The week before my flight back to America, I sat in the parlor of a saloon-style ice cream shop, prodding a half-melted scoop of vanilla with my spoon. Beside me, my exchange friends Tiffany and Ruby deliberated silently. Ruby had just asked if we thought there was an afterlife.
“I’d like to think there is,” she mused. “It’s comforting.”
“I don’t know,” I said after a beat. As a nebulous Christian, my thoughts on the afterlife were mixed. I wasn’t raised within a church, but I joined a Bible study group at Georgetown to better understand the world around me. Then, my close relative was hate-crimed by a Christian couple for being gay. Her experience deeply struck me, and by the time I flew to Bristol to study, I no longer read scripture every day.
When I first arrived, I relished the fact that religion wasn’t in my face. Ten minutes away from my flat, a towering church, St. Mary Redcliffe, pierced the view from my window, but I could certainly avoid it. British politics were not overtly religious the way American politics often are, so reading the news became a harmless refuge for me to learn about my new home.
Josephine poses in front of Bath Abbey, a parish church of the Church of England in Bath, Somerset, England.
Religion finds a way to infiltrate life, though, no matter your beliefs. As an English major, my two classes heavily hinged upon an understanding of Christianity. My Victorian poetry class examined how nineteenth-century writers described their doubt of overarching Christian views in their poems, a phenomenon that very much encapsulated my mindset. My medieval literature class exclusively focused on poems derived from scripture.
“How did Christianity interact with medieval socioeconomic forces? How does that appear in literature?” my professor asked. I dug my fingernails uncomfortably into my palm. It seemed that the Christian-influenced values of both medieval and Victorian English society impacted women particularly, determining their relationships and status.
When I decided to explore beyond the borders of the United Kingdom, there were always reminders of religion, no matter where I looked. Across 10 countries, I visited famous churches like St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. Religion inextricably permeates European history, meaning that European social structures and institutions have inevitably been influenced by what I sought so long to avoid. If I chose to avoid confronting my struggles with religion, then I would be ignoring a crucial part of the history and culture of the countries I wanted to explore.
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, a Romanesque- and Gothic-style Catholic Church in Vienna, Austria.
The night my friends and I debated the afterlife we didn’t reach any agreement or conclusion. Neither of them are explicitly religious, so I found comfort in the fact that our mutual curiosity emerged from a shared experience of witnessing cultural and religious influences in our travels. We laughed and ate and debated for five hours, none of us wanting to say goodbye. Ruby and Tiffany were heading to Germany the next day, and by the time they would return I’d be back at home in New Jersey. Religion can bring people together—and it has for me through Bible studies at Georgetown—but this time, it was a crucial aspect of my study abroad experience that tethered my friends and my wanderlust together.
The next day, with Ruby and Tiffany on a plane to Cologne, I walked to the doorsteps of St. Mary Redcliffe and wavered, not knowing if I should enter. A line of children waddled through. The chaperone hustled them inside, but before she followed heed, she hesitated and turned to me. “Do you want to go inside?”
St. Mary Redcliffe, built around 1086, represented the heart of Bristolian architecture, culture, and history. Not entering would be an injustice to my time here. Yet, I found myself paralyzed in front of the ornate wooden door. I shook my head. I wasn’t ready yet. Despite all my time exploring varying representations of religion in society, I couldn’t confront the personal part of it.
The gray-brown exterior of St. Mary Redcliffe, a Gothic-style Church of England parish church in Bristol, England.
Today, though, on my way to a cafe to write this piece, I listened to a recording of Psalm 139. I was tired of running. “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my anxious thoughts,” the pastor recited.
When I came to Bristol, my heart was full of anxious thoughts: What if I couldn’t find friends? What if I didn’t like the country? What if I was homesick? Now, on the precipice of leaving, I find myself filled with anxious thoughts again, but different ones this time: What if I never see my exchange friends again? What if I can’t adjust back to America? What if I’m homesick for my new home? Falling in love with Bristol for four months allowed me to find a new home, but it also means the goodbye is that much more difficult.
My anxious thoughts won’t leave, at least not for a long time. But I think of Ruby’s words, how faith can be comforting, how religions have survived after all this time by yielding refuge to anxious souls. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as religious as I used to be, but I’m no longer running away from the value and impact of religion. And I do know that I’ve experienced the most beautiful of Bristol blessings: to love and to be loved.
Josephine poses in front of St. Mark’s Basilica, the cathedral church of the Patriarchate of Venice, in Venice, Italy.
Josephine Wu (C'24) is an undergraduate student double majoring in English literature and economics. She is studying abroad at the University of Bristol. Her areas of interest include the financial markets, economic and education policy, and biblical literature. Born in New Jersey, she is looking forward to learning about the United Kingdom's political philosophies and literary developments. On campus, she serves as a tour guide for Blue & Gray and is a member of Hilltop Consultants. She also enjoys writing poetry and training for triathlons. She is part of the spring 2023 cohort of the Doyle Global Dialogue.
