This year, I tried something new as my Lenten practice: conversation office hours. I came across this idea while reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.
After the Nuclear Family
If you’re at all interested in kinship, family structures, or intentional community, you’ve gotta check out David Brook’s cover article in The Atlantic titled “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.”
The Church, in Twos and Threes
Many of our physical spaces of worship are closed to us during this season of Lent. What can we do to be together in this time of isolation?
Life on the Frontier
New beginnings are hard. Whether we’re talking about a first date or the start of a new project at work or just Mondays in general, the frontier of something new always demands a lot from us.
Light a Candle & Say a Prayer for Someone
It’s painful to think back on all the people I’ve loved and lost touch with, but it’s important that I do this, that we do this. All these people were important pieces of the social fabric of my life.
Digging Deeper into Social Media
Maybe we’re just living in a world full of limited options for community. Maybe behind our “obsession” with social media is really just an “obsession” with the human community.
So Much More Than Mud Huts
Until I lived there, South Sudan was more of a concept than an actual place. But in the spring of 2018, I got an email from a Jesuit priest who was the Country Director for the Jesuit Refugee Service in South Sudan.
Travel Diaries
It is often only when I am traveling and “off the clock” that I can remove myself from the to-do list grind and see others consistently.
Radical Friendship
I’ve recently started to re-examine what Arrupe actually meant by love in his “Fall in Love” prayer. What if we treated our friendships with the same kind of intentional love as other relationships?
An FJV’s Reflections on DisO
With Dis-Orientation just completed for the current JVs, I feel obligated to reminisce on where my heart was just twelve short months ago.
Thoughts On Homeless LGBTQIA+ Youth Social Services: What Does Enough Look Like ?
I recently attended a conference on Building Stronger Communities, held by the Albert Kennedy Trust, one of the UK’s biggest LGBTQIA+ social services. After an incredible experience, I reflect on where social service spending goes and how its being used.
Cooking Up Community
Three lessons, three questions, and one recipe: reflections on cooking, community, and care.
Ruminations on Community
As FJVs we have spent time living in small intentional communities, which are very tightly focused on the people we share a house with. But it is surely the case that we are meant to carry the four JVC values out into our lives with us. I wonder what it means to bring our experience of intentional community out into the communities around us, into our local neighborhoods, our cities, states, and nation.
Commuting with My Community Post-JVC
Most of the things I do on a daily basis now, I do alone: commuting, working, exercising, and eating, just to name a few. I find myself in these moments wanting to invite God to join me in the accompanying bus seat or at the dinner table. In these moments, I find God in the comfort of remembering my JV community. Their presence pervaded the minute details of my routine in Houston, and I can’t help but think of them every day.
Community Means Commitment
By the end of our JVC year, my housemates and I were a community because we stuck together through the endless flux of not always liking each other while trying to love one another.
The Ruined Report 