Sense the Earth Loving You
Demarius J. Walker joins GIPL this year as a Road Fellow with the Episcopal Service Corps. We're grateful for his energy and presence! Read a short bio on Demarius here.
"Walk slowly, letting each step kiss the ground, and sense the Earth loving you back."These instructions from Sister Mary at the Sacred Heart Monastery represent a call to consciousness that I am blessed to work out over the next year through an internship with GIPL. I find myself at GIPL, as I found myself in Cullman, AL at the Sacred Heart Monastery, by way of the Road Episcopal Service Corps.
As a Road Fellow for the 2015-2016 "Year of Service," I live in intentional community with ten other young adults who are concerned with issues of social justice and are seeking spiritual discernment. Each fellow is placed in a non-profit or ministry around Atlanta where we seek to understand what it means to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God (and with 11 fellows from all over North America, there are certainly different opinions on what that means.) As fellows, we also engage in a variety of programming and workshops intended to deepen our personal spiritual practices and efficacy as servant leaders.After studying philosophy and political science at Boston University, I sought a way to come back home to Atlanta on terms that allowed me to engage with the questions I had been wrestling with, most abstractly "What lies at the intersection of Truth and Community?" Or more concretely, "How does one operate at the intersection of religion and politics?" Most directly stated, "What is my ministry?" My call to ministry has felt like a very disorienting process. There is so much to be done in this broken world; to which corner am I called to work? The Episcopal Service Corps has provided me with the opportunity to discern this by experiencing the work firsthand. Last year, through the All Saints Atlanta Project, my experience providing marginalized populations with resources to meet their immediate needs was juxtaposed with my experience meeting the needs of a wealthy parish in a traditional church structure.This year, I am working on behalf of God's creation, and I find myself considerably out of my comfort zone. While I engaged in various kinds of activism and worked with interfaith communities during college, I never fully engaged the question of environmental justice; I even struggle to find the right language to use in this arena. Nevertheless, I am excited for the work ahead and the shift in consciousness that is sure to come over the course of my next year at GIPL.On my first day at GIPL, Rev. Kate, our executive director, told me that GIPL's work is about helping people fall in love with God's creation, again. Well, to Rev. Kate and Sister Mary I say, "I am ready!"