“If you can’t have peace nowhere else in this world, you ought to have it in your own home.” Whenever my grandma would say that, I’d lean in—mostly because she would say this when she was talking to a family member about discord within their household. I’d been taught to stay in a child’s place in these moments, but I wanted to be nosy. I wanted to hear what was happening, even if I needed to grow in age and wisdom before I would understand the complexities of adult life.
My grandmother’s words have stuck with me throughout my life, and I have endeavored to make my own home my safe place. Navigating this world without her and my mother, I’m uniquely aware of grief triggers. I’ve created a home where I can thrive in the best of life’s moments and be comforted in the worst of them. I have boundaries that don’t budge for anyone. After all, this is my space; my peace here is paramount.
In the backyard, I have a hammock. I lay out there, an audiobook coming through my outdoor Bluetooth speaker or my Kindle in hand. Just enough . . . being. In the right corner of my yard, closest to the door, is the outdoor kitchen I created for myself. And in the evenings, when the Thomas Edison-style bulbs I strung light up the night sky, I lay out there with my 5-year-old beagle, Charlie, and remember that there’s a joy I have that wasn’t given to me by this world.
Remembering that is crucial, because entirely too much happens in our world that aims to take our joy. I could list current tragedies and events, community specific and felt by the whole, and I would surely miss something. We’re all feeling the weight of the world, and many of us have questions. Where and how we seek answers to those questions makes a difference. The interior life matters. And a desire to help people along this journey led me to seminary more than a decade ago.
We were in the thick of the modern theological deconstruction movement; 2008 to 2022 saw a deconstruction “boom.” I, and many others, were blogging, vlogging, and hosting podcasts and the like—creating space to challenge long-held ideas about faith, theology, God, and the world around us. It was great. People began asking questions about race, gender, sexuality, class, and God. And the theological and denominational containers that once made some people feel safe weren’t doing that anymore. Blinders had fallen away, and we were able to see one another afresh and anew. It was a powerful time.
Then, the COVID-19 pandemic happened, and afterward we reemerged into a world that was different. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to make inquiries that led you to question and, sometimes, abandon elements of your faith (or all of it). People desired to be rooted. They needed to be grounded in something again and, for all the good the modern deconstruction movement had done, many people felt it had unmoored them. And they weren’t necessarily wrong. Many people had done the work of helping people walk away from toxic theologies, but they hadn’t stopped to think about how difficult it would be to walk into whole and healthy ones.
What is left after the furious inquisition that is deconstruction, after we’ve excavated every aspect of our interior life and decided what must leave and what can stay? Did we even decide what would remain, or did that happen by default? How do we look at the vestiges of our faith and spirituality in the aftermath of deconstruction and go “live on the rest,” as Elisha instructs the widow in scripture (2 Kings 4:7)?
Accompanying people as they learn to live on what is left is the work that has been tasked to today’s seminarians and emerging theologians. It is not enough to push people to ask questions and seek answers if we don’t also offer guidance for when that process leaves empty what was once filled. It’s not enough for us to challenge Christians to abandon the notion that God is male if we’re not also willing to walk with them through the valley of he/him toward an oasis of inclusive language and an expansive understanding of God.
Introducing existing theological frameworks and constructing new ones that speak to a consistent God in an ever-changing world is crucial. We were never meant to live fragmented in the rubble of our questions and answers. We are meant to be whole, thriving in a life that bloomed after that rubble was watered. It is its own miracle to witness someone move beyond patriarchal articulations of God and binaries to cultivate a faith that calls us to hold one another to a higher standard. This is how we go from the grim realities of restrictive faith to glory.
For many people, introducing existing theological frameworks and constructing new ones will require more learning. That learning can take on myriad different forms, but ultimately, it is a commitment to being better than we have been. It is when we are well-informed that we can identify theories, concepts, and practices that can further ground people in a God of their understanding. And, because generativity flourishes in community, we must be willing to open our new and emerging theological frameworks to critique. If iron sharpens iron, we are all made better when we refuse to do this work in silos and vacuums.
In a world that can often offer more heartbreak than hope, constructive theology is the salve. It reminds us that God is still speaking, that with the day’s new mercies comes an invitation to think more deeply about the world and our place in it. And those thoughts lead us to create. And those creations move us to more hope. And that hope can steady us when more heartbreaks come.
This is why I say that my grandmother was the greatest theologian I will ever know. She taught me how to cultivate a life of practices that draw me closer to God when the world’s darkness wants to pull me away. I go outside, barefoot, and recite Psalm 23—just like she taught me to do after I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I cook meals that my loved ones and I enjoy. And I lay in my hammock with books filled with sentences that make me think, smile, laugh, and cry—sometimes all at the same time.
I’d like to believe Grandma knew I needed to know this, and that’s why she didn’t shoo me out of the room immediately or chastise me for being in grown folks’ business during those moments when they were discussing how to deal with household discord. I’d like to think that, even back then, she knew I’d be responsible for helping others craft their own definitions of peace, rooted in healthy understandings of who God is and how God sees them. I’d like to think she knew my home would become an incubator, and my community would be the better for it. I believe she always knew and trusted that, one day, I’d know too.
This article also appears in the September 2026 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 91, No. 9, pages 18-19). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Unsplash.com/Dmitrii Shirnin
