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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?
Contemplatives in Action: Part 2 of Our Conversation with Fr. Damian
Have you ever paused in your daily hustle to sense the divine in the ordinary? Join us as Father Damian Torres-Botello unveils the practice of being 'contemplatives in action'. Our enlightening conversation traverses the landscape of integrating spirituality in routine life. Whether it's marveling at the simplicity of nature or finding meaning in the mundane, Father Damien guides us through the delicate dance of keeping faith at the center of our everyday existence. He also unfolds the transformative power of theater in giving voice to the voiceless, resonating deeply with our university's Jesuit and Mercy mission, and acting as a mirror to society's often overlooked narratives.
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. I'm Annalala, university Minister, and I'm Margo E, your Student Co-host.
Anna Lawler:Welcome to part two of our conversation with Father Damien Torres-Betello. If you haven't listened to part one of our conversation, be sure to go back and listen to that first. Let's get on with our conversation with Father Damien. This might be a good transition to talk a little bit more about contemplatives and action. We're talking about finding God in all things, which is wonderful, and we're also talking about how that's hard and how witnessing the suffering of the world our own personal suffering in different aspects of our lives, makes it complicated.
Anna Lawler:But what are the ways in which maybe some of that discomfort with that phrase of finding God in all things isn't perfect, or it is perfect in the phrase of itself, but it's not perfectly executed by our human experience? How do we then lean into contemplating, contemplative action? How do we lean into the reflection piece of it that we were talking about, the going back and thinking about? God was still in these moments, or God was still in this interaction with a co-worker that frustrates me, or God's still in the moments where I'm having a hard time with different family members? God's still in those moments? What does it mean to be called to be a contemplative in action? And maybe called isn't the right word. But what does it? What does contemplative in action mean? And maybe, how is that related to us witnessing and discussing the suffering of the world?
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Yeah, you know, I think to start I would have to say that there are, that in Ignatius' time there would be contemplatives, and so the contemplatives in action would have been a new concept. Contemplatives were individuals who stepped away from the busyness of the world monks, perhaps that might be like a not the right term to use but individuals who dedicated themselves to stepping away from the business of life and to just contemplate God's love and God's life.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:That was their life that they were in a monastery or they were in hermitages and they were contemplatives, and that's what they did. And that's still what some individuals are called to be. They're called to be those kinds of contemplatives that contemplate God's love and contemplate God's life in our life. But then we have contemplatives in action, which is to say, how are we contemplating God's love and life while we are living our life, while we are living our love? And so I think that in one aspect it is to recognize that God is moving about. So I think that's the relationship between God in all things. And contemplative in action is that is, to see God in all things, to see God in nature, like the squirrels I saw this morning, the sky you saw last night on our minds when we saw that was God. So we could move about our day seeing those things happening and folding in front of us with God in our mind and giving that idea to God. As we are, as I'm walking to my office, as maybe you're walking to your car, as we're doing this, we're not stepping away from the world to contemplate the beauty of the sky or the innocence of these squirrels. We're doing it as we are moving about. And so to be a contemplative in action is to contemplate God's love and life as we are moving and in my imagination.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:The desire I have is that I am actively doing that all the time, which I'm not right.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:I'm not do it by strive to do that.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:I strive to recognize God and everything, to know that God is moving about, to know that God has given me gifts and God is continuing to forgive me and to give me mercy and to give me compassion, and to do all of that, to have all of that at the front of my mind.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:As I am making breakfast, walking to work, I think on my computer that it's both happening simultaneously that I am doing the mundane things of life and just in awe of what God is doing. And all of that I think I know when I have those moments where I have been able to do that, my life just explodes in awe and wonder, like, oh my gosh, I just get so excited about life and about where I'm at, about what I'm doing, that I think that the invitation to contemplate God as we are moving about is really to invite God into what we are doing as we are moving about, so that our lives are not siloed into here's God on column A and here's my life on column B but it is actually together that they are both symbiotic and they are both reliant on one another, so that as I'm taking, step by step, filing things away, I am also knowing that doing this it's because God loves me and I have been giving the privilege and the freedom to do this.
Anna Lawler:It makes me want to ask about your background. Prior to joining the Jesuits and also even as part of your formation and when you were here at Detroit Mercy, you were really involved in theater and you're still involved in theater. I know you are, but I'd love to hear a little bit about for you where the intersection of theater and this? You know we talked and we mentioned in your bio that a lot of the time theater for you and your opportunities with theater have been about amplifying people's voices who aren't often heard, and that feels to me very much, very much in line with this idea and this concept of contemplatives in action. It's both the reflective nature and it's the bringing forth, it's the action piece.
Anna Lawler:Whether someone sees it that way or not, I very much do see this piece of like theater as an experience and a joy, and we've interviewed other people on the podcast talking about the arts, more so about musical. We talked about musical theater a little bit and just how much there is space in theater to talk about spirituality, to talk about voices that aren't heard, to use theater as a platform to share stories that are often not shared, and so I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience with theater and amplifying voices, maybe some of the shows you've worked on. I wasn't here at Detroit Mercy when you were here in the theater department for your Regency, but I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience here too. I'm sure we have all new students since then, and so our student background is different, and I'm sure they'd love to hear some of the stuff that you did here as well.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Yeah, the first play that I was a part of that helped me, I think, really uncover or solidify what I feel about theater, and amplifying voices was a play that I did with who I am being my business partner and is my best friend, jeremy. We wrote this play called Whispers from the Streets and it was a is still a play where we went into Catholic worker communities in Kansas City and interviewed persons experiencing homelessness and we used the same kind of strategy that Steven Spielberg used when he was I think it was Steven Spielberg when he was writing the movie shouldn't there's a list when he interviewed Holocaust survivors. It was a style in which you are not being invasive into someone's life but you are inviting them to tell a story without without asking questions. It's kind of like the podcast in a way. It's kind of like you're, you're having a conversation and from those interviews we created composite characters to tell the story of what homelessness looks like. It's not just someone who doesn't have a home, but it varies from severe poverty all the way to living in a box. But it encompasses a whole lot of people and all kinds of people and it connected for me this idea of faith, spirituality and theater in that our gospel stories are, chris.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Scripture is all story, all of it is story. All of us in our lives have a story. We have one whole story like an overarching story, that how we got from a to b, and we also have, within that, little stories about our lives that tell a truth. That tells our own truth, and so do our scriptures. And our scriptures tell the story of a people who are enslaved, a group of people who God then comes and appears to chooses, chooses a family of people to touch, to connect with the heaven and the earth, so that God can accompany these people and in a way, in a sense accompanying us on this earth, to bring back together the intersection of heaven and earth into one. That was separated from the Genesis story, where human beings felt like that they could do everything on their own without God. And so let's eat an apple, right? And so God is trying to reconnect with the earth and does that in the Old Testament through Moses, through all of those individuals, but chooses a people and so chooses us, and then we hear a story of a savior who tries to do the same thing, and then we hear the story of a people, after Jesus is crucified, dies, and the rightness from the dead and the people who are trying to carry that mission out. We hear those stories.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:From those stories that we hear voices that are marginalized, we hear stories from people who are oppressed, and in a way, scripture itself was told like theater. It was oral tradition and the whole of Mark or Luke I forget which one, one of the two was originally written to be told out loud. So the idea of telling stories is theatrical, and I don't mean that in a dismissive or disrespectful way, but there is a kind of performativity in the Gospels, performance in the Gospels, and so that's how I connected the two that what stories are not being heard, what stories are not being told, and how can I be a part of telling that fifth gospel? According to whomever? According to Anna, according to Margo, what is that fifth gospel? That also tells the story of God and Jesus interacting with the world.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:And so when I was at Detroit mercy, one of the projects I did with the students was called American privilege, and the idea was what is American privilege and who are the unprivileged and what are their voices? So ageism, racism, homophobia, other isms that were very prevalent at the time, economic status, mental health, and those stories are not told and those who don't experience them or maybe don't want to hear them. They have an American privilege because they can choose to hear them or not hear them, but we are saying you have to hear them. It is actually a privilege to hear those stories. And so the students wrote plays, wrote monologues, interviewed people I help them create these interview processes so they can do that with individuals they met and then they directed these scenes on their own and we put it together into one whole story called American privilege. And it was beautiful to see the aha moments that the theater students were experiencing as they were writing in these plays and as they were interviewing these individuals. And it was awesome to see the aha moments the audience was experiencing after they came out from the production.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:And it was a one act. One thing was an hour and a half no intermission play and it was a play that was directed by students, designed by students, performed by students, so they had ownership in this and in a sense, that was saying they have a voice to the youth have a voice to, and this is what they are saying through this production. So, yeah, theater is just forming another gospel, trying to see where God interacts with all of us, and so I think that's what I pursue it. But you can also see it in like musicals, like wicked or lamez or cats, like, if you really kind of break down those stories, there is God in there, there is God talking about the oppressed, talking about the marginalized, and so it's just inherently theater itself, just even taking away any spirituality. Theater itself talks about who am I, and you can't explore who you are without navigating kind of a spiritual side to that.
Margo Iwu:So the question to kind of piggyback off of what was being said and also I'm sure you probably have more to act by context wise to this question. So the question is what can young people learn from your spiritual practices? So the ones that you've mentioned and, of course, the ones you can always feel free to mention as you're answering this question, and why are they valuable? And so the spiritual practices of finding God and all things, and contemplatives and action, and indirectly you kind of did talk about, like the examine, as you talked about reflecting at the end of the day, and that's kind of indirectly what the exam does, and things that you have talked about, things that you haven't talked about, and you know we have some students listening to this podcast, of course. So just a nice little takeaway and insight, but your students a little younger, like me, Well, you know, that's a good question, and I would say this is a marathon.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:I think our faith journeys. It is not 100 yard dash. This is a long, long journey. I was raised by my mother and my grandmother and my grandfather and my grandmother. She raised seven kids, had multiple sclerosis, they were poor and she raised a lovely family, I would say, because my mom was one of them and her faith journey was a long, long one, and she died at 88 in 2008. And so I learned from that. That. How do you run a marathon?
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:I've always been a larger person, so I've always been on diets. So, in a similar way, like, how do I make a new lifestyle of eating? And I just love food, and it has always been to start small, to start slow, especially in the faith life. There are so many people who I have spoken to who have said either I want to pray this long, I want to go to church every day, I want to do this or that, or I used to go to church all the time, I used to do all these things and I lost it and I want to go back to it, and so the temptation is just to go all in and all in all the way, and that works for like two days. That's right. So the idea is, in the faith journey is to start small.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:If you are someone who journals, and even if you don't, you don't have to just pick something in your day that surprised you, what surprised you today, and just pick one. And you could do this while you're driving home, walking home in the shower as you're brushing your teeth, like it doesn't have to be, prayer does not have to be always sitting for 30 minutes to an hour in silence with the Bible in your hand or whatever it is. Sometimes all you have time to do is brush your teeth and that might be the only piece you have in the day. So in that moment, what surprised you in the day, what surprised you? And let that be something that sits with you and, if you can ask yourself, what is God telling me about me? So, for example, a couple of weeks ago I had one of my best friends gave me a call on a random day of the week, just called and said hello. Now I am the kind of person who likes to schedule phone calls like we're gonna have a conversation, we're gonna do it at this time on this day and it's in our calendar. Cause for me, if it's not in the calendar, it's not gonna happen. So I rarely any conversations that I've had that are spontaneous and just random. But he just called and I answered the phone and he said I just wanted to see how you're doing, just wanted to say hello. That was a surprise and when I take that to reflection, what I took away from that was I am worth someone's time, which in my story isn't always something I think of first when it comes to me. But in that moment God wanted to affirm but I am actually worth someone's time, and we only spoke for maybe 20 minutes, but that's how God was loving me and reminding me of my personhood, the joy of being created in this diverse world that God made. But I am worth someone's time, and that's what a surprise can do if you want to go there with it. But even if not, it's just well. I had a phone call today. That's awesome, and then you rinse your mouth out and you know after you brush your teeth and go on about your day.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:But prayer does not have to be such a long thing. It can just start out in such a simple way, and it has to be. If there is a desire to connect with God, if you have a desire to pray, you have to begin with that. If there's no desire, then you know, like, if I don't want to go to the gym, I'm not gonna go to the gym, so why try? But if I desire to go to the gym which I do now for a long time now I go to the gym, but it took a while for me to get there. But now I desire to go to the gym and so I go and I get a lot out of it. I desire to pray, I desire to connect with God, and so I get a lot out of it, and then you just grow bit by bit. Just, I want more than just a reflect on a surprise, I would like to think about something else. And then you add to that and you just go and go and go and not to seek perfection in that right.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:I think oftentimes in our world, I feel like, especially in social media, the images that come across are you have to have it together quickly, you have to have it, the right job, the right amount of money, you have to have it and it has to be perfect and ready and like TikTok Instagram. Beautiful, you know, but no, not at all. What we don't see is the rehearsals that those people did to get those TikTok dances down, but we don't see as people like maneuvering their rooms or whatever they're doing to take a picture to post. We don't see that. That is the journey. That's the fun part is doing all of that.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:So, with that kind of images that are in our faces, we have to strive to be gentle with ourselves and to be patient with ourselves. I think I say that a lot in my homilies. I say here at Bellarmine Chapel a lot of things that I say when people come to me for confession. I say that a lot be gentle with yourself, be patient with yourself. We are the worst enemies. We are our own blockades. We are the ones that prevent us from doing things on our. It's us, it's me, damien Torres-Battello, that prevents me from feeling and experiencing God. So I need to be gentle with myself and I need to be patient with myself, and that takes work, but it's so much easier to be hard. I can be harder myself, but I can do that up and down all day long, and I have, and it gets me nowhere.
Anna Lawler:Yeah, no, that is really relatable, and you brought it up twice, just in this last one and then in your last answer and earlier in the podcast. You were talking about perfectionism and this was something that came up for me earlier this week. Our team was on a retreat for the day and we spent a chunk of the morning reviewing and looking at our relationship with Jesus and I was stuck for a little while.
Anna Lawler:Some of the questions that we were prompted, just like they weren't sitting with me, I wasn't connecting, wasn't sure what it was not to say that the questions weren't well written or that they weren't good questions, but I think what I realized in reflecting and praying and asking Jesus why am I just like having a hard time with these questions and I realized for me that it was about I was. So the questions were much more focused on Jesus's divinity, which is beautiful and important and central to be Christian.
Anna Lawler:However, what I realized, for me, my relationship with Jesus is founded and sustained through the recognition of Jesus's humanity, recognizing that Jesus is not, for me, thinking about Jesus as perfect, because I often link perfection and divinity together, which is, I think, a struggle. I have a hard time with that. I'm like I can't. That's not relatable. I am not perfect, I can't be perfect, I'm not God, and thank God because it wouldn't, the world would probably look a little different. I miss. But what I lean into and what sustains and, I think, blesses my relationship and my friendship with Jesus is his humanity and being. Like you've been where I've been, you felt emotions, I feel, and I just thought that that was something lingering for me. Was this also the part about, like, take it one step at a time? You know, do one small thing. You know, I often am a person who, like I, need variety, I need change.
Anna Lawler:I am not good at having, like a very set prayer routine because for me that it's, it becomes mundane and then I'm just doing it to do it rather than doing it to really have a connection and moment with God, and so sometimes my prayer is in the car, listening to show tunes and and just singing at the top of my lungs and just praising God that I have the time to do that on my 15 minute drive home and just have that space.
Anna Lawler:And sometimes it is sitting down and journaling, and what people might claim or say is a bit more formal prayer or maybe it's like you know you're in the chapel and having a quiet moment, something that people might identify as being more prayer like. But yeah, it's those, it's those small moments and it's just doing whatever is going to bring you closer to God for one minute, five minutes, whatever it is, it will longer period of time. If you can sit down through that or be moving, you can do it while you're walking and what it is I think is really meaningful and powerful and I hope our students hear you in what you're saying and just start small, start small.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:And you know you make it with good point and about connecting with Christ's humanity. And you know that as part of our prayer in our mass, when we're at the churistic part of the mass, and if you see the priest pour drip some water into the cup of one, to the cup of wine, the prayer that the priest says, and under his breath or quietly to himself, is by the mystery of this water and wine we would come to share in Christ. Divinity humbled himself to share in our humanity. And so our prayer is that we want to recognize that Jesus was divine and Jesus also was human, starting off as well as we are in the season of Advent.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:You know babies, babies are needy, needy little creatures. They need a lot and they require so much and maybe some might say they rob you of a lot of stuff because they need that much. And Jesus was that. Jesus was a needy little baby and in that kind of vulnerability. Of course we can connect with Jesus in that way, because we too were needy children and I could say I am probably still a needy child, but. But but to connect with Jesus in that way helps us connect to, then, the divinity of Jesus, right, and for some, the connecting with the divinity of Jesus is also maybe the great way to start for them, to help them connect with Jesus, with the humanity of Jesus. So it goes both ways right there that it goes both ways, and so what you know, whoever is listening, you know, however, you connect with Jesus is how you connect with Jesus. But then the invitation is to see all, all the sides of Jesus, because it helps us see all sides of us.
Anna Lawler:Wonderful. So we're coming near the end of our time and so when we close out our podcast, we always like to ask our guests a question about mission and the world, how we're defining mission for us is our Jesuit and mercy identity. Obviously, you're familiar with the Jesuit identity and you're familiar a little bit with the mercy identity, having been here for and worked here for three years at this point. You worked at. You worked there longer than I have so far and so you probably know more than me. So we like to always ask people the question of what is the thing that you loved most I'm using past tense because of your time here, but it could be something you still love Most about the mission of the University of Detroit Mercy, so something you love most about the Jesuit and Mercy Charism being combined here. I think that's, you know, what makes us a little bit unique from some of our brother and sister schools in the Jesuit.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:And so there is a Detroit Mercy. There is how I describe it to myself is kind of like a hard and soft side of Detroit Mercy. Ignatius is kind of hard. He's a soldier who was wounded and and and his time. I would say he's probably a man's man and reading his letters that he's written, that he's written lots of them and they're published everywhere, it feels like little books about his letters or with his letters in them. I mean he's a straightforward kind of like love God, pray to all the stuff, but I mean he is, he's hard.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:I've heard Jesuit say you know, when I die it's not, it's not God's judgment, afraid of its. Ignatius is. Well, there is this hard side of Ignatius. I'm just saying what, and then? But then Detroit Mercy has the soft side of mother McCauley and a tender side, a compassionate side, not to say that she didn't have a hardness and not to say that Ignatius didn't have any compassion. But what is what? What? The parts that face forward to me are those two sides.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Mother McCauley is, you know, having tea, what she said at the at her death bed, helping into helping the sick people, and they had tea.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Ignatius had cannonballs, like they're both very different saints, and yet they're hot and they can hurt you in their own way. Right like hot tea does hurt, so Detroit Mercy, I think, offers the sense of resilience and the sense of of how can you create your life? Life is not there to be created by others, but how can you, with God, create your life? While mother McCauley is also saying while you're doing that, don't forget where you came from. Don't forget that you're not. You didn't. You're not, you did not get formed in a bubble. But there are people around you that deserve your gratitude and your love because they helped form you. And I think of when she said when when I hear about having tea with, with the people that you love, it's not just, it's not just having a conversation, appreciating them, it's not just that, but it is also to remind yourself that you are part of a large community, you're part of many communities, and to have tea, to make tea, is a process.
Margo Iwu:I don't know how to put it, but like that hard part, you know how they say what doesn't kill you, make you stronger. That was, I feel like, most definitely most necessary for me to grow. And then we're fucking back on. When you said things like fighting God and all things, I actually had those kind of challenging conversations. It's easier to tell myself like, oh, there is God in everything. It's harder to convince someone who doesn't think that there is God in all things. Cause I've had that conversation I think ministry has this hat that's like find God in all things.
Margo Iwu:And I had a friend that was just like God is not everything. And I'm just like how am I supposed to sit here and tell this person that God is everything, that God is in everything, when they like, not even by default, without any background information, you see something and it's just like God's not there, that's the devil or just anything like that. And so convincing wise, I feel like hope and faith is kind of just like believing in the unseen and just because we see the physicality of something bad happening that doesn't outshine the light that's still present in something. Easier to tell yourself, right, very easy to tell myself. Very hard to convince another person. So when he said it was as hard, I was like stuck, like I just stuck. Give us reasons, because it's just not that?
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:No, that's right. That's right, that's true. It's hard to convince someone else, and then we have to ask ourselves, like, is it our job to do that convincing right? I remember when I was at Loyola Chicago, one of the ministry that I was involved with was with this organization called the Mayus Ministries.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:And they work with male prostitutes. And now these are men who are prostitutes for survival, not for career, and the organization started by and mostly involves evangelical Protestants. And so some of the most evangelical university students were assigned to work, to volunteer or be ministers out of Mayus Ministries. And so we walk into the room for training day and the individual who was in charge of training us walks into the room and says this work involves working with men who prostitute to other men and are involved in homosexual activity. If you are not comfortable with that, you should leave now.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:And then we waited, maybe one person left, and then he said now, the first thing is that we are training you on how to minister, which is a ministry of presence with these men. We are not here to tell them that God loves them, because, unless we know their story, we have no job telling them that God loves them, because we can't convince them. Otherwise, right the lives those men went through, I would not be able to say God loved me after all of that. So who am I to say that God loves you? Because in their experience, god probably didn't. So how do we convince with that words? Well, maybe we convince through our actions, by being present, by being there, by offering our heart or hands or whatever. So, margot, you're right, like we can't convince people, but maybe, as I like to say, as I've said sometimes, because it was said to me once, sometimes you are the only gospel people are going to read. So maybe that's how we convince is through being the living gospel.
Anna Lawler:We still have one last little section that we wanna do, which is the lightning round. It's like a quiz. It's kind of like a quiz, but it's not really. There's really no right or wrong answers, so it's a quiz that everyone passes, but the purpose of it is, you know, some rapid fire questions. There are funny little things that allow us to know some things about you. The last question is probably the one that needs a little bit of a longer answer, because it usually involves some sort of story which I'll just tell you now so you can think about. It is what's the best piece of advice you've ever received? Hmm, okay.
Anna Lawler:But the rest are just quick questions. Margot and I will go back and forth asking them and just give us the first thing that comes to mind. You don't have to explain it there. You know you can leave the audience lingering. Why the heck would he choose that? You know, this is just our fast little rapid fire at the end. So I'll start, margot, and then you can pop in if you want. We have been in the chat. If you want to add one of the questions that you threw in the chat that you thought of for the lightning round, you can. I'm nervous, but I'm excited too. Okay, don't be nervous, it's supposed to be fun. So I'll begin. Are you a sweet or salty person?
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Hmm, sweet. What was your first job? I was a concession person at AMC theaters.
Anna Lawler:What is your favorite liturgical season? Advent?
Margo Iwu:Divine Murthy's or Hail Mary's.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:I'd like to hear that question. As far as that's good, hail Mary's Okay.
Anna Lawler:Super strength or the power of invisibility.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Ooh, oh, super strength or super invisibility.
Margo Iwu:That's your current favorite song.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Oh my gosh. There is a song called Promises by Maverick City.
Anna Lawler:Okay, who is your hero?
Margo Iwu:My grandma, what is one food that you cannot live without?
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Oh, cheese, cheese and bread, yeah, kind of near each other.
Anna Lawler:Cheese and bread. Yeah, basically pizza.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Basically pizza yeah.
Anna Lawler:Favorite place you've traveled to.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Ooh Peru.
Margo Iwu:Okay, morning Mass or Night Mass.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Ooh Night Mass.
Margo Iwu:My type of guy.
Anna Lawler:What saint or religious figure would you like to talk to if you could?
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Religious figure, father Michael Judge. He was the chaplain of the fire department during 9-11 that he was killed. I'm trying to help the firefighters save some lives. So, father Michael Judge.
Margo Iwu:Sunrise or sunset.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Sunset.
Margo Iwu:You gotta come back.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:I just don't like to get up in the morning.
Anna Lawler:And then what's the best advice you've ever received?
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:The best advice I've ever received is also part of my favorite quote Be you and be it. Well, I would say that because oftentimes in my life I've always been a person of color in white spaces, I've always been a larger person in skinny people spaces, I had learning disabilities and just I mean I was all over the place and I always felt like I'd never fit in and someone had said, well then, just be you and just be sure that, whoever you are, that you're doing it all the way. So now that I am in my mid-40s, like it's finally hitting to understand what that means and I just want to like, just be that, like I can't be anything else but that. And my vocation to be a priest is really about this. Part of it is really about being me. God called me. He didn't call another version of me, and so I need to lean into that.
Anna Lawler:Well, damien, thank you so much for being with us today, for just having such a wonderful presence. I loved our conversation. I think we shared a lot about different aspects of our stories and it was so nice to hear from you about just how things are, how do we look at these Ignatian concepts of contemplatives in action and finding God and all things. And it was just also beautiful to just be in conversation with someone. There's a gift and a beauty in just being, and I felt that a lot today hearing our stories.
Fr. Damian Torres-Botello, SJ:Well, thank you, I appreciate the invitation. This was so much fun and I enjoyed talking to the both of you, so thank you for taking of me and allowing me to share with the Detroit Mercy community the things you wanted me to share, and I appreciate that.
Margo Iwu:And I hope you enjoyed listening to us today. Be sure to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Also, be sure to follow us on social media at UDM underscore ministry, or check us out at what's the tea with ministry podcast on the Detroit Mercy website.
Anna Lawler:Thank you also to all those who have made this podcast possible especially the communication studies department, our sound engineer, michael DeGeneres, our music composer Dan Greg, marketing and communications and the whole Detroit Mercy community. We look forward to sharing more of the mission with you next time, see ya si.