Duke and Spirituality

ETA: I just found out that Duke has reversed its decision and decided to hold the call to prayer in the quad instead. I can't say I was particularly pleased with this backtracking, but I have to acknowledge that Christians might not be comfortable with the chapel being used for the Muslim call to prayer. (Though I have to say... the chapel holds a lot of non-Christian events at school, and I have yet to hear any major complaints against those.)

HOWEVER.... what pissed me off more than anything were the comments people left on Duke's Facebook page. Calling Duke a "traitor Muslim school' and all sorts of garbage. I suspect NONE of those people ever studied at Duke in the first place and have NO IDEA what it's like on campus. Those people threatening to never send their kids there -- if your kids are just as close-minded and poisonous with hateful words, then they probably don't belong at Duke either.

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Original Post

I generally don't blog about current events, but there are times when the events intersect strangely with the ongoings in my own life, and I feel compelled to write in order to process my thoughts.

My alma mater, Duke University, recently announced that every Friday, the Muslim call to prayer will ring from the chapel bell tower. This has been gaining particular attention the news, especially in light of the recent events in France with the terrorist act committed at Charlie Hebdo. Some boneheads have been calling upon donors and alum to stop donating to Duke until the policy is reversed, claiming that this encouragement of Islam is a threat to Christianity.

I won't even go into the fact that the influence of Christianity is everywhere at Duke (the insignia, the chapel, the Bibles we all receive upon graduation), and that the idea of Christianity being wiped out from Duke is laughable. But I will talk about how I am indebted to Duke for opening my eyes to religious acceptance and spirituality.

When I entered the school in August 2009, I had no concept of either. I was vaguely aware of the Buddhist influence on my extended family an ocean away, but growing up I had no religious rituals and hardly ever thought about higher powers and whatnot. That changed almost as soon as I started my freshman year, when a high school alum at Duke invited me to join a Christian fellowship's welcome event.

That freshman year was a terrible year, but it made me who I am today. Two things happened coincidentally during that period. My disastrous academic experience hurtled me into a personal crisis of intense self-doubt and loathing. At the same time, I began exploring Christianity -- initially, as a way to make friends who also felt fatigued by the prevalent hook-up culture, but little by little I began attending small groups and large groups, intrigued by the conversations on what it meant to live a good life and be a good person. These were conversations I'd never had growing up, and I read Bible verses and listened to the pastors in curiosity.

At a certain point, however, I reached a dead-end. There were things I liked about Christianity, but there were also things I didn't like, couldn't accept, or just couldn't believe. As I asked more and more questions to my mentors, the answers started to meld into one: "It will make sense if you believe." But I can't believe, I wanted to say, because it doesn't make sense! Gradually, I stopped attending the group events, but the friends that I made remained through the rest of my undergraduate career and beyond. My best friend from Duke is a devout Christian, and if anything, my experience with that Christian fellowship taught me how to be religiously sensitive.

The other major spiritual epiphany happened in my junior year. To get some English major requirements out of the way, I enrolled in a class called "Spiritual Autobiographies." Our first essay assignment was to observe a spiritual or religious event that is not part of our own beliefs and write about the experience. Some classmates went to a mosque, while others went to a Buddhist temple. I went to visit a pagan witch on the night of the full moon.

That night will always be one of my favorite memories, because in many ways it changed me. Not because I started believing in pagan rituals or spirits, but because of certain things the witch said to me that night. One was what she told me when she read my Tarot card. The second was when she said that it's okay to take bits and pieces of what you like in other religions and custom-build your own spirituality, without having to accept all the other baggage that comes with each organized religion.

The light came on. And that's where I am now--spiritual, but not religious.

In medical school, religion becomes especially important when we talk about end of life care and death. During my end-of-life elective class yesterday, we had to act in scenarios with actors in which we were supposed to break the bad news that his/her mother had terminal cancer. We were split into small groups that rotated through four stations, each with a different actor. As soon as my actor asked me, with tears streaming down his face, if I believed in Jesus our Lord and Savior, bells went off in my head.

My friend had to do the same scenario in a different group, and she said her first reaction was panic. I understood -- religion is something we almost never discuss publicly and can become a scary topic to broach. But as I held the actor's arm, I quietly told him that I believed in a higher power, but that my role in his mother's care was not in religion but in medicine. When he suddenly closed his eyes to pray aloud, I let him. I kept my eyes down in respect, just like I'd done all those times I'd had dinner with my Christian friends who said Grace before every meal.

Duke University not only helped me understand my own spiritual beliefs, but also helped me understand how to interact with people of other beliefs, and to respect the positive things that religion can bring--compassion, comfort, and solace. I am proud of my school for leading the way in religious acceptance and grateful for what it has taught me in turn.