THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF FAITH
STORIES OF FAITH | STORIES OF HUMANITY is an arts-based research project that fuses phenomenological research with digital storytelling to create experiences of interfaith empathy and dialogue.
RESEARCH PROCESS: As a phenomenological researcher, Dr. Nisha Gupta interviewed nine research participants of diverse spiritual and religious affiliations, and with intersecting cultural identities, about their lived experiences of faith. As a digital artist, she transformed their interviews into digital stories which were sent to participants as a “gift of empathy”, as well as uploaded onto a website to facilitate widespread empathy among the public.
RESEARCH FINDINGS: Along with the digital stories, Gupta produced an existential-hermeneutic phenomenological interpretation about the essence of faith as an existential human experience across religious and spiritual affiliations. The written interpretation has been published on the website. Both the digital stories and written research findings aspire to spur individual and sociocultural healing—to facilitate a therapeutic sense of being empathically listened to among participants by giving them digital stories as “gifts of empathy.” and to facilitate widespread interfaith empathy among the public by publishing the existential research findings online.
FUNDING: This project was made possible by funding from a generous co-sponsorship grant from New York University’s Center for Spiritual Life.
CINEMATIC POEM ABOUT THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF FAITH
You kiss my world with the sun.
I’m lifted from head to heart.
You crumble the cage around me.
I’m anchored by your breath.
My tears whisper a "thank you".
You respond with the gift of expansion.
My eyes squeeze tight to welcome your voice,
this intimate dialogue that flows in and out,
embracing me in our in-between.
In my heart, I remember truth.
that there is something, someone, There.
That I am connected, protected, accepted,
exactly as I am.
That I am not alone.
These primal needs that have always quivered
from every crevice of my flesh,
suddenly, easily, they become fulfilled.
You sing to me a lullaby
so that life and death make sense after all.
But time is the force that vilifies faith.
That cord which promised to never break
is ruptured by life’s rollercoaster fate.
Faith threatens to snatch my beloved away,
to abandon me in a world that’s too large.
Faith drives a wedge between me and the They;
Pointed fingers condemn me to exile.
Regulations recite that I’m bad and wrong.
all in the name of you.
Questions of identity tear me in two
betraying my certitude
Trust shatters.
Days float by in a numb fog.
(The loss, the loss, the loss, the loss...)
And yet, somehow,
in this space of unspeakable depth,
in this unfathomable instance where grief becomes beauty,
I turn to you again.
Once upon a time I only knew of faith
through lessons and language and rituals
thrust upon me by those who were There.
Then my time of reckoning arrived.
I felt you There
or not There.
I made you mine
or not mine.
Where will our story lead tomorrow?
If I've known your Thereness once,
a part of me trusts that
you will always return
(and so will I).
Phenomenological Art Collective 