Looking for church

And finding it everywhere

Hey everyone,

Sending this to you from an Episcopalian summer camp in Canton, Mississippi. The kids are running around calling me “Kendall of Brooklyn” as if the disc golf course is a medieval town square. I’m loving every second!

There’s a gothic church in Downtown Brooklyn that’s been home to a Unitarian Universalist congregation since 1844. And the age shows. Between the intricate stained glass, original wood fixtures, and paper fans used in lieu of air conditioning, you would hardly be able to tell that the building is riding along the same timeline as the rest of us. But something gave it away when I walked into the pride interfaith service this month. The organist was playing ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” to begin the service.

This tension between traditional and unconventional is what made the service so meaningful to me. It was groundbreaking to be in a real-ass-whole-entire gothic church from the 1800s while bearing witness to, and participating in, a genuine celebration of queer lifestyles. The service was not about acceptance, as in “to endure without protest or reaction.” Rather, it was about acceptance, “to recognize as true; to have a favorable response to; to regard as proper, normal, or inevitable.”

At one point in the service, the different interfaith leaders dispersed around the sanctuary to give individual blessings to any congregants who wanted one. The prompt was “a blessing that was previously withheld from you” or “a blessing that you never received.” I received a blessing; I wept. I returned to my pew; I wept some more.

I love going to church. I look for it everywhere. I’m constantly seeking the ritual, the community, and the meaning-making that compose a church outside of a specific, sacred four walls. It feels good to be connected to a lineage that’s bigger than my family. We are meant to live inside of a tradition, even if our place within that tradition is to subvert it. What is the alternative? To look into a broad expanse and try to make meaning devoid of any context?

I find the divine in experiences that strip me down to my most basic self, on a roller coaster, on a long bike ride, on getting lost and having to find my way home.

I find ethics in a juicy piece of gossip that I share with my friends, repeating the same conversations a few times over. We mull over right and wrong, out-of-pocket or in-bounds, co-creating a moral framework to move forward with.

I find ritual in sending mail on a slow morning. Every letter I drop into a blue postal box is a prayer in it’s own right; an offering to a relationship, an invocation of connection, an extension of a part of myself.

I find commitment to action among people who choose to show up for one another. I find fellowship in meals shared in community gardens, in apartments, on patios, on the street. I find meaning in my classroom, in book clubs, in movie nights. I find repentance in honesty and apologies and moving forward. If connecting with others is my religion, then the world we all share is my church.

New York City is a deeply religious place. Hear me out on this! Although there is no dominant religious institution the way there is in the South, the way the city moves mirrors one big church. I’ve often said that I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in people. Care is very reciprocal here, very karmic. I think about all of the people who have ushered me through the subway when I’ve needed help, and all of the people I’ve ushered through the subway in return. I think about the battle my deli guy and I are fighting to see who can give the other more free stuff. He’s been winning as the school year ended, but now that I’m on summer, he has a lot of cookies coming his way. I think about the ebb and flow of the seasons, which pushes us to show up for each other differently throughout the year. Sometimes this is movement, sometimes this is stillness; always, it seems, is togetherness.

Nothing captured this feeling better than the 2026 NBA finals playing out in Brooklyn.

There were watch parties on every block in my neighborhood. Knicks fans crowded around projectors big and small, incorporating their personal worlds with the street around them. It’s never been easier to talk to strangers in New York—something that, importantly, was never that difficult to begin with. Walking up to a stoop with a TV reminded me of taking communion. Someone welcomes you to stand for just a moment, to take a sip from the chalice, to check the score, to signify spiritual union. As I wandered through crowd after crowd, they all blended together. The same bright smiles, the same defeated groans, all created a common thread that led me to wherever I was going.

Of course, I’m not from New York. I’m from San Antonio, famously the city that lost to the Knicks last month.

I watched a lot of the games at Doris, my favorite neighborhood bar that keeps a Manu jersey hanging year-round. A shrine, if you will. Usually a chic-if-not-homey bar, Doris was a force during the NBA finals. The owners brought in a projector and a TV; the patio was full of shared screens and cellphones. Every possible view of the game was atrocious. When I walked in at halftime of game 2, I was hit with a wall of humidity that almost made me leave. But the line for the bar moved quickly, with everyone ordering Lone Stars and margaritas, and it was as social as I’ve ever seen a line at Doris. The question “where are you from?” was rendered absolutely useless. Instead, we all skipped straight to “where did you go to high school?” or “summer camp?” or a simple “we know each other.” Many of these interactions were fleeting sparks of excitement, people who I barely knew to begin with and will likely never know again. But knowing that we have a common thread is special, and pouring back into our well of shared context is a gift.

I watched game 5 at Doris as well. There is no community fiercer than ten Spurs fans huddled around a desktop computer set up on a patio in Brooklyn.

Of course, we all know how this game ended. Our makeshift setup on the patio had a small lag, insulating our bubble against the Knicks’ win for just a few seconds longer than the rest of the city. The cheers on the street started while we still saw time on the clock. To believe in a Spurs comeback was absolutely senseless. We gripped to this hope even as the cheers grew louder, even as we heard the bar inside grow quieter. Faith, too, requires radical, senseless hope.

As we made our way inside, crowds of Brooklyn-based Spurs fans floated between the bar, the projector, and the door. We stood around for a moment, too, wanting to experience our disappointment together. Eventually, ABBA’s “Slipping Through My Fingers” poured over the crowd as we poured into the street, ready to celebrate the Knicks with the rest of the city.

Thanks for reading!

All my love,

Kendall