By Frances Lee, MDiv ’24
Editor’s Note: Third-year student Frances Lee details their experience working with Harvard’s Greenhouse, a “BIPOC healing sanctuary and ritual lab.”
Frances Lee (they/them) is an MDiv III studying interfaith chaplaincy and creative writing. In 2022-23, they completed a unit of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Since Summer 2022, Frances has been a Research Assistant for the Mapping Buddhist Chaplains in North America Study, a project of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab. They are currently the 2023-24 Interfaith Chaplain Intern at Tufts University Chaplaincy.
Before coming to HDS, I worked for more than a decade in non-profits, the tech industry, and higher ed. I came to HDS because I wanted 1) space to make peace with coming from three generations of Christian ministers–even though I am no longer Christian-identified–and 2) to collaborate with kindred spiritual innovators.
In this post, I want to share about The Greenhouse: BIPOC Healing Sanctuary and Ritual Lab at Harvard.
But first, some history. When we first arrived to HDS two years ago, Auds Hope Jenkins (MDiv III) and I founded BBSnax, a BIPOC social club at HDS, to foster BIPOC belonging and resource sharing. Eve Woldemikael (MDiv III) and Jenn Louie (MRPL ‘23) joined leadership and we ran it for two years.
As I was reflecting on how I wanted to spend my last year at HDS, I realized I wanted to cultivate a dedicated spiritual community for BIPOC students. Auds and Eve joined me in this vision, and we applied for and were awarded funding from Harvard CLIF (Culture Lab Innovation Fund). We are also grateful to receive mentorship and administrative support from the HDS Diversity, Inclusion, & Belonging staff.
The environment we’re in can be isolating for BIPOC students, especially if we are also international, first generation, and/or low income. At the Greenhouse, BIPOC students across Harvard’s schools gather biweekly in the Multifaith Space to share and develop rituals in service of healing for ourselves and others. We also eat dinner together afterwards and socialize.
In my broad training in spiritual care, I have experienced the transformative power of intimate witness and feeling your feelings in a safer container. When we engage in ritual in this context, I believe that it changes the world by changing us and how we perceive and operate within our realities. As a facilitator, I’ve observed participants move between crying, laughing, deep shares, and gratitude, all the while building friendships and lowering their anxiety. So we are creating life-giving sanctuary for ourselves at the Greenhouse. Like a physical greenhouse, our gatherings provide temporary shelter from harsh conditions so that our tenderest parts can rest, adapt and bloom when ready.
The “lab” in our name means that the Greenhouse is also a practice space for developing ritual and receiving feedback, which aligns with our larger goal of growing BIPOC spiritual authority outside of traditional religious institutions. Auds and Eve and I led most of the gatherings this fall semester as a model, and we had a few students volunteer to lead portions last month. Now that we have a committed group of folks who attend, we will invite more people to sign-up to lead most of the spring gatherings. We hope that in giving our peers a structure to build their facilitation and leadership skills, we can ensure that the Greenhouse will continue after we leave HDS.
As I’m graduating in May 2024, I have dreams to expand the Greenhouse into the larger community. I plan to seek out city funding to create a version of the Greenhouse open to the public. I would love to secure a low-cost, centralized physical meeting space space in Somerville/Cambridge and continue exploring the role that ritual experimentation can play in a non-traditional spiritual container rich with BIPOC cultural histories and experiences.
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