A Message From our Chaplain and Director of Spiritual Life

We at the Center for Spiritual Life want to be grounded in a different way than encouraging us to seek belonging by othering other people.

In the upcoming months and years, we will see communities being targeted and demonized with the goal of undermining our democratic system and normalizing cruelty in our communities.

In this time of uncertainty, we are committed to building solidarity with immigrant and Black communities, LGBTQ+ communities, particularly trans and non-binary communities, Native people, and all communities who have already been the target of violence and demonizing narratives. We need each other.

We will take action together, and we will also be in community with each other. At this time, we know it might be hard to sit across the table or next to people who do not share our exact opinions. But our belief in our common humanity must give us courage to face one another.

Please care for yourselves and one another. In the midst of everything else we might be feeling, let us also locate beauty and connection and perhaps even faith in what is larger than us. And when we cannot do that ourselves, may we feel held up by someone else who can.

We yearn for a country and for a campus where every person gets to co-create the systems that hold us together. We yearn for a space where communities are not pitted against each other because of their race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or any other otherized identity. In that world, you belong, and I do too.

—Hilary Martin Himan, Chaplain to all (secular, spiritual, and religious) and Director of Spiritual Life