“Beatitudes” (2021-2022)
This essay has cycled through many lives. It began with an entirely different site of study; I was initially going to write about a local bookstore. When I shifted focus midway through the drafting process, I didn’t have the words for what I was confronting; I just knew that it scared me, and that it was necessary.
My relationship to religion and spirituality has always been a complex one. As a queer woman, it is impossible for me to overlook the centuries of injury and persecution inflicted upon queer people by religious institutions. To reiterate, it is impossible for me to overlook the grief and guilt other voices insisted I should feel for the nature of my identity. I have immense respect for the activists who have worked and are working to make religious spaces accessible to the queer community, and yet there remains an ache inside of me for all of us who have lived and died thinking we were unlovable.
My queerness is not the focus of this essay, but it lingers behind every word I wrote. “Identity” became a key term for me as each draft progressed; specifically, how our identities are reflected in the stories we tell, and vice versa. Religious texts hold some of the oldest stories in the world. Churches, too. Their survival is miraculous. I wanted to understand the elements of their endurance. I wanted to know if it was hate or hope that keeps them here—maybe both.
As “Beatitudes” exists now, there is much I feel could be done better. This is merely a symptom of growth, however, and I cannot regret growth. While my identity and artistic interests have shifted over the past year, these words from the past are a beginning, and beginnings thrill me for the promise of the journey ahead.
Jessica Kupillas (Tisch ’24) is a rising sophomore at the Tisch School of the Arts, currently pursuing a BFA in drama. Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, her early exploration of art and language instilled in her a passion for creation, contradiction, and connection. These are both the guiding hands and the jagged tools through which her understanding of the world has evolved; in this essay, they shape her analysis, as she attempts to reconcile identity, spirituality, and uncertainty, as well as our intensely human relationships to places and stories.