Field Notes is a spiritual anthropology anthology that searches for how we (de)/(re)/construct identity, purpose, belonging, ritual, and meaning-making.
Through observation of innovative and liberative gathering spaces that are engaging with shifting spiritual and political landscapes, and in conversation with the folks leading those spaces, we peek into how current and emerging generations wrestle with ways to enact new imaginations, new worlds, and new futures.
A personal quest at the heart, Field Notes is in part a search for like-hearted collaborators and a way to battle the loneliness of individualization by exploring the multiplicity and abundance of community. By engaging in autoethnographic integration I allow myself to be reshaped and reformed by my encounters, observations, conversations, and the stories, feelings, and questions that ensue…
In this opening episode of Field Notes, I share the story behind this experiment—my attempt to step back into community after five years of distance, solitude, and deep questions.
I explore my complicated history with “community,” beginning in the evangelical Christian spaces that shaped my early understanding of identity, purpose, belonging, and meaning-making. From churches to seminary to my work in faith-based institutions, community and vocation were once inseparable—until they weren’t.
A divorce, burnout, COVID, and new parenthood put me in major hermit-mode. Now, I’m re-emerging with curiosity:
How do people gather?
Why do we gather?
What boundaries define who belongs, and who doesn’t?
What does it mean to enter a new space as both participant and observer?
Field Notes follows me into diverse communal spaces—starting locally in San Diego on Kumeyaay Land—as I explore how people are creating meaning together, weaving new rituals, and navigating the dance between inclusion and exclusion. This is both personal and collective—a blend of autoethnography, spiritual anthropology, and embodied curiosity.
If you’ve ever wrestled with belonging, identity, or the longing to be part of something bigger than yourself, I invite you to come along. There are no prescriptions here, only questions and possibilities.
In This Episode
My early experiences of “community” through evangelical Christianity
How seminary, vocation, and faith institutions shaped my identity
The unraveling: divorce, burnout, COVID, and early parenthood
Why I paused, and what I found in five years of solitude
The questions driving Field Notes: identity, belonging, purpose, meaning-making, and ritual
How I’m approaching this project through both personal experience and observation
Takeaways
Community shapes who we believe ourselves to be—and who we believe we’re allowed to become.
Belonging is layered, complicated, and sometimes fraught with boundaries and expectations.
Pausing, stepping away from familiar spaces, can create new ways of seeing and being with others.
We are in a collective moment of reimagining how we gather and why.
Join the Conversation
I’d love to hear your reflections:
How has your relationship to community evolved?
What kinds of spaces have shaped your sense of belonging?
Where are you finding—or creating—new forms of gathering now?
Share your thoughts with me on Instagram @_erendira_ or meet me over on my website.
