My journey has taken me many places, often far from home. I grew up outside of Chicago where I went on to earn a Bachelors in Business from Northern Illinois University.
Later, I earned a Master of Divinity from St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri That led to many years of ministry in churches around Missouri as a United Methodist pastor.
I eventually trained as a chaplain and worked in rehabilitation, pediatric, and hospice settings.
In 2005, I became UU as I found joy and meaning in Unitarian Universalism. To deepen my Call, I completed a social justice internship at First Unitarian Church of Baltimore in 2014.
My ordination followed in May 2015 and I have been the minister at Cedarhurst Unitarian Universalists in Finksburg, Maryland since August 2015.
I enjoy knitting, reading, gardening, and watching sci-fi with my spouse, Daniel Clark.
Dan works for the Federal Government and has recently earned his PhD in educational psychology.
He also has picked up photography and provided all of the nature images on the site.
My Ministry Philosophy
I believe in shared ministry. Ministry is never done alone or in a vacuum. Congregations have ministries that have been created through the shared experiences as a community of faith, understanding of the needs of this world, and the synergy of individual gifts, joys, fears, and concerns. All of these threads, and many more, make up the tapestry of each Unitarian Universalist congregation.
As a minister, I have a ministry that reflects the spiritual gifts and commitments that I have been blessed with and which have been deepened by training and experience. I have expertise and knowledge around issues of faith, spiritual care, social justice, religious history and texts, philosophical issues, ethics, and systems, along with a myriad of other interests and topics.
Together we draw from our strengths and our growing edges to form a shared ministry that is shaped and guided by our experience, knowledge, history and circumstances. In other words, we are in this ministry together. Each of our ministries began before we will meet one another, and when we collaborate, we embark on a journey together to bring more hope, justice, and love into the world.
My Theological Perspective
My dominate theology is based in the context of relationality. I believe in a relational theology where we are all interconnected within the interlocking web of reality. That which undergirds and connects us is love; it is the ground of our being and the source of life. This Source of Life, Ground of Being, Spirit of Life that binds us all, is what I call God.
I believe in a God who loves and calls us to love one another. In the words of Beverly Harrison, we are to “love one another into being.” It is through interconnectedness that we find ourselves as truly human. Moltmann names this relationality as an “intricate web of unilateral, reciprocal, and many sided relationships.”
God is in, through, and throughout our universe, interconnecting us with one another.
My understanding of interconnection has implications for how we are to live. It is through relationality that we express our full humanity. At our best, we recognize these connections for what they are - that which unites and undergirds us, and that which we put our confidence in.
I believe that we are connected to one another through a God who cares for us and loves us. This sense of relationality helps me to know that we are not alone, and in not being alone we seek to find and sustain community. In seeking such a community, we then move outside ourselves and truly see one another as having intrinsic worth. This sense of relationality then moves us to act in ways that see one another as truly connected; injustice to one is an injustice to all. Out of such sense of relationality and community we act to seek ways to address injustice. Because we are all related to one another through the Spirit of Life, the ones who are considered outsiders are our sisters and brothers. We must act because we are relational beings – it is not just what we do, it is who we are.
I believe that out of relationality, we have a responsibility to love and care for one another. We can and do this in many ways: deeply listening to one another, seeking to be present for and with one another, and acting with one another. Some may see such a theology as naïve or unrealistic, but I believe that this is what moves us at our core, even if we do not always live out our lives in ways that seek justice and connection.
I believe that as a liberal religious community, we affirm that we have the freedom to choose to live in just ways and to reach beyond ourselves, to those who have been disenfranchised and outcast. We act not as saviors or out of a sense that others are “less than” and must be helped, but we act in recognition of the full humanity of one another. We also act knowing that we do not have all the answers. The application of my belief means that we reach out to one another because we are interconnected.
As a UU minister, my call is based on the belief that all people are fully human and that we are interconnected. Through community, we each responsibly seek truth and meaning; for me, this is the key and most important element of being a Unitarian Universalist minister.
It is in the community of faith that we encounter one another and the Spirit of Life through shared traditions, rituals, scriptures, and through the bringing together of our individual experiences. Through communities of faith, we have a shared identity; individuals become part of a whole. Ideally, faith communities are places where relationships are formed and the presence of hope, justice, and love is made real. They are places where we learn and are challenged to express this presence to the world in ways that seek justice, love, and wholeness. The function of communities of faith is to transform society – to put forth a new vision of love and peace in the face of oppression and hate in a suffering world.
