Four accomplished young adult Christians freely discussed how their faith has helped them amid trying times in their lives and challenging times in their country during a Sept. 19 forum at Georgetown University.
Luke Russert, author of this year’s bestselling memoir “Look for Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself” and a former congressional correspondent for NBC News, said he remembers his first grounding of faith from his father, Tim Russert – the late NBC newsman and longtime host of Meet the Press – when he could still bring Matchbox cars with him to church.
“Dad, why do we have to go to the dark place with a lot of weird windows?” Russert remembers asking his dad, who replied, “You’ve been blessed a lot, and we take an hour to remember that and how you can help others.”
Scripture is what does it for Tamika Mason, director of faith outreach for Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the Assistant Democratic Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives. “The world is changing so rapidly every day, so every day I have to do reminders,” said Mason, who is Christian. “In the morning when I wake up there’s Scripture that I read. There’s Scriptures at my desk. ... where I can see it. I see it, I can read it, I calm down – and I just center.”
“My faith shapes my perspective on the world and forms my worldview,” said Eric Bazail-Eimil, a writing fellow at Politico. “Our Catholic theology is based on a fundamental promise of renewal,” he added. “It forces me to think about the people I work with, and also the people I cover.”
“In the midst of great change and great uncertainty, my faith is very much an anchor where I can move forward and make progress,” said Army Maj. Elizabeth Verardo, an active-term member at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former helicopter pilot with two tours of duty in Afghanistan.
Verardo, who is Catholic, recalled when her copter made a harder-than-expected landing at an airstrip in avoiding other aircraft parked there. Her co-pilot told her afterward, “My back hurts.” “My co-pilot turns out OK, but I’m not,” she remembered. “I think I have a reputation as an exacting commander. I did not always act with kindness and compassion, and now I am responsible for the livelihood of one of my soldiers.”
Her commanding officer tried to comfort Verardo, but “there was nothing he was going to say that was worse than what I was telling myself,” she said. The episode offers her, even today, “a painful and memorable lesson that is very valuable, but which I fall short of many times.”
Russert remembers being interviewed once on the Christian Broadcasting Network. By their questions he had deduced that “they were trying to set me up to do a slam dunk.”
Rather than take the bait, “I answer, ‘I think one of the big issues is that we pigeonhole people. There’s a huge evangelical movement that’s very environmentally minded, because that’s God’s green Earth,’” but aren’t noticed due to society’s stereotyping of evangelicals.
“Catholics should not have these endless civil wars. We should talk about it. And that’s what the Jesuits do well,” Russert said during the forum, held at Jesuit-run Georgetown University. People who pigeonhole, he said, miss “the totality of the teachings” of the Church.
The Salt and Light Gathering for Young Adults, titled, “How Can We Live Faithfully in Our Personal, Professional and Political Lives?” was sponsored by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life and held at the Georgetown School of Continuing Studies in Washington, D.C. The discussion drew an in-person and online audience of more than 400 people.
God was writing straight with crooked lines when it came to the forum panelists’ careers. Russert wasn’t offered a job at NBC until after his father died. Verardo said Long Island, New York, where she grew up, wasn’t exactly a hotbed of military recruiting. Mason studied computer technology in college. “It was not a desire for me to work in politics” when she got the job offer to work for Rep. Clyburn, she said. And after “the plan I had disintegrated before my eyes,” Bazail-Eimil and his spiritual mentor at Georgetown went through a process of elimination with him before he discovered he liked writing and journalism.
“I professionally grew up in an organization that prizes obedience and a clear hierarchy,” Verardo said. She added, “I’m talking about the military here, because when bullets are flying, it’s not time to have a nuanced discussion.”
Faith influences her family life, Verardo said, but it’s a challenge, she acknowledged. “We try to go to church. I spend a lot of time chasing my one-and-a-half-year old. (She and her husband also have a 4-year old.) I have to lower my expectations” on what she gets out of the Mass, she added, given her current situation.
Being a person of faith on Capitol Hill can be tough, Mason noted. “Many times, I need to take a break. I need to step away and say, ‘OK, where do you need me to be?’,” she said, stressing the importance of “always doing or giving your best, and setting a good example.”
Russert said his father was the subject of a newspaper interview, and the writer included in the profile the phrase, “Tim Russert, who admits to being a practicing Catholic.” “He always kept that one up there (on his office wall),” Russert said. “He understood that not everyone felt the same as he did.”
In 2016, Russert was at a career crossroads: sign a new contract with NBC or find some other endeavor. He was getting ready to do a live standup piece for NBC when a voice came through his earphone: “Sorry, but we have to scrap you. We’re going live with Donald Trump’s reaction to the shooting of Harambe the gorilla.”
“And that,” Russert said, “was God talking to me.” He left NBC that July to ponder other career opportunities.
