Just like at Valpo, the Grünewald Guild has a walking labyrinth outside, just beyond their central building and right next to the river. Anyone can use it at any point of the day, or night even. I actually heard from someone that they went out to walk it at night and stargaze. We use it during our final Vespers service of each program week too; to meditate on all the things we’ve learned from the week, to center ourselves and find a few minutes of peace and quiet inside our busy bodies.

This last week, I started to really pay attention to how the labyrinth walk made me feel in the moment. It’s a triple-spiral, which can mean a lot of things to people depending on their spiritualities, but as you move through the labyrinth, you pass by the spirals you already walked. I’ve been doing a lot of personal discernment lately, and it got me thinking about just my life’s journey thus far. It’s only about two decades worth of memories, but I can see so many different sides of myself when I look back, just like how the spirals loop back to themselves. But I’m not becoming an entirely new person every time I move on or take a new turn, I just add more to my story. My passions and interests, talents, quirks, and experiences all stay with me. They walk with me, even if my path itself is twisting around and around in a dizzying spiral. 

In another of our weekly Vespers activities, we have made our own labyrinths by tracing the shape into a small disk of clay. It’s up to the artist however they want it to look, and each person’s ends up looking a little bit different from their neighbor’s. Sometimes we’ll draw inspiration from one another, sometimes give it a gentle effort but not too much, and other times people think completely outside the box and make their labyrinth into a cube. When these clay labyrinths dry, you can trace your finger through the path either you or someone else made. It’s a way of sharing our stories and paths with each other.

As I’m finishing out my internship here at the Guild with only one week left, I’m looking back on the memories I’ve made with the people and the land around me. Some experiences have opened new doors for me that I’d like to keep open as I come back to Valpo. Others have shown me interesting perspectives and walks of life that add to my understanding of the world and how I engage with it. I think I’ll be visiting our labyrinth at Valpo a lot more often next year.

Blessings,

Gabby Unzicker

Grünewald Guild Intern 

As of late July, I have served as a Communications Intern at Grünewald Guild in Leavenworth, WA for two months as part of my placement as a member of the CAPS Fellows Program. Through working in this position, I have exponentially grown to further refine my vision for my vocation as I approach the final year of my academic career at Valparaiso University. The mission of the guild is highlighted through the three core values of art, faith, and community and, since I am a Music and English major, I initially thought I would gravitate my attention mostly towards the value of art during my time here. Surprisingly, that was not that case and I started to primarily focus upon the aspect of community involvement and how it uniquely manifests itself at this non-profit organization. By nature, I have more of an introverted demeanor and it often takes me a bit of time to feel comfortable with expressing myself in a new environment. Interestingly enough, I did not feel as timid as I typically do during a transitional period of my life, and I think that lack of apprehension I felt is due to the Guild deliberately being a welcoming and community-oriented environment by its very design. 

The manner in which I started to recognize myself leaning towards the value of community was quite subtle and implicit but, in hindsight, the pattern is so obvious. For context, the programming I help advertise through the Guild is called the Waymaking Summer 2024 program where, from June to August, there is an eclectic array of art classes held at Grünewald Guild, and approximately two to four of these classes are taught per week. Whether it be a passion they have indulged in for decades or an unfamiliar pursuit, our students can acquire a new toolbox of inventive skills to pave the way for their artistic endeavors through these classes. Though not included in the dictionary, the term “waymaking” remarkably encapsulates this inquiry because it refers to the peculiar and ever-changing approach that artists take towards their creative undertakings. The length of a programming week varies from four to six days, but the day that begins each week remains relatively routine. Programming always starts on a Sunday and, after dinner, the guild hosts an evening vespers service. 

The opening vespers service on Sunday evenings has an activity that is distinct from the rest of the services that are held throughout the week. Since the week is young and the guests have only just started to filter into Centrum, the main building on the guild’s campus, the staff is curious to what these students plan to make of their stay. To quench that curiosity, our Executive Director, Sarah Sprouse, leads the group in an activity where every participant is asked to share three words that they would like to be descriptors of their upcoming week. Since I regularly attend these services, I share my three words to each new group that makes their way to the guild, and I have started to notice that I use the word “community” as one of my three words invariably. Though this activity is not new to me, I do not have a predetermined set of words that I recite from memory just for simplicity and consistency. I chose my words purely to reflect my own personal aims for each week, but one of those unchanging aims is to learn about the people who surround me and soak in their stories like a sponge. 

Through my daily tasks at Grünewald Guild, I am able to gain this sense of community through doing morning check-ins to supply the studios with ice water and an appropriate amount of art supplies, sitting with the students and guest artists at mealtimes, and engaging in our matins and vespers services. Through these commonplace exchanges, I am able to have meaningful conversations with the students and guest artists, and we are able to learn a lot about each other. There is one simple but incredibly banal question that has been asked many times throughout the vast majority of mealtimes and miscellaneous lulls of leisure and, at first, I thought that this question seemed very superficial and not exceptionally meaningful. Due to the clientele being art lovers, I have learned that this question has a lot more gravity associated with it than I originally expected. The question is, “What is your favorite color?” and an individual’s answer to this question acts as the key to learning a lot about them and their outlook on life. 

During the first week of the Waymaking Summer 2024 program, there was an artist talk during one of our morning matins services by Nancy Marsh, a returning guest artist at Grünewald Guild and former art professor at Valparaiso University. She was teaching a weaving class that week and, through this class, her students were able to choose from a wide assortment of colors to create their zesty concoctions. From her artist talk, Nancy elaborated that she does not believe that the choices her students make for the colors of their fabrics made on a whim or by a mere coincidence. She created an intricate chart that acts as a roadmap for the different emotional connotations that are associated with each color of the rainbow, and discussed how she took into account the specific colors that each of her students were drawn to. Through this method of quiet observation, she was able to deeply fathom the complexities of the mindsets of her students. 

This artist talk made me think about how, in recent years, active listening has been extensively studied and education about the topic has been embraced by the general public in order to promote empathy and kindness to those in our communities. I think that this truly eye-opening color theory offers a way that people can practice the art of active listening in a helpful and rare configuration. As a writer, I regularly find myself listening to the way in which other people choose to explain certain concepts to learn how to further fortify the strength of my own voice and perspective. I was exceptionally fascinated with Nancy’s casual phrasing of a particular concept within this color theory, and this quotation has branded itself in my brain. To describe how people are so allured to how variations of colors compliment and coexist with one another, she described this occurrence as being “higher than indigo” due to our divine connection that blesses humans to be able to perceive a never-ending multitude of colors. That phrase moved so swiftly and effortlessly off of her tongue and, upon hearing the verbiage used, I wrote it down as fast as I could so that I could remember it. 

Conversely, my favorite color is not indigo. My favorite color is red. I appreciate the versatility of the color red in its portrayal of emotions. Different shades of this color can overtly represent themes ranging broadly from love to passion to aggression. I have affectionately called the color red the “main character color” due to it boldly being the line leader of the rainbow. There have been multiple instances of students and guest artists at the Guild indirectly acknowledging that red is my favorite color, but there are two occasions that most notably come to mind. During a family-oriented week, there were two children who gave me a thank you card at the end of their time at the guild, and every word and image contained in my specific card was written in red crayon. One of the guest artists, Dede Shilling, and I bonded over the fact that red was both of our favorite colors and we deliberately decided to film our guest artist interview for the Guild’s website while both wearing red. I appreciate that the guild is a mindful community that takes the time to notice and find beauty within the small characteristics of all the members within their community. As cliché as it sounds, I feel as though the “v” in vocation stands for vibrancy and I have definitely found direction in my vocation through the vibrancy of the close-knit community facilitated at Grünewald Guild.

• Jasmine Collins, Communications Intern at Grünewald Guild

Reconnecting with my high school viola teacher after three years brought up her valid question of, “Any updates with what you want to do with your life?” When I replied, “Well, I want to apply for programs to study or teach in another country for a year… Then possibly grad school for something ‘international’…” we both had to pause and laugh; nothing had changed in the three years since we’d last talked. I still didn’t have a set plan.

Driving home that afternoon to get back to work with the Valparaiso International Center (VIC), I questioned everything. Why I still didn’t know, why I still didn’t have everything figured out. The following day, my CAPS interview project changed my perspective on everything.

For my CAPS interview, I met with Hugh McGuigan, VIC Board President but also a
Valparaiso University legend, and hearing about his adventures and international experiences made me realize that maybe vocation doesn’t have to be perfectly planned. Having worked as Director of International Studies and professor of orientation and English classes for international students, Dr. McGuigan was instrumental in growing VU’s study abroad programs, designing plans for what used to be the Gandhi King Center in the Harre Union, and supporting language programs for decades. He was there for the international students 24/7, and he emphasized the importance of immediately making freshly-arrived students feel welcome; that first impression was everything.

Yet, how did his VU legacy, based on compassion and love for his students, come to be? Through years of exploration, travel, life experience, and the ever-present need to give back. Dr. McGuigan’s experience abroad started as a military deployment in Europe, studying Russian linguistics, and led to traveling the continent afterwards, living in a German-intensive language community with people from around the world, and many more adventures. After returning to the US and earning his PhD in German, he never forgot the feeling of being the traveler and the joys and struggles that came with it.

These life experiences unfolded for Dr. McGuigan by following his love for language, travel, and culture, and he brought years of international immersion with him into his role at VU. This is not to say that this path did not require extremely hard work. After all, Dr. McGuigan started his international journey with military service and ended it with a doctorate degree. Discipline and planning were not absent. Yet, discipline and hard work are not the opposite of wandering and not knowing. I realized after talking with this incredible man that there is no syllabus for life, with the exact dates of projects and exams written ahead of time. There are challenging moments or events to prepare for, yes. But it is also possible, perhaps necessary, to leave time to explore.

Three years have passed since I entered VU, and I honestly am not done figuring out my next steps. But what I can say is that, after talking with Dr. McGuigan, I am not in the same place I was during freshman FOCUS. Living with other VU international students, struggling to understand new accents when studying in Spain, organizing the World Cultural Festival I used to attend as a child… These life experiences have unfolded for me over the years. And I believe vocation will, too.

• Lucia Otten, Valparaiso International Center