by Tess Brewer (she/her) Seattle, WA ’23-24
Tess recently shared this reflection at a celebration of service at her alma mater, Xavier University, where she served in a number of programs through the Dorothy Day Center for Faith & Justice. Her reflection spoke specifically to the experiences of the students there, but we thought our whole movement could benefit from her story.
In the spring of my senior year at Xavier, I was on the precipice of the unknown. While nearing the end of my degree, I was questioning what was next- what did I really care about doing in the world? In having numerous conversations with family, friends, and professors (who told me what I was going through was called ‘discernment’) I began to recognize a pattern in the experiences that stood out to me and were rooted closest to my heart.
Many of these experiences were those I encountered in X-Change. Weekly visits with elderly friends, building a growing wrist of bracelets. Relearning math and grammar with my 3rd grade buddies, and getting absolutely schooled on everything related to Anime and Fortnite. Walking dogs and the joy of stretching my legs and breathing in the air with them. As an XChange leader, getting to reflect on these experiences with other volunteers was always so enlightening- learning from my fellow members and seeing them grow in their love and commitment to service and those they served with made my own passion for it grow
Alternative Breaks was a similar deepening, but one that was especially immersive. In the Spring of 2021, I led a spring AB trip in Cincy, and got the opportunity to serve with Cincy homelessness coalition and the peaslee center. I grew even more in the connection that service has to justice. Learning about mothers who fought hard for their communities, to maintain safe educational spaces, and individuals who made it through hardships on the very city streets I spent my time on was transformative. The transformation continued as I chose to do a summer service internship through the CFJ, spending a summer in living with other volunteers and making lifelong friends, lifelong memories- and having some of the most difficult conversations around justice, real service and faith that I had ever had. Through these experiences I was feeling the budding of a changing within me that would become a cornerstone for my next steps beyond Xavier.
This budding extended into the classroom (usually it goes the other way right) where through my philosophy and theology classes I really began to understand the processes of thought and spirit that I was feeling. That spring break of my senior year, I got the opportunity to visit El Salvador with Dr.Mescher’s spirituality and solidarity class. We visited and met people who live their lives rooted in justice work, work that is care for their communities. For these individuals, inspired by Father Romero and Jesuit martyrs, I was realizing that service is to allow your heart to be breaking, and always open, to your community. To remember that we belong to each other.
And I realized that that is what I had been doing. The budding in my heart from my years of service at Xavier, I was belonging to my community, to young and elderly, to my friends and service leaders, and growing with them. We were cultivating each other.
I chose to take the leap and do a year of service as a Jesuit Volunteer in the Northwest. The cultivation continued through my service at Community House Mental Health Agency in Seattle, where I built relationships and shared space both in and out of service. Through joy and tears, grief and celebration, my fellow volunteers and my mentors at the agency tended to ourselves and each other. An expression of this tending was through the opportunity to help build a community garden at my site, growing flowers and food and digging in the dirt, learning so much from the clients I served with. The dirt dusting my arms at the end of each day was a reminder that true service is the hard commitment of breaking ground and building trust with my fellow community members.
My service story has brought me back to Cincinnati, where I now work in a clinic with older adults experiencing memory decline. This is work where I feel my heart breaking and opening constantly, and I learn so much from my patients, their families, and fellow coworkers. The path that brought me here was full of twists and turns, uprooting and rerooting.
Your service stories are growing and changing with you too. I often return to Mary Oliver’s timeless quote: What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
For me, this is paying attention to what’s budding within you. Watch the ways you are sprouting towards others , growing in ways your younger self could not possibly imagine. Remember you are cultivating yourself as you tend to others – solidarity in action. Find the ways your heart breaks in anger and grief, roots growing in those cracks to sprout your work towards justice.
I will close on a Dean Brackley quote, from his book Call to Discernment in Troubled Times (you may have heard it before): “We do not desire any more pain in the world. We simply want and need to share the pain that is there, in order to lighten the load for all of us. We want to be more and more a part of humanity’s march, with its suffering, its hope, and its joy. For unless we share the suffering of the world, its beauty cannot heal us and solidarity cannot fill our void.”
Seattle Mercy ’23-24 (l-r): Back row: Alec Maloney, Ben Smith; Front row: Tess Brewer, Areceli Prado, Cambrie Rhodes, Shannon Dilorio.
