Companion Stories
2020 - 2021
Spirit & Justice is celebrating 2 years of building relationships, deepening spirituality and engaging in justice initiatives!
We are strengthening our commitment to relationships through hosting relational meetings throughout our community.
2020 - 2021
Spirit & Justice is celebrating 2 years of building relationships, deepening spirituality and engaging in justice initiatives!
We are strengthening our commitment to relationships through hosting relational meetings throughout our community.
Jane Chandler
In one of those meetings, Companion Jane Chandler explained: “I became a part of Spirit & Justice because I found a community here that is grounded in values that free me to trust in what I will find here. I know that I can be the seeker that I am and trust this community as I seek.”
In this challenging year of the pandemic, we continued to carry out our mission by going virtual. We worked diligently to train people to be able to join in meetings online.
Spirit & Justice Companions held spiritual gatherings on Hope and Revolutionary Love; Gatherings of Companions and house meetings, deepening our spirituality and discovering the evolving needs of our community. We partnered with Greater 60 Aid Baptist Church to broaden our understanding of the needs.
Our anti-racism work continues with over 30 participants taking part in the 3 Just Faith Racial Justice modules: Faith and Racial Equity, Faith and Racial Healing, and Faith and Racial Justice.
In this challenging year of the pandemic, we continued to carry out our mission by going virtual. We worked diligently to train people to be able to join in meetings online.
Spirit & Justice Companions held spiritual gatherings on Hope and Revolutionary Love; Gatherings of Companions and house meetings, deepening our spirituality and discovering the evolving needs of our community. We partnered with Greater 60 Aid Baptist Church to broaden our understanding of the needs.
Our anti-racism work continues with over 30 participants taking part in the 3 Just Faith Racial Justice modules: Faith and Racial Equity, Faith and Racial Healing, and Faith and Racial Justice.
Spirit and Justice Leadership Development
We developed and hosted Census Civic Academies to build up the number of people responding to the 2020 Census. We worked on Get Out the Vote and helped citizens understand the many important amendments that were on the ballot.
Through a $12,000 Nexus Community Partners grant, Spirit & Justice further developed our leaders. Leaders learned how to have relational meetings and house meetings. They listened to their neighbors and discovered the needs of the different metro council districts. They formed relationships between constituents and future metro council members and established priorities to work on together, holding accountability sessions with nearly 40 metro council candidates and the mayor.
Spirit & Justice is partnering with Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church to co-host a “Save Our Water” Civic Academy, in partnership with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network and Together Baton Rouge. This Academy will bring to light the threats to Baton Rouge’s clean water and the work we can do to save our deep aquifers from salt water intrusion.
Spirit & Justice Companions are also very grateful for the support of the local Congregation of St. Joseph sisters who once again dedicated their resources to our work with a $3000 Gift Grant.
Spirit & Justice is an active dues-paying member of Together Baton Rouge with a core team of 11 participants strategizing our involvement with TBR.
Thanks to supporters like the sisters and our many dedicated Companions and volunteers and to our membership in Together Baton Rouge, Spirit & Justice fulfills its mission and brings the power of our collective Spirit into our world.
Through a $12,000 Nexus Community Partners grant, Spirit & Justice further developed our leaders. Leaders learned how to have relational meetings and house meetings. They listened to their neighbors and discovered the needs of the different metro council districts. They formed relationships between constituents and future metro council members and established priorities to work on together, holding accountability sessions with nearly 40 metro council candidates and the mayor.
Spirit & Justice is partnering with Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church to co-host a “Save Our Water” Civic Academy, in partnership with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network and Together Baton Rouge. This Academy will bring to light the threats to Baton Rouge’s clean water and the work we can do to save our deep aquifers from salt water intrusion.
Spirit & Justice Companions are also very grateful for the support of the local Congregation of St. Joseph sisters who once again dedicated their resources to our work with a $3000 Gift Grant.
Spirit & Justice is an active dues-paying member of Together Baton Rouge with a core team of 11 participants strategizing our involvement with TBR.
Thanks to supporters like the sisters and our many dedicated Companions and volunteers and to our membership in Together Baton Rouge, Spirit & Justice fulfills its mission and brings the power of our collective Spirit into our world.
Using house meetings to discover neighbors' concerns
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Meeting with the mayor during accountability sessions
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Getting out the vote and educating citizens about ballot amendments
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Companion Stories
2019-2020
Spirit & Justice has had an exciting first year!
Companions have deepened their spirituality by engaging in both spiritual experiences as well as justice activities.
Spirit & Justice Companions gathered for a prayer service before the October election, giving participants an opportunity to both voice their fears and recommit themselves to the political process. As a group of constituents of one of the metro-council districts headed to a meeting with their metro-council member, we prayed together. “I have never been in a group that prays as they go into political meetings. This is so powerful,” commented Kathleen Randall.
Our anti-racism work continues with over 20 participants signed up for Just Faith. One group is in their second module, Faith and Racial Healing, while another is just completing its first module, Faith and Racial Equity.
Spirit & Justice is an active dues-paying member of Together Baton Rouge with a core team of 11 participants strategizing our involvement with TBR.
Spirit & Justice obtained a $12,000 Nexus grant in collaboration with Together Baton Rouge for leadership capacity building. This program will target participants who are underrepresented in places of power and decision-making. Through relational meetings, discoveries will be made to learn the path of movement from the margins to the center of decision-making power. From those discoveries, trainings will be designed to encourage leadership capacity building and movement to the center of activity
Last in-person gathering of JustFaith Group 1
The crisis of the corona virus is changing the way we socialize and work. With physical distancing becoming a health care necessity, our community of Companions is finding creative ways of staying connected to one another. Companions are getting trained in how to continue gatherings and meetings through technology. Our Just Faith groups demonstrated their adaptability by switching to video conferencing to carry on their important programs. The Spirit & Justice Census team has developed a distance learning training to get people signed up for the 2020 Census.
Spirit & Justice fulfills its mission thanks to our Companions and many volunteers and our membership in Together Baton Rouge. We have established a philosophy as a community of paying it forward. Rather than paying for our own dues, Spirit & Justice Companions contribute to the dues for another to join in. With this dues structure in place, we have brought in over 70 dues-paying members this year.
We are a community of Companions who have not had a building to call our own, yet we have been welcomed into many spaces to do our work. We remain a community now even as we have to adjust to meeting virtually. Our relationships thrive. Our spirituality deepens. And we continue answering the call to bring about a more loving and just world.
Spirit & Justice fulfills its mission thanks to our Companions and many volunteers and our membership in Together Baton Rouge. We have established a philosophy as a community of paying it forward. Rather than paying for our own dues, Spirit & Justice Companions contribute to the dues for another to join in. With this dues structure in place, we have brought in over 70 dues-paying members this year.
We are a community of Companions who have not had a building to call our own, yet we have been welcomed into many spaces to do our work. We remain a community now even as we have to adjust to meeting virtually. Our relationships thrive. Our spirituality deepens. And we continue answering the call to bring about a more loving and just world.
