The Blessing of the Nuns on the Bus & Friends

Current and former nuns on the bus gather in Chicago for a bus blessing.

Writer: Sarah Christopherson

Current and former nuns on the bus gather in Chicago for a bus blessing.

I’m not someone who throws around words like “blessing” very much. But I don’t know what else to call the Nuns on the Bus & Friends “Vote Our Future” tour but a blessing for me. For a brief, wonderful moment, I got to put aside the daily grind of Zoom meetings, doom-scrolling on Twitter, and exhausting internal movement politics. And even though we bus riders were talking about the significance of this election around the clock, riding the bus let me do something constructive with those feelings of helplessness, confusion, and despair that have plagued me throughout this campaign cycle.

Attending the Rally to Vote Our Future in Chicago on October 9 was incredible in every way. We were set up in El Zócalo, the town square of the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, where an Instagram-worthy mural of Our Lady of Guadalupe flanked a courtyard filled with spectators of all ages cheering on a rousing list of speakers with deeply inspiring personal stories. All of it bathed in beautiful October sunshine.

Sarah Christopherson, tax justice advocate and bus rider on the 2024 Nuns on the Bus & Friends “Vote Our Future” tour.

On the bus tour, it was simply impossible not to feel hopeful. Everywhere we went, people were doing incredible work to make their communities better, to stand up for each other, to take care of each other, and to keep up the excitement and the energy around voting. In Chicago, we heard from Congressman Chuy Garcia. I had known he was a strong voice for tax fairness in Washington, DC, but I didn’t know about his journey from Mexico to the United States Congress or his deep ties to the community in Pilsen.

We heard from Irann Martinez, a brilliant young researcher and aspiring doctor whose talent and ambitions are at risk because of Congress’s repeated failures to pass comprehensive immigration reform. We heard from Adrienne Alexander from AFSCME, a second-generation labor activist with deep roots in the fight for the dignity of all workers. And we heard from Mark McCombs, who shared how his painful experience emerging from incarceration into a hostile post-prison world impacts his work leading the Kolbe House Jail Ministry.

As I struggled to jot down a few words about it all, I realized that I was in denial about my journey on the bus being over.

These people, and so many others I met along the way—speakers, volunteers, town hall and rally attendees, NETWORK staff, support staff, and my fellow riders, of course!—gave me joy. There’s no other word for it. To the nuns and friends, to the people who made the tour possible, to the amazing people who joined us in El Zócalo that day: this bus was a blessing to me, and I hope it was to you.

This reflection is from the 2024 Nuns on the Bus & Friends bus rider blog.