In Conversation with Tabitha Nichole Smith

How and where have you found deep beauty during the pandemic?

During the pandemic I have found deep beauty in memory. By remembering life before the pandemic, I am able to avoid being bogged down by the daily realities of what living in a pandemic really looks like—sickness, death, isolation, and much more. My memories remind me that I have a lot to live for—family, friends, community, travel … They remind me that I cannot give up on possibility and hope for a future in which COVID-19 won’t constrain my daily life and experiences.

You write in your essay about your grandmother and the impact that she had on you. In these especially turbulent times, what can our elders teach us about dealing with adversity?

As I ponder this question, I think of a dear friend whose father passed away not so long ago. My friend’s father was a man of great faith, who, even to his last breath did not complain. He chose instead to proclaim that he had lived a very full life and that he was unafraid of death. True to his word, he, like my grandmother, left this plane peacefully. He transitioned with the conviction that he had shared his whole self—his talents, his wisdom, his love … so many things that money can’t buy. So, as I remember both this patriarch and the matriarch of my own family, I believe that our elders teach us that we should strive to be our very best selves regardless of the circumstances that we face. That is to say that our elders teach us that adversity cannot be avoided, so it matters how we choose to deal with adversity.    

How have your Master of Divinity classes sustained you during the pandemic?

Having been raised in the South, I was taught as a child to, on one hand, fear God’s wrath against me—a sinner—and, on the other hand, to trust God. The best way for me to describe my early engagement with God is to say that I was the victim of a kind of spiritual Stockholm syndrome—I loved a God that I had been taught sought to abuse rather than nurture me.  Fortunately for me, seminary freed me from this incongruous relationship with God by helping me to embrace God as loving rather than punitive. Indeed, seminary study has provided me with the revelation that God is always concerned for all of God’s creations. The problem is, however, that we do not always exercise the same degree of love for one another. This being the case, I believe that my theological study has helped me see that, because God loves me unconditionally, God hears me when I pray for myself and the world. So, my sustenance during this pandemic has, without a doubt, been prayer.