Iona College Hosts their Annual Peacemaking Week

Iona College recently concluded their annual Peacemaking Week. The 2017 Peacemaking Week centers on the theme “Self + Other + Earth = A formula for Our Future.” The Week of the Peacemaker begins with “Hope and Healing in the Anthropocene.” The event featured a day of contemplative inquiry with a “host of healers, teachers and spiritual practitioners who look to guide those in attendance into informative and transformative dialogue on the challenges of being well and offering wellness-of body, mind, and spirit-to an ecologically, socially and spiritually suffering planet.”

The keynote presentation was given by Karenna Gore, the director of the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary. Gore’s keynote will focus on her experience working in the legal center of Sanctuary for Families, which serves victims of domestic violence and trafficking and as director of community affairs for the Association to Benefit Children (ABC), which provides early childhood education and other services for families living in poverty in New York City.

To read more about Iona College Peacemaking Week, click here.

Food for Thought Friday: Healing in Worship

Food for Thought Friday: The death of a college student, a friend, classmate, and community member, brings great grief to a campus.  During these difficult times, campus ministry staff, faculty, and other campus staff provide care for students and help them process their grief.  In an article published in the July 2016 issue of U.S. Catholic, writer Jessie Bazan, Director of Retreats and Social Outreach at Saint John’s University explores the impact of the liturgy, both memorial services and the Mass, on campus communities after the death of a student. In her own experience, she finds that although the liturgy does not reverse the situation, it often helps in the grieving process. She writes, “Our liturgy didn’t take away the hurt, but it gave us a safe space to hurt. It didn’t bring our dead classmate back to life, but it honored the life he had – and his life to come.”  Read the full article here.