A trip that challenged many of the beliefs I inherited about faith and devotion

As I sat on the steps of a traditional Balinese home (Rumah Gapura Candi Bentar), questions about my religious upbringing began to resurface. For the first time, I felt like I was able to make sense of experiences that had lived quietly inside me for years.

Early on in my life, most of my family did not have a particular religious affiliation. I heard stories—often told with judgment or ridicule—about my grandmother practicing what others called "witchcraft," though it was more closely connected to her ancestral African traditions. I quickly learned not to ask questions.

But around the time my parents divorced, my mother turned to Christianity and began attending church regularly. My father, meanwhile, continued his professional dancing career, which often involved performances that went late into the night. I was around eight years old. Spending time with both of them separately, my spiritual world felt split in two.

Growing up in the church was fascinating. Every summer, groups of young missionaries from the United States would visit. Many came from places like Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Everyone around me was always so excited to welcome the new group of missionaries. I was, too.

I was especially excited to see the new arts and crafts supplies they brought with them that didn't exist in Venezuela or weren't accessible to us. We would be photographed, and I would do my best to have fun and enjoy the experience.

As a child, I'd been socialized and conditioned by the media and institutions to see missionaries as better than us. So I gave them all my attention, and we often treated them like celebrities. At the time, as uncomfortable as it is to admit now, I felt like that proximity to someone important somehow made me more valuable too. I also believed that the missionaries were coming to save us in a way. But as I grew up, I was able to question that narrative. While many of them were caring and well-intentioned, I now wonder about the message it sent to children like me—that help, wisdom, or value had to come from somewhere else.

Still, I immersed myself in church life. I completed a two-year theology certificate and became convinced that my faith tradition was not only the right path, but the superior one. I imagined a future where I, too, would become a missionary, traveling the world and "saving" others.

Then, in my early twenties, my husband and I spent a month in Bali for our official honeymoon. It became one of the most transformative experiences of my life.

Growing up surrounded by religious prejudice and superstition, I felt skeptical when I learned that most Balinese people practiced Hinduism. I wasn't sure what to expect. Part of me was curious. Another part of me was afraid of what I might discover if everything I had been taught wasn't true.

We stayed with a loving and devoted Balinese family whose home reflected their spiritual practice in every detail. The rice fields seemed impossibly green. The sunlight illuminated colorful flower offerings placed at entrances, shrines, and roadsides. Despite growing up in the Caribbean and being familiar with tropical landscapes, I was still stunned by the beauty around me.

But what moved me most wasn't the scenery. It was the feeling.

There was a sense of reverence, peace, and devotion woven into everyday life that I have difficulty describing. It wasn't performative. It wasn't loud. It simply was.

And slowly, many of the assumptions I had once carried began to crack.

I remember asking myself: If the Divine is present in all things—if the same force makes the sun rise, the grass grow, and love possible—who am I to condemn how another person lives and worships? Who am I to decide that someone else's sincere devotion is less truthful and worthy than my own?

As we traveled around the island, we spent time in a northern region where Hindu, Muslim, and Christian communities lived side by side. I became friends with a local woman and eventually asked her a question that had been on my mind: "How do you all live together so peacefully?"

She smiled and replied, "We respect each other. We see the beauty in each other. We don't assume our beliefs are better than someone else's. That's what allows us to coexist."

I had no response. Her answer felt so simple, yet it challenged years of certainty I had built my identity around. I thought of my late grandmother. I wondered what it felt like to have your spirituality judged before anyone bothered to understand it. I now wonder what stories she never got to tell. I also thought about the stories I had inherited. I thought about how different our family might have been if our ancestors' spiritual differences had been met with curiosity instead of fear, and love instead of judgment. When I returned home, I realized something humbling:

"I know nothing!"

And that realization became a gift.

It pushed me toward unlearning, learning, questioning, listening, and examining beliefs I had accepted without reflection. I also discovered that some of the prejudices and superstitions I had carried with me were preventing me from experiencing the very peace, joy, and connection with the Divine that I longed for.

In the practice of yoga, we have Bhakti Yoga, which represents a path of devotion. While it can look different for each person, at its heart, Bhakti invites us into a sincere relationship with something greater than ourselves.

What my experience in Bali taught me was that devotion can take many forms. It can look like a Christian prayer, a Hindu offering left at a doorway, a Muslim call to prayer, or the quiet reverence someone carries in their heart while caring for another living being.

As the years went by, I realized that much of my faith had been rooted more in fear than devotion. Fear of being wrong. Fear of questioning. Fear of others. Yet the more I learned about people, cultures, and spiritual traditions different from my own, the more that fear began to soften. And what remained was curiosity. And perhaps, that's what devotion asks of us—not certainty, but openness. Not superiority, but humility. Not the need to be right, but the willingness to recognize the sacred in places we never expected.

May this full moon invite us to approach one another with a little more curiosity, a little less judgment, and a deeper reverence for the many ways people seek meaning, connection, and the Divine.