“When I graduate, will I have learned how to live a life I am proud of?”
Questions like that kept Mary Edith coming back to St. Paul’s Memorial Church on the campus of the University of Virginia. She was majoring in economics and advanced mathematics, and at The University Fellowship at St. Paul’s, she found people curious to know “Why are we here? What do we live for?” and more.
“No matter where you go, you will always have a home here.”
Mary Edith liked being part of a community that was not a typical club or affinity group, that spanned many ages and walks of life.
“My perception of Christians were people who follow this doctrine just because they were raised in or they’re born in it,” said Mary Edith, who was raised Baptist. “What I learned is that the people I met at church were the most critically thinking, critically questioning, the most thoughtful and questioning people.”
Spiritual discussions and close friendships humanized her college experience and influenced how she wants to apply her practical quantitative knowledge. After she went with St. Paul’s to a local day shelter, Mary Edith wrote her honors thesis about homelessness. “Keep putting my skills to use in a way that’s helpful,” she said of her broad future goals.
Music also helped attract and keep her at St. Paul’s. A pianist, she unlocked her “lifelong dream to learn to play the organ” there. She may not have found St. Paul’s without an invitation from Evaline, who sang in the University Choir with her. Mary Edith admired the beautiful, new and also familiar hymns of the Sunday evening service, followed by dinner.
At the start of her junior year, Mary Edith went “all in” and joined the student vestry and the Episcopal Church Leadership (ECL) Scholars, which St. Paul’s administers on behalf of UVA to educate students for life and leadership within the Episcopal Church.
She formed a small choir for the Sunday evening services as an ECL service project. At their final performance, her choir sang “The Road Home,” by Stephen Paulus, a song whose movement from questioning toward homecoming resonated with her own experience at St. Paul’s.
“No matter where you go, you will always have a home here,” she said. “That was special to all of us.”