FINDING GOD ON PARK STREET

Professor Paul Kennedy: Service and the STM Medal

• Grace Klise, Director of Alumni Engagement • Season 3 • Episode 1

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We are honored to welcome Professor Paul Kennedy, the esteemed 2024 recipient of the Saint Thomas More Medal, as our guest on this special bonus episode before the premiere of Season 3 of Finding God on Park Street. Sharing stories from his four decades at STM, Paul reflects on the role of this faith community in his life as a father, professor, and believer.

Journey with us as we explore a central theme of Paul’s life of faith--service. As the STM Soup Kitchen begins its 41st year, Paul talks about the origin of the Soup Kitchen and what he remembers from its very first day. Still volunteering on Wednesdays at the Soup Kitchen, Paul believes he’ll be asked by God at the end of his life how he served the poor. So, he will never stop serving. And, he hopes that our students make that same commitment when they leave Yale. 

Finally, we tackle the ways in which Saint Thomas More has changed, and remained the same, since the 1980s. Prayer and peace continue to be foundational, especially as Yale students, faculty, and staff rush from one commitment to another. Paul reminds us all to “take a breather” and spend a few moments in conversation with God. For Paul’s wisdom and witness, we are grateful and, for his service, we are honored to recognize him. Tune in to learn more about the legendary man receiving the Saint Thomas More Medal this year. 



Mentioned in this episode: Guido Calabresi, Sam and Miriam MacDowell, The Rev. Richard Russell Years, Tom Golden & The Expansion of Catholic Ministry at Yale, Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK), Columbus House

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Grace Klise:

This is Finding God on Park Street, a podcast from Saint Thomas Morey, yale's Catholic Chaplain Center. I'm your host, grace Kleiss, with Michelle Keefe, our student co-host. Thanks for listening. Listening.

Grace Klise:

Before we kick off Season three of Finding God on Park Street, we bring you a special episode with Professor Paul Kennedy, the 2024 recipient of the Sat Thomas More Medal. As you'll hear in this conversation, the STM Medal celebrates individuals in our community who embody the virtues of our patron saint. This year, we are proud to bestow the award on Paul, a longstanding member of our community, an invested board member, a devoted Soup Kitchen volunteer and a beloved history professor. As we prepare to celebrate Paul this month, we reflect with him on his 40 years at St Thomas Moore.

Grace Klise:

Although Paul is known internationally for his contributions to the fields of international security and diplomacy, at STM he's known as 10AM 10 ass attendee and soup kitchen greeter, and that's just the way he likes it, because Paul believes that when he stands before God at the end of his life, he'll be asked how he served the least of our brothers and sisters. So, 41 years after Paul greeted the STM Soup Kitchen's first- ever guest, he continues to show up on Wednesdays to serve Paul's reflections on faith and service invite us all to ask ourselves how we are praying, serving and slowing down in our everyday lives, because it's then that we'll find God. Let's dive in,

Grace Klise:

Paul. When I called you on Tuesday, you were at Lighthouse Point Park birdwatching. Can you tell us a little bit about this hobby of yours?

Paul Kennedy:

About six miles south of the city of New Haven. The south of Yale is a promontory going into Long Island Sound with a lighthouse on it, Lighthouse Point, and it turns out to be a marker for migrating birds, butterflies and loadings. What else goes south? But I'm particularly interested in the overhead flight on good days, windy days, of the hawks, the kestrels, the osprey and all of the other raptors which have spent the summer season in greater New England and are now heading south, migrating south. There's a dedicated group of hawk watchers, the Northeast Hawk Watch, which goes there almost every day.

Grace Klise:

Wow, M ichelle, I know you know a lot about this.

Michelle Keefe:

It's a phenomenal place. I wasn't there on Tuesday. Was Tuesday a good day?

Paul Kennedy:

No, it was a crappy day, oh no. On the other hand, the Thursday preceding it, I saw in the daily Count, which they released very swiftly, 850 raptors of very many types, large and small, went across Lighthouse Point. Probably means that twice that number were in the sky, but we just were unable to count them, wow.

Grace Klise:

Okay, it's exciting. That is exciting. I know this is a hobby of yours as well, Michelle.

Michelle Keefe:

I'm usually at the Hawk Watch, but depending on my class schedule really determines when. But was there a good community there on Tuesday?

Paul Kennedy:

Tuesday is very small. The weekends are where people are frustratedly, in their office or in their workshop, you know, looking up and seeing good winds above them but unable to get down to Lighthouse Point-- just dying to get to. Saturday morning, is when they can go there and watch.

Michelle Keefe:

I know I've gotten texts from friends who are there like a random Wednesday, like you got to come down and I'm in class, I can't.

Paul Kennedy:

I know.

Michelle Keefe:

What's been the most memorable bird for you at Lighthouse.

Paul Kennedy:

The rare golden eagle.

Michelle Keefe:

Yeah.

Paul Kennedy:

It's not just that above you, flying south, is an eagle of a slightly broader size than the sea eagles that we count and get excited by. It's just the excitement of the bird watchers below. Like you know, is this, can it really be a golden? Et cetera. And for some of them it's the first time, maybe the only time in their life they're going to see a golden eagle and flight. So that's one.

Michelle Keefe:

That's a favorite one for mine too, and also it's the excitement of everybody below just saying, oh my gosh, there's a golden eagle. It looks very similar to a lot of the other birds you're seeing, but you're like it's a golden one.

Grace Klise:

Well, you are very busy this fall, Paul, with, I know, teaching a couple of courses, birding on the side. You also are the recipient of the 2024 STM Medal, and I'll read the description here for those listening who maybe don't know what this is. The Saint Thomas More Medal, inspired by our patron saint, celebrates individuals who embody faith, wisdom, humility and uncompromising integrity in their life, work and service to others. So congratulations on this honor, and I know there is a buzz around Saint Thomas More right now, as we are preparing to celebrate you on October 11th. Can you share a little bit about what this honor means to you?

Paul Kennedy:

It's stupendous to me about what this honor means to you. It's stupendous to me. This is a community I fell into when I came here with my family, my word, 40 years ago, and it's served me and us and I hope I've tried to serve them and Saint Thomas More and the students and friends I've made. But it's really wonderful. Secondly, it's wonderful because I follow in the footsteps of my dear pal Guido Calabresi, who was awarded the first Saint Thomas More Medal for his outstanding, remarkable life and achievements, Saint Thomas More Medal for his outstanding, remarkable life and achievements. So I'm honored in two ways by you and by the fact that I'm a sort of an echo of Guido in a certain way.

Grace Klise:

Yeah, two giants of our community who are honored in this way.

Michelle Keefe:

Well, and Guido last year had mentioned that he also is very decorated with many awards and medals and he talked at the dinner I remember last last year about why the Saint Thomas More Medal was particularly important for him. Can I ask you the same? What makes this medal particularly important? Because you also are very decorated with many awards and medals.

Paul Kennedy:

As folks like Guido and to a lesser extent myself rise in prominence for whatever area we've been distinguished in and the various awards come in, I think you can feel a little blasé about it.

Paul Kennedy:

I mean, when Guido gets his 29th honorary degree he's really trying to feel very, you know, super, super excited about it, while somebody who's getting an honorary degree with him for the first time is super excited. So the excitement or the thrill of being awarded the Saint Thomas More Medal is a reflection of the sort of deep feeling I have for this community. It really is a remarkable one. I'm so pleased to have arrived 40 years ago, to have found a faith family and a faith locale.

Paul Kennedy:

It was terribly important for me and my wife Kath, also a Catholic, also from the northeast of England originally, that with our three Bolshevik sons aged 15, 13, and 5, to move from attending Mass in the city of Norwich in the east of England to attending Mass fairly smoothly I mean the Sunday after we arrived at Saint Thomas More and for them to grow up like looking sideways at Yale undergraduates and graduates in the same worshiping community was for me very, very important indeed. And the other thing which it's rather hard to find a homily or reflections on the readings of the Sunday service, which come anyway close to the thoughtfulness and intellectuality of what happens at Saint Thomas More. So it's very good to be reinforced in the idea that there is not only a way of finding one's faith in the service, but that one can be provoked intellectually by what is said, by the thoughts of the homilists.

Grace Klise:

Yeah, it is a special part of Saint Thomas More, our worshiping community, that in the pews there are students, undergrad and graduate, there are faculty members, there are staff members, there are people from the community who choose to worship there with their families, and so you see that whole range of different life seasons and backgrounds. Most have a connection to Yale, which I know for our students is really exciting Then when you see this esteemed professor kneeling in prayer in the next pew over the impact that that has on our students too. But as you said, it's a spiritual home and also an intellectual home to be challenged in their faith.

Paul Kennedy:

I want to add on to that and give it another twist. It was important for my sons, I think, looking there, and important for me that they could see well, you didn't have to lose your faith. You didn't have to just drop out because you'd finished with Church, finished with religion, because you had become an undergraduate or graduate at some distant place. You could carry the faith with you. With you, and I think that's really significant. If I would go and visit my second son, John Kennedy, down in North Carolina on a Sunday, we would head off to find a Catholic church somewhere down the highways and byways of the foothills of Appalachia. If I'm in the city, I might join my third son, Matthew, and find a Mass there. So it's important for reinforcement of the idea that intellectuality and Church can go hand in hand.

Michelle Keefe:

I think about the amount of times because I recognize the professors that I've had. But when I'm sitting next to people who, to me, are people of the community first, and then I learn, oh man, that's Guido. Like I remember the first time somebody said, yeah, that's Guido, you know, like recognizing the greats that you're among but knowing them first as members of the worshiping community, it's a really, it's a really beautiful almost reversal of you know the, the forward facing, intellectual. It's seeing a person again, like Grace was just saying, kneeling in prayer next to you as a member of the same community, and then learning, oh my gosh, wait, you do this. Oh, you wait, you have that, you're, you're this.

Grace Klise:

You know it's really phenomenal kind of first. We are all one before God. Yeah, Spending time on this Sunday or at daily mass, taking time from our busy, busy lives to worship together, yeah, it's really special. So 40 years ago, Paul, you came to Saint Thomas More with your family. Can you share some memories of those early years at Saint Thomas More? Can you share some memories of those early years at Saint Thomas More, maybe how it is similar to the place that we know it to be today.

Paul Kennedy:

And then some things that are a little different four decades later, the fantastic new buildings of the chaplaincy and to hark back to ancient and beaten up places where things would take place. So the great similarity is standard 10 am Mass. It has not wavered. The mix of students, faculty and the chaplains is quite wonderful. I'll talk a little about Chaplains in a minute.

Paul Kennedy:

The fact that fairly shortly after we arrived here, just by coincidence, the senior assistant chaplain, Fr. Jerry Cohen, told the community that Next Door Christ Church had asked if we could take over the Wednesday running of a soup kitchen to give that community a chance to have its weekly committee meetings and other things on a Wednesday and not be interrupted by the soup kitchen actions, and to see the early response to that. And then, almost hesitant on both sides beginning of the soup kitchen, I can remember being on the door when the very first attendee or recipient of our soup kitchen poked his head around the door and said is this where the new soup kitchen is? And we kind of all ran out to greet him Don't go away, come on in. And then by the end of that first Wednesday, maybe somewhere in November 1983, if my dates are right, on that day we had 65 and we thought it was great. And then the next we had 110. And then, you know well, we were off to the races, yeah.

Grace Klise:

We're getting ready for the next season of the Soup Kitchen when this podcast comes out our 41st year of the Soup Kitchen- will be off and running as it has been for the last 40 years. We often see you on Wednesdays at the Soup Kitchen. Why is this something that you continue to dedicate time to each week?

Paul Kennedy:

I do it in a miserably small way, time to each week. I do it in a miserably small way. I go to join Joe Gerson as a welcomer, or what is the word? What is our word?

Grace Klise:

Greeter.

Paul Kennedy:

Greeter yes. Inside or when it's nice weather outside. That's a great deal of fun. I hardly feel I'm working compared with. I think my original status was one of the dishwashers, or cleaner rubbers or something like that pots and pans department.

Paul Kennedy:

But it still is wonderful to give and to be there and to see what is happening. New Haven is a city which has this extraordinary mix of wealthy and non-wealthy and to just see the operation of not just ours but the other soup kitchens and night shelters, offering some work for the poor, for those disadvantaged, drives me quite a lot. If you talk to some of the other members of our community, they also may say that when our great chaplain, father Bob Boulogne, was close to, I mean, he knew when he was leaving. When he was getting close, he started like hammering home in his homilies need for service, for looking after those less advantaged. He was starting to get a little teary, I think he felt Bob felt so committed to this thing, he had this imagination that when we are individuals, passed away and went up to those pearly gates and there was St Peter standing at the door, but there was Christ just looking over Peter's shoulders. This is a funny image.

Paul Kennedy:

But they would ask one question, Bob said, and that would be what have you done for the poor? So never mind your distinctions, never mind your service, never mind what you've done in the Church as a Cardinal or this or that or the other. What have you done for the poor? Have you done for the poor? And then Bob stepped down away from the pulpit and walked back, I think, really emotionally filled by asking and demanding from us.

Paul Kennedy:

So I think, in a minor way, just being able to get there on a Wednesday, even if it's small scale compared with those who might have been cooking up ur two chefs might have been there the night before and cooking for ages I just feel I have to cling to a bit of a commitment to the place. It's important Psychologically. I think we've often in our Christian faith stressed that there's a thrill and a great benefit in giving, not just in the receiving of some benefit but in the giving of it. I feel that very much when I go to a soup kitchen. I think as a Catholic and Christian parent, you don't overstress what you're doing.

Paul Kennedy:

With some delight you learn that, like one of your sons or one of the students who went and helped along at the soup kitchen is now down in Washington DC and has found a soup kitchen there and is going to a soup kitchen to work and volunteer and that's kind of thrilling here and that's kind of thrilling. Maybe more of what we do rather than what we're saying with our children and the students who are around us and not only the students, the faculty members too, and other members of our community how much and devotion that we see every day at Saint Thomas More.

Grace Klise:

I can't tell you how many times I've walked by the Chapel, you know, rushing to drop off these copies somewhere, and I see a student who's kneeling in prayer in this quiet, empty Chapel between classes and it just moves me to to be in awe of the faith that we have around here.

Paul Kennedy:

I agree. It would be equally thrilling if you were on on the street and you saw a student heading over in haste and you realized that they were one of the regulars at the soup kitchen and they were a bit late and they were running to get there because it was important to them and I, like you, always struck at the medley of people, in some ways, however distinguished, going there to work at the soup kitchen.

Paul Kennedy:

Great professor of mathematics, am McDowell, and he and his wife, both of them Brazilian, Brazilian Catholics. He was a professor in the math department for many years. Miriam was one of the chief cooks in that soup kitchen for so many years and as her work was over, she was, you know, taking off her apron and getting ready to leave. Along into the soup kitchen would come her professor husband, kitchen would come her professor husband and Sam was in charge of a table breakdown and clear up, and so he did that. Every pair of them were there in their different roles, but every Wednesday for decades and decades, and I just, I just took it for granted that this was part of their Saturday, I mean, Sam came from a lab or something like that and went back to a lab and maybe went home, probably to rest and then to cook at the home. But it was just so nice to see a mix and mingle of people who went to the soup kitchen.

Grace Klise:

For both the volunteers and our guests. I know that the Wednesday Soup Kitchen at STM and its return in October is something that so many look forward to as this time of communion together. You mentioned earlier, Paul, that you would touch upon the chaplains, and you talked about Father Bob. I'm curious, though, if you have any stories or memories from your friendship with the Saint Thomas More Chaplains over the last 40 years.

Paul Kennedy:

The Chaplain in Residence when I arrived and was there for many, many years was a Chaplain with the initials RRR-- Richard Russell. A giant of a man. I mean even taller than Father Bob probably. Dick Russell, as he was called, was something like six foot eight.

Michelle Keefe:

Wow.

Paul Kennedy:

And disguised his very considerable knowledge of theology and Church doctrine and many other things in just being a rather affable tall figure, almost as big as a giant totem pole. I remember that totem pole image. There was one time we were having a particularly bad time. There was one time we were having a particularly bad time with unrest and fights from the street spilling over into the soup kitchen. Our guests were getting very distressed about this and we actually for a while had a cop come by just to check things out. But the best like antidote to people misbehaving in the chaplaincy was when Father Russell decided to come and stand as a greeter at the door with his pipe, blowing smoke out in the other direction, down to those below who passed him. So anybody who was going to push their way in to have a fight with his girlfriend or something like that. I could see them looking at the intimidating figure of Father Russell looking down at them, smoking away, standing like this totem pole and turning and deciding not to come in.

Paul Kennedy:

And I thought well, you know, the ways of God are very mysterious. And when Dick goes to his final rest and they list all of the things that he did in supporting the Christian ideal, I hope you'll remember the time that he did in supporting the Christian ideal. I hope you'll remember the time when he just sat and brought control to the entrance to the soup kitchen. A nd another female assistant chaplain was, I think, really important to many of the younger women in our community and wouldn't be seen in the traditional Churches around the place, where that wouldn't happen at all. I thought it was great that there would be like a family. Maybe it was a young faculty member with offspring. There'd be graduate students with smaller kids, there'd be individual students there, which I thought was always very impressive.

Paul Kennedy:

It's a time when, for many, many Catholics, when I think the undergraduate years in particular ones where you're pretty unsettled and you don't regularly go to Mass and not just going to Mass the big array different from, I think, back in Father Russell's day the big array of formed groups the graduate group, the female graduate group, the expeditions, other special events which are there for the undergraduates now is built up significantly and I'm trusting we'll be able to keep that up. The responses from the students to these extracurricular parts of what the chaplaincy does is probably something that most people going just to the Sunday Mass don't really see, but it's there and it's terribly important.

Grace Klise:

And how the chaplaincy has grown too, from one priest, as you said, to then adding assistant chaplains having females as part of that team, now a team of five with Father Ryan as the Chaplain and four assistant chaplains. So they're doing so much behind the scenes, as you said, to help support all those ministries as they're growing.

Paul Kennedy:

I shake my head at that. I mean it's remarkable, it's a true blessing.

Paul Kennedy:

Another thing I've behind the scenes, which I've noticed as being a member of the chaplaincy the whatever we had as an endowment back in the 1980s was actually shrinking year by year.

Paul Kennedy:

The two nice elderly members of the board who were in the business world or finance world were extraordinarily conservative and I think they put their funds or investment in government bonds and it just shrank away in an age of a certain amount of inflation.

Paul Kennedy:

And I think there was a sort of fiscal revolt by Guido and one or two others who were involved in Wall Street investing and said let us take these funds now and turn them around and put them in the market and see how it goes. And that meant that instead of having dire meetings where we would look at a report that said we could no longer afford an assistant chaplain, you turned around and said that we now had such a flow of monies coming in we could support this and that and the other activity. That's a transformation and I don't know if the story is similar in the other the Catholic chaplaincies at the other Ivy Leagues and similar universities. I rather doubt it. I think ours is now big and very special and a lot of growth occurred because a lot of committed lay members of the board, together with successive chaplains, had that happen.

Grace Klise:

It's good to remember those of us today who are benefiting from the efforts of so many who came before us.

Paul Kennedy:

It's good to remember those people and what they did to put us in the position that we are in today they did to put us in the position that we are in today and members of a board who are not resident in New Haven or greater New Haven but have to come one of them coming from LA, a number of them coming from New York City and being not just on the board as it meets in its regular three times a year session, but being part of a subcommittee of a board which would necessarily meet more frequently. They are offered in return for what they felt they gained from being student members of a community 20 or 30 years ago. Student members of the community 20 or 30 years ago. Their paying back is a very significant part of the story.

Grace Klise:

The success story, I think, of our chaplaincy. We're very grateful to the board and grateful for your membership for so many years.

Paul Kennedy:

I think it's important to have a mixed board. In many other bodies and instances I can think of, it's the finance men who are there and nobody else is there and all they deal is a fiscal part of a story. I think having members one or two members of the community, one or two Yale faculty on that board, as well as these distant businessmen, former alums, each learning from the other in certain ways, is because the agenda of the board is now such a mixed and packed one. It can't just be the one third year fiscal report, it's something much bigger and broader, which is great.

Michelle Keefe:

Yeah, it's good to being made now from people on the board for the next 40 years and beyond for St Thomas More and the Soup Kitchen and all of the service ministries. What are some of the things that you hope for in the decisions that you're making right now? What are some of your dreams or hopes as you think forward to the next decades for St Thomas More?

Paul Kennedy:

If you feel that the chaplaincy now is motoring along with like to use a motoring term all cylinders firing that things are from. We don't have any fiscal crisis. We don't have a crisis among the chaplains. We don't have any tension between chaplain and associate chaplains as once or twice happened in our checkered story. We don't have a you know anywhere like a massive student disaffection and departing goods. So in a position of being in a fiscally advantageous state and a wonderfully structurally supported state and I still shake my head in amazement at what, the golden sentiment, what, what, what did this guy, mr, mean when he came along and said that he really wanted to reconnect with the chapel which he had lost any contact with at all, and was willing to put an enormous amount of money into something different? Maybe Father Bob's question or St Peter's question could be thrown out at this chaplaincy, which has so much in terms of assets and so much in terms of resources, are you going to be standing at that pearly gate where the charges made that you didn't make as much use of the chaplaincy's resources in a place where there is still a lot of poverty? So I would hope, before I start rambling on too much on this account.

Paul Kennedy:

I would hope we could try and persuade even more of our students to go into social commitment. You know the great homily of Christ where he gets challenged by the smart aleck lawyer like who is my neighbor? I think it was such a chance and an opportunity to turn around and say, like in New Haven, who is my neighbor? And there are different ways people can help out in a busy, crazy time and it was a privilege to me just to watch what was happening. I went with Alan and a couple of our student volunteers to the food bank and I thought, wow, not only has this food bank grown enormously since it was set up by a young Quaker couple like 35 years ago or so, but there it looks. This food bank could do with three or four hefty volunteers or not so hefty volunteers from us if we managed to let people know that it was there, and so I think we can do significantly more at least I hope we can. Any other transformation in the 40 years? I lack the imagination.

Grace Klise:

Well, that's a great goal. It's really, it's beautiful and something that hopefully St Thomas More is a place where students, as they are being challenged intellectually in the classroom, can also be challenged in this way, as we all could be to serve. Yeah, you mentioned, paul, that college is a time when many students maybe stop attending mass and the faith that they grew up with is something that they drift away from. Can you share a little bit about Paul Kennedy in college?

Grace Klise:

and the role of faith for you as a young adult, especially as you were discovering this field of history that really stole your heart.

Paul Kennedy:

I didn't apostatize or slip away when I became an undergraduate. Like many in Scotland and the north of England and the big industrial towns, if you ventured that far from your working class background to go to university, in the first place it was the local university. So I went to the wonderful but heavy science and engineering and medicine research university of Newcastle Newcastle-upon-Tyne is the largest city in the northeast of England and stayed at home to be helping at home and so I was a home student. I missed a lot of the experience of being an undergraduate away. I didn't get that until I went to Oxford as a graduate student, and so I had a mix of opportunities at that time. I didn't get that until I went to Oxford as a graduate student, and so I had a mix of opportunities at that time. I could still go to my local parish, our Lady and St Aidan. This was an Irish community in the north of England and follow my father's footsteps of being an altar server, and I sometimes would be back then being an Aldo server even while I was an undergraduate student at the local parish.

Paul Kennedy:

I wasn't so involved with the chaplaincy at Newcastle. I viewed it as being there for the students from other places, the Catholic students from other places. When I went to Oxford I hadn't intended to do a graduate degree but I was sort of pushed into it by my Newcastle professors when I got a first-class honors degree in history and they said you mustn't follow this job. You had being a journalist. You must go down to Oxford and do graduate work there and I found a marvelous Catholic chaplaincy there, truly wonderful, intellectual and warm. It inherited an old building which was called the Old Palace, opposite the gates of one of the greatest of the colleges, christ Church, and every afternoon this chaplaincy had sandwiches and tea for everyone. So the whole street life and postman returning from work and all sorts of other people were in at this amazing community and I felt almost a recovery of my faith. It was, the sermons were wonderfully intellectual and it was something different when I moved on from there to my first teaching position at a new university in the UK, at the Cathedral City of Norwich. There was a chaplaincy there but there were local masses in the Catholic Cathedral in Norwich which I was more likely to attend because it was close by with my family and I think that it wasn't really until I moved from that University of East Anglia position to my position in Norwich and was encouraged to find out the chaplaincy here that I became a much more regular member of it and a committed member of it and it was convenient.

Paul Kennedy:

In many, many ways it's fitted in with what I wanted to do with my three sons as they were growing up. The message that came out from the homilies about service and other things was terribly important to me. My eldest son is an international disaster relief coordinator International Disaster Relief Coordinator. He's just left Gaza for another job in Chad, so we rarely see Jim Kennedy. My second son runs an organization that distributes medications to stop drug overdose in the Carolinas west of Asheville. Third son is an instructor and teacher for autistic kids.

Paul Kennedy:

So I don't have a banker among them, I'm sorry to say but in some ways I think that what they're doing is inordinately reinforcing. I don't know whether they go to Sunday Mass regularly as their father, except when they come back home, and then they always go to Sunday Mass with their father. But I just like the idea of the various ways in which you can carry out the mission. When you leave and you go past university time, you can find other things to do.

Grace Klise:

Thanks for sharing that about your sons. You must be very proud of them.

Michelle Keefe:

You've mentioned the role of intellect specifically in the homilies a number of times. As somebody who also sees faith and intellect very much in tandem, it makes me wonder about your prayer life and how that either complements the intellectual work that you're doing or where you find the challenge and the call to serve coming from these homilies. I would love to hear more about your prayer life.

Paul Kennedy:

I don't get much of it during the day. Sometimes I mutter to myself the hasty prayer of Sir Philip Sidney, who was a Elizabethan, I think one of Queen Elizabeth I's generals, and he invents this prayer which he's sent over by Elizabeth to fight in various battles against the Spaniards or with the Dutch in the late 16th century. And he has this prayer saying something like Lord, I'm on the eve of battle. You know, lord, I'm going to be very busy today, so if I don't think of you, will you kindly think of me? So I keep like muttering that, as I'm running in the opposite, instead of heading to you know, wednesday 5 pm mass, I'm going to a seminar at International Security Studies. I keep muttering Philip Sidney's, I don't think of you, will you kindly?

Paul Kennedy:

think of me. I think that prayer is an extremely difficult challenge. Busy people don't need to be the top professional or academic or whatever, just very busy in life. I like it if, after mass, when there's a drift of most of the congregation either going home or going down to the coffee hour, it's possible then just to sit and add on a few prayers, which are necessary ones.

Paul Kennedy:

You you mentioned that you had that occasion where you walked through the chaplaincy and you saw just a young man able there in prayer. So the knowledge that the chapel is open, uh, during you know most of the day and that you can slip in there is one that maybe we need to be reminded of, and not just once, but on a number of occasions. It's also the case that if there are grad students coming in, slipping into St Mary's it's a wonderful church. It's kind of interesting if you slip in there about 1115 or something and you look around and you notice that there's two or three people kind of scattered, but they've come in for prayer for themselves, for something which is very important to them. The chaplaincy, the rooms are available, the places are available. We should I think of myself as well, we should take more account of trying to get in for quiet reflection, mm-hmm.

Grace Klise:

A good reminder, as the semester is running at this point and that there are spaces on campus and very close to campus where we can step away and remind ourselves who we are and to what we're being called to do. And thank you for that reminder.

Paul Kennedy:

I just feel like saying maybe we in the chaplaincy weekly notes and messages about itself. There should be a little section called Take a Breather and underneath that it just says you know, the chapel is open and St Mary's is open. Yeah Turn off for just a little while. Yeah, yeah, yeah, st Mary's is open.

Michelle Keefe:

Turn off for just a little while, yeah yeah, because the amount of times the prayer is God. I don't know if I'm going to be thinking of you today that's it.

Grace Klise:

I'm going to be using that prayer in the meantime, if you can't take a breather, say this prayer instead well, I think when you hear a podcast with Paul Kennedy, people probably assume that we're going to talk about history for most of it, but I think it speaks to who you are and why you are the recipient of the STM Medal this year, in that we spent most of this time speaking about service, and so our final question, paul, for this conversation is where have you been finding God recently?

Paul Kennedy:

One easy and nice place for me every Wednesday to be a greeter at our soup kitchen. People will come to the door and then go through, get a ticket and a second or supplementary ticket for the dessert part of the course and then on they go and then 45 minutes later we will see them coming back up the stairs or coming out rubbing their tummies in a very satisfied way and saying that was a great meal and chatting in a satisfactory way and off they go. Very rarely does anybody come out of there like angry with the place. I don't know if we have had one or two encounters like that. So easy is because I could just join in on the outside and see that the soup kitchen is going so nice and smoothly as it does.

Paul Kennedy:

Challenging because it sort of reminds you uneasily of the amount of poverty and need and everything else in the city.

Paul Kennedy:

Some of those people occasionally come out and if they're new to town, if they're drifting, ask us where the nearest downtown overnight shelter is and you watch somebody walking away from your soup kitchen with a bag on their back.

Paul Kennedy:

Sometimes there's a battered bicycle, sometimes an old lady, and I shake my head at that like where has the family gone that she is here in the soup kitchen. So there's toughness and sadness around as well as a kind of rejoicing at what's happening. I'm pleased to keep doing it and I'm pleased to be. When I see so many of the volunteers they're assembled also for their own faith and service at the Sunday Mass, I'm kind of reinforced in this. It's something that I think once you've got between your teeth this idea of service as well as your faith, you're probably not going to give up and any noises or distractions you have about you know, scandals in the church or what is happening in the higher reaches of the great Catholic Church, which may be bad news or disturbing news, needn't disturb what you're doing in your own significant small mission at St Thomas More Chaplaincy.

Grace Klise:

Thank you, paul, and thank you for joining me and Michelle today. Thank you for your service to St Thomas More. I hope anyone who listens to this, if you see Paul at the soup kitchen or in the pews after 10 am Mass, that you congratulate him. We're really grateful, especially that question that you posed that came from Father Bob, that reminder of what are we doing to serve the poor. Thanks to everyone for listening to Finding God on Park Street. We'll see you next time. If you enjoyed listening today, please share this episode and leave us a rating and review. The producer of this podcast is Robin McShane, director of Communications at STM. Sound mixing and editing are by Ryan McEvoy of Yale Broadcast Studio and graphics are by Mary Lou Cadwell of Cadwell Art Direction. We hope this podcast encourages you to seek God's presence in your everyday life. Thanks for listening and be assured of our prayers.

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Grace Klise

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