42 MAN OF SCIENCE, MAN OF FAITH |^ WILLIAM WAN
In recent years, my work had become
increasingly personal, and I’d come to view my
work—examining people and the world around
me—like that of a psychologist, who studies the
mind of others in hopes of finally understand-
ing himself.in journalism, some reporters change jobs
and subject-matter beats constantly. Others
find their specialty and stick with it for years
and decades. That takes time, commitment, and
sacrifice, but it’s often the only way to develop a
network of sources and expertise in a subject.
I had none of the above when I moved to the
science desk this year. It was an unexpected
proposition for someone like me; until then, my
career had focused on the two driving obsessions
in my life, China and religion.
Just a few weeks into my new job as science
correspondent, I got a call from an old source
from my days as a religion reporter. There’s a
man you should meet, she told me.
His name was Jaime Maldonado-Aviles, and he
had worked for years as a neuroscientist at the
laboratories of Yale University. That is, until
recently, when he decided to give it all up and
quit science entirely to pursue the prospect of
becoming a priest.
I met him one day this summer on the campus
of Catholic University of America, where he
was taking classes as a seminarian.
He showed up to the coffee shop already wear-
ing his clothes as a priest-in-training—a jet-black
shirt, topped with a small white collar. And as
we talked—sharing the stories of how we had ar-
rived at this point in our lives—the conversation
at times took on the feel of a confession. We were
fellow travelers, each coming from a land foreign
to the other, crossing paths along the border.
I asked Jaime what had caused him to
leave science.
He told me how three years ago—at the
pinnacle of his career as an Ivy League researcher,
having finally received the offer of a tenure-track
position—he felt a nagging sensation inside.
By that point, the feeling had been plaguing
him for years, especially at moments of success:
when he learned that a paper years in the making
had been accepted for publication, say, or afterwinning a prestigious post-doctorate fellowship.
It wasn’t so much a feeling as it was the lack of
feeling—an emptiness that made such moments
ring hollow.
When he was finally offered the tenure-track
job—a goal he had been working toward for
years—he thought back to something a teacher
had told him at the Catholic high school he’d
attended: “Pray so that you study what God
wants you to study.”
He thought of his father back in Puerto Rico,
a medical lab technician whom he had followed
into science. He recalled how, despite grueling
hours in the lab, his father made time every night
to retreat to a corner of their house and pray,
searching for guidance.
Like his parents, Jaime also prayed daily and at-
tended church, but he found himself questioning
whether he’d ever truly listened for God’s voice.
“I lived a pretty compartmentalized life. I did
my science during the week, and then went to
Mass on the weekend,” he said. “I took pictures of
stained neurons, tried to understand how the cells
interacted. But I rarely thought about the miracle
of how that worked. How we become who we
are, how we are able to even exchange ideas and
have these complex relationships with other
people. What the mechanisms are of the soul.”some of my earliest childhood memories
are of falling asleep on the hard pews of an old
church in Saskatchewan, Canada. I remember the
strange dreams I would have, drifting in and out
of consciousness, as my father’s words washed
over me from the pulpit.
In those days, my father preached in Chinese
to a group of elderly immigrants who had spent
their lives working menial jobs in convenience
stores, hair salons, and restaurants in the remote
Canadian hinterland.
His words were so foreign to me back then.
It wasn’t just the language that confused me,
as a boy of seven or eight. It was the concepts:
Faith. Forgiveness. Kingdoms in heaven. Broken
bodies on crosses.
On weekends, I tagged along with my parents
as they made the rounds from one home to an-
other, listening to their parishioners describe the
pain in their bodies as they approached death,