Ireland May 23
We are ready to travel and meet new people, hear new ideas, learn new things and see a part of this big, wonderful world that we haven’t seen before. It feels like it’s been a long time! Our last big trip was to Puerto Rico to lend a hand with the amazing and resilient members of a local Methodist church helping everyone they could repair and rebuild after the devastating hurricane that slammed into their communities in 2018. We lent our hands and they filled our hearts and minds with ingenuity, creativity, faithfulness, resilience and gracious hospitality.
We are planning a new adventure for May ‘23 (rescheduled from May ‘22 due to COVID) to immerse ourselves in the Corrymeela community in Northern Ireland. Lots of US colleges and universities are among the 8,000 people from all walks of life that come to Corrymeela to learn how to be better together, to challenge injustice, to hear each other’s stories so that we learn how to live well with each other. In our increasingly divided world, Corrymeela is a movement of people rallied around one inspirational idea: “Together is better.”
As we’ve seen of late, it’s not so easy “being together” with people who have different political ideas, different ways of expressing their faith, and different ideas about how the world should be. One of their learning clusters is led by Ohio State University and focuses on working with individuals to move communities and individuals from violence to peace around the world. Our program will address the increasing hostility and intolerance found around the world in the “public square.” Acknowledging that our ability to speak, to listen, and to understand in the face of deep division has rapidly diminished in recent years, Corrymeela will share with us research and tools to embrace differences, welcome the stranger, and even a “perceived enemy,” with hospitality, creating space for authentic and safe dialogue to take place and build capacity of groups and communities to engage in positive social change.
We’ll engage in the the theology of reconciliation, peacebuilding, transformative leadership and community building in divided societies. And, we’ll do all of this with people college age and older from all walks of life and various areas of the world.
We are hosting monthly Zoom info meetings and will begin building our community of travelers through meetings, meet ups, story telling and reflection. We are able to take between 10-15 people on this exciting adventure, and we' are committed to helping each and everyone find funding support to ease the financial burden of $1200-$1500.
Even if this trip is not for you this year, if these are ideas and concepts that excite you, join us in building this type of core community that can engage in this transformational work at NAU.
Email us at CMblue@nau.edu from your NAU, CCC or other university email account for the Zoom link for our info meetings, or to meet with our trip leaders, 2018 alum Emma, or Campus Minister, Kathleen, for more information. This trip is open to recent alums and young adult leaders from the last few years due to opportunities missed in 2020, 2021 and 2022 related to COVID related travel restrictions.
We are looking forward to this next great learning adventure and forming connections with our new traveling partners!
