“While There Is Life, There Is Hope”

Asedillo reflects on the legacy of her godmother, Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Tapia, a pioneering PANAAWTM theologian who embodied courage, resistance, and radical hope. She recounts Tapia's perseverance in securing a US student visa despite systemic bias, and celebrates her refusal to accept barriers placed before her. This act of refusal becomes a metaphor for resisting colonial, patriarchal, and exclusionary systems. She honors PANAAWTM's foremothers who carved space in white-dominated theological academia and calls for ongoing radical hospitality rooted in justice, inclusion, and deep listening. She urges PANAAWTM to grow by embracing Pacific, West Asian, queer, trans, and multireligious voices often marginalized even within progressive spaces. PANAAWTM, she writes, must remain fluid and unfinished--not flattening difference but learning from it. She ends with a poetic vision for a collective, radical future, echoing Dr. Tapia's legacy of faith and resilience: "While there is life, there is hope."

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Stable URL: https://doi.org/10.2979/jfs.00056

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