FINDING GOD ON PARK STREET

Muriel Wang ’20: Navigating NYC with a Compass of Faith

• Grace Klise, STM Assistant Chaplain • Season 2 • Episode 4

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Have you ever started over in a new place and experienced feelings of isolation or uncertainty? How did you move forward? Muriel Wang, a Yale College graduate from the Class of 2020, shares her compelling story of relying on her Catholic faith amidst the skyscrapers of New York City and the rigors of a high-stress career. Abruptly cut off from her community at Yale due to the pandemic, Muriel found herself alone in NYC and struggling. Yet, she knew where to turn: her Catholic faith. 

 Muriel beautifully invites us into her story that traverses Singapore, New Hampshire, New Haven, and NYC. Finding a Catholic community at Saint Thomas More was a highlight for Muriel when she came to Yale and a stark contrast from her high school faith experience. Experiences like spending Spring Break on a silent retreat at Taizé in France continue to impact her, especially in the fast-paced environment in which she works. The encouragement and model of faith witnesses, like her mom, Fr. Bob Beloin, and peers at STM, strengthened her foundation of faith in college. And, when her time at Yale ended and her next chapter began in New York City, Muriel had a foundation to rely on to steady her amidst total upheaval. 

 All listeners, but especially our recent graduates, will resonate with Muriel's story of trying to do it all on her own and coming face-to-face with her own limitations. Only through struggle did she recognize that she needed God, a faith community, and the sacraments to anchor herself in the often-turbulent transition from college to post-graduate life. Her story is a shining beacon of hope that God is with us always, whether we're in college, graduate school, or a small studio apartment in a lonely city. Muriel's perseverance in cultivating Catholic community is a reminder to all that we need each other for this journey. So, tune in to celebrate another alumni story of faith and resilience.

Show Notes:
 
Mentioned in the episode: Taizé Ecumenical Community

What Muriel is reading: The Patron Saint of Liars (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992) by Ann Patchett

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Grace Klise:

This is a podcast from Saint Thomas More Yale's Catholic Chaplain Center. I'm your host, Grace Klise, with Mary Margaret Schroeder as my student co-host. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Finding God on Park Street. Working a high-stress job, looking for community, seeking to integrate your faith into your secular work. You are not alone, as our guest today reminds us. Muriel Wang graduated from Yale College in 2020. Her intellectually and spiritually rich undergrad days were cut short by the global pandemic that had her finishing her senior year from her home in Singapore. Months later, she found herself alone in her New York City studio apartment, working long hours without a faith community and feeling the burden of trying to do it all on her own. But she wasn't alone. She had a foundation of faith cultivated by her mom and her years at STM. Muriel reminds us in this episode that God is with us always, in our failures and in our triumphs, in all that we have and call our own. So let's dive in. So fun having you back in New Haven, Muriel.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

Muriel Wang: Thank you.

Grace Klise:

Do you notice the changes to the city when you come in from New York City?

Muriel Wang:

Yes, all the time. I think number one is restaurants. It's a very cool scene now and that's one. So having new restaurants here but also places I used to go to as a student disappearing, I think that's a sad thing. So, for example, Jojo's, the cafe I used to go to all the time, is no longer here. So I think that's the temporality of this space. You come back as a college student and you reminisce about all the cafes and restaurants you went to that are no longer here, that have been replaced by other establishments. So it's an ever-evolving city.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

What's your favorite place that's still in New Haven that you visit every time you're back here?

Muriel Wang:

This is a very funny answer and my friends would laugh is Donut Crazy. It's really silly. I love donuts. I was in Trumbull College, which is right next door, and I used to study there, the reason being they had really bad Wi-Fi so I had to. If I had an essay to write, where I'd done all the research and all I had to do was actually write it with my notes, I would go there knowing I could not go on social media, I couldn't get distracted and just be there the entire day, and when I had office hours running different student clubs, I'd make Donut Crazy my office, so people would come by and meet me there.

Grace Klise:

So I still go there a lot now and you have a donut on the side as you're working on that essay.

Muriel Wang:

Not bad, yes they have a lot of good food breakfast items as well. By the way, it's not very popular and also they have a Chai.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

You need to get sponsored by Donut Crazy next season of the pod. Sponsored by Donut Crazy, that's right, donut and Chai.

Grace Klise:

I think we could go back to when you were growing up. When did Yale become something on the horizon and how was your faith part of your upbringing or your family's culture?

Muriel Wang:

Yeah, thank you for that question. I am from Singapore and I was raised in Shanghai and I went to high school in New Hampshire, so kind of all over the world. My mom is Catholic and my dad isn't, but my mom was very intent on raising us Catholic. But growing up in China it wasn't a big part of my faith other than going to catechism with other Catholics and then going to Mass with my mom. But growing up I'd never really had a community of people my age especially as a young adult who were Catholic. And I think after I got confirmed that was when my mom kind of said we've done everything we had to do, go forth on your own.

Muriel Wang:

And I went to boarding school in New Hampshire and in boarding school I obviously enjoyed it a lot. It was an Episcopalian high school, so going to Mass was kind of a responsibility I took on myself. No one was forcing me, no one would make sure I went to Mass and I tried my best to retain my Catholic faith, even though I no longer had that community and having my mom bring me to Mass every Sunday. When I decided to apply to colleges, Yale was definitely at the top of my list, but I didn't think of a Catholic Student Center or a Catholic community as particularly important to me. I think a lot of high schoolers would say academics, a community of people who are like-minded, et cetera. But at least for me I never even thought about faith life as a criteria that would matter at all, and especially since in high school I never really had any Catholic friends. So it's not as if that's something I cared about.

Muriel Wang:

But in applying to Yale and ultimately deciding to come here, my mom and I googled Catholic Yale just to see what was out there, and she was pretty curious about, hopefully, me growing my faith through a university.

Muriel Wang:

And that's how I came across Saint Thomas More, just by Googling it.

Muriel Wang:

And my mom said you must declare that you're Catholic on all the different incoming student forms and hopefully that's where you'll find Catholic friends.

Muriel Wang:

Your age and kind of view faith as something more personal rather than something that you had to grow up with and your mom imparted on you and you just had to follow through on. So I remember my first time visiting STM and walking through the chapel as I don't know within my first week of being a Yale student, and I also remember my first walk ever to STM because it was I think Caitlin was her name. She walked I think 12 of us first years from old campus to St Thomas More for our first 10 am Mass and from that point on I was like I want to be very involved here and that was kind of it. And then I decided to go to different events held at STM, from study breaks to we had small church communities where you had different Bible study sessions to socials and all of that and applied for UGC the end of my first year as the undergraduate council and had a lot of really cool opportunities through STM.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

Gosh, that's such a cool story. Thanks for sharing that with us when you were in high school. It sounds like you had a pretty similar experience to a lot of college students when they get to a new place for the first time and they're not with their family and they have to make their faith their own and decide if they're going to continue living out their faith. But you had that at a much younger age, going into boarding school. So what was that transition like then, going from high school to college? Do you feel like you had your footing already within your Catholic faith, or was it still a little bit rocky being in a new place and trying to find the Catholic center?

Muriel Wang:

Yeah, I think that's a great question and I also remember my first homily ever at STM when I was preparing for this podcast.

Muriel Wang:

I was like I remember a ton about my Yale time and it was Father Bob who gave a homily and he said very clearly a lot of us enrich our intellectual studies and learn about new things in the world through the lens of academics, but a lot of us halt our religious studies at a certain age.

Muriel Wang:

So you are continuously learning about all sorts of things in school, and especially at Yale, but then for some reason we think once you're confirmed, that's kind of it, the book has been closed and you know everything there is to know about the faith and we don't have that same urge and curiosity and desire to continue learning more about Jesus.

Muriel Wang:

So I think that's the big difference. Here is, when I came to Yale, having not really enriched my faith in high school, I thought to myself, wow, I've really kind of stunted my learning after a Catechism and I think a lot of us, like cradle Catholics, have that experience where you learn a lot when you're a kid and then close that book. So when I came to Yale and thought out about STM, my goal for myself was to take that initiative to personally be responsible for my own Catholic education and find the resources of which there are plenty at STM to kind of get up to speed, so to say, because I did realize that there was quite a big gap, number one in not reading the Bible very often and number two in just lack of understanding of our Catholic traditions. So I think that's one big benefit to being at STM is having those resources readily available and the people to consult.

Grace Klise:

I think that's so true that sometimes we think, once you get confirmed, it's like you've graduated from ever learning more about the faith.

Grace Klise:

There are actually depths that we can continue to explore our entire lives and I'm so thankful that STM is a place that is interested in the intellectual, spiritual, theological pursuit of truth and how that impacts young people and those of us on staff as we are growing in discipleship too. I'm really interested in your mom and her faith, because I'm just thinking of the examples of faith that I've had in my life and, yes, eventually we have to make it our own and we have to choose it and make decisions around that. But there are those people, whether it's a parent or a teacher, who really helped to cultivate that foundation and sometimes are that tether, their example of faith and their steadfastness. So what has that been like as you especially coming into college, encountering the community at STM and nourishing this part of your faith life, sharing that then with your mom back home and in a new way, making it your own, but something that the two of you shared, almost as disciples walking together?

Muriel Wang:

Yeah, I think just bottom line is my mom is proud of me for everything I do in the Catholic faith, if that makes sense. Like she doesn't care what grades I get, she doesn't care if I'm like captain of whatever team or getting whatever honor. She's. Like you're going to mass, you're close to God. That's really all I need from you. So that's kind of our relationship in that sense. And a good story there is when I was in high school and boarding school. When you get busy you're like do I really need to go to mass? No one else is going and it's kind of far and it's an Episcopalian church. I'm kind of going to chapel every day anyway. And my mom said I don't really care again what school you get into, what your grades are, but if you choose not to go to mass you're pulling you out of boarding school. That was her bottom line. You can be failing all your classes, that's fine, like we'll pray for you. But if you decide to not go on Sunday, like why are you even going to school abroad? You know that's the baseline here. So she's been, as you said, kind of the guiding force for me and both my sister and I, as we have struggles in our lives, when we face challenges, she's the one we turn to because we associate our faith so strongly with her, and she's such a good example of that and not only her, my entire family. So I think now that I'm older and now that I'm living alone in New York City, basically she's still in Singapore, so we've not been under the same roof in a very long time.

Muriel Wang:

I think being Catholic together is the connective tissue, as you can imagine. You know, she has a busy job, I have a busy job. It's not fun to talk about our jobs to each other. It's like that's not the conversation topic we want to have on a 13 hour time difference over a FaceTime. What we want to talk about is how we're feeling, what the homily was that past Sunday, how that impacted us.

Muriel Wang:

She'll share about the retreats she's been going on. She's just been on the Camino like twice or three times and I've been on different retreats for young people as well. So that's a huge commonality between the two of us. That always leads to more conversation. You know, and she's the first person I turn to and I say, hey, I didn't understand the gospel today. I honestly didn't agree with it and I had a hard time grappling with it. Before I talked to anyone else, I call my mom first and I say what did you think? Am I misinterpreting it? And then that's just an avenue for more conversation. So I think it's great now both being adult Catholics and having that relationship.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

That's so great to just think about how important role models are in the faith and for that to be your mom for you is such a beautiful thing, and I'm also so glad that at STM you were able to find a similarly nourishing spiritual environment, and I love that. You can remember the first homily that you heard there from Father Bob, and I was wondering if you could share with us a bit about Father Bob and these happy memories with him, because I was one of the first classes of students who never overlapped with Father Bob and I've just heard so many amazing things about him and I am just, yeah, overjoyed when I hear about little memories with Father Bob.

Muriel Wang:

Yeah, I mean, I think for a lot of us who overlapped with him it was his homilies. I think we would go to mass being like I can't wait to hear Father Bob preach and after mass, being able to talk to him about it. He was always so open and glad to share and really tried his best to make that kind of personal impression on you. So if you wanted to talk to him about your life he would say you know, feel free, schedule some time. I want to meet with you personally. And that's the kind of pastoral care that I had never really experienced prior to coming to college. And now I seek out whenever I am to say I want to have that relationship with the priest and feel comfortable enough to see him as a role model and a figure for guidance in my religion.

Grace Klise:

Yeah, we definitely still feel his presence at STM, even those of us who did not overlap with him. So, yeah, thank you. Thanks for sharing those stories, and there is a great booklet of his homilies all collected together which, yeah, if people are interested in getting a copy, we can definitely get you one of those. So just full of spiritual wisdom and truths in there. Now, besides UGC, I think that was a formative part of your time as a community member at STM during your four years as an undergrad here. Were there certain experiences within that UGC community or elsewhere at STM that really stand out to you now as a young alum, looking back on the role that this place had on your faith life?

Muriel Wang:

Yeah, yeah, I think the few things I'll bring up. The first one is I went to Tesei my first year with Carline and a lot of others in STM. That was something I decided to do because, as I mentioned, I hadn't really made a lot of friends who were Catholic growing up. So I really wanted to go on an overseas trip and build that community and make sure that I was strengthening my faith with people who also agreed with me and wanted to talk to me more about it. So Tesei was that for me and it was amazing.

Muriel Wang:

We got to go to Paris for a few days and then ultimately go to the Tesei community, which is an ecumenical community in France of brothers who are Christian generally and the days compose mostly of chants and prayers and song and then eating together, sharing a meal and any kind of small tasks, which was a very different rhythm of life I'd been used to, especially coming from Yale, jumping into a monastical community where everyone was very quiet and silent and contemplative and no one is there to really engage in that really vigorous debate or discussion that I was very used to at Yale. It was a very inward looking experience for me and I ended up deciding to do a silent retreat option at Tesei. So I think I forget if it's three or five days of silent retreat where I was segregated into a different dorm of women rather than the main Tesei living quarters, and that was very hard. I found it at first super challenging and boring because I again never really experienced silence like that and then as time went on, I realized that a lot of it was just being comfortable with God without the noise and the fun and the singing and the friendship that I fundamentally had to be comfortable building a relationship with God just me. So that was a good realization.

Muriel Wang:

The second thing I'll share about STM and all the times I had there was the small church communities. That was a big part of my faith formation. I think now there are even more little groups of things that focus on Bible study. That was a goal of mine is to get more acquainted with the Word in a guided way and not just me on Google. So having six, seven people who are equally as interested in debating and learning and being more closely acquainted with the Word was a very good experience and helped me build a habit for reading the Word, which I never had before. So now I find a lot of times that if I need help, I do turn to the Bible, and it's because of that good example that I've been set for me by others in my SEC.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

Those are such cool experiences. Thanks for sharing those. I have heard so many legendary stories about the times at Tesei, so it's cool to hear about yours, and I didn't even realize there was a silent retreat option. So what a wild way to spend your spring break. I'm wondering what it was like living out your faith at Yale more broadly, outside of the STM sphere, and when you came back from Tesei and you had this experience, you were in silence, probably a very different spring break experience than most of your friends. How was that dynamic Living out your life as a Catholic? Did you find there to be tensions within your life on campus, or were you able to share that faith with any of your friends who were not necessarily Catholic, and any struggles or graces that came with that?

Muriel Wang:

That's a very good question and I think the first thing I'll say is going to Tesei is always my fun fact in any setting, because I don't like if you say Tesei, no one knows what it is. But if you say I was in a silent retreat for a spring break, I was like whoa, that is so wild, what are you talking about? Even now, my fun fact in any icebreaker meeting is I once spent five days in silence in France. Which people just find so novel, and that goes to the heart of it is I do feel like being Catholic to me is so obvious. Everything that we do makes sense, but to an outsider they find it really strange and sometimes they don't get it. And even very basic things like Ash Wednesday, people get so concerned and they're so confused all the time. Like every year this happens. This can't be news to you anymore. Every year I come to work with a cross in my head. You've seen me.

Muriel Wang:

But I think at Yale I didn't necessarily identify as Catholic very visibly, as in it wasn't something that people really knew about me.

Muriel Wang:

Even when I went to STM for things I was like just going to mass, bye guys.

Muriel Wang:

It didn't feel like I felt comfortable telling everyone about it or broadcasting it or people know me in certain ways and they wouldn't think like Catholic is the first thing and that was something just I had to get comfortable with ultimately and saying, yep, it's mass because I am Catholic, that's why I'm gone Sunday mornings or Sunday nights and I think coming back from today, that was the kind of awkward looks. People were like oh, what did you do this spring break? And I share the story of my being with brothers and monks. But ultimately everyone's very accepting, everyone's very interested. But I think what I cared a lot about at Yale was a community of people who I could kind of hang out with, who had that same baseline understanding. We don't have to explain everything from day one. All the inside jokes make sense because you all grew up the same way and had similar faith backgrounds. So it's really cool to have a Catholic space and then non-Catholic space and just be myself and in both.

Grace Klise:

And to have people with whom we can wrestle as you said, wrestling with something in scripture that we don't understand and knowing that we share a foundation and that together we are looking and seeking, is such a gift and I see that over and over again in the students at STM that it's not only coming for liturgies or other events, but it's also the relationships that are formed with the people sitting on either side of you that actually are so formative and important in one's own growth and faith while here at Yale. So it's neat to hear the ways in which that community, as I see it play out today at STM, was sustaining you as a student here, and you were here leading up to COVID and then your senior spring was very disrupted. You graduated in spring 2020. Could you take us back to what that spring was like, especially when that spring break, you just never came back to school.

Muriel Wang:

Yeah, I was in Ireland, I think. At the time I was taking a research trip. It was funded by Yale and we were doing conducting research in Northern Ireland and Ireland and we found out that it would be, I think, hard for non-US citizens to come back into the country and that day we decided all to just fly back immediately, before any kind of ban would happen. So none of us actually thought it was going to be a complete stop on coming back to campus, many of us just stayed on campus and or with friends who were in off-campus apartments, thinking this would be a two-week thing, one-month thing max. Ultimately, I flew back to Singapore once I found out that wasn't the case and things were very dire.

Muriel Wang:

So I spent the rest of my senior year in Singapore, taking my classes over, zoom on a 12-hour time to friends and I had like a 4 pm lecture or something New York time, which was 4 am Singapore time, and that was it.

Muriel Wang:

That was my life for a few months and ultimately I think what was hard for us was the graduation aspect, was not being able to have a ceremony, not having your family celebrate you and not saying goodbye to all your friends. So even now I think we still have that weird gap where people, some people I was really close to what you'll have not seen since March of 2020. And that kind of affects your personal relationships, because then you move on from life, having never kind of rekindled that relationship again, where you may see them online, see them on Instagram, and say, yeah, we were so close at Yale and didn't have that closure or next step conversation. So it was definitely very tough, but the silver lining, the grace of it all, was I got to spend time with my mom, which I had not done since I was 12. So my sister and I lived with my mom for six, seven months and that was a very enriching experience too.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

Wow, yeah, I can only imagine, as a senior who's kind of gearing up for all the graduation things at the end of the semester. I was four years behind you so in high school that was the senior spring that I had as a high school student. But at least I had a little bit of redemption in that in the sense that now I'll get hopefully, god willing a normal college graduation. So, yeah, I can only imagine how it felt to have that all kind of like ripped away from you so last minute. But it's so nice that you're able to find a silver lining and get to spend that time with your mom and your sister in Singapore, despite the like midnight and 4 AM classes. That sounds like a wild thing.

Muriel Wang:

But it made you look really good. You'd show up and be like it's 4 AM here, guys and I'm still here. That's so true. It's a major brownie point. You can't give me a bad grade on anything. I showed up in the middle of the night for this class, for your class, so that was kind of funny.

Grace Klise:

Did you do anything within your family to mark your graduation?

Muriel Wang:

Yeah, my mom cooked a big meal. We got some food, my grandma and everyone, and that was very nice and there was a virtual ceremony. And the best thing about that actually was we got a lot of really cool famous Yale alumni to do a virtual commencement speech. So we had basically 20 speakers rather than one. That was their way of saying sorry, you can't have a real graduation.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

That's crazy. What was the transition like for you out of college and then into the working world? I know you work in investment banking. How did you end up choosing that as a career, and can you give us a little bit of insight into how your faith might have affected those decisions or played a role into when you moved back to New York City and you were on your own for the first time, without a Catholic center?

Muriel Wang:

Yeah, yeah. So I moved to New York and started my job in August of 2020. So, after some really nice months doing nothing in Singapore, I packed my bags and I flew to New York City August 14th, started my job August 15th Because I wanted to delay leaving my family for as long as possible. So I got in my apartment. I was like the Wi-Fi better work, because I'm starting work tomorrow. If it doesn't work, I can't work at all, and I think some things to mention faith-wise as to what led me to this moment was the two things I'll share. One is finding housing in New York and two is choosing this job. So finding housing was really stressful for me. I had no one on the ground in New York City to help me find housing and I was going to be living alone in the studio, most likely because most of my friends were still at home. Given every job asked for remote work. So no one was moving into the city for a job in New York. Everyone was in Florida or wherever doing that. So I asked my mom like hey, I have to move because I can't work in Singapore. I really stressed out by this. I have no experience in putting down a down payment and getting a guarantor and learning about getting recommendations for a landlord and my mom said there's a saint for that. As we always know, it's St Joseph like paying for a real estate and housing and all that stuff. So we prayed really hard to St Joseph for a while and of course, as all these things happen, I find the perfect department for a price within my budget, in a safe neighborhood, in a place I like and know, and it's just perfect for me. So that was immediately a sign like hey, don't forget that any choice you make you must do with the guidance of God. When you're stressed about a big life change and you think that you're relying on just yourself and your own expertise, that there's something higher work in there, you need to just trust that it's going to be fine. So ultimately, that all worked out.

Muriel Wang:

The second thing with my job and being comfortable with moving to the city for a brand new start, I think I didn't trust or pray a lot before picking this job at all, and that's because I think things within the academic, professional realm I feel very self-reliant. Anything that is tied to grades, getting a good score and an exam or doing well at your work it's the first thing I think of is thank God, I did a good job. That was basically all me. God, thanks for your little help there, but I carried my way through and you came through at the last minute minute. But ultimately, because of all the hours you put in, I felt always for academic things, that it's mostly me working, because I see myself working really hard and staying up all night and that just must be my own expertise and all that. But ultimately that's all arrogance and pride. So I think, similarly with my job, I did not decide to consult God at all. I thought this is what I want to do, I applied for it and I got it. So that must just be all my hard work paying off.

Muriel Wang:

Finally and I think that was the wrong way to start, as you can imagine, because ultimately it was a very lonely first year, being at home all the time, working remotely, having no one really near me, and I found it to be really hard and a big struggle when I had no friends at all and my colleagues were all not in the office with me, for example.

Muriel Wang:

And I think in those moments of desolation and sadness and loneliness, that's when you remember it's not just me.

Muriel Wang:

There's a lot more at work here and I really have to start praying again and believing in God and asking for His help, because being alone and doing all that yourself is not what I was used to being a Yale student. And why do I think this is going to be such a big change, where now I'm suddenly OK living out my faith without a community? And that's when I decided, you know what I need to fight a New York faith community. I want to go to a church that I feel comfortable in and find young people who, similarly, would enrich me the way STM did. So that was kind of the big revelation there, and I'm sure we all see this no matter how on fire you are at a moment in time, something can change and you lose all of that immediately. So I think 2020 and 2021 was when I got very far away from God, even after having four years of amazing community at STM. It's just so easy to fall back into your old ways.

Grace Klise:

Yeah, it's a good reminder for all of us that we have to, in our faith life, continue to put in the work to cultivate that relationship, because just because it's there now or has been there in the past is in a guarantee that it will be there in the future. And it, like any relationship, it takes work. So, as you describe it, it almost seems like that period of time was almost like you're wandering in the desert and coming upon the stream of life, giving water and saying, oh yeah, this is, this is what I miss, this is what I need to stay close to exactly.

Muriel Wang:

And I think that is very common for young professionals because, especially remote, but even now, in person, your day is kind of the same almost every weekday. You get up in the morning, you sit in the same chair nine to seven or eight to eight, depending on your job, and you just don't have the time to think beyond the work in front of you and it makes it so easy to just forget about your spiritual life and nourish that and work for it, because you feel like this is all there is, my job is all there is, and Sundays I go to Mass. Fine, sure, but you don't put in the work in your faith life anymore. So I definitely had that moment and I'm glad I came out of it. As you mentioned, you know, finding that life giving water and realizing that there's more to my life than just the piece of work in front of me every single day was definitely a big change in my New York life.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

How did you go about finding God in this way and making him the center of your life when you were at this point when it seemed like work was maybe overcoming that or being a bit above God in your head? And then, after that, did you see a noticeable change where you were seeing your faith intersect with your work more? Or can you walk us through that a?

Muriel Wang:

Definitely and also caveat that the other big reason why my faith life was so barren is because there was no in-person Mass, which I completely forgot about because we're so far away from that. There was no Eucharist and it was online Mass, and every Sunday I was alone in my little studio apartment with my little YouTube video, and that really changes the way you interact with your faith. So that was a big part of that as well, and I think how I came to being close to God again was again reading the Bible, was thinking to myself hey, I'm not feeling really good, I don't have a lot of friends near me, my family is so far away. What do I have left? What do I know to be true that I can rely on? And that's why faith is like a muscle to me. If you work it hard enough, even if you have a few days off, you can always come back to it. And I thought to myself I need to again look inward, read the Bible, be close to God. Even if there's no Eucharist or Mass, I can go to every Sunday. This is my own responsibility and I can feel strong again and feel like I'm close to God again. So that's how I started and then, when Mass resumed, things did get easier having the sacraments, having people around you, meeting new people. That made it much easier for me and, I'd say, the biggest way my faith has intersected with my work.

Muriel Wang:

Life is in moments of stress and pain and suffering, which a lot of us relate with, is when you make a mistake at work, when you turn in work that wasn't your best, when you get feedback that you weren't really comfortable with or you felt like I could have done better.

Muriel Wang:

Those are the moments where I think to myself hey, that's not the end of the world, whereas without God, I think it would be a lot of self-blame, because if you think that you're the only person doing all this work and accomplishing all these great things, you equally think you're the only one to blame and you're the problem for any mistake you make, which is bound to happen in any workplace or in any school setting.

Muriel Wang:

Is you need to be able to think to yourself hey, this is not just on me, this is not me being a failure. It's something that happens and I have someone to lean on when this happens and, with God's help, I can get out of it, and I think that was the biggest way it helped me is getting out of that prideful mindset of all my work as my own and thinking to myself this is all due to the grace of God and in times of sadness and failure, to pick myself back up with the help of God. And I have a friend who gave me some sage advice, which is I don't know what I would do if I weren't Catholic. In times of failure, I don't know how I would pick myself back up because that is how we were taught right to lean on Jesus, to pray to Jesus, to pray for Mother Mary's intercession in times of help and need. So getting that back really helped me with dealing with moments of stress and sadness at work.

Grace Klise:

It's such a challenge, though, I think, especially for our students and our young alums, because it requires a recognition of our dependency on God, which, at Yale, admitting that you are dependent on someone else or something else, that you are not entirely self-sufficient, is counter-cultural in many ways. And it also requires a recognition that our identity is more than just what we do, which, again, is not something that we maybe see emulated here on campus, and those two things together it's a real act of faith to get to that place and to say, oh yeah, I'm not just what I do or what my boss says in this feedback or in this evaluation of my work, but I am more than that. And who am I? And my identity? Where does that come from? So all of those questions that it totally makes sense we all have had periods of, especially in high stress times, which COVID, starting a new job, moving to New York, not having a parish community all of that compounds and we can lose sight of how dependent we really are on God.

Muriel Wang:

And the flip side of that is, of course, being able to see God in your successes as well, which I also had to have tested and learned through work, instead of being like, hey, I did well because I worked hard, I did well because, with the grace of God, I was able to succeed, and that's something that I think will help me throughout my next age in life as well. Thinking about what's next if I want to go to grad school, do I want to think about another industry, like all these questions that I just feel like usually are just in my head, I need to really be dependent on God and say show me the way. You're not going to harm me, you're going to protect me, you're going to lead me to where I'm meant to be next. That is, I think, very counter-cultural to thinking it's not just your own time and energy spent on LinkedIn or looking up grad schools or looking up whatever. There is God who will guide your hand.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

Muriel, you are full of so much wisdom. I like to write down everything you're saying. If you could go back and tell your college age self, what would you say to Yale student Muriel, knowing now what you know about your faith and about your work, life and all that?

Muriel Wang:

It's a very hard question for me to answer. I think first of all, I'll say like you're doing a pretty good job, like chill out, you're fine. All these little stressors you're feeling at Yale whether that be to an impending deadline or a paper you got a bad grade on or whatever it is, or a friendship issue or a relationship issue it is all passing and it's going to be fine, which is actually the advice I will give to myself right now as well. I think that's just my general issue in life is I have a lot of anxiety. I have a really hard time like resting my heart in God, which ties to why the silent retreat was so difficult for me.

Muriel Wang:

It's just a trend I've seen my entire life is I have to go, go, go. Like I have to be doing things, accomplishing things. I think a lot of Yale students and graduates will see that as very familiar, where being high achieving means that you cannot take a second to reflect and think and pause. So advice to myself back then and again now, every day, I tell myself this it's going to be okay. Take a deep breath, trust that God has it right, rest your issues at the base of the cross. It's going to be okay. I think I needed a lot of that as a college student.

Grace Klise:

It's like we all need to go on a silent retreat. What Muriel is parish life like? You said that you work to find a community, recognizing how important that was for your growth and faith while a student here at Yale, so in New York. What does that community now look like? And thank goodness, we are back in person and can receive the sacraments again. So could you just paint us a picture of how that's going in finding that community and cultivating it, apart from your college Catholic center?

Muriel Wang:

Yeah, and I think I'll bring up that St Joseph thing again, which is when I found the perfect apartment. I took it immediately. I didn't Google Catholic Church near me, I just said this is the apartment, putting my name down, we're done. Only after did I then Google Catholic Church near me, which is also how I found Yale, and then Google STM, and of course, one street over was a Catholic Church classic. So I didn't worry about that at all for the first years where I was able to go to mass in person, that was my parish the Church of the Blessed Sacrament on 71st Street, and that was a church that was very full of families and very vibrant. So I think when I first started out I thought to myself I'll be a lector, that's what I did at STM, I'll do that again.

Muriel Wang:

And then slowly got more and more involved with parish life. So one thing I started to do was there was a rich community of people helping out the elderly on the Upper West Side. So I thought to myself I have time on weekends, I'm an able-bodied young person, I will help with the grocery shopping, I'll help with any tasks like bringing them to the hospital or to the doctor's appointments, et cetera, and from that community I kind of built and made more friends there. The other great thing about living in my area is there are actually three Catholic churches in within. I honestly like 20, 30 streets so I also go to a different church sometimes which is more full of young people. So that's where I go for young people, bible study and socials and Super Bowl parties and all that kind of thing. So you are able to have different types of church communities in New York because there's so many Catholic churches. So you can volunteer here and then go to the young person group here and really mix and match a little bit.

Grace Klise:

Such a gift to have all of that just right there within walking distance. Yeah, from a doorstep, it's amazing.

Muriel Wang:

Yeah, which again was because I found the studio apartment. It's just perfect.

Grace Klise:

It's just perfect.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

Good old St Joseph. Yeah, well, yeah, praise God for the communities that you're able to join there and all the opportunities that they have for you to nourish your faith, and also just praise God for your willingness to do that and jump into that. I know it's certainly not easy, especially in the space that you're working in or being in New York. There's a million things going on and different things that can steal your time. So it's, yeah, what a gift to be able to spend your days doing that and stay close to the Lord. Yeah.

Muriel Wang:

And it's about prioritizing it, which I had a hard time with at first as well. But ultimately, you know thinking about, you know you only have so many hours in the day and a lot of it was already work, so with the remaining time left you would like to do something that's enriching and brings you closer to God, so I kind of prioritize that going into it.

Grace Klise:

Well, as we wrap up here, we have to ask you our final question that we ask all guests when have you been finding God recently?

Muriel Wang:

Yes, I had thought about this question a lot and there are many answers I have. And the first thing I'll say is in my sister. We live together Now in New York. She graduated from Yale in 2022. So we both live on the upper side, now which we are in the same parish community, so a built-in friend in any setting, and the two of us have been having just the best conversations about our faith and thinking about the ways in which our faith intersects with our work life, thinking about keeping close to God and, of course, on like weekly calls with my mom. You know things about that. So I think having my sister has been very helpful in me living up my Catholic life. And the second thing I'll say is I recently read a pretty good book by Anne Patchett called the Patronstain of Liars, which I recommend to any Catholic, and she brought up in that book a lot of questions and themes about hearing God's voice, which is something I'm still struggling with to this day hearing God's voice in silence, because I feel like I am prioritizing silence and being close to God, but I don't always have the revelation or realization or God's voice that I'm seeking.

Muriel Wang:

So that book helped reassure me that that's normal and people in different parts of their faith journey might hear God loudly and in other parts might not hear God at all. And it's about trying and making that time and being in a position in which you are open to it and what's important, rather than always feeling like everything you're doing is because of God's word to you, which I was hoping would come at all times. But that book helped me grapple with all those questions and be okay with hey, I'm open to God's word. I'll say, yes, I don't hear you right now, but at least you know I have. I'm in that position where I am receiving your grace. So I read that last week actually, so it's quite timely. So I really recommend it to anyone who's looking for a good fiction book.

Mary Margaret Schroeder:

Going to add that to my list. Yeah, sounds like an awesome book and sisters are so special. It was so lovely hearing you talk about your sister and how awesome you guys get to live together.

Grace Klise:

Yeah, we love a good book. Recommendation on the podcast especially during the season of lunch maybe that's something that our listeners could pick up and spend some time with.

Grace Klise:

So thank you, Muriel, for joining us today, and we're so grateful that you are part of this community, and I think so many who listen will see parts of themselves in your story. So thank you for your honesty and your witness, and we are grateful to all those who tuned in as well, and we'll see you next time on Finding God on Park Street. If you enjoyed listening today, please share this episode with a friend or relative and leave us a rating and review. The producer of this podcast is Robin McShane, director of communications at STM. 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 know of our prayers.

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Grace Klise

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