Nancy Ortiz
      This semester, the UIC FOCUS team started a monthly event of praise and worship, prayer and reflection, for the Newman community. They chose to call the event Ignite, to reflect the theme of kindling the faith of others by sharing the fire of one’s own love for God. For February’s event, the featured Ignite speaker was Fr Tim Fiala, STD, and he spoke about the objective nature of truth and its importance in a relativistic culture.
      Ignite is a wonderful event that is full of joyful music, laughter and knowledge. I really enjoyed the words Father Tim Fiala whom spoke about truth in various angles according to morality and ethics. This interested me very much because it reminded me about my catholic high school ethics class. As father Tim Fiala was talking about truth and comparing morality and ethics to real life situations I questioned myself very much. This questioning leads me into reflection about my life and the decisions that I have to make in my life such as, should I ditch my family because I have to study? Is schooling more important than my family? I came to a conclusion that these to things are very important to me; however, I really do not have a real answer. Truth has different branches that lead to sub topics like ethics and morality. I will never have a real answer because both school and my family are important in my life.
      I overall really enjoyed ignite because it helped me reflect on my life and it was a great time with wonderful others that made me feel happy. The praise and worship was peaceful and helped me breathe some fresh spiritual air. The reason why I chose to go was because I was stressed with schoolwork and thought I would relax and so I did, it was a great time. I would encourage others to attend Ignite because it is a wonderful experience to be part of a community that wants to praise and worship the lord through music and learning.

Nancy Ortiz, Freshman, Pre-Nursing