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California Love

LAist Studios presents: NPR's Code Switch & Oye - A Former Church Girl's Search for a New Spiritual Home

California Love

LAist Studios

Music

4.51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode is a collaboration with our friends at Oye and NPR's Code Switch about finding salvation in unexpected places.

After leaving the Pentecostal church, reporter Jess Alvarenga has been searching for a new spiritual home. They takes us on their journey to find spirituality that includes the dining room dungeon of a dominatrix, Buddhist monks taking magic mushrooms, and the pulpit of a Pentecostal church.

Special thanks to the Ferriss, UC Berkeley’s Psychedelic Journalism program for their support.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, it's Francis Lamb, host of the Splendid Table.

0:03.0

Join us for a special live taping of our show

0:06.0

where I'll be talking to some of Orange County's culinary stars.

0:09.0

It's February 4th at South Coast Rep.

0:11.0

Tickets at LAIST.com

0:13.1

slash events. Can't wait to see you.

0:15.1

A heads up before we get started, this episode contains explicit language and

0:19.6

includes sensitive content about sex and drugs. By the time I was 16 I knew how to pray and I mean pray pray. I had been preparing for the rapture since before I knew how to read. I was raised

0:47.8

Pentecostal in the south and it was a huge part of my identity.

0:57.2

So many of my childhood pictures are of me with a toothless grin against the brick walls of my Pentecostal Church in Houston, Texas.

1:02.4

I still have a scar on my left knee from when I tripped and fell during a game of tag

1:06.9

in the church parking lot.

1:09.5

And I can still taste the enpanade of Plaano a savadoran sweet dessert dusted with sugar, my dad would buy me

1:16.3

from the Salon Sosial, the church cafeteria. Sometimes he'd even let me take a sip from his coffee.

1:25.0

When I was in high school, I was baptized and received the Holy Ghost.

1:30.0

I went door knocking to spread the word of God.

1:34.0

But ten years ago, when I was in college,

1:38.0

I started to question everything. Tanya Serejijido with L.A. Studios, and this is a special episode of California love.

1:55.0

It's a story that came to us as part of Oye, an audio incubator for LatinX creators with NPR.

2:01.0

It's a collaboration with our friends at Code Switch about

2:04.0

finding salvation in unexpected places. And this story comes to us from reporter

2:09.1

Jess Albaeringa. Jess is an audio producer and documentary filmmaker normally focusing on the stories of other people

...

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