortable and safe at all times. I go home at the end of each shift aching and exhausted--but also strangely energized. Because, despite the fact that I make a living wiping someone else’s ass, I love my job. And here’s why: the grunt work grants me the opportunity to simultaneously serve and witness.

This army of scrubs, this branch of the Church Militant, allows me to channel my natural instinct for anonymity into something productive. I am never offended when my patients ask for my name multiple times; a hospital room is a rotating door of personnel. Instead, I sink into the anonymity. In losing myself in these acts of mercy--caring for the sick, counseling the doubtful, comforting the sorrowful--I lose myself in Christ. Although I may leave the hospital questioning the technical adequacy of my care, I never question the spirit in which it was done.

The skills will come with time; the ministry prevails. By carrying God in everything that I do, I hope to wordlessly communicate His love to those who need it most, reassuring them that human worth has nothing to do with health status.

Love Actually begins in an airport terminal with images of loved ones embracing after periods of time apart, Hugh Grant’s dreamy voice narrating: “If you look carefully, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that love actually is all around.” Our love, God’s love, is always with us; but in the hospital, that love is piercingly, achingly present. It reveals itself in the wife who daily visits her husband, the victim of a terrible brain injury that has left him vacant-eyed and unable to focus; still, she gazes at him like a newlywed, with unbridled affection that makes you marvel at the strength of her love. I have come to find that the greatest hope and love often abide alongside the deepest despair.

Most recently, I was one on one with a newly admitted patient who had suffered a brain injury. He showed glimmers of recognition and cognizance, but had not yet spoken and was unable to sit still. In my time with him, I talked with and observed this patient’s father.

The father worked a solid blue-collar job. He waxed on about his “man cave” garage, watching the Bears play with all of his friends, and drinking lots (and lots) of cheap beer. If I had met him in any other situation, I likely would have turned my nose in distaste and rolled my eyes. But he was there, in the hospital with his son when no one else was. I watched him watch his boy; I watched him marvel at the improvements he’d made in such a short span of time; I watched him tear up when he recounted the accident; and I teared up when I watched him tenderly kiss his son’s forehead to say goodnight. He trusted me with these private moments, and no matter how he chooses to live the rest of his life, this hurting father showed me the best of himself.

Hospitals are battlefields. We battle for life and death, for family and dignity and love, for humans, for souls. We serve and we love, and in turn we are witness to humanity at its best. Every day, we don our armor and march off to battle, every action saying: you are human, and you are loved. Working in a hospital has taught me how to love with each moment, with each breath, with each movement.

My ministry doesn’t take place within a church. It takes place where God is ever-present but rarely acknowledged. I am challenged every day to present my best self, to witness humanity, to speak the Gospel with my actions and not my words. And during those long hours, I am fulfilled. I am my best self. I am closest to God.

The challenge, of course, is bringing this lesson home. Loving in the midst of despair is easy, but how do I love with comparable temerity in the grocery store? Or, even worse, how do I love with such wild abandon those I take most for granted, without expecting some sort of tragedy? I will be struggling to find this balance, I expect, for the rest of my life whilst I soldier on through the ages of war yet to come. In the meantime, I will continue to march swiftly and tenderly, allowing my ministry to shape me into an ever-clearer image of God.

Katherine Jones graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2013 with a BA in English and also studied pre-medicine. Through the Center for Social Concerns at Notre Dame, Katherine did Appalachia service immersion and a Summer Service-Learning Program in Syracuse, NY. She was also a Mentor-in-Faith for Notre Dame Vision and a member of the Notre Dame Folk Choir. After graduating, Katherine went on to the Masters Entry to Nursing Practice program at DePaul University. Raised in Highland Village, TX, she now lives in Chicago, IL, where she will soon complete her graduate program, take her nursing licensure exam, and begin her nursing career. Katherine can be reached at kajones0@gmail.com. (Editor's Note: And I'm marrying her in July 2015.)