Jul 13, 2023
2023-2024 Precious Blood Volunteer, Clare Brown
Meet Clare Brown! She’s one of the 2023-2024 Precious Blood Volunteers.
Clare is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame. She earned a degree in sociology, along with supplementary majors in peace studies, and education, schooling and society. Clare is from Arlington Heights, Illinois. She will be serving at Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation (PBMR) in Chicago, Illinois.
Why do you want to volunteer?
“Studying Sociology, Peace Studies, and ESS at Notre Dame greatly increased my awareness of the many ways in which interconnected structures of violence and systemic inequality perpetuate injustice within society. At the same time, my faith calls me to create God’s vision for the world despite the many complex challenges we face. I want to volunteer because it provides an opportunity to put both my education and my faith into action in pursuit of the common good.”
Why do you want to volunteer with Precious Blood Volunteers?
“I was drawn to Precious Blood Volunteers specifically because of its emphasis on seeking reconciliation and deep commitment to accompanying marginalized people. I wanted to be a part of an organization whose work contributes to making a world rooted in peace, justice, and compassion ever more possible and imminent every day. Additionally, I am looking to gain knowledge and skills related to restorative justice, and the placement at PBMR provides an opportunity to learn from people who are doing amazing work in that area.”
What are you looking forward to about your volunteer experience?
“I am looking forward to learning from the work of PBMR and the many ways in which they practice restorative justice in concrete ways. I know that I have much to learn, and I am excited to learn with and from others in the community! I can’t wait to see how God will surprise me throughout my volunteer year with relationships and challenges that push me to grow in empathy, curiosity, and commitment to the flourishing of all people.”
Learn more about Precious Blood Volunteers at preciousbloodvolunteers.org.
Jul 12, 2023
2023-2024 Precious Blood Volunteer, Abigail Standish
2023-2024 Precious Blood Volunteer, Claire Downs
2023-2024 Precious Blood Volunteer, Clare Brown
2023-2024 Precious Blood Volunteer, Anna Nowalk
We’re excited to announce the 2023-2024 Precious Blood Volunteers!
We have four wonderful young women who will be starting in late July. These four will join us for Orientation which starts on July 30, 2023 and ends on August 5, 2023. Two of them will be living in community at Jerusalem Farm in Kansas City, Missouri. The other two will be living in community with the Dayton Precious Blood sisters in Chicago.
Our two volunteers in Kansas City will be working at two different placements. Abigail Standish will be serving as coordinator of Bishop Sullivan Center’s “Order Ahead” program. Claire Downs will be serving as a community health worker at KC CARE Health Center. Abigail is from the Houston area, and Claire is a fellow Texan from the Dallas area. Abigail is our first volunteer from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. Claire is our second volunteer from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.
Clare Brown and Anna Nowalk will be serving in Chicago at Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation (PBMR). Clare is from the Chicago area, and Anna is from Virginia. Anna is our first volunteer who matriculated from Fordham University. Clare is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
Over the next several days we will be introducing them here on our website and on our social media feeds. Keep a look out for them!
Please keep our volunteers in your prayers as they begin their service. If you’d like to send them a note of support please send us an email at volunteers@preciousbloodkc.org.
Learn more about Precious Blood Volunteers at preciousbloodvolunteers.org.
Feb 1, 2022
Raechel with members of the PBMR community
By Raechel Kiesel, Precious Blood Volunteer
One sunny Sunday in December, I found myself in the PBMR hallway watching my friend Essie teach the niece of one of the moms in our Families Forward program how to play a clapping game. It was similar to many of the patty-cake-like games I played as a little kid, but it wasn’t one I had seen before, so I soon turned to Sr. Carolyn, and we tried to clap along with Essie and our new friend. After many rounds of trying and failing, I ended up playing with the young girl. We had both improved just a little, so soon enough we were shouting together, “Right! Left! 1 Right! Left! 1 2 Right! Left! 1 2 3!” and clapping faster and faster, and when we finally made it to 5—which was a major feat, let me tell you—we jumped up and down and cheered. It was then that I remember watching out of the side of my eye as Fr. Kelly walked past us, narrowly avoiding contact with our flailing, clapping limbs, and I realized just how ridiculous I looked at that moment. Not only did I have reindeer antlers on my head, but I had been bent over playing patty cake with a little girl, laughing, shouting, raucous, and happy, in the middle of the hallway on a Sunday. It took me a while after that to realize that, actually, it wasn’t ridiculous at all—not for PBMR. Because that’s what we do here.
Only a month before that, I had been asking Sr. Donna if I could come to the first in-person mothers circle since covid had rendered them virtual. And when I found out that my parents would be visiting that weekend, I asked if my own mom could come too. Of course, she said, “Oh yeah, that would be great!” So that Sunday morning, I sent my dad with my brother to explore the city, and my mom and I went to PBMR. We were one of the first ones there, and still we looked at Sr. Donna and said, “Are you sure that it’s okay if we’re here?” We were feeling the discomfort. As two white women, strangers to gun violence and the grief of having lost a child, we were hyper aware of entering a space that did not belong to us—and yet we were invited in. So we made our name tags, pretended like we were comfortable, and we sat next to each other as the rest of the circle filled with beautiful women from around the neighborhood.
I didn’t expect to have much to share. Here at PBMR, we sit in circle for staff meetings each week, and by that point I had a pattern. Even coming here, I knew that as a white woman, I had so much I needed to learn. So I had decided early on that my primary role was to listen. Which isn’t something I’ve often told myself—to be humbled and value others’ voices over my own.
But in the mothers’ circle that day, when the talking piece got to me, I told a story about losing my grandmother, and the beauty that I got to witness in her final days among my family, how important that was to me. Looking around the circle as I was speaking and teary-eyed, and then as my mom spoke after me, the other women were nodding. They looked at us with faces that knew loss deeply, even the loss that we had felt, losing my grandma, my mom losing her mom. That stood out to me. They didn’t have to let some white girl walk into their circle and try to say something about grief, but they did. Not only that, they listened and encouraged me, and I felt so welcome and loved in a space I didn’t know could be my own.
Raechel with fellow Precious Blood Volunteer, Vincent, at PBMR
Jacquelyn Grant, a womanist theologian, makes the case that God is a Black woman and, in fact, manifested “in the community of Black women” (Grant, Jacquelyn. “The Challenge of the Darker Sister.” White Women’s Christ & Black Women’s Jesus, Scholars Press, 1989). In the experience of ancestral Black women, she writes, “They identified with Jesus because they believed that Jesus identified with them. As Jesus was persecuted and made to suffer undeservedly, so were they.” I read these passages years ago, but only now, witnessing the power of the community of Black women who gather at PBMR, do I understand them more clearly. These women incarnate God’s love, strength, and pain in our community, as they’ve done for me.
So our women—our community—are the ones who really decide that hospitality is what we do at PBMR. I know it might have been the founders thinking it over in the beginning, but the mothers sitting in circle that day were the ones to tell me, no, you’re welcome here. Come into this circle, sit with us, be with us. We know your pain, and we can share ours, and the burden can be a bit lighter. We can share healing, too, and laughter, and breakfast, and we can play patty cake and laugh raucously in the middle of the hallway together.
Raechel is serving as a Precious Blood Volunteer at Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation in Chicago, Illinois. Go to preciousbloodvolunteers.org to learn more about Precious Blood Volunteers.