My Journey
The more I opened my heart (and my eyes and my mind),
the more Love came rushing in.
the more Love came rushing in.
When I was eighteen, my home congregation called a woman in her early thirties as our settled minister. The ministerial search committee shared with the congregation that they were so excited by her ministry because she made them “laugh and cry and think.”
Sitting in the sanctuary, I thought, “I want to do that!”
I feel privileged that my chosen life's work is to create space with people to honor the human experience: laughing, crying, thinking, feeling, loving, living, dying—all at once.
I knew early on that I wanted to be a minister in the faith that had cradled me my entire life, Unitarian Universalism. I was concerned, however, because I did not believe in God -- at least not the God I was learning about in my all-girls Catholic high school, Ursuline Academy in Cincinnati, Ohio. In fact, I was so adamant in my disbelief that while I consented to go to church with my parents some Sundays, I would lower my hymnal every time we were to sing the word God! I was dismayed and disappointed by God, Christianity and religion in general, but I was also incredibly curious.
I first encountered the Bible at Ursuline, loved learning about the historical context of scriptural texts, and had a lot of questions:
Why is God so different in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles? Couldn't we say that Esau was tricked into being evil? How is that fair?
Couldn't Jesus have been saying that he was God's son just like we are all God's children?
Required classes in philosophy, ethics and theology were taught by a curious and understanding priest, Father Jack,
and the most fun-loving nun you would ever meet, Sister Lucy, and they all opened my mind and my heart. We read Victor Frankl's
Man's Search for Meaning, Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I came to understand religious faith as a positive force in people's lives and in the world. I wanted that kind of faith. Despite my protestations, I desperately wanted a relationship with God and was fascinated by Jesus of Nazareth, I just couldn't bring myself to believe in a masculine, personified deity or that Jesus was his only son. Feeling angry and isolated, I turned away from religion, even my Unitarian Universalist congregation.
I was relieved to head to college on the East Coast, leave such questions behind, and planned to study biology and psychology. Upon arriving at Wesleyan University in Middletown Connecticut, however, I found myself -- most unexpectedly -- missing religion class, hanging out in churches on Sunday mornings, praying late at night in the University Chapel, and seeking out the protestant chaplain, a UCC pastor who calmly and compassionately answered my questions and invited me to Vespers, a weekly service of spiritual reflection, food, and fellowship. I signed up for the course Religions in America, and I was hooked! We talked about why people believe what they do and delved into explorations of conservative Christianity and Haitian Vodou. I went on to study Modern Christian Thought, Ethics and Communities, Religion and Race, Experiential Theology, New Testament Studies, and Early and Modern Judaism. I asked questions and found answers and imagined a career as a religious studies professor, all the while, harboring a secret desire not to study religion, but to do it. I still wanted to be a minister.
In the year after I graduated from college, my home congregation, First Unitarian of Cincinnati cared for me and my family during a most difficult time. A member of the Care Team, Ray (who would later serve on my ordination committee) wrote to me regularly that year.
He sent simple letters, reminding me that I was loved and treasured by our community. Those letters meant the world to me.
They are one of the main reasons I am a Unitarian Universalist today.
I wanted to give back to the faith that had held me so dearly. Two years after college, I headed to Washington, D.C. to serve as one of the Social Justice Interns in the Unitarian Universalist Association's (UUA) Washington Office for Advocacy. My work centered on civil liberties and civil rights, and I worked with coalitions in Washington and congregations around the country to live out the prophetic imperative of our faith. And the call to ministry began to sound even louder. When my supervisor took a leave to begin seminary, he asked if I wanted to stay and run the office. It was tempting, but I realized that it was time to answer that call and head to seminary myself. Anthony and I got engaged that spring and headed to New York City where I started school in the fall of 2006.
Sitting in the sanctuary, I thought, “I want to do that!”
I feel privileged that my chosen life's work is to create space with people to honor the human experience: laughing, crying, thinking, feeling, loving, living, dying—all at once.
I knew early on that I wanted to be a minister in the faith that had cradled me my entire life, Unitarian Universalism. I was concerned, however, because I did not believe in God -- at least not the God I was learning about in my all-girls Catholic high school, Ursuline Academy in Cincinnati, Ohio. In fact, I was so adamant in my disbelief that while I consented to go to church with my parents some Sundays, I would lower my hymnal every time we were to sing the word God! I was dismayed and disappointed by God, Christianity and religion in general, but I was also incredibly curious.
I first encountered the Bible at Ursuline, loved learning about the historical context of scriptural texts, and had a lot of questions:
Why is God so different in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles? Couldn't we say that Esau was tricked into being evil? How is that fair?
Couldn't Jesus have been saying that he was God's son just like we are all God's children?
Required classes in philosophy, ethics and theology were taught by a curious and understanding priest, Father Jack,
and the most fun-loving nun you would ever meet, Sister Lucy, and they all opened my mind and my heart. We read Victor Frankl's
Man's Search for Meaning, Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I came to understand religious faith as a positive force in people's lives and in the world. I wanted that kind of faith. Despite my protestations, I desperately wanted a relationship with God and was fascinated by Jesus of Nazareth, I just couldn't bring myself to believe in a masculine, personified deity or that Jesus was his only son. Feeling angry and isolated, I turned away from religion, even my Unitarian Universalist congregation.
I was relieved to head to college on the East Coast, leave such questions behind, and planned to study biology and psychology. Upon arriving at Wesleyan University in Middletown Connecticut, however, I found myself -- most unexpectedly -- missing religion class, hanging out in churches on Sunday mornings, praying late at night in the University Chapel, and seeking out the protestant chaplain, a UCC pastor who calmly and compassionately answered my questions and invited me to Vespers, a weekly service of spiritual reflection, food, and fellowship. I signed up for the course Religions in America, and I was hooked! We talked about why people believe what they do and delved into explorations of conservative Christianity and Haitian Vodou. I went on to study Modern Christian Thought, Ethics and Communities, Religion and Race, Experiential Theology, New Testament Studies, and Early and Modern Judaism. I asked questions and found answers and imagined a career as a religious studies professor, all the while, harboring a secret desire not to study religion, but to do it. I still wanted to be a minister.
In the year after I graduated from college, my home congregation, First Unitarian of Cincinnati cared for me and my family during a most difficult time. A member of the Care Team, Ray (who would later serve on my ordination committee) wrote to me regularly that year.
He sent simple letters, reminding me that I was loved and treasured by our community. Those letters meant the world to me.
They are one of the main reasons I am a Unitarian Universalist today.
I wanted to give back to the faith that had held me so dearly. Two years after college, I headed to Washington, D.C. to serve as one of the Social Justice Interns in the Unitarian Universalist Association's (UUA) Washington Office for Advocacy. My work centered on civil liberties and civil rights, and I worked with coalitions in Washington and congregations around the country to live out the prophetic imperative of our faith. And the call to ministry began to sound even louder. When my supervisor took a leave to begin seminary, he asked if I wanted to stay and run the office. It was tempting, but I realized that it was time to answer that call and head to seminary myself. Anthony and I got engaged that spring and headed to New York City where I started school in the fall of 2006.
I chose Union Theological Seminary because of its history of social justice activism and ecumenical Christian education in the bustling metropolis of New York City. I had some unfinished business with Christianity, and I wanted to deepen my Unitarian Universalist faith in a context that would both challenge me and help me grow. Union did both of those things -- in spades!
Many of my Christian classmates struggled in Bible classes that focused on the historical and anthropological context of Hebrew and Christian scriptures because their long-held beliefs were challenged. I struggled because I soon found that my dis-belief no longer served me. I was shocked to re-discover a new conception of God in the texts I had long railed against. This was a God I could believe in, a universalist ideal, an understanding of Love and Justice as the Source of Life itself.
I dove into the study of Black Theology and found a new understanding the Christian story that resonated in my heart. In a class on the psychology of prayer, I found myself not only at my desk, but on my knees. As I studied preaching and worship, I learned not only how to deliver a powerful sermon, but to let the magic and mystery of worship work on my own spirit.
In working with the Poverty Initiative at Union, I traveled to the American South following the path of Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign and saw what it means to fight for what one knows is true: that each person is inherently worthy of love and deserving of dignity and respect.
My time at Union, and my faith journey as a whole, was marked by a continuing process of resistance and surrender. The more I opened my heart (and my eyes and my mind), the more Love came rushing in.
Many of my Christian classmates struggled in Bible classes that focused on the historical and anthropological context of Hebrew and Christian scriptures because their long-held beliefs were challenged. I struggled because I soon found that my dis-belief no longer served me. I was shocked to re-discover a new conception of God in the texts I had long railed against. This was a God I could believe in, a universalist ideal, an understanding of Love and Justice as the Source of Life itself.
I dove into the study of Black Theology and found a new understanding the Christian story that resonated in my heart. In a class on the psychology of prayer, I found myself not only at my desk, but on my knees. As I studied preaching and worship, I learned not only how to deliver a powerful sermon, but to let the magic and mystery of worship work on my own spirit.
In working with the Poverty Initiative at Union, I traveled to the American South following the path of Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign and saw what it means to fight for what one knows is true: that each person is inherently worthy of love and deserving of dignity and respect.
My time at Union, and my faith journey as a whole, was marked by a continuing process of resistance and surrender. The more I opened my heart (and my eyes and my mind), the more Love came rushing in.
I drew on the reservoir of that Love as I began my training in hospital chaplaincy, first as an intern and then as a full-time resident at New York Presbyterian Hospital. For over a year, I sat by bedsides and stood by infant incubators. I lay my hands on people as they died and held weeping parents in my arms. Over the sounds of beeping monitors and labored breathing, I learned to pray the prayers of my heart, to speak the name of God in ways that were authentic to my own faith and to the people to whom I ministered -- no matter what they believed.
I saw so much pain, so much death. And I saw so much joy, so much life. I learned in the hospital that the work of ministry -- anywhere and everywhere -- is companioning others in their truth, sitting with them in the pit of despair, and embodying the undying glimmer of hope that lies in each of us until they can see it again.
I fell in love with parish ministry at The Universalist Church in West Hartford, Connecticut, where I was privileged to learn and serve alongside Rev. Jan Nielsen for two years. First, as the intern minister and then, with special dispensation from the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, as the Associate Minister on a one year contract. At "the church on Fern Street," as it is known, I learned how precious religious community is when it has its foundations in a deep, resonant, inclusive, and celebratory love. I also learned the ins and outs of policy governance and administering a large congregation, worked closely with long-established and newly-formed committees and task forces, and saw the power of small group ministries at work. I was loved into leadership at The Universalist Church and remain forever grateful to the good people there who sent me forth.
My call to ministry has been forged in the fires of despair and resurrection, and it has been blessed with deep belly laughs, good food, and good company. My ministry emerges from the space where we are living and dying in each moment, laughing and crying with the same breath, our hearts breaking and soaring simultaneously.
The path has been winding and the road ahead is unknown, but I know this for certain: in Unitarian Universalism, in ministry, and with the Spirit of Love, I am home.
Shall we journey on together?
I saw so much pain, so much death. And I saw so much joy, so much life. I learned in the hospital that the work of ministry -- anywhere and everywhere -- is companioning others in their truth, sitting with them in the pit of despair, and embodying the undying glimmer of hope that lies in each of us until they can see it again.
I fell in love with parish ministry at The Universalist Church in West Hartford, Connecticut, where I was privileged to learn and serve alongside Rev. Jan Nielsen for two years. First, as the intern minister and then, with special dispensation from the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, as the Associate Minister on a one year contract. At "the church on Fern Street," as it is known, I learned how precious religious community is when it has its foundations in a deep, resonant, inclusive, and celebratory love. I also learned the ins and outs of policy governance and administering a large congregation, worked closely with long-established and newly-formed committees and task forces, and saw the power of small group ministries at work. I was loved into leadership at The Universalist Church and remain forever grateful to the good people there who sent me forth.
My call to ministry has been forged in the fires of despair and resurrection, and it has been blessed with deep belly laughs, good food, and good company. My ministry emerges from the space where we are living and dying in each moment, laughing and crying with the same breath, our hearts breaking and soaring simultaneously.
The path has been winding and the road ahead is unknown, but I know this for certain: in Unitarian Universalism, in ministry, and with the Spirit of Love, I am home.
Shall we journey on together?