Steps on the Journey

Jan 5, 2023

By Tim Deveney, Precious Blood Volunteers Director

I have traveled a fair bit during the last 18 years, so I have my packing routine down pretty well. I have different routines for different types of trips. When I pack for recruiting trips to college campuses, I pack pants, button-down shirts, a dressy pair of shoes, and ties for when I’m feeling a bit saucy. If I’m heading to Chicago to visit our volunteers, I’m more of a nice shirt and jeans type of guy. I know to check the weather in every destination I’m going to. It always amazes me how different the weather can be between Chicago and South Bend.

Traveling requires me to think through some of the possible contingencies. Where do I stay that is both comfortable and responsible with the resources the United States Province trusts me with? What’s the best route? Do I really want to pay the tolls to get to Notre Dame, or should I take an extra half-hour on the road to avoid the tolls? Should I rent a car or trust my skills in navigating public transportation? Do I have child care for my kids in the mornings before school? How am I going to get to and from the airport? (Thanks to my mother-in-law and father-in-law for regularly taking care of those last two items.)

Even with all the planning, there is a lot I cannot control. The traffic in Chicago is always a wild card. The places I stay might not be comfortable or quiet (There’s a loud rooster that lived near our volunteers in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago!). There are usually some unique experiences, sights to see, or new food. I learned about the glory of kolaches thanks to former volunteer Lina Guerrero’s parents in Austin, Texas. I have met some amazing people, some of whom I now count as confidants and friends.

Sometimes there are unexpected difficulties that come up. There are times when I feel tired and have to force myself to take that next step. I have been to recruiting fairs that no students show up to, leaving me with two to four hours of thinking about all the other work I have to do and the burden that my family is bearing because I’m traveling. At visits to our placement sites, I have to have unexpectedly difficult conversations with our volunteers or our placement contacts. Those conversations occasionally involve me having to dive really deep into how I am working with those people.

In November, I traveled to Florida for the Catholic Volunteer Network annual conference. It was our first in-person meeting since 2019. During the conference, one of the participants shared the poem “For Those Who Have Far to Travel” by Jan Richardson during an opening prayer. It’s a meditation on the journey of the Magi. It offered me a much different perspective on the journey the wise men took. She opens her poem:

If you could see
the journey whole,
you might never
undertake it,
might never dare
the first step
that propels you
from the place
you have known
toward the place
you know not.

The story of the Epiphany only appears in Matthew’s Gospel. The “wise men from the East” only appear briefly in Matthew’s infancy narrative. The author of Matthew’s Gospel gives them only two more sentences than Joseph, whose silence makes the wise men seem verbose. The unnumbered group undertakes a journey whose destination they do not know.

They appear in Jerusalem to get directions. When they arrive in Bethlehem, they give their gifts to Jesus and offer him homage. They renege on their promise to Herod after having dreams in which angels warn them Herod’s intentions are not good. They end up going home a different way. They are a group of people who appear quietly in Matthew’s Gospel, and after giving their gifts and offering homage to Jesus, they just as quietly disappear.

What was their journey like? What did they pack? What new foods did they taste? Who were the people (besides those in Herod’s court and the Holy Family) they met on their journey?

How did they feel on their journey home? Did they feel the exhilaration of getting a glimpse of God’s love, or did they feel let down that God’s glory was in a child born to a young peasant woman and a carpenter instead of in a palace? Were their lives changed by their journey and those they met at their destination? How did they push through when they were tired, thirsty, or hungry?

We are all on journeys, maybe not as profound as the wise men, but journeys nonetheless. Our community is on a journey of discernment and discovery of how we are to witness Christ’s reconciliation in the world. Ultimately, this is a journey of love, inspired by the love of a God who gave us his Son to bring peace, mercy, justice, and truth. The road is hard, but like the wise men, we need to continue on even if we do not know the steps ahead of us. We probably do not even know the place we are going to! Throughout it all, we need to trust the slow work of God and be open to God’s love being revealed to us in unusual ways.

Tim Deveney is the director of Precious Blood Volunteers. Go to preciousbloodvolunteers.org to learn more about Precious Blood Volunteers. 

This article originally appeared in the January 2023 edition of “The New Wine Press.”

Excerpt from “For Those Who Have Far to Travel” © Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. Used by permission. janrichardson.com

Rolling Up Our Sleeves

Dec 17, 2021

Current PBV, Raechel Kiesel (masked), with other members of the PBMR community

In early November I attended the Ignatian Family Teach-in For Justice, which is hosted by the Ignatian Solidarity Network. One of the speakers, Father Greg Boyle, S.J., founder of Homeboy Industries, a gang intervention program in Los Angeles, spoke about our call to practice kinship. In his talk he kept coming back to a note that we all share the same last name. The last name “being.” He continued, “we are all born the same way. Everyone is unshakably good. Everyone belongs to each other.”

The message from Father Greg has been echoing in my prayers and my mind over the last few weeks. We all belong to each other. We are all in God’s family. We are all made in the image and likeness of God, and we are “unshakably good.” This is all true, but do we actually believe it?

Sometimes it’s hard to see that in the middle of a growing catastrophe of human-caused global climate change, violence that tears the fabric of our communities, the northern hemispheric (and largely white-centric) economic system that leaves billions of folks behind because of where they were born or the color of their skin, and so many other evils in our world.

As I was lost in the despair of so much that is wrong in the world, I kept coming back to his encouragement that we are about “obliterating the illusion that we are separate, we are human beings.” His further instruction that we should not “settle for just shaking your fist, roll up your sleeves to create the place where we cherish each other with every breath.” The challenge is to live up to the belief that we are all connected and then point the way to God’s inclusive love.

Current PBV, Vincent Tedford, in Chicago

When I meet with our volunteers, I see them rolling up their sleeves and being part of creating places where all people are cherished. They are in places where they are better able to recognize their family members who share the same last name of “being” and are children of our loving Creator. I am amazed when I talk to them about what they see and experience with the folks they work and walk with. Instead of just shaking their fists they continue to do the hard work of building a better and more just world. They choose to live out a spirituality of the blood, a spirituality Father Robert Schreiter, C.PP.S. described as a spirituality that “proclaims life in a world where death seems to have the upper hand.”

On a daily basis our volunteers witness the toll that structures which uphold white supremacy and racism takes on the folks they walk with in their placements. It would be easy for our volunteers to point out and shake their fists at these injustices. I know I find myself often shaking my fists at these injustices, and not pointing the way to life. Oftentimes most of us take the easy path of ignoring our own participation in these systems. The hard work of rolling up our sleeves requires us to take a good hard look at our own participation in these structures and commit to breaking them down and building up places where all people are cherished.

We are continuing on with our commitment to the charism of the Precious Blood by making sure we are a welcoming and inclusive community that reflects our charism of reconciliation. Over the next few months we are expanding an effort to examine how the Precious Blood Volunteers Program can proclaim life in this world through being a more racially just program and working for the liberation of all God’s people.

Current PBV, Aaron Wise, at work at KC CARE Health Center

This process will include making sure we are a welcoming and inclusive community that reflects our charism of reconciliation and renewal. It requires some deep questions about how we support our volunteers and alumni of color. In this process we will be looking at how our recruiting practices may unnecessarily exclude people of color. This includes examining how we portray our volunteers and the people they serve in our brochures and website, as well as how we talk about our ministry at recruiting fairs and from where we recruit our volunteers.

We are looking beyond just our own practices to challenge our volunteers and placements to be pointing towards this way of being together as one family. We will engage with our placements to make sure they are working towards a more just future in their hiring practices, their support of their staff, how they treat the people they serve, and who is leading their organizations. We want to be sure that our volunteers are working for reconciliation, where the lives of the folks they work and walk with are valued. Our volunteers should be using this year as an opportunity to bind up their own liberation with the liberation of the people they work with.

In our discernment process and throughout their volunteer year we will need to see how we can better help our volunteers discern their purpose as a way to glorify God through their work and relationships with others.

You can watch Father Boyle’s talk at https://www.youtube.com/user/IgnatianSolidarity along with other videos from the 2021 Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice.

Tim Deveney is director of Precious Blood Volunteers. You can learn more about Precious Blood Volunteers at preciousbloodvolunteers.org. 

“Investing in Your Future” or “Why Volunteer?”

Mar 2, 2017

by Tim Deveney, Director of Precious Blood Volunteers
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being part of a panel discussion hosted by Avila University’s Campus Ministry. The discussion centered around serving after graduation from college. It was a good discussion about our experiences as individuals and what we have learned from former volunteers. I was inspired by the stories and reflections I heard from the good people who were part of the panel.

Former Precious Blood Volunteer, Nate Balmert, made an investment in his future


As part of the panel we took questions from Avila students and Avila’s Campus Ministry staff. They were great questions about why people should volunteer after graduation, what benefits they will receive and the impact they will make on the lives of the people they serve.
One of the questions that came up during the discussion was about how to explain serving after graduation to parental units. I translated the question as “How in the world do you justify to your parents working for little to nothing after spending four years racking up massive student loans?” It’s a great question and a responsible young adult (and parent) should probably wrestle with this question. I jumped right in and offered three of my thoughts on the question.
The first part of my response was about what we offer to our volunteers. We help out with loan deferrals. Additionally, at the end of a full year of service we provide an education award payable to either a loan provider or institution of higher learning. These get our volunteers on a path towards paying off the loans and having freedom from some of that debt earlier in their adult lives.
The second part of my response was that the students discerning a volunteer experience are adults. At some point they have to make decisions on their own. We accept only people who are over 18 and generally accept people who have completed a college degree or advanced technical training. Basically we want young adults to serve with us and we are going to treat them as adults.
As an adult they are ultimately responsible for the eventual repayment of those loans. We encourage our potential volunteers to include the people they love and trust (that hopefully includes parents!) in discerning whether or not to volunteer after graduation. In the end the person has to make the covenant as a volunteer willingly.
After I said all of this I told the students in attendance to not worry too much about the first two and focus on what I’m about to say next.

Former Precious Blood Volunteers, Kara McNamara (left) and Leah Yeo (right), made investments in the type of people they became.


Here’s why: By serving as a volunteer after graduation the person is making an investment in their future. It’s an investment in their future as a human being. It’s a great time to invest their time in learning how to be a better follower of Christ, to be challenged and supported by others in community. It’s a wonderful time to walk with and develop relationships with people who are struggling on the margins of our society.
What a person does when they enter the “real” world informs how they live their lives afterwards so why not do it now?
Learn more about becoming a Precious Blood Volunteer at www.preciousbloodvolunteers.org.
To apply to invest in your future as a Precious Blood Volunteer go to www.preciousbloodkc.org/pbv-apply/.