By Lindsay Steele
The Catholic Messenger
In the latest Catholic Messenger Conversations podcast, Keri Walter, a science teacher at Assumption High School in Davenport, gets candid about her faith journey and the signs of God she’s discovered in her field of study.
Walter was baptized in the Catholic Church as a child. However, her grandfather’s tragic death in a farming accident in 1964 had shaken the family’s overall sense of Catholic identity. “The sheep were scattered” in a multi-generational shift away from the Church. Walter began seeking out the faith on her own terms at age 17. “I just felt this divine feeling that there’s a better life out there, and so I went to seek that.”
She took Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) classes and, upon becoming a mother in her early 20s, was eager to raise her son in the Church. Meanwhile, she earned a degree in industrial engineering from St. Ambrose University in Davenport. “When I started learning physics (in college), I just started to feel like there is a world I can’t see. I just felt there’s something divinely connected, which seems obvious now. It’s not Newton’s laws of motion, it’s God’s laws of motion according to Newton, right? We have discovered (through science) what God has given us.”
A tragedy of her own — one that is “still very raw” — halted her spiritual growth. “I got angry and walked away. No, I ran away. I became very belligerently atheist.”
Years passed, and various life circumstances, including the births of her three youngest children, led Walter to take a year away from her job as an engineer. She enjoyed the flexibility of substitute teaching. “It allowed me to have a schedule to match (my children),” she said. Walter earned a teaching certificate through Regents Alternative Pathway to Iowa Licensure (RAPIL), a two-year program through Iowa’s public universities designed specifically for working professionals and career changers.
Assumption was “not on my radar” of potential workplaces, Walter said. She applied for a science teacher position there anyway. “Let’s try it,” she remembers thinking. Once she got on campus, “it just felt so right.”
She went through the motions when it came to religious life at Assumption, not wanting to draw attention to her personal faith struggles. With time, she became more open to Catholicism again. She found hope in the idea that Jesus suffered before the Resurrection. Science, too, helped her find her way back. “When I started teaching introduction to physical science, it just started to hit me again, the little things, the incredibleness of the universe.”
Walter’s faith is still a work in progress, she admits, but the past two years have been transformative and healing. “I really feel like I’m just starting to open up and be able to make some sense (out of what I’ve been through) and use it in a positive way,” she said.
Listen to Catholic Messenger Conversations podcasts at https://www.catholicmessenger.net/podcasting/ or on your favorite podcasting app.
