Prayers for Peace

Yay Interfaith! This past Wednesday Loyola University Chicago Interfaith Ministry had its first event. It was the International Day of Peace, which made it the perfect day to show the unity of interfaith ministry. Although everything was planned no one can plan for mother nature, and for the first half of our event I felt like she was fighting us. We set up a table in front of the Information Commons and had a grand plan to have interfaith trivia and a game show wheel to spin, but all too quickly it became clear that the wind whipping from the lake was not going to allow that to happen. We had to abandon the game, but we still got to spread our message. We decided to devote our attention to the international day of peace. We had a poster with a giant peace sign on it, and had students write prayers for peace on ribbons and tape them to the sign. It was really beautiful to see the sign fill up as the afternoon went on. It became increasingly colorful, and knowing that each one of those ribbons represented a person praying for peace made it worth all the struggles we had with the wind. It was also encouraging to see how many people stopped at our table and were willing to write a prayer and listen to us talk about interfaith ministry. I think that it was a fantastic way to start of our events at Loyola, and I’m so glad that we made our presence known through a call for peace and prayer. 

- Elaina Jo