A picture of faith
As part of International Education Week, the “Visions of Faith” photo exhibition opens at Heritage Coffeehouse, showcasing artists sharing what faith means to them.
It’s a busy day at Heritage Coffeehouse. The midday sun spills through the windows onto bustling workers and tables of students bent over laptops or laughing with friends. It’s a mundane scene — business as usual under the earthy smell of coffee and the voice of Tom Petty singing through the speakers. But, looking beyond the foreground, is a room alive with an array of worldviews, experiences and faiths.
The photographs displayed along the walls — part of the “Visions of Faith” exhibition hosted by UD’s Global and Intercultural Affairs Center and the Interfaith Council — capture fragments of those experiences in the lives of a few UD students, faculty and staff.
Amid the diverse imagery and backgrounds, common themes emerge — community and human interaction, tradition and ceremony, service and prayer. Almost half of the photographs feature nature, reflecting on creation as a glimpse of God and the divine.
Sophomore education and math major Matthew Carpenter’s image, “Beauty of the Tabernacle” (a photo of the tabernacle beneath a vibrant stained-glass window), reflects how faith grows in stillness and silence.
Mechanical engineering graduate student Rebekah Revadelo captures the faith found in love and community in her picture of a service project, “Where Community Grows.”
Some of the photos explore joy and connection. “Faith and Friendship,” submitted by the UD Muslim Student Association, showcases two students laughing together at a table.
The description reads, “In our differences we find strength, and in our friendships we spot the divine.”
Others showcase grief and healing. Mathematics professor Shannon Driskell submitted “One Step Closer to Heaven,” a photo of her niece’s husband, Max, ascending Mount Rainier. According to the description, Max passed away shortly after the photo was taken. Her niece had the opportunity to summit the same mountain in his honor, navigating the role of faith in love and loss.
The most beautiful part of the exhibit is not the photographs themselves; it's the stories behind them. They are both overlapping and individual, personal yet interconnected. They find the divine in weddings and mountaintops, in group prayer and summer retreats, in stained glass and UD’s own blue-topped chapel.
And, of course, in the simple moments — a distant sunset, a rainbow after a storm, the smell of espresso and the voice of Tom Petty echoing off the coffee house’s walls.
