# Graduate Profile: Cara Snajczuk, MDiv '24 May 13, 2024 ![Cara Snajczuk, MDiv '24](/sites/g/files/omnuum5526/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/hds2/files/carasnajczuk-900x600.jpg?itok=MEwVgaQ9) Cara Snajczuk, MDiv '24 / Courtesy Photo ## Memorable Moment Two strings of memory come to mind. First, I think of the restorative justice circles Deans Melissa Wood Bartholomew and Steph Grayson Gauchel led during my first year. I especially love remembering the spring semester, when we would gather on the floor of the Divinity Chapel on Thursday evenings. And second, I think of so many moments in between—the chance run-ins. The times two or more of us gathered, impromptu, when we paused for a sidewalk chat, lingered after class, whispered in passing in the library, found each other on the grass, checked in in the hallway, and shared a bit of the time we didn’t know we had. Sometimes it was brief; other times a minute became an hour. They were often the sweetest moments and the exchanges that reoriented my day. ## Favorite Class or Professor Every class I have had the chance to take with Professor Hallisey has challenged and expanded my thinking, and the first class I took—Buddhist Narrative and Story Literature—has a particularly special place in my memory. It always felt like an education of the head and the heart as Professor Hallisey taught literary theories while seamlessly weaving the stories we were reading into the stuff of our lives. I still think about so many of the narratives we read in that class on a regular basis, and a few weeks after the semester ended, I suddenly realized that Professor Hallisey had begun to completely shift my way of understanding stories. ## Message of Thanks It has all been and always will be a big group project, and I have more gratitude than will be poured into words here. Thank you to my academic advisors, Professor Cheryl Giles and Professor Charles Hallisey, for exemplifying—each in your own way—the practice of ministry in scholarship. Professor Giles, thank you for encouraging me—from our very first conversation—to see that it was possible to pursue training in both clinical chaplaincy and Buddhist Studies and for actively supporting me along those paths. Professor Hallisey, thank you for always teaching towards care for the future, for mentoring so generously, for sharing the pleasures of reading and learning, and for ceaselessly inspiring my imagination. Thank you to my field education supervisors, Janet Evergreen and Sister Maureen Mitchell, for your extraordinarily well-honed abilities to hold space for deeply transformative learning. Thank you for following the paths you did and for your ongoing commitment to share the fruits of those through teaching. Thank you to everyone I have had the privilege to work with at Brigham and Women’s Hospital—patients, loved ones, and colleagues—for being some of my greatest teachers. Thank you especially to Chaplains Walker Bristol, Sister Kathy Gallivan, Rev. Kata Bergh, Amelia Catone, Imam Elsir Sanousi, Monique Cerundolo, and Alex Baskin. And thank you to my brilliant classmates in both CPE cohorts for co-creating true communities of learning and reminding me that we cannot afford to settle for less. Thank you to Professor Janet Gyatso for supporting my development in so many ways—especially through your enthusiasm and care as a professor and your vast creativity as a scholar. I have particularly happy memories of reading Vinaya stories together around that seminar table in Divinity Hall. Thank you to my family for the grounding interludes and especially to my parents for your oceanic support, patient understanding, and enduring encouragement in my education journey. Thank you to Peter Snajczuk and Erin Whinnery for more than you realize and to Margaret Klipfel for inspiring and making possible my studies even after your passing. Thank you to my classmates and friends at school—especially my fellow MDivs and buddies in Buddhist Studies—for teaching me through your questions, your care, and your ways of being. I learned from you constantly. Thank you to my dear friends beyond this community—Monica, Devin, Caitlin, Cara, Nikki, Andrew, Emily, Nick, Harriet, Maggie, and especially Sara and Christina—for bearing witness and bringing me back to the heart’s terrain, for sharing the sweetness of the everyday, and for being near even from afar. Thank you to Bob Deveau, Kama Lord, Robbie Rhodes, Dan Hawkins, Josie Lee, and Nan Hutton for being phenomenally good people to work for and with and for the staggering amount of amazing work you do for our HDS community. Thank you to Kathe McKenna for being a trusted elder, mentor, teacher, and friend whose very way of living continues to be one of my greatest sources of inspiration. You have supported my path in inestimable ways. Thank you to Lama Willa Blythe Baker for being a true kalyanamitra, for encouraging my journey through school, and for creating and helping me to find paths forward. Thank you to Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche and to everyone at Rangjung Yeshe Institute at Kathmandu University—especially Tina Lang and Professor Diane Denis—for the opportunity to return to school and enter the world of Buddhist Studies. Without your kindness and those studies, these studies would not have been. Thank you to many other professors, teachers, elders, and guides—within the HDS community and beyond—who taught in ways that opened my mind and shared knowledge, wisdom, and advice that significantly shaped my trajectory: Professors Sravana Borkataky-Varma, Jay Garfield, Berthe Jansen, Chris Berlin, Karma Gongde, Sarah Jacoby, Leonard van der Kuijp, Stephanie Paulsell, Patrick Cummins, Pema Bhum, Mayra Rivera, Yunus Kumek, and Anne C. Klein, Deans Melissa Wood Bartholomew and Steph Grayson Gauchel, Gen-la Tseyang, Semo Saraswati, Sherah Bloor, Lama Liz Monson, Dawn Holtz, Briana Brightly, Matthew Akester, Steve Rizzo, and Emma De Lisle. Thank you to the Khyentse Foundation, the Harvard University Asia Center, the Victor and William Fung Foundation, and the Helen M. Bower Scholarship Fund for generously supporting these studies. Thank you, thank you many times over to every being who has contributed, is contributing, and will contribute to the Buddhist Ministry Initiative through dreaming, growing, nurturing, and making real new possibilities. And, of course, thank you to the big pine trees out front, the old grapevines out back, the spring ferns and fall leaves, the crows and sparrows, and the sun, moon, stars, and sky. See also:- [ Student Activities and Interviews ](/discover-stories-about/student-activities-and-interviews) - [ Commencement ](/topic-tags/commencement) - [ Commencement 2024 ](/topic-tags/commencement-2024)