The Quill/Joanna Mizak
By Justus Sturtevant Editor in chief
For David Gregory, a CNN political analyst and the author of “How’s Your Faith: An Unlikely Spiritual Journey,” the path of spiritual growth began as a journalist’s questioning of “What do I believe?” but became much more.
“For me, the spiritual search, it became a duty of the heart and not of the head,” Gregory said to the audience of Susquehanna students, faculty, staff and guests during his lecture on Feb. 27 in Degenstein Campus Center Theater.
“His personal story was fascinating,” Susquehanna Chaplain Scott Kershner said.
“He was an incredibly engaging and thoughtful storyteller about his own personal journey and process and he demonstrated a moving sense of humility,” Kershner added.
Gregory, who is Jewish, spoke about the absence of faith in his early life, which he said played an important part in his journey.
He was raised culturally Jewish by his father, but the faith was not a central part of his childhood. This lack of spirituality became clear to Gregory when his mother was arrested for driving under the influence when he was 15 years old.
“It was the absence of faith that was so remarkable to me,” Gregory said. “There was nothing that gave me a sense that everything was going to be okay.”
After having undertaken a spiritual journey as an adult, Gregory told the audience that giving his family the sense of love and comfort that he was missing during this difficult time in his life was important to him.
Gregory’s journey began while he was working for NBC. During this time, he began to seek an understanding of what it meant to be a person of faith.
Gregory said he was challenged by two individuals in particular to confront his faith. The first of these was his wife, who asked him “What do you believe?” The second person was President George W. Bush, who asked Gregory a question that shaped much of his spiritual journey: “How’s your faith?”
Both questions challenged Gregory to look beyond who he was and confront his beliefs and his understanding of the world in a personal way.
“What struck me about his faith was the way that it began,” junior Charlie Frekot said.
“He started taking a more serious look into faith and how it was or wasn’t part of his identity after being challenged by his wife. Having others as part of your faith journey is something I think is very important,” Frekot continued.
Faith, Gregory told the audience, is an act of love, which is something that can be difficult at times to reconcile with the objective approach to the world of journalism.
The questions of his wife and Bush pushed Gregory into an exploration of faith that changed his outlook on life and on his career as a journalist.
Part of the process, Gregory told the audience, was the gift of being humbled. He spoke about clearing away clutter in his life and recognizing his own shortcomings.
“The path of faith is not the path of figuring it out,” Gregory said. Instead, he said, his faith has brought him a better understanding of where he fits in the world and a deeper understanding of others.
Gregory spoke about two particular moments of great faith in his life.
One was a recent experience he had while praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
After worrying about what to pray and how to best connect with God in that holy place, Gregory found a quiet peace at the wall without saying a word.
“I was just fully present in that moment, and I was deeply moved,” Gregory said.
Another moment Gregory talked about—one that has had a more profound impact on him—was his final conversation with his father, who died less than two years ago.
After becoming somewhat estranged from his father earlier in his adulthood, Gregory found his faith bringing him back to his father.
While his father struggled through health issues and surgeries, Gregory used prayer and scriptures to comfort him through the pain.
In his final conversation with his father, Gregory told him that he was filled with love and there was nothing left unspoken between them.
That moment, Gregory told the audience, was what his faith journey was all about: that moment of relationship between him and his father and God. Gregory described it as “the deepest moment of feeling and love.”
Gregory closed his lecture by talking about an idea he called spiritual citizenship.
It is an idea that is based on peacefulness, understanding, care for others and something Gregory referred to as the loving embrace.
He described spiritual citizenship as a lifelong pursuit of openness, learning and love, not just an intellectual pursuit.
Following the lecture, Gregory answered several questions from the audience, including a question about his discernment between religion and spirituality.
He responded by saying that his spiritual journey was about a relationship with God, and he viewed religion as the prism through which he experienced that relationship.
“I thought that was a really great framing,” Kershner said. “His way of articulating the relationships between faith and spirituality didn’t set them against each other, which is so often the case.”
“Spirituality is very personal, but it can be nurtured in many different ways,” Frekot added.
Gregory was brought to Susquehanna by the Department of Religious Studies and the Office of the Chaplain as the 2017 Alice Pope Shade Lecturer.
