Peace, Social Justice and Care for Creation

Greetings from the Columban Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) Office, the national advocacy office for Columban missionaries in the United States, located in Silver Spring, MD just outside of Washington, D.C. Through advocacy, solidarity, and education, the JPIC Office is dedicated to raising the peace, social justice and care for creation concerns of Columban missioners and those people with whom we live and serve. As people of faith, we are both challenged and called to raise our voices with the voices of the most marginalized in our world.

My name is Amy Woolam Echeverria. Since 2005, I have had the privilege of coordinating the Columban JPIC ministry here in the United States. Before coming to Washington, D.C., I was the Columban JPIC Coordinator in Chile where I had been on mission since 1999, first with Sisters of Holy Child Jesus and then with Columbans.

Other “titles” that describe me are: wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, lay woman, closet writer, and speed-challenged runner. There are probably more titles yet to be discovered, but for the meantime I am content.

I suppose my newest title is “blogger” and one that I am very excited about. Since 2004 the Columban JPIC Office has distributed an e-newsletter which usually included an opening reflection from me on some aspect of social justice (check out archived issues of the Columban JPIC e-newsletter www.columban.org/content/view/69/52). So perhaps I’ve been a closet-blogger all these years and never knew it!

But now the virtual doors have been flung open wide, and I look forward to sharing with you my thoughts, feelings, reflections, and questions about life, mission, and faith.
An important image that Columbans embraced at our 2008 Regional Assembly was that of table-fellowship where we are both hosts and guests and all are equal. Please, let us walk together to the Table.

In peace,
Amy W.E.