This 1991 film about friendship, food, and small-town Alabama perfectly shows the kind of Christian love that shapes my faith, despite its complex background spanning different spiritual traditions through the generations in my family in the far-off Ilocos and Hawaii.

An unseen source of all beauty, truth, and goodness was seen by many early Christians as pointing toward God.

As the Declaration of Faith reminds us, “We do not know when or how the final redemption of creation will be achieved. But we know that God will win.”

My ancestors were told that their gods, their rituals, their ways of relating to the land were evil—and they were punished for honoring them.