Where we are wounded allows us an opportunity to offer healing to others. This, I believe is the point…of everything. I want to help the world by creating spaces and healing for people who’ve been wounded by religion, it’s followers, or it’s ideology. There is much, I believe, healing to be offered in faith. I want to take my passion for the divine and the holistic life offered and try to help bridge the gaps that so many face due to the ugly of religion.
I’ve chosen to accept my admission to Abilene Christian University in Texas to study for a Masters of Divinity degree; for some this is my only remaining salvation, for others it is one of the more disappointing things I’ve done. This tension is hard, but it’s where I live. I cannot divorce myself from my past, nor can I run to it, fully embraced, as my future.
To be completely honest, I was also accepted to two other universities, one Baptist by heritage and one Methodist. It came down to ACU and the Methodist school in the Northeast, and the honest to goodness tipping point in the coin toss choice was the weather. I just don’t think I can hack three New England winters.
ACU, however, will push me in ways that a school with a differing heritage than my own ever could; it will push me to see the validity and the good in people and ideas that I have long since left. It would be easier to adopt another denomination’s baggage and try to work through it as if I hadn’t abandoned my baggage at that invisible line that one crosses when leaving the Southeast. Here, I will have to unpack my issues for what they are: spaces where I’ve been wounded for myself or for others. And from that, I hope, I can help offer a life that is better.
Becca Kello 