Finding God On Campus

As a college freshman finishing my first semester, I, and I'm sure many others like me, have been trying to find religion and a welcome spiritual community on campus. For those of us who do not attend a college affiliated with our own denomination, this can be quite hard. I attend Vanderbilt University, and this has been one of the things I have struggled with in my first semester. For me, it has been hard to keep this a priority in my life as a new college student. Between getting adjusted to college life and trying to meet a group of friends where I fit in, trying to find God on campus can be difficult to keep in mind.

All the HELM Leadership Fellows are involved in a leadership training position that they find themselves, and they actively participate in during the school year. As I searched for something to do at Vanderbilt, I was reminded of the difficulty of finding God on campus. There were not too many student groups around campus, outside of the typical Habitat group, and I was looking for something smaller and more concentrated. After a long time of searching, I came across a group called Vanderbilt Inner-city Projects, and this is one of the places I have found God. Although this group is not religiously affiliated, I have been able to be involved in projects where God is present, and also around people whom God is present in. My first project with them was serving dinner in a local soup kitchen, and although I had never met any of them before, I was accepted by everyone there and immediately handed a stack of dishes for cleaning.

Even though I have not yet found a religious group here at Vanderbilt, I am sure that one will come up eventually, as this group did, and I am reminded of God through small events that happen every now and then. One of these that happened recently occurred during a lab for an astronomy class I took this semester. We have lab on top of a parking garage, and there are telescopes that we work with. A few weeks ago, we were in the middle of lab and one of the teachers told us Saturn was up, so I decided to look at it through the telescope. It was unbelievable. I could see the planet, and even the rings around it. Even though, at the time I was being reminded of the fragility of human life by the fact that it was 30 degrees out and I had been standing on top of the parking garage for 2 hours, I was reminded of God and the majesty of the universe. It is small things like this that let me know that, even though I am not yet active in any religious groups around campus, God is still in my life here at college.

Chris Miller-McLemore is in his first year as a HELM Leadership Fellow and is a member of Woodmont Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Nashville, Tennessee.