You just didn't know any different, right? Is that fair? Yes, and when I was at UCLA, my spirituality was not as active as before, although I had a very intimate relationship with God with my prayers and meditation. But that was not diminished a little. I think that when I look back, I didn't like the Catholic Church here when I came to this country because it lacked all the paganism of Catholicism in Latin America.
Latin America is very – the Catholicism in Latin America is very mixed with paganism, with the indigenous imagery or rituals and all that. And when I came here, I felt that the Catholic Church was very stark and very influenced by Christian Church, like Reformed Christianity, and I didn't like it. When it was the time after I graduated in the mid-90s, I found another church that I was very interested in, which was very New Age.
It was more of a metaphysical type of religion that accepted everything. It was not religion, it was more like a spirituality, and it emphasized the mystical relationship with God, that if we go to the heresies of the beginning of the 300s and 400s after Christ, it would be Gnosticism. Now I see it, I didn't see it then, where there is not much attention to the body or the flesh, but to the spirit, but that gives permission to do whatever you want with your body.
And I think that, now that I look back, I would say that that's what the Centers for Spiritual Living that I was attending were doing. But I was always doing my relationship, as I say, my spiritual practices. I was not reading the Bible at that time.
I had studied theology in the Catholic University, and my relationship with the Word, when I was in the Catholic University, was more mental than really from the heart. And then I became a professor. I started teaching in the different public universities of California, both the state and the UC system, and I was doing really well as a scholar.
And I decided to retire early. I retired in 2014 because I was fed up of academia. I did a lot of work, political work, with my students.
I was teaching at the California State University, Northridge, which is one of the more progressive universities in California, even more than Berkeley or UCLA. It had the first African American Studies program and the first Chicano Studies program, and I was working with many of the Chicano students who are the Mexican American students who have become very politicized. I was even a mentor of these students, and I was even a mentor of the students who came together and drafted the bill for the Dreamers.
