I’ve known I was starting seminary this Fall for a while, but this week is the first time it feels real. I said goodbye to the neighborhood that held space for me during my first year after undergrad. And I moved into my seminary campus, just 500ft from the Lake! I have spent the week making my dorm room feel like home, and as I write this, sitting in front of my “inspiration wall,” I think I have accomplished my goal.
I am ecstatic to begin grad school! Just ask my girlfriend how often I’ve talked about how much I’ve missed researching and nerding out about the most niche ideas! Yet a part of me anxiously remembers the last time I was this excited to begin school. Five years ago, I had just moved to the US and was preparing to begin Bible college. And only a few weeks after that first day of the Fall semester of 2018, I experienced the first cracks in what would become the shattering of my faith.
My body remembers the overwhelming pain of seeing the faith I held so dearly run like water through my fingers over the course of four years. The nights when the terrors of damnation kept me from rest. The madrugadas when I feared that if I drowned in my tears and went to meet my creator, he would hate my inability to change how I was made. The days when shame knocked the air out of my lungs and left me wishing I could just stop breathing. The Sunday mornings when the isolation felt thicker in a room full of people singing words I longed to believe were true.
This last year, sleeping, breathing, and singing have become easier. A combination of store-bought serotonin, therapy, a loving community, and Jesus has rebonded much of what used to be fragmented. My faith still feels like water, but I am okay with it. I have come to realize that I swim in the never-ending ocean of Christ’s love, and there is no need for me to try and hold the uncontainable. As one of my favorite songs1 says, I now
hold it all more loosely and yet somehow much more dearly ‘cause I’ve spent my whole life searching desparetely to find out that grace requires nothing of me
I have been learning how to allow myself to experience a multitude of emotions at the same time. So, as I experience the healing joy of this moment in my spiritual, emotional, and relational self, I am also making room for the grief and fears I carry as a result of religious trauma and newly diagnosed disabilities.
In an effort to continue to make room for all the emotions of this new journey, I decorated the space where I will spend many hours this semester with pieces of art and symbols that capture what faith looks like for me these days. So welcome to the virtual tour of the corner that will act as my ebenezer. I have written a (non-exhaustive) creed of sorts to accompany each art piece/symbol.
I believe in the Triune God - Father, Christ, and Holy Spirit - who tenderly holds and sustains all They have created.2
I believe in the incarnate Christ who laughed, cried, nursed, played, believed, feared, prayed, sang, built, worked, slept, dreamed, celebrated, grieved, lived, died, and resurrected.3
I believe in the incarnate Christ born of the poor Mary of Nazareth and forever existing in the brown body of a Palestinian Jew who died on the cross to dismantle death from the inside out.
I believe in the eternally scarred and incarnate Christ who, in the glory of his resurrection, dined with his beloveds and who, even when their eyes were shrouded by grief, ignited the deepest parts of their being with his piercing love.4
I believe in the Good Shepherd whose goodness and mercy run after me incansablemente.5
I believe in the Holy Spirit, whose breath runs through my lungs, who knows my innermost being and invites me to re-conocer6 the Divine through the gift of my own incarnation.
I believe in God the Parent, who hears my plea, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”7
I believe in the God of my ancestras, the Apostles Junia8 and Mary,9 and my abuelitas.
I believe in the God I knew as a child when I learned the words to Cuán Grande es Él (How Great Thou Art) in my abuelita’s kitchen.10
I believe in the God who creates, welcomes, and blesses the beauty of diversity.11
I believe in the God who has already and will one day reign over God’s good creation in a kingdom where death, oppression, and all evil will be no more.12 Amen.
One, Sleeping At Last.
Hold Fast, Scott Erickson. https://scottericksonartshop.com/collections/everything/products/hold-fast
Christ in the Wilderness, Kelly Latimore. https://kellylatimoreicons.com/collections/signed-print/products/christ-in-the-wilderness
Road to Emmaus, Ivanka Demchuk. https://www.etsy.com/listing/550791020/road-to-emmaus-original-print-on-natural
The Good Shepherd, Kelly Latimore. https://kellylatimoreicons.com/collections/signed-print/products/the-good-shepherd
Re-conocer, Wendy Cordero Rugama. The title of this piece is a play with the Spanish words conocer (to know) and reconcer (to recognize), symbolizing the process of knowing, re-knowing, and recognizing the image of God in self.
Quote by Justin McRoberts. https://justinmcroberts.com/
Saint Junia The Apostle, Wendy Cordero Rugama (hand embroidery of the traditional icon). https://www.instagram.com/needles.and.books/
Mary Preaches the Resurrection, Wendy Cordero Rugama (hand embroidery of the traditional icon.)
Collage including a watercolor painting of my abuelita Alicia by my uncle Rodmi Cordero. http://www.rodmi.com/index.php?/projects/portraits/
Rainbow prayer beads/Anglican rosary by artisan Kenetha Stanton. https://www.etsy.com/listing/240882084/anglican-rosary-with-wood-beads-and?ref=yr_purchases
This Little Light of Mine, Ben Wildflower. https://benwildflower.com/collections/prints-1/products/this-little-light-of-mine