What Do You Seek?

"What do you seek?"

Triumphant in my acceptance into ACE 33 and a growing understanding of my new community in Detroit, the question above stopped me in my tracks. For the days, months, and even past year, I had been on a forward trajectory towards ACE, from my joyful experience with the ACE Ambassador program to now my entry in the 33rd cohort, but I had allowed the fervor and excitement to pull my focus away from what I had been looking for when I first applied. I had been keeping my eyes on the pavement, one step at a time, and April Retreat was barreling down the street to invite me to look up.

The retreat began and ended with a journey, and those journeys were one of great company. Blessed as I am to come from Fordham University in the Bronx with two other delightful 33s, as well as another NYC compatriot from Columbia University, I headed to South Bend with a merry band of ACErs, who shared hopes, information, and anxieties as we huddled at the gate in LaGuardia airport at 6:30 in the morning. After flight delays and turbulence, we made it to Chicago Midway airport, where, one by one and two by two, we slowly accumulated into an early community, looking around for other college age folks who we thought would maybe be, like us, looking for the group. 

As we, somewhat frantically, filed onto the bus to South Bend, I felt such a rush of excitement from both the knowledge that we had all made it onto the bus and the fact that our destination was a mere two hours away. 

That rush of excitement never went away. In fact it grew each step of the retreat where we finally got to be together as our new ACE 33 and broader ACE community, met our diocesan leadership, and experienced the beauty of Notre Dame's campus. But that excitement did not cloud the intensity of the question that opened our second session on Saturday. “What do you seek by serving as a Catholic school educator?” 

To be honest, I kind of flubbed the question. It surprised me, to be challenged like that by something that seems like it must be self-evident to anybody who has already said yes to ACE. It scared me a little too, to answer that question in front of three experienced and dedicated Catholic educators as well as four of my peers. After stuttering through something about holistic education, human answers to human questions, and a legacy that had given so much to me already, I sat back, a little disquieted by my own answer. The question stuck with me, echoing in my head that night, when I walked around St Joseph’s lake, and the next morning on the bus ride back to the airport.

A few days later, I’m still thinking about the question, but also with a profound sense of joy and love that being with my new community has brought about within me. As I sat in the M60 bus on the way back from LaGuardia with another future ACE teacher, I looked at the map of the bus line we were on. The disquiet from my answer the previous day had not gone away, but had instead begun to form a certain restlessness that yearns to look to the horizon, take my eyes off the pavement, and take seriously my own “yes” to ACE.