What’s with the God Thing?

On Reverends and Rock Bands

You could say I’ve been spiritually non-monogamous.

Baptized Catholic. A CCD drop out. Briefly Buddhist. Danced for rock bands. Taught cathartic fitness. Avoided gyms. Prayed in my own way. Cried to poetry. Sometimes believed. Sometimes didn’t.

And now? I’m in seminary.

Let me explain.

This past week I flew across the country for the final intensive of my first year of interfaith seminary. We met in person for the first time after ten months of classes over Zoom. It was one of those weeks that feels like it lives outside of time. Something inside me shifted. Not loudly, not dramatically. But definitely.

The God-Lovers (and God-Leavers)

Let’s back up. My mother and all of her four siblings were raised in a Catholic boarding school. Not only raised by nuns and priests—but eventually, each of them became one. 3 nuns, 2 priests on my mother’s side. My uncle served in the priesthood for as long as 15 years. My mom left the convent after 5. Over time, all of them chose other paths. The joke in our family is that we’re all going to hell because the all the Igoas (my mother’s maiden name) "divorced God." Irreverent reverends.

Some of them still went to church. Some didn't. My mom went when she needed to. Her faith became a quiet thing, customized and hard-won.

I was baptized and took my First Communion. And somewhere along the road to Confirmation, something in me started to shake. I remember sitting in the back seat of the car after CCD class and declaring, loudly and stubbornly:

"I don’t believe in these stories! So why am I getting confirmed in them?"

My mom had a choice. She could insist I stay the course, forcing me onto a path that I was petulantly refusing or she could let me step off the path, potentially forever. And by the Grace of… Who (?) she chose the latter. And then she called Aunt Crissy.

Auntie Crissy, when she left the monastery, had set Jesus down and picked up Buddha. And that weekend, she paid a "surprise" visit and handed me Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Because she wasn't my mom, I read it.

It did what I suspect she hoped it would. It opened a new window, not just into Buddhism, but into the idea that there were many windows. That my mom maybe wasn’t so crazy for what she believed in and the stories I was being taught, because the way Buddha said it, I was starting to get what this whole God thing might be all about: learn how to human well.

I stuck with Buddhism for a while. I liked the simplicity. The sound of chanting in my Sangha meetings, the scent of their incense.

Then around the ripe old age of 15, the teachings around minimalism were reeeeally clashing with my intense desire to wallpaper my bedroom in Dave Matthews Band posters.

So I put Buddha down. And picked up music.

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Music as My Church

In my twenties, music became my religion.

I danced for rock bands and I felt lit up from the inside. Thousands of people on their feet, arms in the air, hips moving, voices lifted. Untethered. Unarmored. Free. Unified. Beaming. Belonging.

There was something sacred about it, though I wouldn’t have called it that then. A kind of collective looseness that gave everyone permission to be more themselves.

And yet, underneath it, I still felt a quiet shake.

I wasn’t a trained dancer. I wasn’t particularly flexible. I felt like I was faking it, in a sense. Trying not to get fired and riding the magic as long as I could. I loved being part of it—but it didn't quite feel like mine.

“Everything That Happens” David Byrne Tour 2010

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The Class as a Calling

In my late twenties, early thirties, I started on a big decade-long journey with The Class (you should try it if you haven’t!), as a teacher and as a builder of the business. I didn’t just participate—I gave it everything. At one point in a performance review, I described it as "my vocation."

Through The Class, I (along with our amazing cohort of teachers) led people into embodied release—tears, sweat, sound, silence. Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of people moving, feeling, unraveling. It was liturgy without dogma. It was soul work through squats and screams.

And still—the shake.

Because, the truth is - the cosmic joke is - I don’t really love fitness. You won't find me casually lifting weights for fun. What I absolutely did love was watching people come alive and come back to themselves and their bodies. Watching the masks drop. Watching something real get revealed in the room.

That part felt sacred, and I did start to use that term then. It absolutely felt sacred, and yet, it still didn’t feel holistically me.

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The Bowl

After that chapter closed, I found myself walking through the Irish countryside with the poet David Whyte. A tour. A pilgrimage.

We climbed a mountain in wild weather: sleet, mist, sunshine, fog. Ireland doing what Ireland does. At the summit, the land dipped into what they call “The Bowl.” Limestone steps led into a natural hollow where we paused, breathless and damp, to listen.

David told us a story: this is where many, including John O’Donohue, had seen the face of Jesus in the stone. It was here that John first felt the call to become a priest. And years later, he returned to the very same spot — this time, to hear the call to leave the priesthood behind.

The shake stirred. It wasn’t necessarily David, or John, or Jesus.

Not a voice. Not a vision. Just… one of those cartoon pie moment. The way scent curls on air and calls something forward.

Something in me said: Pay attention.

By Bryant Arnold

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Little Signs and Nudges

That whisper grew louder in the weeks after. Little signs. Nudges. A knowing that eventually landed in my lap: Apply to interfaith seminary.

Which was hilarious. I mean—what?! Seminary? All the reasons why that was crazy:
Girl. Ministers don’t exactly roll in dollar bills and health benefits. Also: remember that whole bit when you refused to get Confirmed? How about Buddha vs. Dave Matthews? Also: the world was (and is) on fire. And religion has been wrapped around much of it. Why would anyone walk into that terrain? Why would you?

Meanwhile, the wellness industry feels like its jumped the shark. Social media’s pseudo-psychology has made sacred language into hashtag culture. And AI is startlingly good at impersonating care, but can’t actually carry it.

And still, something’s calling me on.

I wonder if, actually, the most radical thing I could do - while state legislature debates whether or not the Ten Commandments should be posted in every school, and while religion is still used to justify violence - is to walk straight into the center of it.

To dive into the holy, messy, honest work of reckoning - with the places where our distortions have been most powerful, and the places where there’s still the possibility of making the world even slightly more bearable, more beautiful.

Not just through one lens—but through many. Movement. Word. Prayer. Presence.

Is it too naive? Too hopeful?

I suppose I’d rather be too hopeful than in despair.

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The Intensive

So this past week, we gathered. Fifty of us, in a modest retreat center. No frills. Cafeteria food. Shared bathrooms. But what we had was a shared language. A shared ache and perhaps shake. A shared devotion to what cannot be pinned down.

We moved past small talk quickly. We asked each other real questions. Sat in silence. Cried in circle. Laughed in lines for tea.

The second morning, I opened my notebook and found the very first quote I had scribbled on the very first day of seminary, from our first class:

“If it does not help me love you, then it cannot be the truth.” - Kurt Johnson

I read the words. I looked up at my classmates. I glanced at the programming for the week — the conversations, the rituals, the Initiation that would mark our completion of Year One.

And the strangest thing happened…