A warm and hopeful welcome to our new and returning students, faculty, staff, and all the Arrupe Initiatives community!

It is funny how arbitrary time is, but still, we enjoy the feeling of a new beginning, be it a New Year, or a new administration, or a new semester, and that is because it allows us to rekindle our hope.  With that in mind, we asked everyone at the Arrupe Initiatives to share what they wish for the new year, and for a piece of media to recommend to the USF community.

Luis Enrique Bazan

  1. My wish for 2021 in one word is togetherness. I am really looking forward to being with other people and sharing the same space. Giving people hugs, shaking hands, seeing people’s facial expressions, getting together without being in a meeting. Demonstrating that virtual reality hasn’t replaced the virtue of being in close proximity with others is my biggest wish.
  2. Media recommendation: A book that has helped me during this pandemic is Gabriela, Clavo y Canela by Jorge Amado, and Mafalda by Quino

Ana Karen Barragán:

  1. I wish that our human bonds would meet again to break the different types of violence that prevail in our society, including our Common Home (planet Earth). May our hearts widen and we embrace hope from compassion and tenderness. May we be witnesses to a society that is more reconciled with itself, based on justice and deep love.
  2. Media recommendation: José María Rodríguez Olaizola SJ – writer

Kathleen Shrader:

  1. I wish that we move into the new year with hope, and that we do as Amanda Gorman says and believe that there is always light if we are brave enough to be it.
  2. Media recommendation: I saw this image a while ago and I loved it

Maria Autrey:

  1. My wish for this year is to let go of that which weighs us down and to choose Joy. I read a quote at the beginning of the pandemic by Arundhati Roy that read:  “The pandemic is a portal, We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks, and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”
  2. Media recommendations: Parable of the sower trilogy by Octavia Butler and The City We Became by N.K Jemisin to remind us that we can dream of new worlds.