FINDING GOD ON PARK STREET
Dive into the heart of the Catholic experience at Yale University with host Grace Klise, Director of Alumni Engagement at Saint Thomas More. In each episode, Grace and her student co-hosts engage in conversations with students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community members. Together, they discuss the nuances of living out the Catholic faith in today's world, culminating in the question, "Where have you found God?" This podcast offers a space to explore the intersection of spirituality, community, and education, providing listeners with personal insights and meaningful perspectives. Subscribe now to join the journey of discovery and connection.
FINDING GOD ON PARK STREET
Dr. Maureen Long: Between Faith and Faultlines
Join us as we talk about creation with our guest, Dr. Maureen Long, a trailblazer in the field of observational seismology who calls Yale and Saint Thomas More home. From Peru to the Pacific Northwest to the Appalachian Mountains, Dr. Long's work transcends borders, capturing earthquake waves from around the globe. Listen to her love for plate tectonics as she unravels the mysteries lying deep within our Earth.
But this conversation is not just about exploring the physical layers of Earth; it's also a dive into the layers of faith and science within her life. Listen as Dr. Long shares how she weaves her faith into her perspective on her scientific research, finding spiritual nourishment amidst the hustle and bustle of academic life at Yale. Dr. Long also shares her personal journey at Yale and how the Saint Thomas More community has been an anchor for her and her family. It's a fascinating blend of science, faith, and personal reflection that you won't want to miss.
This is Finding God on Park Street, a podcast from St Thomas More Yale's Catholic Chapel and Center. My name is Grace Klise and I'm your host, joined by Zach Moynihan as the student co-host today. Thanks for listening. What do rocks, university life and faith have to do with each other? Just ask Dr Maureen Long, an observational seismologist who currently serves as the chair of Earth and Planetary Sciences here at Yale. Since she was in eighth grade, Maureen has loved learning about plate tectonics, and her love for them has only deepened as she has committed her professional life to researching what is happening beneath the surface of the Earth. Whether she is on research trips in the middle of the ocean, doing fieldwork in rural New England or with her family in the pews at St Thomas More, Maureen never ceases to stand in awe of the beauty of God's creation and the incredible opportunity she has to learn more about it. Let's dive in. Maureen, you have been doing some fieldwork this summer, correct? Can you tell us a little bit about that, where you've been and what you've been doing?
Dr. Maureen Long:Yes, I would love to. My research specialty is seismology. I study earthquakes. Specifically, I use earthquake waves to study the deep structure of the Earth. I'm interested in the crust and the mantle and even the core. I'm interested in basically what lies beneath our feet. One of the projects that I'm working on right now that I'm very excited about involves deploying seismic stations, so instruments that will record earthquake waves from earthquakes actually all over the world. They don't need to be close to the station. We're deploying those instruments here in New England. So in Massachusetts and across Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, we are trying to study what lies beneath all of the really complicated and rich and wonderful geology that we have here in New England. It's super fun. Fieldwork is one of the best things about being a geologist.
Zach Moynihan:Has this work led you anywhere outside of New England?
Dr. Maureen Long:Yes, In the past I have done fieldwork in some fairly far-flung places. I worked in Peru for several years. Early in my faculty career I had a big deployment of seismometers down in Peru, which was amazing. One of my favorite places in the world. I've worked in the Pacific Northwest US in the Cascadia subduction zone. I've done some work further to the south in the Appalachian Mountains and the West Virginia area. I've even been to sea. I was involved in a deployment of seismometers in the ocean offshore. I got to go on a research ship for two weeks collecting seismometers from the ocean floor, which was a ton of fun.
Grace Carroll:Gosh, that sounds really fun and very diverse in terms of where you're going and probably the teams that you're working with, the cultures that you're in, the landscapes that surround you.
Dr. Maureen Long:Absolutely, that's totally true. It's one of the great parts of getting to be a geologist who does fieldwork. I've been, you could be high up in the Andes Mountains in a tiny village that you would never, ever go if you were a tourist. Then a month later you're out in the desert in eastern Oregon just you and the sagebrush. So it really is fun being getting to do earth science fieldwork. It's a joy.
Grace Carroll:Did you always know that you wanted to be a geologist?
Dr. Maureen Long:Yeah, actually I have wanted to be an earth scientist for a really long time. When I was a kid I was always very math and science oriented, kind of really always loved science. Then when I was in eighth grade I took an earth science class. That was kind of my public middle school in Massachusetts. Everybody took earth science in eighth grade. It's funny because a lot of the class I thought was boring, I didn't have the most inspiring teacher or anything, but we did the unit on plate tectonics. Plate tectonics and earthquakes and volcanoes. I just thought it was the coolest thing I had ever heard of. I was like this is what I want to be when I grow up, at the age of however old you are in eighth grade, 13 or 14 or whatever. That turned out to actually be what I wanted to do. It's great. I think being a scientist is just the best possible career and I highly recommend it.
Zach Moynihan:Your account is eliciting some fond memories that I have learning about the crust and the mantle and plate tectonics back in middle school. I'm wondering if you have any particular highlights over the past couple of years that have built on what you've learned over the course of your career.
Dr. Maureen Long:Oh yeah, gosh, I'm interested in studying it. As I said, what happens deep down in the earth and then how that relates to what we can see at the surface. One of the science problems that I work on is what we call intraplate volcanism. This is volcanic activity that happens far away from plate boundaries. There's actually a really good example of that. There are some well-known examples. Hawaii is the type example of that. It's a mantle plume, we have a volcano, and it's right in the middle of the Pacific plate. We actually have an example of that here on the east coast of the United States. There is a little volcano.
Dr. Maureen Long:Virginia and kind of the eastern part of West Virginia has some volcanic activity and it is really young. Now brace yourself. When I say young, I mean 50 million years old, so young on the geologic time scale. But it happened right in the middle of a plate boundary and it happened at a time when you know that there was no big tectonic event in that part of the world. And so one of the things that I've been working on over the past few years is to try to understand what happened deep in the earth, what happened in the mantle, to cause this little blip of volcanism far away from a play boundary, in a setting where we don't usually expect it. And you know the whole problem of kind of what goes on in the earth's interior to cause volcanism far away from plate boundaries is a like a huge unsolved problem in earth science. And so I've been tackling, you know, thinking very deeply about this particular setting.
Dr. Maureen Long:In Virginia I proposed and ran a big seismic experiment. So we deployed a bunch of seismic instruments and analyzed the data and just in the last couple years we've published several, you know, papers that I'm really excited about, that have set, kind of proposed a model for, you know, we call it, I'm not going to get into the technical details, but we call it lithospheric loss or delamination. So a piece of the lithosphere broke off and sank into the mantle and that caused volcanism and so, again, the technical details are not important, but anytime as a scientist you're tackling, you're tackling a problem, you're asking a question nobody knows the answer to, and then you go out, you design an experiment, you get it funded, you carry it out, you do the analysis, you write the paper and you answer the question. I mean, that is just, you know, that is what science is all about and it's it's the coolest feeling. So that is one of the the recent projects that I've been working on.
Grace Carroll:And I'm sure it makes it all the more meaningful when you can bring students along with you.
Dr. Maureen Long:Absolutely, and that's, you know, one of the best things about being a scientist working at a university and a faculty position is that you know the research and education are intertwined and we're always, you know, a huge part of what we do is, just as you said, Grace, you know, we're bringing students into the field, we're showing them how science is done, we're training them in in research and training them to, you know, ask those unknown questions and then figure out how to answer them. And, yeah, it's one of the things I really love about being a professor is is that you know we're doing, yes, this cutting edge science and we're doing it in the context of educating our students. And it's you know, there's nothing cooler than bringing students out into the field and showing them how to you know, teaching them how to collect data.
Grace Carroll:That's, it's a really cool feeling inspiring the next generation of earth scientists.
Zach Moynihan:Yeah and in this field there seems to be such a clear connection to religion, perhaps in the way that you are investigating, in some ways, the foundation of God's earthly creation, and I'm wondering in what way your research over the years has intersected with your faith life.
Dr. Maureen Long:Yeah, what a, what a great question. And I think you kind of got to the heart of it there. I mean, it's sort of, you know, I think for, you know, this is maybe true of all physical scientists whether we studied, you know, the earth or the solar system, or the cosmos, or you know whatever it is. Yeah, we really are, we're studying God's creation, right? And, and you know, I would certainly say, you know, I wouldn't say that my faith impacts the way that I do my science, but it absolutely impacts the way I kind of think about my science and relate to it, and and it really is cool that, yes, we're studying, you know, these natural phenomena that are part of, you know, God's creation, and that that is a very cool feeling and it does, yeah, really inform a lot about how I think, about my faith and how you know and how, as a person of faith, I go about, you know, relating to the work that I do.
Grace Carroll:I'm thinking just with all of the places you've seen around the world too. How can one not be moved by the awe and wonder of creation?
Dr. Maureen Long:Absolutely, oh, absolutely. And I mean it is a real privilege to be able to go to all these places. And yeah, marvel, you know again, you're like high on a mountain in the Andes or you're in the middle of the ocean. The cruise that I went on, the research cruise that I went on I forget what year it was, maybe 2015. It happened to be that it was over Easter, which was a huge bummer. It felt very weird being away from church during Holy Week and Easter, but on the other hand, I was kind of standing out on the deck of the ship all alone and sort of knowing, okay, it's Easter Sunday, I'm going to sort of spend some time with God here and just standing there in the middle of this vast ocean. And I mean it actually was really profound. I mean in a very different way than it would have been profound, being at church on Easter Sunday, but it really is a very profound experience when you can kind of relate to creation in that way.
Grace Carroll:Did you grow up Catholic, Maureen, and, as your career was flourishing in those early years and then becoming a faculty member here at Yale, have you had challenges in integrating your personal faith with the work that you're doing?
Dr. Maureen Long:That's a great question. So I did grow up Catholic, you know, cradle Catholic, and grew up in a family that was very, you know, very much practicing and weekly churchgoers. Interestingly, and something that's been a little different for me with my faith life, is that for the most part, actually most, members of my family are no longer practicing Catholic. Some, so my mother is, and I am, but a lot of my family members have actually sort of made, you know, a different turn in their faith journey and some senses, yes, and in some senses no.
Dr. Maureen Long:I mean I very often get the question of, like you know, how do you sort of like reconcile your faith with being a scientist? And you know, I mean, on some level, I always, you know, almost like roll my eyes at the question a little bit. It's like, well, you know, how do you reconcile your faith with, like being a plumber? Like you know, like I mean, we all, we all have to do that work right. But on the other hand, I mean I think there is something to the idea that, for somebody whose scientific work is very much in this naturalistic frame of like, okay, we are seeking out the natural explanations for these phenomena that we as Christians, of course, believe are very intimately tied to God and creation. There is some tension in that and it's something I think about a lot. For somebody who studies the natural world and also as a person of faith, you know, it does, I think, force you to sort of think about well, how does my faith fit in with the rest of my life? And those are not always easy questions to answer.
Grace Carroll:No, they're not but hopefully, a community of faith around you and a spirit of curiosity within us makes us continue to seek out answers and seek better understanding. So have you had either communities or books, or authors or mentors who have helped you in that journey of integration?
Dr. Maureen Long:Yeah, that's a great question. I think that I mean one thing for me, so I have done all of my schooling at, or did all of my schooling at, institutions that are pretty different from Yale. So I did my undergrad at RPI, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and then I went to grad school at MIT. So my whole schooling was at institutions where I was surrounded by other, you know, scientists and engineers and I was, you know, involved in the Catholic faith communities at both of those institutions you know kind of, especially at MIT, which has a, you know, just wonderful Catholic community, much as Yale does here at St Thomas More. And I think it did,
Dr. Maureen Long:I know that it did help me to be surrounded by other people who were also getting a PhD in science, as I was, but also practicing Catholics, and we're all sort of on that journey together of integrating our work and our faith. And also, you know, another thing that I think has been enormously influential and wonderful for my faith life is having gone to school and grad school and then now as a university professor. I think when you're part of a faith community centered at a university, one of the amazing things about that is that you are surrounded by people who are not only willing but eager to think about, to really tackle their faith on an intellectual level as well as a purely spiritual one. Right, where everybody, everybody's a learner, we're all curious, we all want to, you know, none of us here at Yale or in the other universities where I've worked, you know nobody's shying away from asking those difficult questions and everybody is very willing and eager to ask the tough questions about our faith, and that has just been really great for me.
Zach Moynihan:I think personally, as a college student, I think this environment has been so rich in many ways for my faith life. As you say, it's provided an opportunity for me to contemplate some of those bigger questions in the company of my peers. It's also made it a little bit more difficult when it comes to the hustle culture that we sometimes have at Yale.
Zach Moynihan:And it can be hard to stay on track with your spiritual practices. So I'm wondering what are the steps that you take to find spiritual nourishment when the semester gets crazy, as we know it's about to become?
Dr. Maureen Long:What a terrific question because, like, oh my God, I of course feel you, we all do right and I love the phrase hustle culture because it is so apt for, I love Yale, I love being here, but it is absolutely true that this is a place full of type A over achievers, right? That's why we're all here and that's not always conducive to slowing down and valuing the right things in your life and nourishing your spiritual life and nourishing your faith life. Do I have gosh words of wisdom, tips and tricks? I will always take any advice from anyone on how to do this. One thing that works for me and this is maybe silly, but I got into the habit maybe a year ago and I've kept it up on my morning commute.
Dr. Maureen Long:I live maybe 20 minutes from campus or so, so it's not a super long commute, but my drive in in the morning is kind of like my time to sort of like clear my mind.
Dr. Maureen Long:I try to spend some time praying and just try to get in the mind frame of the day. I find myself slipping into like the mental to-do list, and that's not what I'm after, right, I'm trying to more just kind of like center myself and sort of get in the right mindset of like okay, I'm going to go through today. Yes, I might have, you know, a million things on my to-do list and I have to teach tomorrow and I got this, that and the other thing but also I'm going to try to, in the back of my mind, slow down and center the important things, which is not the hustle in the what can I achieve next and what award can I win, or whatever it is.
Dr. Maureen Long:It's the fundamentals of like how am I going to live my life consistent with my faith and my values? So I mean that's you know for me taking that morning time and I happen to do it in my, in my car, on my commute, because the morning rush with getting the kids off to school is done with and I'm not yet sitting at my desk. So I try to take that time, but it's not easy. I mean, you've articulated something that I think is a challenge here at Yale for all of our faith lives.
Zach Moynihan:I think it's so important to have those ritual practices. I think for me, going to Mass every Sunday has been such an important part, just such a good reset at the end of the weekend heading into the week. I'm a big fan of the 9 pm Mass particularly, but over the course of the summer I've attended my fair share of 10 am morning Aasses.
Zach Moynihan:And it's definitely a different vibe. But one of the things that I love about those Masses is the community presence we have and also the families that you see at Mass. So I'm wondering what it's like raising your kids in the Church and what it's been like having this family to bring to St Thomas More.
Dr. Maureen Long:Yeah, I was so glad you asked that. Yeah, no, I am definitely one of the families when you look around at the 10 am Mass with the kids in tow. So my husband, Tony, and I have two children. So Patrick, our son, is 12 and our daughter, Caroline, is nine. So they're going into seventh and fourth grades and yeah, it is really funny, not funny, haha, but like wow, how much I found that the experience of becoming a parent changed my faith life. And you know, I mean some of it was just practical, like I mean my kids are now they're old enough that they're always well- behaved and they, like they were always been pretty well behaved. But, like you know, there is, Mass is not always a profound spiritual experience when you have like a wiggly 18- month- old you're trying to like corral. So I mean some of it is just practical that you kind of have like one more thing on your plate that you're trying to juggle with your faith life. But the other thing is that I am really finding that having children really forces you, or at least has forced me, to really think through your values and your faith and what is important to you, because you're transmitting that to your children, and that that is a very profound thing, right, and so I think that's been very valuable for me. I think it's forced me to engage a little deeper with, with the you know kind of nuts and bolts of my faith. And what are we, what am I, we, my husband and I, what are we passing along to our children and why? And so that you know that's a really lovely aspect of parenthood. You know, the other thing about being a parent and having you know family life is, I have always really liked the metaphor that God loves us, the way that we love our children. And you know, I don't want to kind of oversell that because I know that there are a lot of parent and child relationships that are fraud, and but for me personally, I've always loved that metaphor, and that metaphor, of course, just got that much more real after I became a parent, right? So, yeah, I think that's that's another aspect of family life that has been really important for my faith.
Dr. Maureen Long:And children ask the best questions too. Children ask the best questions. There was a, we had a hilarious moment once. Patrick was little, three years old maybe, and Father Bob the, of course you know wonderful, amazing, long time Chaplain at St Thomas More was giving you know, giving a homily on you know a very sort of like, intellectual sort of like, and he was talking about Nietzsche and made reference to the famous like is God dead? You know that Nietzsche, you know, quote, and Patrick pipes up, "God is dead? In the middle and like the whole church just burst out laughing and I was like oh my gosh, like that was definitely my kid. But yes, like you know, kids say the darnest things and they do. They ask wonderful questions.
Grace Carroll:We love having Patrick and Caroline here and they've been involved in religious education. And Patrick is our superb basket collection guy.
Dr. Maureen Long:He loves, oh man, he is your guy at the 10 am. He loves passing the baskets. He's always like come on, we gotta get to church so I can get in on the baskets. Where's Sister Jenn? You know.
Grace Carroll:I think it is really meaningful for our students too to see families at various stages of family life who continue to pour into this community and to make it part of their weekly routine to come to Mass together. Dr. Maureen Long: Yep, yeah, that's very special.
Zach Moynihan:And while we were preparing to record this episode, Grace and I were reflecting on the many ways that rocks show up in scripture.
Zach Moynihan:And we wanted to quote some for you and see if we could get some reflections. So in Matthew, chapter seven, we find the parable about the man who built his house on rock as a sturdy foundation, and in Psalm 18, verse two, we see the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer. And so we see this motif coming up again and again in the Bible and I'm wondering what you think about these passages.
Dr. Maureen Long:Oh, I love it. I love that you brought that up, because I also have that whenever there's any kind of earth science topic that comes up in Bible verses, I love it. In addition to the references to rocks that you brought up, that I love, I mean, I love my rock and my salvation. That that one is a very meaningful image for me.
Dr. Maureen Long:But there's a lot of imagery in the Bible about building up the mountains, or the mountains laid brought low and the valleys filled in. And the other thing as a seismologist, there are so many references to earthquakes and there was actually one a week or two ago and I forget now the exact context. But so I always, you know, smile to myself whenever there's a reference to earthquakes or rocks or any earth science topic. But yeah, you know, I think I mean certainly as a geologist all of that imagery really makes sense to me and resonates, and I'm sure that's true, for you know, all sorts of different fields there's, you know, no matter what we do or work on or think about, there's gonna be stuff in the, you know, in Scripture that really resonates with us and that's, you know, that's one of the special things about reading scripture, of course, right, is that different things are gonna resonate differently with different people. But yes, I love, I absolutely love all the rock and earthquake imagery in scripture, for sure.
Dr. Maureen Long:It's a reminder of our incarnational nature too, that we are creatures of body and soul who are living here on this earth, yep, embodied and there's, you know, materials around us that we touch and we feel, and you know all of that. I totally agree.
Grace Carroll:Yeah, when you just think about the Mass, the turning of bread and wine into the body and blood, it's such a good reminder and really neat to hear for you how that shines through, based on your expertise and your field of study. I wonder what advice you have, Maureen, for some of our students, whether undergrads who are thinking about the future and maybe pursuing a PhD, or graduate students who are currently in a PhD program here at Yale, or those who are listening, who are in academia like yourself, to share with them any wisdom in how to maintain and continue to nurture one's faith during that long process of obtaining a PhD and submitting grants and publishing papers and trying to get faculty status somewhere. Because Zach mentioned before the hustle culture and that is very much a part of that, it's a long road with a lot of hurdles and one has to be very focused on the end goal.
Grace Carroll:So any advice you'd share to those listening who maybe are feeling a little either overwhelmed or daunted?
Dr. Maureen Long:Oh yeah, gosh, yeah, I mean I certainly I don't feel blame people for feeling overwhelmed or daunted, because I mean it is. You know it's pursuing, you know, in my case, academic science. Yeah, it's not an easy career path. I mean you know it certainly isn't and I never would tell anyone it is easy. Now, it's rewarding. I mean I feel like I absolutely have my dream job. There is nothing in the world I would rather do than the job I have. So you know, if it's what you love, it's certainly worth sticking with it.
Dr. Maureen Long:I think, thinking very carefully about what your values are in your life and what is important to you and making sure that, even as you're hustling and working towards you know whatever that, whatever your goal is, you know whether it's an academic job or you know tenure. I mean I, the first, you know, I don't know, eight or nine years that I was at Yale, I was working towards tenure and was very focused on that career goal. But whatever that goal is, and as you're working towards it, reminding yourself that there is more to life than the next paper or the next grant, and you know yet the work that I, the professional work that I do, is important and I love it. But there is more to life and there's, you know, I have, of course, my wonderful family and my very rich family life.
Dr. Maureen Long:I have my faith life and I think, just knowing for yourself, working out for yourself what are the things in life that you value and being very mindful of like, okay, I value my faith and I'm gonna make time for Sunday Mass and for my, you know, a Small Church Community meeting on, you know, mine's on Tuesday night. Right, I'm going to make time for that because I value it and you know, and then the flip side of that is that I think I know that having a life outside of your professional grind, it is the only way to live, number one, but it also is better. I mean, I think it makes us all better at what we do professionally when we have other things in our life. And certainly for me, one of my anchors to my life is my faith life, and you know that I find through St Thomas More. So know what you value and make sure that what you value is being included in how you spend your time.
Grace Carroll:Do you find, Zach, that it's hard to remember that, amidst the grind of college life, that there's more to life than one's work?
Zach Moynihan:Oh, absolutely. Me too, yes, I think that is the proverbial quest of something like the semester is keeping your head above water enough to have that perspective. You mentioned having a timeframe of about eight or nine years to achieve tenure, and it's so easy to shrink that down too. It's like I have 13 weeks in the semester and I'm just focused on this one. There's months and years left in this journey. I think gaining that perspective is always a fight for me, but it's getting easier and easier as time goes on.
Dr. Maureen Long:Yeah, that totally resonates with me. I mean, it's so easy to plant the 13 weeks of the semester and get so hyper-focused on the next midterm or the next whatever it is. But yeah, yeah, but you're right, I think it does get easier with time. I mean, I think it's like anything, work-life balance or however you want to put it. It does get easier with practice and you just have to be intentional about it, I think.
Zach Moynihan:What has made Yale specifically home to you over these past few years?
Dr. Maureen Long:I really love Yale. I love being here. It's an amazing intellectual community. It also is, I think community is the right word it is a home to me, both intellectually, but it feels like one personally as well. I will say that one of my very favorite things about Yale and one of the very best things about Yale is St Thomas More. The St Thomas More community has been such an anchor for me and for us, for our family, during our time here, so that's really made a STM has made a huge difference in my Yale experience and ours too.
Zach Moynihan:Oh, absolutely.
Grace Carroll:What does the fall semester look like for you, Maureen?
Dr. Maureen Long:It's going to be busy. I am teaching. Because I am chair of my department, I only teach every other semester, but I usually teach in the fall. So I taught my natural disasters class last year and this year I'm teaching my forensic geoscience seminar, which I'm very excited about. On top of that, I have a great terrific group of postdocs and grad students and undergraduate researchers who work with me and keep me busy, keep me on my toes and lots going on in my department. I'm not really gearing up for sort of the madness of the fall semester to start, but I'm looking forward to teaching. I really, forensic geoscience is maybe my favorite class to teach, so I'm looking forward to it.
Grace Carroll:And it's neat that you get the experience in the field, this summer especially, have had ample time to do field work and then you get to apply that in the classroom. So, Zach, you want to ask our final question.
Zach Moynihan:Yes, the next tradition on the podcast is to ask this as our final question, and we're wondering where have you been finding God recently?
Dr. Maureen Long:What a good one. Well, I'm going to give what maybe sounds like an obvious answer. I mean, I've already talked about how much the STM community means to me and it's going to sound sort of silly for me to say well, I find God in church, but I really do find God in the just amazing community that we have all collectively built for ourselves at STM. We go to church on Sunday. I'm part of a Small Church Community of just amazing, wonderful people who I love to death. We have been meeting weekly since the beginning of the pandemic on Zoom on Tuesday nights and that group has just been so good for my faith, life and for helping me to find God in kind of the everyday moments and amidst the grind and the hustle that we've been talking about.
Dr. Maureen Long:We were out of town this past weekend, so we weren't at STM but we went to church in Pennsylvania where we were visiting my in-laws and we sang a hymn that I wasn't familiar with, but the refrain, the thrust of the refrain of this hymn was "let our lives be rooted in love, and I looked it up later. That's from Ephesians, and that idea of wanting to live a life that is rooted in love is extremely powerful for me and really helps to drive my faith life, and I mean STM has really played such a huge part in helping me. It's not easy to do right, but in helping me to do that and to find a way to let God's grace in to enable me to hopefully live a life that's rooted in love. So again, I know it's going to sound a little cheesy to say that I find God in church, but really the STM community has just played a huge role for me in how I find God on a day-to-day basis.
Grace Carroll:We're so grateful, Maureen, that you are a part of that community, that your family is a part of that community, and what a great closing line and reminder to let our lives be rooted in love and hopefully our time at Yale this fall semester be grounded in who we know ourselves to be, as beloved children of God. Apart from our titles and our GPAs and all of that that, we may remember our foundation. So thank you for joining us on the podcast. Thanks to everyone for listening.
Dr. Maureen Long:My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. This is a great conversation.
Grace Carroll:We'll see you next time on Finding God on Park Street. Thanks for tuning in to Finding God on Park Street. Please share this episode and leave us a rating and review. Robin McShane, director of communications at STM, is the producer of this podcast. Sound mixing and editing are by Ryan McAvoy of Yale Broadcast Studio and graphics are by Mary Lou Cadwell of Cadwell Art Direction. We hope this podcast encourages you to seek God's presence in your everyday life. Thanks for listening and be assured of our prayers.
