A while ago, I was having dinner at a Japanese izakaya with one of my best friends when we began talking about Islam. 

A little context: At the time, I was pretty obsessed about Islam. After reporting on Islamism in Southeast Asia and reading former Muslim Nabeel Qureshi’s books, I concluded that Islam is a dangerous religion, one that’s fundamentally violent in its goal to function as a political system. Meanwhile, my friend—let’s call her Jane—is a liberal freethinker who looks out for oppressed minorities, and to her, Muslims belonged to that group. 

An agnostic, liberal YouTube celebrity and a conservative evangelical journalist walked into a Mexican coffee shop in Los Angeles and did the seemingly impossible: They sat down and had a two-hour, civilized discussion about religion, politics, and sex.

I (the journalist) had asked Laci Green (the YouTuber) out for an interview, but I warned her that my publication is Christian. The meeting would be more like a casual conversation, I told her—one that I hoped would challenge perspectives.

“Great!” she chirped. “We have that in common.”

Last week, I was invited to an iftar at a mosque in Los Angeles. An iftar is an evening meal that Muslims eat to break their Ramadan fast after sunset. Ramadan began on May 5 this year, and for a whole month, Muslims all around the world are fasting from food and drink from sunrise to sunset.

It’s hard to erase the memory of your mother’s tears—especially when you know she’s crying over you. Oh, how I made my mother cry.

Long before migrant caravans began overwhelming the southern U.S. border, Tijuana Pastor Gustavo Banda Aceves had a dream. He says he dreamed of a black man who spoke fluent Spanish, leading a large group of other black folks into Banda’s church.

At the time, he was on vacation in Mexico City and hadn’t heard the news that waves of Haitian migrants had been arriving in Tijuana, where he’s the founding pastor of La Iglesia de los Embajadores de Jesús (Ambassadors of Jesus Church).

The first time I tried to visit Pastor Gustavo Banda’s church in Tijuana, my local guide and I got lost driving around and around the steep canyons in pitch darkness. Eventually, already two hours late, we gave up. The second time I tried to visit, Pastor Gustavo sent a text dissuading us: The winter rains have made the roads here too terrible for travel, he said. Best if you don’t risk it. 

Last week, I experienced the most uncomfortable prayer meeting. I was the only Asian in a group of about 24 mostly black women gathered in Compton, Calif., but that wasn’t what made me uncomfortable. No, what caught me off guard was that I was the only person not crying or wailing or speaking in tongues.