Being Christian at Dartmouth!
Hey!
This is Antônio, once again! This is already my 37th post, can you believe it? Not that I think anyone has read all of them, but it's so much fun to have my own journal up here in the web haha.
Recently, as I was going thorough my People Places Pines profile, I realised many of my posts relate to different parts of my identity: being multiracial, being Latino, being queer, and much more. But here, I seem to have never talked about being Christian!
For the ones who know me personally, it is clear that going to church is an important part of my weekly routine. Being born to a Catholic mom and to a Methodist father, it was at Sunday School that I learnt to be in peace with myself. Currently, my family and I are part of the Anglican Church back in Brazil and, here at Dartmouth, I was surprised to learn about all the ways I could get involved with the Episcopal Church—which is the North American branch of Anglicanism.
Since freshman fall, every Sunday I try to carve out my morning off my schedule to be able to attend the rite at St. Thomas Church. It not only took some space in my Google Calendar, but it became a weekly motivation to wake up early on the weekends and be productive the rest of the day. Although this term I am not dancing with DDE (the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble), during my freshman year I would usually leave church, grab lunch, and go straight to practice. That Sunday routine was literally one of the peaks of my week, especially after the winter blues hit me and I had to be more intentional about my health—both mental and physical.
As a new thing, since I got back to campus this winter, I have decided to attend the weekly Wednesday dinner at the Edgerton House. The Edge, as we call it, is an off-campus student housing maintained by the St. Thomas community. Besides housing a few students, it is also open every Wednesday night for dinner and religious discussions. Every term there's a new book—that somehow is related to the church, to religion, and, more specifically, to youth—that we read and discuss all together. Carving out time to be around people who believe in the same things as I do has been very valuable to me.
Well, this is a part of me some of you might not have read about yet, so thank you for sticking with me :)