Hi, before we get started, just want to let you know that we recorded this episode on religion before the papal conclave met and selected Cardinal Robert Prevost to be the next leader of the Catholic Church.

So unfortunately no talk about Pope Leo XIV, but a lot of conversation about spirituality and faith and what God means to us.

So back to the episode.

Do you ever thank someone or something when you first wake up in the morning?

All right, we'll take out your lagañas first, but afterward... Is there a moment of reflection where you maybe address a higher being and say something to the effect of, thanks, whoever, for giving me another day of life?

For me, a former altar boy, that's God, or Diosito, which, how could it not be?

The Mexican culture I grew up in is synonymous with Catholicism.

Just look at how we talk.

¡Ay Dios mío!

¡Si Dios quiere!

¡Gracias a Dios!

Diosito is everywhere.

Now, if you don't believe in that god or even a god, hey, no te preocupes, there is zero judgment on my part, which as a Catholic, doesn't come easy.

But you know what else doesn't come easy?

Trying to convince young people, especially other Latinos, that God and his old-school fan clubs are worthy of their time.

Because as time passes and society pushes forward, younger generations are increasingly identifying weaknesses in organized religion.

Take the Catholic Church for instance.

It wants us to believe that queer folks, particularly transgender people, should apologize for their supposed sinful existence, which, no thank you.

It also refuses to let women become clergy or assume positions of power within the institution despite a critical priest shortage.

And don't even get me started on the ongoing abuse scandal.

Some will say that Christian institutions are publicly hurting God's image.

So much so that it's pushing people away.

Others will say that organized religion just isn't relevant anymore.

So simply put, who or what should we believe in?

I'm Xorje Olivares, and I'm eager to ask this question.

Is God still relevant to us?

This is Hyphenación, where Conversation and Cultura meet.

So joining me today are two people with very different relationships to religion than myself, but we all grew up Catholic.

And since we grew up catholic, I'm dying to figure out the last time they went to church.

So joining us first is Hoja Lopez, a comedian and writer who pretty much spent her entire academic career in Venezuela going to Catholic school, which all the power to you.

And now identifies as like a spiritually fluid person.

So, thank you for joining us.

And secondly, when was the last time you found yourself in church?

You have truly stopped me with this question.

I was trying to rack my brain.

I think the last time I went I went to a very fancy white lady and man wedding in New Orleans and there was it was like one of those grand ones that has like a giant organ in the back and like sort of expansive ceilings and I'll tell you what the Catholics we really do churches right.

It was so big.

It It was so amazing.

This was probably like 2017.

I stood outside of a church two years ago waiting for my mom to come out.

And my mom was sort of like beckoning me in and I said, I'm good, I'll stay out here, I'll wait for you.

But that, yeah, there's something about a church, the grander it is.

I don't know if they're trying to maybe bamboozle you a little bit to feel the sort of grandiosity of God, the bigger the church is, but.

There is something about like a beautiful stained glass that makes you feel like there's something bigger going on.

- There's a chorus of angels just singing, bringing you inside its doors, very Sister Act style.

100% greatest movie ever made by the way.

Number two.

There's something every Latino I've ever spoken to is obsessed with Sister Act.

Like in Spanish we say cambio de hábito, by the way, which means change of habit.

Change of habits.

Such a good title for the film, anyways.

It is.

Well, I don't know if he's a Sister Act fan, but excited to welcome Luis Galilei, who is an actor, filmmaker, and a performer who grew up Catholic, but pretty early on rejected a lot of its teachings, is now very much a follower of Andean spirituality.

And so I'm curious for you, Luis, when was the last time you were inside of a church?

Well, I had to look it up because I wanted to put some cultural context here.

The last time I was in a church, Teach Me How to Dougie dropped.

Whoa.

Whoa, okay.

2010, baby, when I was 15, dog.

That's the last time I stepped in there.

Uh, I'll just chime in and say that for me, it was just to make my mother Margie happy, it was the Saturday before Easter this year, uh, before Pope Francis left us, it must have, I must have known my body was driving me to church in order to get my Pope one last hurrah.

Well, thank you so much for joining me today to have this conversation about religion.

And I figured the best way to begin, uh is for us to bow our heads in prayer.

So if you'll join, I'm not just playing.

I would've read it.

If I had an impromptu prayer session?

- What would you pray about?

What would we pray about?

I feel like I would pray for I'm just always praying for safety.

Like the world is a chaotic place.

I just want to make sure that I can step out the door and not be worried.

Hoja, do you have something that you would immediately pray for?

Oh, God, it's probably not that not that benevolent.

I would say the last time that I sat down because I considered this prayer and went, I really want this, you know, like, I hope I get this.

It's a hope is a prayer for me now.

But I was think it was like I was going to go up on a stand up show or something doing Spanish stand up for maybe like the third time.

And I had worked really hard.

And there's nothing more disappointing than doing the very best that you can and still failing.

That is always the hardest part.

So I was like, oh, please let this effort like go well.

So I think that was maybe what I would pray about.

Some stupid and stand up show.

Hey, that's warranted.

Rather than the state of the world, Xorje, probably not.

You're coming in, you're coming.

I don't know if I said this stated, I was a very selfish thing.

It was like, make sure that I am safe, like that when I walk out the door, I don't have anything to, to be worried about.

Uh, but you know, maybe the world too.

I, Luis, is there something that you would immediately, if we did have a prayer circle right now, you would pray for?

I'm, yeah, I'm like way more in a woo way.

Like I always, I always pray like the advice that I've gotten from people that like pray to Pachamama, which is the Andean mother earth, like it's to be specific, right?

Be very specific in what you want.

And mother earth will grant it to you in the way that she feels it should come, right.

So like, but when you said that, I was like, I pray that the men in this country somewhere along the way, God is giving them the obstacles in their path so that they could make better decisions.

Amen.

See, the same prayer session is exactly what we needed to start our day.

A little cracker.

Castinate, be ready.

So I love that we've talked about, we did talk about Catholicism, but mostly this idea of growing up and Hoja, you even said that the last time you were outside of a church was waiting for your mother.

So there is this notion that family is the genesis of our understanding.

Oh my God, Genesis, look at what I did there, of our understand of religion.

So, Hoja, could you talk about... What your family's association with religion was, especially maybe Catholicism?

Sure.

So I grew up with a very religious grandma and great grandma.

There were people who were like waking up at 5am every day rosary, like they would do the little like, like the whip yourself on your thigh stuff, like really hardcore opus day crazy.

Yeah, it was like Um, they, I think Venezuela, part of it is like my, my great grandma grew up in like Campos and it's just like very rural settings where the real unifying factor was religion there.

And so my mom was really like kind of the first rebel of the family.

I feel like there's always a rebel.

Um, so I got to be a second generation rebel.

Um, my mom, this is just reminding me.

Uh, I recently had this thing recently, a couple of years ago, I called my mom and I was like, mom, I remember you in a copper pyramid in the middle of the living room.

And my mom's like, "Ah sí mija.

I was just praying.

I was meditating in the of the copper period, a copper, copper pyramid."

This woman is so not Catholic anymore that she had my stepdad build her a copper pyramid that she would sit in.

And she would meditate because my mom's very like woo-woo now.

So now it's a real kind of like combination for her of coming back to Catholicism as an older woman, but still holding like this very broad set of beliefs.

But yeah, for her, it's real mix.

But yeah my grandma and my great grandma were very fervent.

I have part of the things that like have been passed down to me from my family are all very like religious objects are Catholic objects that now hold a lot of meaning in my life.

Because it's my family, but not inherently because they're religious sort of objects.

Luis, who would you say is the most religious person in your family when you think about religion, like at a Catholic level, Christian level, this like church going figure?

Yeah.

I, I never had someone in my family that was like a very much a church going figure.

I for me, like the Catholicism was just like, it was a part of our it was a part our upbringing was a of our life.

Everything, everything had to do with it, except for going to church.

Once I started to become of age, I guess, like my mom started to get like really enthused with getting me in Sunday school classes and working on my first communion like all all my family has done all the like communion and confirmation thing.

And that's where it stopped and then like sometimes they go to church, very like, now that they're older they go because I think they're starting to feel their mortality.

So they're like, let's let me pray to something bigger and I'm like, oh, it's very interesting how you guys go now.

God's been watching the whole time girl.

Did y'all do catechism school?

Did yall do catechism school?

Like you went through the full I call it like a prep course LSAT, but except for like what eight years old.

I imagine it's like very similar to like, like the studying that you have to do for your bat mitzvah like you have to learn so many things.

I remember catechism as like, it's so effective.

Like, the Bible and the stories of it, it really, like...

It really got in my head.

I still have, you know, like, I still sort of operate on a daily basis, even though I don't inherently, like speak that language based on those stories.

Oh, the fact that in catechism, that I acted out the prodigal son parable at least five times in my childhood.

Like I was the son that came back and was like, my son, you've been gone for so long.

Thank you.

I don't know why we did that all the time.

Like just to, I guess, make us feel badly for choices that we were gonna make as adults.

- Probably, yeah.

- Um, but yeah, we would do it, we would have class right before mass.

So it was like a three hour extravaganza between going to school and all of our commandments, sacraments, and whatever you have you.

And then go to mass and somehow be coherent by lunchtime.

I think I just made a realization on why I don't **** with Catholicism just now on this pod.

Because you were talking about acting out that thing and like you were the son and like I didn't grow up with my dad.

Like my dad was out of my life and he chose to be out of life.

And like this whole religion is about somebody's son.

And I'm like.

Where's he at?

I don't know if that's like real, but like maybe I was like, Whoa, I feel a little like I felt like a little vulnerable right there when you said that.

And I was, like, wait, I wonder if as a little kid, like I was just like this whole son father thing, like really just, I didn't believe in it, because it wasn't granted for me.

So I was like, why?

I don't understand this.

And it's funny, you were talking about this.

I was like, I questioned it from the get I wasn't like a kid that like knew how to, you know, beat to the rhythm of my own drum.

I was such a little follower as a kid.

The only reason that I like that I went to catechism school really was I really thought it was all real like and I wasn t really into the judgment.

I liked the magic of it.

I like the stories of it like I liked this sort of in some way I didn t really have like a super present dad in my life either, but.

There were a lot of other stories that I really sort of like identified with.

And I loved all the virgins crying blood, the drama, the drrrrrrrramaaaaaa.

The drama is - It's a very dramatic religion.

- It is so dramatic, Jesus.

So dramatic, Jesus.

Oh, that we'll cut.

The spirit has overcome me so much so that I almost knocked my microphone off.

I do want to talk about, because as Luis mentioned, there is a very gendered approach to Catholicism where it is father, son, the Pope, you've got Cardinals, all of whom are male identified, which I feel like we do have to bring up the Pope since Pope Francis, unfortunately, has now left us.

There's a lot of response to his passing, particularly from those who felt like he was pushing the church in a very progressive, welcoming direction.

But I'm curious, either Luis or Hoja, did any family members of yours have a profound reaction to the pope's passing?

I'm, not for me, no.

Again, my family's very selectively religious.

My WhatsApp was on fire, my WhatsApp was off the change my - - prayer hands, prayer hands.

- Prayer hands.

My aunt Lillian was going off.

She sort of I know things are bad whenever I start to get different groups like spear, like sort of splinter off from the main family group.

And each one of them is their own, like, I can't believe this happened or whatever.

Like I, I do have pretty religious family members and they have A really deep reaction to the Pope dying and at the same time the Venezuelan relationship with the Pope is very tense.

It's very interesting because as soon as the pope gets into political stuff, which there's so many things going on in Venezuela with like Chavez and Maduro and the pope, like essentially there's like a rift between Venezuelan people who are very anti Maduro, but Catholic.

And so my family was really divided, I feel, whenever the news came out.

It is so interesting, like soon as religion sort of like starts weaving into politics.

People can really it really affects people's lives.

Like I think it's a, for my family, it's been kind of a, not everybody.

But for a lot of them, having those things separate is really important, because they really lost a lot of faith in the pope after that stuff happened, even though, I don't know.

I found them to have a really close relationship to this man who they've never met before in their lives.

I like we're using a lot of different words that I think are part of this spiritual faith umbrella, and I love that Luis, you know, when I when I introduced you, we talked about Andean spiritual beliefs, that that's more of where you're headed in.

Can you explain what that that means for folks who are just learning about this for the first time?

Yeah.

So the, I guess I wanted to call them like Andean spiritual beliefs because there was so many that like there was the Incan empire and then there was, so many peoples, different tribes that were like conquered by them that had their own sort of versions of what would be considered like the Inca religion.

But essentially it's praying to the earth.

Pachamama is the earth, then we Indy, which is the sun god, the mamma Kia, which is the moon.

And there's many different Quechua names for the different aspects of Earth that you prayed to.

And I, myself, in my own therapeutic spiritual journey, have felt very far away from my own self, right, through conditioning and all that stuff, like from, you know, the inner child that we talk about.

So I started to pray in different ways, and I started to find gratitude in many different places, like the Andean sort of spirituality has made me so much, has helped me achieve a peace throughout the day that I haven't been able to in other forms.

But I have seen people who follow Catholicism do, but I can see Pachamama everywhere.

She talks to me in the way the earth talks to all humans.

So like.

I've learned and I know it's super woo woo and I do not look like the type of person that does this, but like I'll choose to walk home so that I can absorb her.

And if I'm not feeling well, like I will literally hug a tree.

Like I will touch a tree and like, you know, I've just seen that throughout all the cultures in this world, there's been a common denominator and it's the earth, praying to the earth.

I definitely feel similarly.

I don't necessarily pray to earth, but I have a lot of like, um, I find truly religion and like really small things.

Like I find it in my day to day life, my rituals, my sort of a congregation with my friends.

Um, the way that I sort of like think about my neighborhood feels very like intensely, spiritual to be, like knowledge of my neighbors, understanding.

The soil that grows in my backyard so I know how to garden in it.

Like I find a lot of sort of like of my spirituality in appreciation for small things that are around me and in the way that I speak to my friends Like I truly am like how do I want to show up for the people in my life?

That feels to me like a set of rules and a value system that I try to live by.

I love that each of you have said this, because I think it's putting into perspective how I've evolved as a Catholic being, this idea that I always imagined God as a singular presence, that there was this outwardly omnipotent omnipresence, omni-something being, never know which word to use, but like that there's somebody all knowing out there that is particularly serving as an arbiter, that there is a level of judgment of the things that I do, the things that I don't do, the moral, I don' know, just.

The moral ambiguities that I find myself in and whether or not I'm doing it to please a larger person.

And now, kind of like what Hoja is saying, it is in the deeds, it is in the little things around us, it is the choices that we make, the people that we choose to surround ourselves in, that that is where the beauty of God can be found, as opposed to this notion of, holy ****, I did something wrong and now somebody's gonna come after me and I'm condemned to all eternal hell.

Which I feel like is one of the things that people have beef with with the church.

This idea that is so rooted in, oh my God, fire and brimstone and we're all, you know, Sodom and Gomorrah, whatever it is.

Um, so I'm curious, Hoja, if there's something that you can particularly identify that means that, that shows that you have maybe a little bit of beef with the Catholic church?

Yeah, I mean, I've been I've actually been thinking a lot about and drumroll the devil and evil.

And...

There is something that I'm a person who really tries to see the good in all people, you know, and it's just a part of like my makeup.

So I do have a lot of compassion for people, but there is one thing that I really struggle to have compassion for.

And I think that the church has a lot of that, which is a hypocrisy.

As I said, there's a part of me that.

Um, really is about value alignment.

Like that is really how I want to live my life.

And oftentimes, um, when I see the sort of judgment that comes down from, uh, the fire and brimstone stuff, I really think to myself, these people are not living the way that they're preaching and that hypocrisy is at the core of my beef, um because if you really are aligned with your value system and you're an evil mother, then there's something there that I can pinpoint as okay well that's evil but that's not a single human to me on planet earth is really like that I think there is good and bad to everyone and so for me I think the piece of like of not doing something that you're judging other people for doing it really gets my goats.

Luis, do you have a similar beef?

Is that where most of your gripes came from?

Yeah, I just like the hypocrisy has to be the biggest thing.

And we could probably talk about that for the entire episode, right?

Like, you know, this this notion of like, you know, that this religion is here to guide people to some sort of saving, you know, like, I, you know, why, why does someone need to be saved?

How much of that saving is taking away their self sovereignty, right, that taking away their own ability to deal with things that have to be dealt with.

And not leave so much up to God or the church, right?

Like I've found that like, I don't love that the religion, it's almost like it's always between you and God.

It doesn't promote you talking to your community about things because nothing is more knowing than God.

So how can I part, like some things are just for God to judge me with.

The hypocrisy of the church, the las iglesias, these massive things, these expensive things.

I mean, you see them in South America and Central America and you see him here.

And these people profiting off of it and now into the age of like, you know, there's the.

Like, you know, Joel Olsteen is one of the richest people I've seen talk about God.

And there's just my, aside from the hypocrisy, like my biggest beef with it is the way I see it is used as a tool of oppression for lower income, you know in Los Campos type neighborhoods in different countries and our country.

I mean, the way it is so easily weaponized to divide people and make people move.

In certain ways, you can see how Christianity and the church was used in making America great again, like they're trying to bring in Christian values back, whatever that may mean.

I think it's just something my biggest beef with it is that there's so much interpretation of it, that it can be used in any way that people want.

I have a question for either of you, but do you remember a time where religion served you?

Like Catholicism or that initial sort of like foray into it was like, made you feel something?

For about six or seven years, I was a part of a gay Catholic church group in New York City.

And there was something so beautiful about being able to, during the sign of peace, like hug other men, other gay men, and give them like the little kiss on the side of the cheek as part of the offering of peace.

And I would never be able to do that in my hometown or in most other churches in the United States, well, pretty much in the world.

So I feel like that really reminded me that community in church, community with God, especially with other people who share this identity is part of that magic you were talking about a little bit earlier.

So I'll say that.

That's probably my positive interaction.

My positive interaction is gold jewelry.

That was lit.

What?

Yeah, dawg.

Explain further, my friend.

The gold cross is like, like every time you did something like first communion, I got my first gold cross and I was like, whoa, this is lit.

Like I'm going to wear it everywhere.

Like, you know, especially for Latinos, like, I don't know, that gold jewelry thing is almost like, oh, like I'm out here now.

And, uh, I love that.

I love the, like we said, like.

The drama of it all.

Like every time, whenever I see like a church scene or anything, like with the church, I loved the architecture.

I love the stained glass.

I love that drama.

I love this story.

But I will say the most meaningful positive thing that I've had with that is becoming my little cousin's godfather.

I was like this, I was just like, I do, I feel him.

He's in the room.

You know what I mean?

Like he's like giving me, he's giving me the opportunity to be a father figure.

Again, I have a lot to do with like my absent father like with my traumas and everything.

So like.

I was like, this is incredible.

And I, even though I don't believe in you, even though, I don' believe in the practice that we're doing here, I believe in you and I like, accept this responsibility through your hands.

Like, I felt like very divinely charged.

I was, like, okay, like this is my commitment and I love that there's a word for it.

I love, that I get to be a father.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, I get- Padrino is a very gay term, padrino.

It's like, it's like it's adding sort of like a little flair at the end of Padre.

I love that, I love the little hat, it's like, padrino.

Padrino Wait, Hoja do you have a positive moment?

Venezuela, we have a big mix of like Santeria and Catholicism and those things really kind of weave interchangeably.

And so we have lot of really amazing, like female figures as kind of heads of church, you know, so much of the American kind of Catholicism, and baptism is so sort of Jesus focused.

But in Latin American countries, we're so focused on las vida in this, and they really take this sort of almost like... God-like aspects to themselves.

And in Venezuela, we have La Virgen de Coromoto, La Chiquinquirá, La Virgemaria, but we also have this woman called Maria Leonza.

And Maria Leónza was, in Venezuela the very sort of like phrase between indigenous culture and Catholicism.

And Maria Leonza is this very like muscular, gorgeous, almost like witch figure.

That is like mainstream in Venezuela.

And I just remember her being the first woman that I ever saw that wasn't like thin, that wasn' frail, that wasn't white.

And so to me, it was kind of like queerness in her.

I saw a lot of like otherness in her that I really identified with.

And Maria Leónza has always been something that like accompanies me in my life now.

There's this really beautiful statue of her in downtown Caracas, and she's on a Dante.

So it's those very strange creatures that have come almost like a hormiguero, like an anteater face.

But it's the size of a bowl almost and she has her hands up and she's holding this beautiful like wreath.

And you can, and she is nude and that's just not something that you necessarily see in Catholicism, but it's a major figure in Venezuelan religion, and I don't know there's something about the women that I grew up thinking of as powerful and lovable and idolizable and look up to-able if that's a word.

That is part of my favorite thing of Latino Catholicism in particular, is that we really deify and give importance to the women that are mothers and to the women that sort of like came before us.

And I think that's something that you don't always see in other kinds of Catholicism.

So like any good Catholic boy growing up in the Texas-Mexico border, my family and I raised money so that way I could go to World Youth Day back in 2005.

And if you don't know what World Youth day is, it's intense.

It is a time where you sent essentially millions of children to a specific place in the world for a pilgrimage and it ends with a papal mass.

So my family and I've been selling, like, chicken fajita plates in order to raise enough money to send me to Germany so I can go see Pope Benedict in Cologne, Germany, now 20 years ago.

And I distinctly remember that part of this pilgrimage is we had to go to confession.

And so they just lined up and corralled all these children into some parish in Germany.

And because at the time I already knew I was gay, had not really told many folks in my life, I thought I needed to confess it.

That I needed to confess to this stranger priest that I was living with this truth.

And when I go up to this priest, again, somebody whose name, face, I could not even describe to you, I remember sitting and saying, as I'm listing out my sins, that I'm gay.

And he looked at me and he said, you don't need to say that here.

And not that it was a part of him saying like, don't mention this in church, it was...

This is not to be included in the list of things that you have to ask for forgiveness for.

And that stuck with me all these years later in so much so that I never felt, one, that I had to confess that I was gay ever again, or two, that I ever needed to hide the fact that Diosito made a choice for me to be gay, and I could live as openly and proudly as I wanted to as a Catholic person who also was of a queer experience.

So I want to start with you, Hoja, about recognizing if your queerness could co-exist with your beliefs or if there was a bit of tension that you had to work through in order to get to that spot.

Yeah.

I don't think there was a ton of tension for me personally.

I kind of , like... As I mentioned, my mom was meditating in brass pyramids when I was growing up.

So she sort of was a very pragmatic woman.

I didn't think that she was ever going to have a real problem with me being a lesbian or me being gay.

And so I guess the thing for me was really like my grandparents.

I feel like I came out to I sort of actually tested the waters first with my grandma and I was like, wouldn't it be crazy if how crazy would it be if I was a lesbian or like was gay or something?

I don't know.

I sound like an old timey bartender.

But but I definitely was testing the waters.

I was at a Baby Barnaby's in Houston, Texas, and she was visiting me.

And I remember, I remember her kind of saying like, her first word because I'm like, ew, you know, and it was such a throwaway little line, but it really kind of sets you back a little bit whenever you test the waters and it doesn't go that well, you know, my mom for so many years was like, don't tell her, just, you know, it's gonna kill her.

I don't know why they always think that coming out is going to kill the old people.

The first response most people have is like, no, please, we wanted to live a healthy life.

Why wouldn't she?

Why wouldn' she?

She gets to know her grand person a lot better.

I finally did come out to my grandma and I think it was a very sort of like soft okayness.

I think that they really care for me and they don't want to alienate me.

So there was not fire and brimstone then, but it was really lovely because she did come to my wedding, to my wife, Rachel.

And that was a really lovely moment because it's a backyard wedding.

I unfortunately, while I love observing drama, I'm not a very dramatic person myself, at least.

Just a chill 35 person wedding was as about as much as I could handle but um she um brought me this little um uh San Juan like uh the religious sort of like thing that I was telling you that I kind of carry around um it's this little uh figurine that I had in my room in her house growing up and it was just something that I'd always like had in my life since I was a child.

It was just this figurine in this room.

I feel like a lot of people can identify with like going to your grandparents' house and notice like, I've been looking at this thing for however old I am, you know?

And when she brought it, I think it's like, there's not a lot of conversations to be had about it anymore.

It's just sort of this like, I accept you, I love you, like I'm here, you know?

And she was grumpy because she's always grumpy, but that was not what it was about, you no?

Well, thank you for sharing.

It's so beautiful.

Luis, is there something, as you're now embarking on this form of spirituality, this Andean spirituality that you've talked about, praying to the earth and praying to the things around you, is it easy to see your queerness in that?

Yeah, I think my queer journey led me to it.

Like, because of the Catholic sort of marriage between this disciplined Catholicism and machismo in the very toxic way from our Latina communities, I never entertained coming out.

I was just like, oh, this is just something that's in me that I don't necessarily... Like respond too much.

So I was like an absolute no, because the men in my family wouldn't accept me, my friends wouldn't except me, girls would look at me wrong, like everything was bad.

But then I came into my queerness and I came out as bisexual to my friends and to other people.

And then, yeah, with this Andean spirituality, like.

There's no judgment on me and what and what I like or feel or attract to there's only judgment on what I do to the earth how am I behaving to my fellow my fellow person that came out of you know lago tiki kaka right like we came out as clay figures out of this pond this lake uh in peru so it's like that is more what I am judged on right like than who I am as a person I guess through my sexuality.

I want to end with this last question, which is, I want us to each describe visually what we envision God to look like.

I mean, this is just the first thing that came to mind, but I think I see myself alone.

I see my self like on a bench and I'm fed.

I'm not thirsty.

I don't have any like need that needs to be fulfilled.

And there's beautiful weather and I feel the breeze on my face and in my hair, and I'm breathing deeply, and I don't even have to meditate on purpose.

I don' have to think on purpose, I don't have to not think on the purpose.

I think it's just like when I'm being, when I'm just, there's literally no attempt, no reach, nothing, it's just sort of existing.

And I have a lot of those moments in my life where I get to just... Just kind of be.

It is so beautiful.

I love that.

I want to copy that so bad.

That's so much better than what I was thinking.

What were you thinking, Luis?

- Don't worry about it.

Well, you said, what does God look like?

And then I was like, I just, I don't know, the sun came into my mind because like, again, that's like my, like the Andean thing, because it gives life to so much.

But then I'm like, all right, would it be some like, and then I, I was, like, oh, black trans Jesus.

That's what she looks like.

And she's fabulous and she can vogue.

But then I was like, no, come on, what, what is it?

And I came down to like a voice, just like the voice in my head, not the bad voice, not that one, but the voice that like.

My intuition, I guess, like the voice that sends the signal to my stomach to go for something, even though I'm nervous about it.

The voice that says the signal to my legs to get myself out of a situation because it just doesn't feel right.

The voice like comes in and also says like, you know, like, is this the way you want?

Like that holds the mirror up to me in certain situations.

And like, is this, how do you want to act in this situation?

Like, you know what you want to be in the example you want to be is this how that person would act?

It's the voice in my head.

It's, it's the intuition that guides me without me asking for it.

It just comes in and sort of drops a gem on me.

And then of course it's my, it's human ability to say yes to that intuition or no.

But I think that's what God is, God's a voice.

Mm-hmm and a black trans woman you said.

And a black trans woman, yes.

- Who can vogue.

- Yes, we're all on Earth at a ball, right, we are all at a Oh Yes.

Um, I will say, I, one thing that I appreciate that somebody told me, especially in this, um, gay Catholic group that I was a part of is that God's pronoun is God.

And so this understanding that there's a gender to him, her, they, that it's just God and you have to appreciate God.

And for me, I appreciate, and I see God, you know, those hugs that you give people when you either, you haven't seen them in a very long time, or you realize like, my God, I have so much love for you.

Those like intense bear hugs.

I feel like that is such a manifestation of God and God's love and like being able to transfer whatever that energy is into an interaction with another person.

I'm getting chills now just thinking about it.

It's just like, there's something so beautiful about.

If I could, I would give you both one of those hugs right now.

Look at that.

I'm so lucky because I get the chance to hug each of you, so...

I'd sniff you both.

I'd get in there.

I take a big noseful of that.

Squeeze, squeeze real tight.

Some nice little squeeze exercises.

Well, this has been such a fantastic conversation, not only about religion and queerness, but just being around two people who I love and admire so much and really make me think about my faith and think about how like this is very much an expression of the faith that I grew up with.

And even though it might not look like the same one from catechism class, it's still all an act of love.

So I cannot thank you enough for joining me for today's call.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you for having me.

And as my mom would say, Que Dios me lo bendiga, me lo empare, que los amores les reconozcan tu camino y eliminen cada uno de tus pasos.

Every time I leave the house, baby.

Every time.

I love that.

I love the little, the little God, Latin saints that we have.

It's love.

It's truly just love.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I couldn't use it.

I'm like, yeah, you know, thank you.

Moving with God.

Well, I do want to let our listeners know that if you want to follow any one of my guests, just go to our show notes, all of their information where you can see them on social, where you could possibly see them live, all that will be there.

And if you want to send us either your own experience with religion or a topic you'd like to have us cover on hyphenation, just email us at hyp at kqed.org.

But until then, go in peace.

Con Dios.