“My favorite picture of myself is from when I was three years old. I had my hair up in little pin curls, I was wearing my grandpa’s robe, and I was holding his Bible and preaching. I kind of always felt that inclination, but I was raised in a church that taught women weren’t allowed to preach. As I grew older, I studied scripture for myself and found that I didn’t hold that view.

When I was 19 or 20, I started dating somebody who was a part of the MCC [Metropolitan Community Churches, an LGBTQ-affirming Christian denomination] and I went to service there. I felt like I got whacked on the head with a 2×4 by god. I went out behind the building, cried, and said, ‘Okay, I give up. I’ll stop running away [from the ministry].’ I started my clergy training with MCC, and I knew that was my spiritual home.

I was very excited to help start the Spiritual Wellness Program at the U. I think spirituality has been incredibly neglected in wellness initiatives. It goes hand in hand with physical wellness and mental health. We have a reticence to talk about spirituality because it’s so often conflated with religion and we have a real fear of talking about religion in public areas like schools. We talk about it in a very surface way, but we don’t have difficult conversations about what faith means or can mean, for us. That doesn’t mean proselytizing, but just learning about our different experiences and views in a deep and respectful way. That scares a lot of people.

I want students to know they can have a fulfilling, healthy spiritual life even if they’re not part of a particular religion. Everybody has a spirituality. Spirituality is the thing outside of our own skin that connects us to other human beings. It can take different forms—it might be your central purpose in life, doing things to make the world a better place, or connecting with nature.

Some people have put spirituality aside because they experienced trauma in their religious background, or things aren’t working for them anymore. But that leaves a hole. The analogy I use is this: Several years ago, Volkswagen got in big trouble because it was revealed that their vehicles were polluting more than Volkswagen had said they were. The people driving Volkswagens didn’t go out the next day and started walking everywhere. They may have changed brands, but they didn’t stop driving cars. When people have been hurt or found a particular faith no longer useful for them, the tendency is to throw it all out. And what I say is, ‘Let’s explore other vehicles so that you’re not walking everywhere.’

What makes us uniquely human is the ability to reach beyond ourselves and find meaning. All of us want meaning in our lives, and that, to me, encapsulates the idea of spirituality. I’m a hopeless optimist. I think if we connect with meaningful things and build community with other people, our lives are so much more fulfilling.”

—Reverend Cindy Solomon-Klebba, Chaplain, Spiritual Wellness Program