Why Divinity School?

The short answer to the question, "why did you decide to go to Divinity School?" is this:

I don't have a formal academic background in religion, and I'd like to have one.

I have a pretty rich experiential background with religion, and I'd like to learn the language with which I can articulate my thoughts on those experiences, and to process those experiences "in community"--whether that be in the classroom, over lunch with classmates, or through books I'm reading.

When the desire to explore seminary was beginning to take shape, I was on a quest to locate myself within the geography of the Christian landscape of America.  This meant taking into consideration my particular ethnicity, gender, personality type, and spiritual giftings.  It meant sorting out my theology and the practical implications thereof.

I have had several fallouts with Christian communities in the last 8 years.  Sometimes it had to do with issues of integrity in male spiritual leadership that I witnessed (dishonesty, sexual harrassment, power-mongering), sometimes it had to do with not feeling the freedom to exercise my spiritual giftings and being dismissed because I am single and because I am intuitively attuned to things not easily articulated before skeptical ears.  In any case, I have had trouble finding a community in which I can truly speak what's on my heart.

To be fair, not all of my experiences have been as negative as they may sound.  In my most recent phase of life in LA, Hope Christian Fellowship, Bible Study Fellowship, and a local women's Scripture Memory Group were all wonderful things.  But some of the most emotionally invested seasons of spirituality of my 20s have ended in relational devastation.

Ironically, those experiences usually start out as smooth sailing.  I connect quickly with leadership and participate in fellowship as candidly and as prudently as I know how.  At first, I do feel that freedom to be me and to express my spiritual side in the way I feel called.  Eventually, however, something always develops that seems to increasingly oppose what I'm about, and then male leadership will do something to discourage or mute any voice that I once had.  A period of disillusionment usually follows, and then I must work up the energy to try again.

Currently, good things are happening in my spiritual life, and I'm grateful.  God led me to a church in New Haven very quickly, and pretty soon after that I settled into a weekly Home Group.  Things feel right, and I'm getting the spiritual support I need.

The words I speak in fellowship do not feel less valid because I am a woman, or because I am Asian.  Men in the group, both married and not married, listen to what I'm saying, just like I listen to what they are saying.  Women in the group, both married and not married, value my thoughts and my words, just like I value their thoughts and words.  There is a joy that comes with being vulnerable and honest, with allowing others to speak from the depths of their experience (both of God and of life) without feeling intimidated or insecure.

Too, I've found solid friendships at the Divinity School where similar feelings of "safeness" are there.  My "Ministry and the Disinherited" class has become the basis for several friendships--men and women  who listen with their hearts as much as their minds.  Roadtrips and study sessions have become opportunities to converse at length with friends about theology, personal history, and future inquiry.  I have been blessed to find people here who are kind human beings that happen to be at Yale.

If you are reading this post, I hope you feel encouraged that if you keep searching for it, answers will eventually (sometimes at an agonizingly slow pace) begin to become available to you.  And while community takes work and initiative on your part, it could also be a simple matter of location and timing.  As in, don't blame yourself if you're not connecting with the community (or lack thereof) that happens to be most local/accessible to you.  Don't be discouraged if you are stifled in your giftings and longing for deeper fellowship, but don't be okay with it either.  Dig deep into your Source, and allow Him to refine you in foggy or dark places.

At some point, He just might bring you into the kind of community your heart so desires.

My current season is an unexpected blessing, one that I'm not taking for granted.  I also know that it can be taken away or dissolve sometime down the road, and that ultimately the only thing that I can count on is my relationship with Christ.  In the meantime, my quest has reached a "resting point", a safe spot where I can replenish myself and have fruitful give-and-take with others who are also staying temporarily in this place, this New Haven to searchers and seekers of faith and meaning.