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What's the Tea with Ministry?
Welcome to What’s the Tea with Ministry!
Where we spill the tea on the Jesuit and Mercy mission at the University of Detroit Mercy! Bringing you mission-centered conversation through storytelling, reflection, and community connection all over a cup of tea.
What's the Tea with Ministry?
Finding God in All Things: A Conversation with Father Damian Torres-Betello SJ
Ever find yourself reaching for a cup of sleepy time tea as a nightly ritual to unwind? Father Damian Torres-Botello SJ does, and it's these small, meaningful practices that help him nurture his faith amidst a bustling life. Join us for part one of our conversation as Father Damian, a Jesuit and advocate for the voiceless, shares his inspiring journey through spirituality and self-discovery. Listen as Fr. Damian shares about how he tries to Find God in All Things as St. Ignatius advises us to do in the conclusion of the Spiritual Exercises. This is only part one of our conversation with Fr. Damian, stay tuned for a future episode where Fr. Damian shares about his time working at Detroit Mercy!
Welcome to what's the Tea with Ministry, where we spill the tea on the Jesuit and Mercy mission at the University of Detroit.
Anna Lawler:Mercy, bringing you mission-centered conversation through storytelling, reflection and community connection.
Margo Iwu:All over a cup of tea hosted by University Ministry and a student co-host, that's us.
Anna Lawler:I'm Anna Lawler, University Minister, and I'm Margo.
Margo Iwu:E Wood, your student co-host.
Anna Lawler:Today we're going to be talking with Father Damian Torres-Betello SJ.
Margo Iwu:Originally from Kansas City, missouri, father Damian received his master's in social philosophy from Loyola University, chicago and earned his bachelor's of arts in theater from St Mary College in Levensworth, kansas. He has worked in the field of theater for 30 years, concentrating on amplifying marginalized and oppressed voices, including three years at Detroit Mercy in the theater department. Father Damian was also the presider at this year's Celebrate Spirit Mass in September. Father Damian has experience in strategic planning, organizational development, event planning and community outreach. He is a spiritual director, lgbtq plus advocate, contributor to the Jesuit post and co-founder of the Jesuit anti-racism Sedality, a network of Jesuits and lay collaborators examining racism to advanced racial equality with an Ignatian lens.
Anna Lawler:So let's talk with Father Damian. Well, damian, we're so excited to have you here today on the what's the Tea with Ministry podcast. It's always wonderful to see you. I know Father Damian and I for people who don't know had one year where we overlapped at Boston College's School of Theology and Ministry. It was still a very poverty time so we didn't interact a ton, but we were there at the same time finishing up our studies and we're just really excited to have you here today. We're excited to invite you back to be part of the podcast and to have a little bit more time to hear from you. I know some of our students and staff and faculty heard from you at Celebrate Spirit this year and obviously a number of people know you from your time working in the theater department during your Regency, so we're just really excited to have you. Typically, we are recording in person in the Briggs recording studio, but today we're meeting over Zoom because Father Damian currently serves at Bellarmine Chapel out of Xavier University, correct? That's right, yeah.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:Xavier University.
Anna Lawler:We're so excited he is in Cincinnati and so we're recording today over Zoom, so I didn't have my chance to lay out my spread of tea to share. As people of know, we always sit down for a cup of tea on the what's the Tea with Ministry podcast to honor our Mercy roots and share a little bit about Katherine McCauley and her experience on her deathbed telling one of the sisters as she was dying, to make sure that the sister sat down and had a comfortable cup of tea in the afternoons together. And so we're taking on that part of our identity as Mercy and sharing together our time, even though we're not physically drinking tea at this current moment. I want to ask you, father Damian, are you typically a tea drinker? Are you a coffee drinker? What is your beverage of choice?
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:I am a caffeine drinker, so I like coffee and I like tea, but I have an evening routine and part of my evening routine is to drink a cup of sleepy time tea, and that's when I tend to pray. Well, I pray in the morning and night, but I tend to pray in the evening when I have my cup of sleepy time tea. It's quiet, the lights are a little low and I turn off all the screens and it gives me a chance to unwind and to disconnect before I actually go to bed.
Margo Iwu:Does the sleepy time tea actually make you sleepy?
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:Um, that's a good question. I don't know. I will say, though, that the cup of warmth, and it's decaffeinated, and it just causes you to pause. I think that is what makes me sleepy the act of making it and the act of sitting and drinking it.
Margo Iwu:Notice for future reference.
Anna Lawler:Yeah, I find myself being a person who likes to have my cup of coffee in the morning. I tend to often be also like an evening tea drinker. Morning is like I absolutely need the caffeine and I need coffee. But I love sitting down with my cup of coffee and using that as my prayer time in the morning. Just don't have to force myself to do anything yet, just sit, drink my coffee, be with God. I need to do it more often than I do. I try to do it every day, but sometimes sleep wins out and I just think my extra sleep is also prayer time.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:That's right. My grandma used to say if you fall asleep while you're saying your prayers, the angels will finish them for you.
Anna Lawler:There you go. That's great, I love it.
Margo Iwu:Grandma was wise?
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:Yes, he was.
Anna Lawler:Great. So, father Damon, we invited you on the podcast today. One because you're a wonderful person. You have an exuberant energy that is just infectious and wonderful. But we really wanted to spend some time talking to you about two very strong Ignatian practices, aspects of spirituality, one of them being finding God and all things and the other being contemplatives in action. So I think that one of those two kind of subject matters for our conversation for today I know there is so much that we could probably talk about for both. So whatever you know, wherever God leads us today in our conversation will be what we need and what needs to be heard. But I'd love to start by just asking if you could share a little bit more about yourself and your spiritual journey and kind of what led you to where you are today.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:Wow, I'm so excited. You know, my spiritual journey is all over the place and I can say that that when I entered the Society of Jesus in 2012. And before I had decided that I was going to or I should say, maybe it's more like this I decided that I was going to listen to God and say yes to this calling. I had an imagination that that guys who were going to become priests have this like extremely pious life. My imagination is that there would be guys kneeling all the time in the chapel just praying hard, praying the rosaries that they would be. They would never cuss, you know, or they would never drink. They're so holy and just like with God. And I was none of those things. Now, I did have my own kind of piety, right, I did pray the rosary, I went to church, but I, I worked hard and I played hard, and so my spiritual journey was one that felt like I was not good enough, that I was not I was seeking for. I thought it was perfection, right, like I thought that to be a holy and spiritual person meant perfection. And all through college, I had friends who were very devout Catholics, and it was because of them that I would say that they kept my eye on God, always reminding me don't forget to go to church, don't forget to pray. So that's like part one. Not part one, but like like level one of my journey is that I have people in my life that reminded me of God and I was thinking I don't know debauchers and whatever I thought fun was in my early 20s is what I was doing, and I stopped going to church because I stopped practicing being Catholic, because I didn't really agree with everything the Catholic Church taught, and if I didn't agree with me then I couldn't be a part of it. So part two like level two of my journey was searching for someplace to celebrate a faith, because I am one who believes. I was always believed in like a central God, something that was central, something that was bigger than me, and so I was looking for a place where I could celebrate that practice that.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:So I stepped away from the Catholic Church and that time I was pursuing a career in theater. I majored in theater. So in Kansas City you can have a pretty good living. You have some I mean all jobs, worked a lot, a lot of odd jobs, but you can make a pretty good, comfortable or stable living is probably the word to use A stable living working in theater, because it was a cheap place to live at the time. And so I pursued theater. And I have a friend, one of my best friends, his name is Jeremy. He and I started a theater company together called Full Circle Theater Company, and it was through him that I learned that that theater can be a way that you can find God, and you can use theater to amplify voices that are not heard or not loud enough for people to hear. Never heard that in my life about theater and that was like a conversion moment. So my friend's telling me not to forget about God, my other friend telling me hey, this thing that you like, theater, that we like to do, you can also include God in that.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:And then I saw a documentary about our Lady of Lords and in that there was a devotion about the called the first five Saturdays, where you were the first five Saturdays of every month for five months you would go to church, you would pray the rosary and you would go to confession. And so I was. I was enamored by that idea of that kind of devotion. I have no idea, I still don't know why. So I decided I was going to do that and I was going to go to confession for the first time in forever.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:I don't think I went to confession. The first time I was there was probably when we did my first Holy Communion, my first Holy Confession time in fourth grade or whatever grade that is. I went to confession. So I went to a bar right next door to the church, that kind of down the street from the church, that the confession was being held, that, and I had a couple of drinks and I wrote down on napkins and a coaster my sins, so I can make a list of them and I am having, I'm having drinks, so I'm probably going against the church law. I was a little probably tipsy going into confession but I had the liquid courage I needed to go to confession with my notes in my hand and I confessed and the things that I confessed to the priest and said to me you know, god loves you and I had never heard that before. I never heard that and since that I was confessing, I always felt like that God was condemning me. I grew up with a very with a God that was the image of God I grew up with was like a dictator. God, you know, god can, god can give and God can take away. God can judge you and and that's it. But but God loving you was not really the language that I was used to. And so this Jesuit priest, with the Jesuit, it was the Jesuit parish in Kansas City, st Francis Xavier, where this priest is telling me that I am a loved person, and that's like conversion number three. We're like, oh my God, okay, okay.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:Simultaneously, at the same time, my friend of mine asked me to audition for this church choir and this church choir, st Peter's Church in Kansas City at the time, was this really good choir and you had to audition to get into it. And she wanted to audition and and she didn't want to do it alone. So I said, fine, audition with you. But I did not. And it was only. The intention was to give her the courage she needed to audition for this choir.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:Well, I ended up getting into the choir with her. So I said, okay, I'll join the choir, but I'm not going to go to church, like the choir saying in the back of the church, of the church loft, and you could step behind this wall and then come out of the wall to sing. So it's like. So when the church part happens quote unquote when church happens, I will step behind the wall and then, when it's time to sing, I'll go in front of the wall and sing with the choir and then go back so I won't participate, I'll just sing. But you cannot not participate in mass, like suddenly you're sitting there, I'm singing a song and then I'm sitting where the choir sits and I'm listening and then I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't mean to listen, I'm going to go back behind the wall and slowly but surely, I am like listening and listening and hearing and conversion.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:Number four occurs. And this is all in a span of like. I graduated college in 2001. I entered the Society of Jesus in 2012. So, like this is all in that time span that all this is happening. And my spiritual journey went from one of like doubt, of extreme doubt I still have that, but extreme doubt to to one of returning to the church, the Catholic Church, and being faithful and praying and going to church and going to adoration and returning to devotions I was raised with, like the rosary, and none of it perfect, you know. Sometimes I would fall asleep in my prayers, sometimes I would get bored and stop praying, and my spiritual journey was all over the place and I would say, probably still is. I don't think there's, I don't even think saints have a perfect, perfect, perfect spiritual life. I hope I would, hopefully would have been, because then that would be what I'd like to try and live up to.
Anna Lawler:Thank you so much for sharing all of that. It's just a beautiful story to hear and I think it's a really relatable story for a lot of people who go through, especially young people. I think some of our students here on campus probably could relate to elements of your story of kind of maybe being raised in a particular tradition and navigating that tradition as a young adult and having to make it your own, and sometimes that means leaving. I know there was a lot of searching for my own spiritual journey as a young person in college and after college of trying to figure out where I felt most at home and I kept ending up back in the Catholic Church. But it definitely was a period of time where I did a lot of exploring and also a lot of not going to church and I always laugh, I always talk about how God is just the most humorous, because I myself went through a period, probably even as a young young person, like high school age or even middle school.
Anna Lawler:I have a story of when I was in high school or interviewing to be in high school. I was. I went to an all. I ended up going to an all girls Catholic high school and I had never gone to a religious school in my entire life. And in the interview I have a memory and I just God laughs at me when I think about it of saying I could you know I can get behind going to an all girls school. I'd never gone to an all girls school.
Anna Lawler:I said I can get behind wearing a uniform. I never had to wear a uniform anywhere. I said, but the God stuff is going to be hard for me. I'm not sure how I feel about the God stuff is how I recited in my my school interview. They let me in, thank God, and you know they converted me, they went, they they're like we can. We can probably change her opinion on that because I ended up loving theology classes and religion classes and just learning and I even started to like going to chapel every morning. So you know there are things there. I just always laugh at God's God's humor of being like you don't know what you're going to like. You might think you don't like this, but you will. You find space and home in church again.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:I was just going to agree.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:I was just going to agree and I think something that struck me was in what you were sharing is that God is, god does have a sense of humor, and yet God, I think it, gives us the freedom to explore and to come to our own right.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:I that are the Catholic faith, and maybe all faith, regardless of the tradition. I'm thinking. So if I'm wrong, I apologize to those for listening, but but I feel like that faith is to lead us to freedom. Right, and part of that freedom is the freedom to be able to explore, to come to our conclusions, to come to our own desires and what we want. And sometimes that might mean for some, but they just never return, and sometimes you do, and but yet our faith gives us that freedom to do that so that we can live a life that is free. Otherwise, if it's a dictated faith not to not to diminish those who maybe live in that kind of faith, that that's my own language that I'm using but if the Catholic faith, faith was a dictated faith in a way that meant everybody, you have to be Catholic, that could, that could be a slippery slope and and strange and be strange for me if that was the case. Yeah, yeah.
Margo Iwu:Mark, are you going to say something? I just had a silly joke to crack and that's how I found my love for pineapples. That was it. I hated them growing up and all it took was one cold juicy pineapple in the Titan dining room and now I love them. But that was it. Yeah, I'll go to other God stories later, but I do agree on the idea of falling in love or liking, growing to like something that initially you didn't anticipate liking.
Margo Iwu:I don't know if I don't know, if I experienced that with my faith journey. I can just say I can only attest to the fact that I know I've grown. I don't think that there was really a time that, like I stepped out, maybe freshman year. Like you know, I became a freshman and started like, maybe not playing my rosy as much, but I did attend Mass at one of my favorite places. I didn't like the faith as much, but I will attest that ministry shout out to sister Erin because I know she's going to be listening somewhere. I'm not surrounded by ministry or if ministry wasn't in Shepo during the time that, like I was a freshman, I probably wouldn't be in. I probably wouldn't be where I am currently on my journey. There we go.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:But that is, that is a thing though, isn't it, mark? I mean, I like there are things that happen, like that story, that part of my story, right, where I watched that documentary about a lady of lords. It was an accident, like I did not seek out that that documentary it was. I think someone just put it on someplace that I was at and I was supposed to be visiting. But I ended up like just watching this documentary and it was an accident, right, it was not. It was the juicy pineapple, right that I was not expecting that I was going to be like. And suddenly I'm watching this and I'm just like taken by it and drawn to it, and I have no idea why, but I bit into it and I wanted to continue eating that particular pineapple. It was juicy, it was juicy.
Margo Iwu:Okay, so how have you embraced the Ignatian spiritual practice of finding God and all things?
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:You know that word embracing, I think, is interesting to me, because embracing means in my mind, the way I have defined embracing is that I have fully, completely committed myself to it. That it is that I'm holding onto it and I struggle. I struggle with that, not that I struggle with the idea of finding God in all things, but in how to do it Right, like I can. There's like the easy part for me is to find God in nature beautiful. You know, this morning here in Cincinnati it was a chilly morning there were squirrels that were kind of just like balled up in a little ball and they just looked so adorable and like I can see God. I can see God in that squirrel.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:But then as the day unfolds and there are people who might come across my daily path that I just am not excited to see frustrations about the work that I'm doing, even globally, things going on in our country and our world, like where is God in that? And that's where I struggle to embrace right, I don't know, because sometimes it does feel good to. I don't want to say hate on people but like you don't agree with me. Sometimes it feels good to say how dare they not agree with what I'm saying. They are wrong. That is sometimes that feels good, and then later on in prayer at night with my cup of tea, and it's like, okay, well, that's probably not the right, that's not the very Christian frame of mind that I need to have, but in that moment I did not find God in there.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:So I think for me that finding God in all things tends to almost always happen after the fact and it almost always happens in retrospect. It's very rare that I am able to in the moment, unless it's with nature, but very rarely in the moment am I able to say, oh, there's God. I mean even around my family, that I love friends that I love. I love them so much. But I don't actively say there's God. I just say, oh, there are my friends that I love.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:And then afterwards in my prayer is when I'm able to actually identify with that phrase that God was there. God was there. I want to embrace it. I desire so much to walk in this world and just to be like, oh, there's Anna, anna, there's God, margo, margo, there's God. But I will find God in my prayer at the end of the day, when I pray about this moment, and I will see God in the both of you, but as life is unfolding I see Anna and Margo, and not that God is absent, but God is never first in my thought. Like that that makes sense.
Anna Lawler:Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I think the way you were just describing is probably also how I experience finding God in all things. It is definitely super easy to look at nature and be like, oh yeah, that beauty. Like yesterday, leaving work, the sky was particularly beautiful. It was like a beautiful orangey, pinky clouds. I was like, oh wow, what a beautiful sky to have in December, when it's usually just so gray and dark.
Anna Lawler:That's a very easy moment to see God and it's probably when I'm explaining what finding God in all things means I often will talk about nature. But it is much harder to in some of the difficult moments in life, some of the difficult interactions, see God in those spaces. But it is easier after the fact. It is easier to go back and be like, ok, yeah, maybe in the moment I wasn't feeling great about X, y or Z that happened, or I didn't appreciate how that person said that or worded it or that's not how I would handle the situation, but there's still a space to be like, but there was still goodness there and that goodness is from God.
Anna Lawler:And I think also, what was the other piece of it that I was just thinking about, not just about the goodness of God and the reflection? Oh, I kind of I love to always think, particularly with saints, with people like St Ignatius, with Catherine Macaulay, like what was their framework, what was their, what was their mindset when they talk about these things. So for Ignatius, what did he intend in the spiritual exercises as he comes to the conclusion and realizes that you can find God in all things? Is that for him? Was that lived out in the same way? Did he walk around the earth and say to himself there's God everywhere in this, and is he doing that all the time? Or did he also have moments, what I would call the very human experiences of being like, nope, this was frustrating and annoying and I don't want this. And did he experience it more in his personal reflection or was it in the moment? I always like to think about the very human aspect of saints or important influence, influential people.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:Yeah, yeah, but it's been a challenge, though. I mean really to think of the fact that that, when we sit, when the phrase of all, the phrase, all things like that, means all means all right, and so to think of the, of what I would exclude from the all, god is also there and it, oh, that's hard, that's that's, that's a challenge. That's a challenge when, when I heard on the news I think it was weeks, months ago I remember when it actually happened, when the war between Hamas and Israel started and you know, back and forth, both sides are warring against each other, both sides are innocent, people are dying on both sides and, unfortunately수 If I to believe that God is in all things, and God is in that too, and I struggle when, where, where is God in that? I Still don't know. I Still, I still don't know. But the challenge is the invitation. The challenging invitation is to is to is to contemplate and reflect and to feel that God is in that.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:Now, what, what I mean by that? I don't know, like bombs and death, I, my instinct is no, um, but, but all things, what? What is that? It is a challenging, it's a really good. It's a really good like Pithy phrase and I think it means well, but then when you, when you really break it down, uh, that is, it becomes almost impossible.
Anna Lawler:I think, sometimes, depending on the situation, right, like depending on the situation- yeah, when you take in to account the suffering of the world, it's really hard to embrace Finding God in all things. Yeah, where, like, where is God in in someone's suffering? Yeah, I always like to think that God's present to someone suffering, but it's really hard to say, oh well, god's still there, like that. It's almost one of those things that, like, I often think of the phrase like after you know terrible situations where people have lost, like a child, or lost, um, you know, someone dear to them, and people will say things like oh well, it God had meaning in this, and it's like, ooh, you know, there's probably an element of truth to them, like, but there's also like that isn't, that isn't necessarily what someone wants to hear and that's not necessarily and I don't necessarily think God wants us to say that either.
Anna Lawler:I'm glad he doesn't. I'm glad God didn't say it directly.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:You're right. No, that's right. My, my mother, passed away in 2014 and um, they're uh, a really good the, the superior of I when I was at Loyola Chicago. The superior of the guys in that community, um, is a really good friend of mine and he said something similar about um, you know I, but he said something to the effect of um, I am most grateful for my faith because I believe in a resurrection and so I believe that that um, I believe in the resurrection, so something good is there.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:In reference to like and to how to mourn the death of my mother, um, yeah, yes, you're not wrong about that, um, and not comforting, like, like, that's not what I want to hear. Like, I want my mother here with me. I don't, I don't, and that's what I imagine the disciples thinking too like, right, like when the Jesus died, they want Jesus there with him. I don't even think even even Jesus appearing with his wounds. I don't even know if that would be comforting because it's like, you're just, you're not here and so, like, my mom is not here at that time and I don't want to.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello:I believe in the resurrection, yes, and God is there, and but Come on, like, I am sad, um, and Anna, you bring up a good point. I don't yet You're, I've never thought about that, but I think that, yeah, maybe, maybe God doesn't want us. God didn't promise that. He that God said resurrection is going to happen, but did not say that sadness and pain and mourning are not going to be there. It's going to be there, um, and so to live in that right to be in that, um, I think that's what I wanted to hear. Like, yeah, your, your mom's, dead, yeah, yeah. Like cry, cry, all you want. Like that's what I would rather hear. I'll get to the resurrection when I get to it. It's just not here right now.
Anna Lawler:You've been listening to what's the tea with ministry. We hope you enjoyed part one of our conversation with father Damian. We had such a lovely time chatting with him that we couldn't leave out any of his interview, and we had quite a lot to say. So stay tuned for part two coming out in a couple of weeks. And welcome to season two of what's the team with ministry.