BY CATHERINE A. SWENDER
This past August at Spring Hill College, faculty and staff gathered for our beginning-of-the-year meeting. As happened at schools across the country, we talked of our concerns about the COVID-19 crisis, the economic fallout from the pandemic, how to address the needs of our students, and how to support our community facing these challenges.
In the midst of this discussion, my colleague Mike Williams, S.J., stood up and reminded us of a value that is much-needed but sometimes hard to find these days: hope. He referred to the book Just Mercy, in which author Bryan Stevenson explains that hope is not just naïve optimism. Instead, it is “an orientation of the spirit. The kind of hope that creates a willingness to position oneself in a hopeless place and be a witness, that allows one to believe in a better future...that kind of hope makes one strong.”
During my 17 years at Spring Hill College, I have found that a spiritual orientation toward hope and its attending values of faith and, especially, love make my work here particularly meaningful and influence my life in ways I never expected. I see hope for the future through the eyes of my students becoming leaders in service to others. My faith has deepened because of the many opportunities Spring Hill College has offered me to develop my spirituality and my understanding of my vocation. Suffused through all areas of my work is the experience of love through interactions with colleagues, students, and the larger community we serve. It is this love and the mystery of finding God in all things that have inspired me in difficult times and that have strengthened me to meet the challenges I have faced – and will undoubtedly face in the future – with hope.
Catherine A. Swender (top-left) teaches composition, British literature, creative writing, and poetry, and she has designed a service-learning course in which her poetry students teach elementary school children in the Mobile, Alabama, public schools.
One of the most important gifts Spring Hill College has given me has been training in Ignatian spirituality and education, which in turn has deepened both my own faith and sense of vocation. With our recently deceased Chancellor, Greg Lucey, S.J., I've become very involved in the college’s Jesuit mission and identity. I’ve participated in the AJCU Ignatian Colleagues Program, co-facilitated yearlong faculty and staff Ignatian seminars, helped lead Ignatian Wisdom Groups with senior students, and undertaken Lenten retreats experiencing the Spiritual Exercises.
These opportunities have deepened my own spirituality and sense of self in ways that continually feed me as a whole person. Importantly, this development has taken place alongside other people, where trust and a strong sense of community set a solid foundation for growth. I have found myself especially drawn to the Jesuit emphasis on gratitude and relationship to mystery, both of which have strengthened my spirit and grounded it in hope.
Teaching within an environment where service to others holds such a central position in our mission has led me to opportunities that make my work meaningful beyond the already rewarding teaching that I do in the classroom. With the assistance of our college’s Foley Service Center and its Director Kathleen Orange, I began teaching a service-learning class a number of years ago. In this course, my students work with inner-city elementary school children on writing activities each week. As the children explore their own voices and gain authority in their writing, they develop friendships with my students. Soon, service becomes mentorship and friendship, with a valuing of each other that leads to confidence, hope, and growth in both groups. As I work with the children, teachers, and my own students, I can see the difference we all make together. Any time I need hope for the future, I need only look at the faces of my students, eager to have an impact on others’ lives.
Particularly because of our college’s small size, it is easy to develop friendships with colleagues and know about their interests. I’ve worked with colleagues on teaching, research, and creative endeavors. I recently joined my colleague in graphic design, Janden Richards, on a project where her students created visual materials for my students’ poems, as if my students were the clients seeking book cover designs. My students loved this project, and this cross-disciplinary mixture of student creativity inspired my own teaching and writing. Janden knew to invite me to team up with her partly because we had already worked together in several other campus groups and developed a friendship along the way.
Catherine A. Swender is associate professor of English at Spring Hill College.