Alyssa Sali on the Deep Joy of Not Knowing Artwork

Crossings Conversations

A show from Church Divinity School of the Pacific about leaders creating Christian community and sharing God's love.

Crossings Conversations

Alyssa Sali on the Deep Joy of Not Knowing

November 01, 2024 • Church Divinity School of the Pacific

Before joining the Episcopal Church, Alyssa Sali ‘26 spent ten years in Jalisco, Mexico, supporting short-term missionaries and raising two children. In her recent chat on Crossings Conversations, she shares about growing up in evangelical traditions, attending Wheaton College, and eventually finding a church that checked the boxes on “a big, long list” of justice and hospitality commitments.

Kyle Oliver: This is Kyle Oliver from Church Divinity School of the Pacific and I am here with Alyssa Sali, a third-year MDiv student from the Diocese of Atlanta. Alyssa, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.

Alyssa Sali: Thanks, I'm looking forward to it.

Kyle: Okay, well let's dive right in and talk a little bit about your early experiences as a Christian. I think if I have the biography right, you were baptized in the Christian Reformed Church. You later attended Baptist churches, you grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, right?

Alyssa: Yes, that's correct.

Kyle: I'm wondering if there are aspects of your early Christian formation in what are obviously, pretty different traditions from the Episcopal Church. I'm wondering if there are aspects of your formation that have really stuck with you and that you're grateful for.

Alyssa: Oh yes, definitely. That's a great question. I think when we shift faith or traditions, sometimes, at least for me, there was a time where I was like, "But it was all bad," which is totally not true. My early faith experiences formed me into who I am and I'm so grateful for all of them. In these particular traditions, the Christian Reformed Church, my grandfather was a pastor in the church and a chaplain at the local VA hospital. My first experiences being up in front of a congregation was at the VA hospital singing into a little lapel mic with my six and four-year-old, my sister and I singing, Let There Be Peace on Earth.

I had that early experience of leading worship and I'm so grateful that my grandfather gave that to me. My mother loves to sing and sang us lullabies that were all hymns. All of the early music that was part of my life was hymns. Those are the songs that come into my mind still today to give me comfort and joy. They were all about intimacy with Jesus. I think my early tradition really gave me a sense that God loves not just the creation, but me personally and each person personally. I'm very grateful for that foundation.

Also just so much Bible. I was in Awana, so I did Bible memorization. I was never like, I don't know, like the sword drills. We never did that. There was this sense--

Kyle: Unpack that a little bit because I think you're nodding to a whole culture that not all of our listeners may know about.

Alyssa: AWANA is Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed. It is a Bible memorization course that follows sort of a systematic theology. It's very proof texty. It's also just so much Scripture that you get points for memorizing. If you do a really good job, then you get patches and you can go to competitions. It also has some games and things in it. Just really soaking in Scripture, having those words for my prayers as I pray, those words come to me. I'm really grateful for that.

Kyle: I was talking to a colleague recently and Awana came up and I don't think she shared with me what the unpacking of the acronym itself, which is-

Alyssa: Oh, I can sing the song.

Kyle: -a whole thing. There's a song? Oh, can I take you up on it?

Alyssa: Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed. Boys and girls for his service claimed. Hail Awana, on the march for youth. Hail Awana, holding forth the truth. I can't remember the rest. That's a little bit of it. Yes, we sang that. It was like saluting the Awana flag. It was lovely.

Kyle: Yes, it's like a high school football song.

Alyssa: Yes. [unintelligible 00:03:38] song.

Kyle: I love what you said about intimacy with Jesus. I think Episcopalians get lots of Bible too and obviously we encounter it in different ways.

Alyssa: Right, absolutely.

Kyle: For me, the distinction of what you say about that sense of sort of like intimacy maybe feels more like something that I, as a cradle Episcopalian, wish that I had more of as a kid. I always felt close to Jesus during Holy Week and Easter, but if you look at the texts and the prayers in our prayer book, there's not a lot of dear Jesus prayers. We do a lot of praying to God the Father through the--

Alyssa: Through the Son and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Kyle: Yes, and what have you. The Holy Spirit. Yes, various different formularies in those collects. I think it doesn't actually, if our main patterns of early formation come from the prayer book, I'm not sure we necessarily get that real sense of close, like dear Jesus, be with me now, let's talk.

Alyssa: There's upsides and downsides to that because I feel like as I did my faith shifting, I really wondered about that person. I had the experience of personal like one-on-one time with God and crying out to God and God answering me, and I had the experience, but the theology around it was really difficult as I unpacked it, because it was like Jesus is going to find me a parking spot. Jesus is going to heal my kid. Jesus is not going to give me more than I can handle. The reality is there is way more than we can handle.

There are not enough parking spaces, and some kids are sick. Finding a theology that can, and I feel like I found that, where Jesus is present with us in all of that, but not like God over here and us over here intimacy, but within our very experiences and self. I don't know how that comes out in the prayer book, I'm still exploring that, but it's definitely come out in the Episcopal spiritualities that I've encountered.

Kyle: Yes, grace isn't magic.

Alyssa: Yes, and God's providence isn't bullying.

Kyle: Yes. That's lovely, thank you. Let's fast-forward a little bit. Do I have right, Wheaton College?

Alyssa: Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, Billy Graham's alma mater.

Kyle: Yes, not too far from where I'm standing, recording this in the North Chicago suburbs. It's such an interesting school in the history of Christianity in the U.S., as you're nodding to. Same question, I imagine looking back there might be lots of, sort of mixed feelings about that time, and I'd love to hear about either one, but maybe especially starting with what from that era has sort of stayed with you.

Alyssa: Yes, well, I chose Wheaton College from a big huge book that my uncle gave me all about colleges, and that was back when we used books instead of internet searches. I'm so old. The Wheaton College was like the only Christian college that was rated at the highest rating for academic rigor, and it was also an evangelical college, and I wanted both, and that's why I chose Wheaton. I definitely got academic rigor in the theology and Bible departments at Wheaton College. I was taught to think hard, and to write well, and to ask lots of questions.

There wasn't a fear about questioning. It was about diving in and pushing around. My senior year, I had a class with Tim Phillips, who died at a very young age of cancer, and the thing that he really impressed me with was he said that if you've got to entertain all the questions, not just the Christian questions, the whole culture's questions, and if your answers don't match the questions, your answers aren't good enough. I just appreciated it. Wasn't just like encouraging our own questioning within our own worldview, but the confrontation with other worldviews, and if my answers weren't good enough, then they just weren't good enough, and I needed to work harder.

I also experienced a real breadth of Christian tradition. I went to school with Orthodox, Catholic, all forms of Protestant, Mainline, Charismatic, Pentecostal, everybody was there. Obviously, the vibe was evangelical, but everyone was there, and in my theology classes as well, I really encountered that wide breadth. Another pointer that I got from a specific professor, Robert Weber, who was an Episcopalian, he taught the classes on Orthodox Christianity and the early church, and at one point somebody in the class was like, "If you're so in love with it, why don't you marry it," kind of idea.

It was, if you love this so much if you think they're so right, why aren't you Orthodox? He said because we all have to plant our feet somewhere. It's not about being right. It's about choosing where you're going to plant your feet for your journey, for your exploration, and he had chosen to plant his feet in the Episcopal tradition. That gave me this ability going forward to think about where are my feet planted and understand that doesn't mean that's the only place to plant your feet. I appreciate those gifts that I was given at Wheaton College.

Kyle: Yes, absolutely, and that makes me think of this mindset that CDSP has always tried to cultivate, and I think has especially been represented and carried forward in the past decades by our connection to the Graduate Theological Union, this acknowledgment that we are part of-- My friend Mary Hess calls it, a community of communities, and that we can appreciate the distinctiveness of our own community and still have that admiration and that deep sense of learning and questioning and when we interact with these other folks.

Alyssa: Yes, now on the flip side of that, the main message that I got from more of my learning at Wheaton was that the goal of all the questioning really was, unlike Bob Weber, certainty, and that did not serve me well, that I needed to get to certainty before I could claim conviction. If I stepped outside of certainty, I was in danger. That would be I think the downside of the tradition that I was in at that time.

Kyle: You were in danger sort of as a disciple, you were in danger as part of a wider Christian community? What was--

Alyssa: Spiritual danger, so in the sense of like not so much that like God would abandon me if I got it wrong, but that getting it right was really, really important, and that my life would be better, my children's lives would be better, the people I loved would be loved better, like if I did it wrong there would be huge consequences for my spiritual well-being, for the spiritual well-being of the people around me, and there was a right and there was a wrong, and I had to figure it out.

Kyle: I was not raised in a religious setting where I would have received those messages a whole lot, but hearing you say that reminds me so much of how I was as a kid for whatever reason.

Alyssa: Right, yes.

Kyle: It's a lot to carry.

Alyssa: Yes, it is. Then when you do see new information that you were certain about, this is how I feel, this is what I believe, if the certainty itself is what gives you peace, then you are very-- I was very unsettled by new information. I do feel like that's not the only way to have your feet planted, is to be certain, and right and wrong. There's a bigger, broader, like I think the psalm says, you've placed my feet on a broad place, a spacious place.

Kyle: Yes. Oh, that's lovely. Let's keep fast-forwarding then and maybe we will sort of find the path to that place as it were in the story of your life. Fast-forwarding then, years later you are married, you've got very young children, and you and your husband Judah feel a call to do missionary work in Mexico. Tell us about what that journey looked like, what set you on it, and how things unfolded.

Alyssa: Yes, well I think it was the way my stream of life and my husband's stream of life and our calls sort of came together, and that was also at Wheaton. Judah also studied an undergraduate, he did physics instead of theology, because that's fun, both of those make so much money. He was at the grad school at the same time I was, so he came back. His life, just to give you a little picture of him, his parents had been involved with the missionaries and groups that we ended up being involved with since before he was born.

He was actually born in a home birth at a missionary training center. Christian hippies ready to go be missionaries, things happened, they weren't able to make that their full-time work. Judah on and off throughout his life lived in Mexico, lived with Mexicans, his parents unofficially adopted a couple of young Mexican women. Judah's life was full of the Latino world before I met him. Then when we got to Wheaton, both of us got involved in the international community in the Wheaton grad school. At that time, I don't know what it's like today, but one in five students at the Wheaton grad school at that time were international students, which was very different than the undergraduate program.

The undergraduate program was overwhelmingly white and American, although there was some diversity. The international community at the Wheaton grad school was just delightful. This is part of my story. As I walked into that international community, I just felt myself drawn to the theological and spiritual, and cultural wisdom that I experienced in people that were seeing God differently because they'd had a different life experience. The surprising ways they understood God and themselves and the world made me feel like God was bigger, and I was bigger, and everything was bigger.

It was just such a delightful place to be and to be surprised all the time. Both Judah and I were in this sort of multicultural context, and that's where we met was in that international student group where we had both been invited in by hospitable international students. When I met Judah, he was speaking Spanish. Most of his close friends were first-language Spanish speakers, and I started working on my own and brushing up my college Spanish so I could join him in that world. Then we got married, we moved to Yakima, we had our babies, and while we were there, we worked in an English as a second language program as volunteers.

That's our family friends, our couple friends were these folks that were first and second-generation immigrants to the United States in that Latino context. It was lovely. When we had this opportunity to move into actually living in Mexico, it was a two-year commitment. We stayed for 10, but it was a 2-year commitment. It was just this opportunity to continue that trajectory of being stretched and grown and formed in a bicultural way for us and for our kids. We really wanted our kids to have that as well.

Kyle: What was the nature of the work that you were doing?

Alyssa: Yes, so we were missionaries, but not in the typical sort of evangelical understanding of missionary, because we did no church planting, we did no evangelism, we didn't preach. I tried once, but it ended up not panning out. Anyway--

Kyle: Tried preaching?

Alyssa: I wrote a sermon, but then the pastor who wasn't going to be able to make it, ended up being able to make it, and so I didn't get to do my sermon. Anyway, but we weren't even evangelizing. We were supportive staff for short-term missionaries who were already coming and going from this group in Mexico, in Central Mexico. That was actually like a part-time job, just when the teams would come. It was mostly Judah. Then my job was holding down the fort at home. I was homeschooling my kids. Our older kid is autistic, and there were not schools that were able to educate him.

Yes, just being with neighbors, with church, and eventually we just became very embedded in our local church, which was pastored by a Mexican pastor, not by missionaries from the United States. It was a blessing. We were developed a lot personally through that. Judah's mission was really to the short-term missionaries, to help them gain enough cultural competency so that they could do what they came down to do without also doing damage.

Kyle: Yes, sort of almost a sort of diaconal sort of posture with respect to the cultural context of [unintelligible 00:18:50] living.

Alyssa: Yes. That was our official job, but we had lots of amazing experiences because we chose to stay for 10 years. We chose to raise our kids from ages 2 and 4 to 12 and 14. We wanted them to have the experience of not being the center. We wanted them to enjoy what we were enjoying, which is the wonder of going outside your house and being confused, and being always something new to learn, and new words to learn, and new cultural practices to learn, and knowing that the manners that you have in your house and the manners that someone else has in their house, it's culture. It's not rigid. We wanted to give that gift to our children as well.

Kyle: Then years go by and eventually you decide to return to the U.S. and you land in Atlanta. Tell me about that process.

Alyssa: Yes, well there were a couple of things that pushed us to end our time there. One was just that I got to the end of my amateur abilities of occupational therapy, social skills therapy, homeschooling, all of those things, and we just really wanted to give our older child the opportunity to have better people doing that job. For high school, we were like, okay, for high school.

Kyle: Those three jobs.

Alyssa: Yes, those many jobs. We wanted our daughter to be able to get some support as well. That's just the family piece. Then the missionary piece, we had become really embedded in our church and in the community of churches. There were 10, 15 churches. We were seeing some patterns that were really different than what we would have wanted. Our theological convictions got to the place where we didn't feel like we were representing our organizations, that we could represent our organizations in the way that they wanted to be represented while still being true to our own convictions.

We actually stepped aside from our missionary work before we moved back to the United States. We had about six months while we were just living and being. That gave us freedom to worship with folks who didn't feel welcome in the communities, the religious communities that were available to them because of queerness, because of having been abused in Christian contexts. There were some folks in our community we worshiped in homes on Saturday evening that were homeless or mentally ill. It was just this lovely place. It was bilingual because we had a couple of different families whose kids didn't speak a lot of Spanish.

We had this bilingual worship where we just hodgepodged it all together, and a couple of people brought guitars, and we served each other the bread and the wine. It's lovely to receive, this is the body of Christ from a two-year-old, which is different than this tradition. It was wonderful and I'm very grateful for that experience. That faith shift also was what moved us out of the missionary context because we couldn't represent well the organizations that had sent us there. We got to Atlanta because there was a school for our older child. There was a job for Judah that could pay for the school. We also looked at seminaries for me. That was something I was already thinking about. We didn't know what tradition we would land in, but seminary was a possibility for me. Candler was in Atlanta, so that was a possibility.

Kyle: Was there also a dimension to the evolving fit between you and your context? Was some of that connected as well to feeling called to ordained ministry, or not really?

Alyssa: No. I think I didn't see myself as called to ordained ministry. I think I saw myself as called to better-equipped ministry, and that's why I wanted to go to seminary. I still hadn't seen a lot of ordained ministry for women. It was still something that seemed bigger than my abilities. Even though the call was there, in college I thought I might be called to be a pastor's wife because that's where I had seen women in ministry. I don't think that was necessarily the main fit. I think LGBTQ, that God thinks LGBTQ people are part of his wonderful creation, that was a big thing. That was probably the biggest.

Kyle: Got it. Is that then connected to how you found the Episcopal Church in Atlanta?

Alyssa: Absolutely. Gaychurch.org, great place to find a church. They listed a bunch of churches and then just said-- And the Episcopal Church in general, just go to any of them. which is not always true, but mostly true but--

Kyle: Yes. I was going to say that.

Alyssa: Yes. I actually walked to the closest Episcopal Church to our apartment on the first Sunday that we were there. I had a checklist, and it did include women in leadership. It included care for the immigrant, it included racial reconciliation, understanding and care for disability. I had a big, long list. I went into St. Bede's Atlanta and just started checking off the list, and I'm like, what? I came home. I'm like, "Judah, it's amazing." He's like, "Maybe you should at least visit one more church." We stayed. We stayed.

Kyle: So-- I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Alyssa: I was just going to say that summer, that idea of ordained ministry for women really took shape for me, because the rector at the church at the time, and still is, he is a man, and he was on sabbatical. All of the ordained leadership for that whole summer was women. There was a deacon, an associate, another associate, a retired priest, and they were so different, and they were so amazing. They were preaching, and they were celebrating. I'm like, this is all women, and it's amazing. That definitely lit a fire in me to see the power of just taking your place to serve, just choosing to continue to serve however God calls you.

Kyle: My next question is a little bit about what that call might look like for you. Here, I'll say that we get to spend a fair bit of time standing in a 20 by 10-foot rectangle in Louisville, Kentucky this summer, representing CVSP at the Episcopal Church's General Convention. Of course, the Episcopal Church is not just a church in the United States-

Alyssa: That's true.

Kyle: -and it is not just a church that speaks English. It was just both a relief and a joy as someone whose Spanish is not where I wish it were. It was a relief and a joy for me to be standing next to you in the booth, and watching both through your personality and through your Spanish language skills, offering such hospitality to Spanish speakers who came by our booth from around the world. I'm wondering if your time in Jalisco, if your time as a missionary, going back to your time possibly in the grad school at Wheaton, how are those experiences, if at all, shaping your sense of what your call in the Episcopal Church might look like now and in the future?

Alyssa: Yes, that's a really good question, that idea of like shaping my call. I think one of the best experiences, or the thing that drew me to that multicultural world and then drew us further into Mexico, for me is just joy. There is this deep joy in being completely incompetent, in not understanding a word that's being said, and in having to accept hospitality, in having to express oneself like a child, and in walking--

Kyle: Let's say potential joy. I think that's a joy in your experience that might not be for everyone.

Alyssa: This is my call and my experience, exactly. I think the joy that I have experienced there is part of my call, to hold somebody's hand as we walk into a situation where we're both incompetent, or they feel out of place, or to reach out my hand to somebody who's new to the United States, and say, I was new to a country. I know what that feels like. Laugh at ourselves, and have that joy of encountering difference. It might be cultural difference, but it might be political difference. Can we laugh? Can we find places where we do have sameness, where we may be talking two different languages, but we can find some place where we meet?

I feel like that joy that I've experienced, I want to call others into and to call it out of them. You're absolutely right, Kyle. It is not necessarily everyone's natural reaction to feeling incompetent, but it feels so good, and I want people to have that joy. Obviously, I was not unaccompanied in that joy, either. My husband has a degree in intercultural communications. I don't know what I would have done without that. Also, just the good friends that came around me and supported me when I was there. I feel like that is part of my call.

Kyle: Yes. I think you're getting at something that is really important. There are different ways to sort of I got to the end of my amateur abilities of occupational therapy, social skills therapy, homeschooling, all of those things, and we just really wanted to give our older child the opportunity to have better people doing that job. For high school, we were like, okay, for high school.

Kyle: Those three jobs.

Kyle: Was there also a dimension to the evolving fit between you and your context? Was some of that connected as well to feeling called to ordained ministry, or not really?

Kyle: Got it. Is that then connected to how you found the Episcopal Church in Atlanta?

Kyle: Yes. I was going to say that.

Alyssa: Yes. I actually walked to the closest Episcopal Church to our apartment on the first Sunday that we were there. I had a checklist, and it did include women in leadership. It included care for the immigrant, it included racial reconciliation, understanding, and care for disability. I had a big, long list. I went into St. Bede's Atlanta and just started checking off the list, and I'm like, what? I came home. I'm like, "Judah, it's amazing." He's like, "Maybe you should at least visit one more church." We stayed. We stayed.

Kyle: So-- I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Alyssa: That's true.

Kyle: Let's say potential joy. I think that's a joy in your experience that might not be for everyone.

Kyle: Yes. I think you're getting at something that is really important. There are different ways to sort of center ourselves in these intercultural encounters or in other kinds of encounters with people who are different from us, and there are lots of legitimate and potentially respectful ways of coming at a conversation like that. There might be a dutiful sort of approach--

Alyssa: Yes, this is what we should be doing.

Kyle: Yes, but when we can laugh, when we can share a smile and a meal, I don't want to veer into making a sort of caricature of this experience.

Alyssa: Right, absolutely not.

Kyle: I have read enough and experienced enough to believe it when people say, actually, if you can laugh in such an encounter if you can rejoice and embrace it in the manner that you're talking about here, that actually opens up possibilities in ways that other orientations to that encounter might not.

Alyssa: Yes. I feel like that's, in whatever context I'm going to be in, I feel like that bicultural piece of me, the joyful bicultural piece of me, informs my call, and I'm grateful for that. What a gift.

Kyle: Yes. Amen. Continuing on the General Convention bus for a little bit longer, I'm curious that there's an intensive immersion into the many cultures and practices of the Episcopal Church that can happen at a General Convention, and I'm wondering, as someone still relatively new to the Episcopal Church, did you have takeaways from that experience?

Alyssa: Yes. A lot. Let's see. It's big and it's small. There's a breadth of language and nationality and experience that I knew, but then seeing like, "Oh yes, I'm from this country, I'm from this country, it's like, oh yes, that's right." That's the Episcopal Church. That's not just the Anglican community, that's the Episcopal Church. That piece, it was really brought home. Bishops are just people and they're just walking around being people with their own personalities and gifts and limitations, just like every single person who has every single call. One of my favorite places the whole time I was there was the New Community Party. That is hosted--

Kyle: This is the gathering-- Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Keep on talking.

Alyssa: Yes. It's hosted by multiple communities within the Episcopal Church who have traditionally been marginalized rather than centered in the Episcopal Church, so African American or Black, indigenous, Latino, LGBTQ, lots of different communities. They host this party and I'm so glad somebody handed me an invitation. It's the joy. It's the joy of, I have never seen someone dance quite like that, or what language are you speaking? Just the-- Everyone chose to be there to celebrate their Episcopal identity and celebrate all the other identities they bring to the Episcopal Church. It was lovely and dancing was really fun.

Kyle: Yes. I am so glad that you got handed that card because I have been to that gathering in the past, but I had not heard that it was happening on that day and that night and was grateful to be invited along by you and was especially grateful to my four-year-old daughter was, then almost four-year-old daughter, was there with us and the extent to which she can understand things like denominations and church structures and whatever, still in the very early stages. I think it was on the way to that party, it might've been a different night, but I remember stopping at another party and it was a place where she had to sit down and eat her snack while I did some business.

It was a room full of people eating hotel appetizers and drinking and having professional conversations. I don't want to vilify that-

Alyssa: Yes, those are cool too.

Kyle: -but I was really proud to bring my daughter to the New Communities Party and say this also is an expression of what it means to be a member of the Episcopal Church, a leader in the Episcopal Church, a part of attending general convention. As a dad, it was a real highlight of general convention for me and for exactly the reasons that you're saying. I have the hundreds of pictures that my daughter took when she stole my phone and started taking photos. It is exactly what you would expect a four-year-old with a cell phone on a dance floor to have captured. It's amazing.

Alyssa: Oh my goodness. That's delightful. That is so great.

Kyle: Anyway, I'm glad you mentioned that because it was a highlight for me.

Alyssa: I'm just going to do one correction. It's actually the New Community, not New Communities.

Kyle: Oh really? Am I getting that wrong?

Alyssa: Yes. Anthony Guillen specifically said, and it was probably at some point when you were feeding something to your daughter.

Kyle: No problem.

Alyssa: It is the New Community because together we form this community rather than communities. That's why I noticed it because he said it at some point. Maybe he said it at the ElmC because I just finished the Episcopal Latino Ministries Competency course through the Episcopal Church a couple of weeks ago. A week and a half ago. Really recently. That's also coloring and Anthony Guillen was in charge of that too. Maybe he said it there.

Kyle: It is quite popular. There was definitely a time where I was in the other room trying to both help her eat some food and I think have a FaceTime home.

Alyssa: Yes, that's right.

Kyle: I would certainly not be surprised to know that I missed something. Let's wrap up by talking just a little bit about CVSP. You are in your third year now. I'm curious, in particular, as somebody who has already spent time studying religion in significant ways, how has this seminary experience stretched you?

Alyssa: I would say there are several avenues of stretching. I'm going to say three. The first would be faculty and coursework. I feel like I've been given back the scripture as what it is rather than what it would be easier to just put it in a box and tell us it's inerrant and we're good. Our Old Testament course, we talked about having an ethical encounter with the scripture and the responsibility of having that ethical encounter, of not just taking the scripture and applying it, of having to meet the scripture and meet those communities and meet their theologies and actually encounter them and not just pass them on.

That's our duty as Christians and as ordained people guiding communities. I feel the weight of that responsibility and also the joy of considering the writers and the communities that compiled the scripture as co-journeyers on our understanding to God.

Kyle: Through that sort of broad land that you mentioned earlier.

Alyssa: Yes, that spacious place. Then our theology course last year with Dr. McDougall, I think because of my fears of certainty and my leaving certainty behind, I have been scared to settle on conviction. It's easier to just say, well, everybody sees it differently. It could be this, it could be that, which in some cases is true. Also, it's my duty and privilege to use my mind and my heart and my soul and my spirit to find the place where I am planting my feet. I'm not just rolling around on the spacious place. I'm planting my feet and saying, no, this is from where I can see right now, this is where I am. That is conviction. It's not immovable. My feet are not poured into concrete. I'm walking around and yet I am standing firm. From there, I can have a conversation. From there, I can be delighted by new information that changes me, that transforms me, whether I encounter that in scripture, in a multicultural context, or wherever I encounter that thing that changes me, my conviction is strong enough to hold that and to be a base for actually encountering the newness.

I feel like that's what I've been given, as well as just the theology, the will, the resources to seek out and truly listen to voices that are not mine. I am a cishet, white, middle class woman. I have so many blinders. I'm not a bad person because this is where I am. Also, I can't just see what I see. I have to see what other people see. I feel like CDSP has really stretched and grown me to always find another commentary if all I can find are dead white guys. I like dead white guys. They're good. Also, that is just not enough. That's the faculty and staff.

I think the second stretching has been the formation in worship community. Since I don't have a long experience with the Episcopal Church, really diving into the prayer book, into the resources beyond the prayer book, the musical resources that Dent Davidson has given us, seeing the breadth of resources within the Episcopal Church for worship has stretched me to wonder how those can be used. Then the third thing I would say is my cohort, my fellow students, one of the biggest things that has pushed me to growth.

Part of me, in coming into the Episcopal Church and encountering women in leadership has been a little scary because if I can't be ordained, then I don't have to be. I don't have to follow that call. I don't have to do that hard work. Now that I'm in a place where I can follow that call, maybe I have to. My cohort has come alongside me in my insecurities of never having a full-time paid job. Who am I? I'm an almost 50-year-old woman and I don't have a career. My cohort has come around me and said, look at the way God has formed you. Look at your call. Look at how you followed it. They don't let me be small. I see us doing that for each other. Each of us has these insecurities and wondering about our call.

I feel like this hybrid model actually encourages us to be connected in a way that will be enduring past our time together. I think the residential model, I was just at Sewanee with a bunch of residential students and they are living together and they are literally eating and drinking and breathing each other all day every day for three years. That's different. What we are doing is connecting in the middle of our lives, in the middle of our insecurities, when we don't have the support around us. We are each other's support. That's where we're going to be when we graduate.

I'm looking forward to continuing to be challenged and stretched and reinforced and pushed by my cohort as we move forward because we've already practiced doing that.

Kyle: On the other side of things, you're now more than halfway through the program. Are there things you expect you might miss during whatever comes next? What of the sort of rhythms of seminary has been especially supportive or positive for you?

Alyssa: Yes. I do really like the go away for a week or two and just be a student and just be dive all in. That has been really fun, which is my word for anything good. It is a good and fun thing always and everywhere to give. Anyway, I really love school. I love reading. I love writing. I love all the posts. I love all the projects. I'm a geek. I think school is the best. Being done with school and being in ministry without getting to do all of that all the time, I'll miss it. I'll miss it. I could go to school forever. Also, I don't think it's my call to go to school forever.

Just because something is fun doesn't mean it's mine forever. I will definitely miss just the rigor and the push and the constant requirement to work harder and think harder from my cohort, from my teachers.

Kyle: It'll be interesting. We are still in the process of developing the curacy program that comes next. It'll be interesting, I think, to see in what ways continuing education with your cohort can be a bridge experience for what you're talking about, both on the mutual support side, as you've already suggested, but also on the academic side. Because it is jarring to go from praying and learning with a community, even in a low-residential hybrid setting, and then for that to go away.

I'm especially interested in the continuity and discontinuity that might come to the fore and be addressed in interesting ways as we think about this new way of transitioning students into ministry through this program with their cohorts and continuing connection to the school.

Alyssa: I think we're getting a little bit of a taste of it. This is the first cohort that's doing the contextual ed year, with the CPE and contextual ed. I'm going to have a little bit of academic-specific because I did my CPE in a different time. We got together this past week. We just were like, "Hey, we don't have any forums to get to. Let's have a Zoom." Now that we don't have those weekly interactions, we're choosing to create that interaction through our Discord group, but also through the Zoom, where we can check in and see how everyone's doing and encourage each other in our call and in our ministry.

I feel like we're doing a mini version of the QRC years, ramping up for it.

Kyle: There's something really powerful about that emerging out of your class's initiative and your class's relationships. I think that gets at what's powerful about being an adult learner and community, with the vocational trajectory we're talking about.

Alyssa: We're choosing to find the resources we need, rather than just taking what's handed to us.

Kyle: Do you have time for one more question?

Alyssa: Oh yes, I've got all the time in the world.

Kyle: This is the part where I ask you a question that you probably can't answer fully, or for political reasons may not be able to answer at all, but I'm going to ask you anyway, and you can decide how to handle it. I'm curious if you have thoughts about, or ideas, and some folks at this stage might, about what your QRC, or hopes, for what your QRC placement might look like, or for other aspects, as you start to look to the medium and long term, about the shape of your ministry. What feels like it's on the horizon for you in this moment?

Alyssa: Yes, well, on the direct horizon, in a couple of days I have a meeting with the bishop's office to talk about those things. That'll be good. There's a layperson in the bishop's office who is sort of our liaison, her name's Sally, and she's amazing. She's so supportive, and she's really direct and helpful in communicating the vision of the diocese, as well as our own calling, and seeing where those intersect. Right now, for the next year, I'm going to be inside the perimeter church, ITP, which is in Atlanta.

It's the area that's closer into the city.

Kyle: Is the perimeter like a highway, or a--

Alyssa: Yes, a ring highway. A ring highway, yes. The churches outside of that metro area are less resourced, are smaller, have more needs. The year after that, I won't have an official placement, as far as like with the school or whatever, but the bishop's office is envisioning with me what it would look like to serve further away from my home in a church that maybe doesn't have as many resources, but still with good supervision. I think that's the year that I'll be a deacon, all those different pieces. We're going to be envisioning that. From what I understand from the bishop's office is that vision of really resourcing the rural churches is a big part of the future of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. I'm excited about that. I can see myself in so many different positions. That's part of being in I guess the, or what is that, ENFP, what is that, Myers-Briggs. All the possibilities, all the time. My spiritual director helps me work on, but what is mine? I love all the things. I can imagine myself being a part-time, working with some Latino community on something creative and new.

I can imagine myself being a church planter. I can imagine myself on a big staff and just working with just children. I can see all these amazing things. In all of them, I want to be somewhere where differences are coming together, whether that be generational differences or cultural differences, language differences, to be at that point of joy and finding that joy in the difference.

Kyle: I feel like we really have a compelling portrait of the sort of world view of Alyssa Sali and where your vocational journey sort of takes you. Through that view, it's really beautiful and I'm grateful for the time and for the vulnerability of teasing that out a little bit for us.

Alyssa: I appreciate the interview because I don't know things until I say them and I feel like I've learned a lot about myself through this interview as well. Thank you so much for giving me that opportunity.

Kyle: Thanks for that too. All right, Alyssa, thank you for joining us on this episode of Crossings Conversation and blessings on your third year at CDSP and beyond.

Alyssa: Thank you. See you in class. Bye-bye.

[00:52:55] [END OF AUDIO]