I say I’m studying religion — we’re at the crest of summer here at our riverside restaurant in Maine, and, as a bartender, I don’t often have the time while pouring drinks to describe the difference between religion and theology, so I go with the former because I, for some reason, think it makes more sense to the masses.
At the bar, there’s a regular the town calls Critter. His real name is Christian, and before this last spring semester ended, I often imagined describing Vanderbilt Divinity School to him— a person with the spiritual capacity for the whole answer but would likely get annoyed if I rambled on too long deconstructing the jargon.
Christian hasn’t asked yet, but most of the town has when they come see me at work. When they ask, I find myself nervous about answering fully, quickly, and honestly during service, and my responses flutter out of my chest like birds disturbed from their trees. In the air, against the sky over the bar, the cries and chirps of those birds sound like “I’m studying religion,” or “I’m learning about the contours of hope,” sometimes a silent cardinal red, or just the laugh of a gull.
Recently, those answers have felt like crows mistaken for ravens, reluctant to leave their telephone wire, content with looking at traffic. Sometimes, when I tell patrons I’m studying theology at a divinity school, they act surprised, but the surprise is a two-fold assumption that, one, I’m going on to be ordained, and two, I’m a Christian. Neither bird is true.
Whatever answers are perching in my chest or roosting in the eaves of the roof above the bar, they are fun to look at and leave me feeling like a birder new to the game. I’m often surprised at the avians that leave my throat when certain people ask— who knew birds could look and sound like that? Whenever I see an old friend’s parent while I’m at work, I come out from behind the bar. We hug, bending the branches of our ribs a bit, and then the questions are warm, and the birds are familiar, but just far enough away I can’t see for certain what they are.
When people ask me about divinity school, answering feels disingenuous because I want to give certainty, especially to the ones I love. I want my answers to feel solid, like rocks, to stand with at least two feet on the ground, but when I open my mouth, all I taste is feathers.
As I get older, the people of the town tell me I’m turning into my father.
Perhaps in look, but in mannerism, too. John is a gregarious red-headed man with a deep voice, excited to talk to just about anyone about anything and learn about them. If I’m ever looking for this red feathered man in a crowd, I look to the air just above the din and wait to see where the birds spring from.
I think of Dad when people ask me about my life and the birds in my chest shift on their branches. His inquiries feel like care, and while I wish I could give people solid ground when they ask me about divinity school, I have to remind myself they don’t always need that in a response — I do, and that’s a difference I’ve lived into these past few months.
While I look to the sky in awe, bewilderment, and wonder aloud about the shape and color of the birds flying out from within, this summer I’ve felt that maybe I should be more taken by the question than I am the answers; maybe when people ask it’s because they want to know I’m doing okay, whatever it is I’m doing; maybe curiosity is a form of love; maybe, well, almost certainly, Emily Dickinson knew these feathered things. “Hope,” she writes, “is the thing with feathers.”
Johnathan Riley is a Unitarian Universalist from the coast of Maine in the Master of Theological Studies (M.T.S.) program at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Some of the topics Johnathan’s exploring in his coursework include the maintenance required of meaning-making, the act of writing as spiritual-identity formation, and theopoetics in pluralism. He holds degrees from Florida State University, and the University of New Hampshire where he earned an MFA in Writing while teaching poetry and first-year composition. In addition to his work as a theologian, Johnathan is an award-winning journalist, columnist, photographer, and poet. Read more of Johnathan’s reflections on the VDS Voices Blog.