HDS communications reached out to our 2021 graduating students to hear from them in their own words about their experiences at HDS, the people who've helped and inspired them along their grad school journeys, and their plans for the future.
Reflection and Messages of Thanks
From HDS Wednesday Noon Service (April 21, 2021): Thank you for today’s scripture, Maeve. I’m old-fashioned, so I turned to the Presbyterian lectionary, but Maeve found us these timely passages.
Thank you, Burns, for teaching me everything Presbyterian. If it weren’t for your magnanimous spirit and this bedrock community of Presbyterians and Friends, I’d have gotten lost in all the richness that HDS offers. Our bygone elders—Mac, Kayla, Kiki, and Steven—we miss you and love you.
Today’s psalm resonates with me as I’ve been working at the Brigham, where I’ve witnessed pious patients express gratitude for their lives whether God heals them or not. Through my work at the Roxbury Presbyterian Church last summer, I also witnessed how God consoles and uplifts those oppressed by race.
Thank you, HDS, for funding both internships as well as my time at MIT and Christianity Today. These
opportunities have been my milk and honey, as I aspire to be a university minister.
Thank you, Kerry, for your class on university chaplaincy. Paul penned these words of gratitude from prison to a young church in Colossus, which echoes our lives as young seminarians confined to our homes. My dad hopes that after my degree from Harvard and citizenship from America, I would be more a Paul than a Peter in serving God’s kingdom.
While my dad has never been to America, thank you, HDS, for welcoming both my evangelical mother and atheist brother into our community. Your embrace knows no bounds.
While the psalmist and Paul were often grateful for their past and present, they also expressed hopes for the future. So I will leave you with some of my dreams for a more beloved community at HDS.
After decentering Christ which for Paul is the foundation of gratitude, I hope we find another centripetal
symbol to hold our diverse community. I also hope our nation’s new president will lower our political temperature, so we can understand and forgive more.
I’ve heard alums express nostalgia for the days of our residential community, and I hope we get our home back. In its absence, my classmates threw stellar house parties to bring us together (before the pandemic that is).
Thank you, for the lunar drinks and dances. I also hope we can keep more beloved professors of color like brother West, and invite Asian faculty to deepen our expertise in Asian religions. It was a joy and honor to found a Pan Asian Student Association at HDS with Chewlin, and I hope to see the organization resurrected once we reconvene in person this fall.
So thank you, UUs and UCCs, for nurturing me at your sacred home. I will move to Presbyterian heartland this fall, and I’d love to reciprocate your hospitality if you visit New Jersey.
Thank you, Prof. Jordan and Prof. Sanchez, for paving my path to PhD and introducing me to Barth (though he can be boring).
May the God of Calvin, Harvard, and Barth continue to bless our endeavors. Amen.