Yellow house over yonder

  When I was living in the yellow house Senior year, I wanted to understand the world. I wanted to know how I fit in. I thought that once I understood, I'd know what I wanted to do with my life—working at a job I hated to pay for a big house or fancy car didn't make any sense to me. I wanted to do something that made a difference in the world, but first, I needed to understand my purpose in life.      When I attended Huntington, I was a Christian. I loved it. I could ask lots of deep questions. It was a way for me to understand the world and my place in it. I cared about knowing the truth. I thought that the other parts of Christianity, all the going to church, the singing songs, the waking up, wasn't as exciting. All I cared about was digging down and finding the truth. The more questions I asked, the more complicated things became. The answers to all my questions left me more and more confused.       When I left college, I wanted to make a dif...

 I've been ruminating, but not writing, for a while now. On the surface the greatest discontinuity between my life in the Yellow House and now is probably religious affiliation. I was a bible major in college and in our senior year was confirmed in the Episcopal church. I thought when I graduated that i was on my way, if slowly, to seminary and the priesthood. Today I am a practicing Muslim. I've been thinking about how to tell that story. The problem is there isn't a neat narrative. No definitive spiritual experience or clear line of reasoning that clicked into place.  It is important, I think, to note that I did not convert from Christianity to Islam. I left  Christianity slowly. Then I spent some years as a bitter ex. I'd like to think that I have reached a more compassionate place and that Islam has something to do with that. When I returned to the US from Egypt in 2013 I missed the sound of the call to prayer. I started reading a lot about Islam and seeking out fem...