About Rev. Hillary

Growing Up

I was born in Bath, Maine, an only child, and I was raised digging in clam flats, wandering the rocky shores, and loving the strong winds and cold ocean. My family eventually moved to Lewiston, where my father taught high school, my mother worked as a school administrator, and I attended Catholic school. We visited the coast often, though, and to this day I return to the ocean as often as I can—in every season, but especially in the quiet winter.

My childhood pilgrimages to the ocean and lakes of Maine, and to the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire, inform my nature-centered spirituality. I also grew up in a household steeped in devout, if sometimes conflicting, spiritual orientations to the world. My father, a long-time Tibetan Buddhist practitioner, and my mother, whose Catholicism manifests primarily in a devotion to the many faces of Mary, both encouraged my own open religious exploration as a child. Their different traditions inspired in me a deep love of ritual practice and an open-minded curiosity about human beings, God and spirit, and the big questions of life and death, which I continue to explore ways to integrate in my practice of Unitarian Universalism.

Education

Despite being raised in a religious household, it was not until I went away to college that I had the space to independently explore my own particular kind of faith and religious identity. Attending Quaker Meeting, Shabbat dinners, Dharma talks, Lenten Mass, and Sacred Harp Sings at Smith College—when I felt like it—was liberating, and it was spiritually nourishing. My spiritual life in college was also enriched by learning how to grow vegetables, fix bicycles, and bake bread. I became as devoted to the practice of farming and sharing meals as I was to daily meditation or attending worship. I studied Religion and American Studies at Smith, where I wrote my senior thesis on the Philadelphia 11, the first women ordained in the Episcopal Church. During my senior year I also studied abroad in Sarnath, India at the Central Institute for Higher Tibetan Studies, where I learned Tibetan Buddhist history and philosophy along side refugee Tibetan monks and students. My studies, travels, and spiritual curiosities all continued to impact my religious orientations to the world.

When I graduated, I went on to teach Religion, Ethics and Humanities classes at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. Through teaching, I realized I wanted to deepen my studies in religion, and applied to Harvard Divinity School, where I was accepted into the Masters of Divinity Program. While there I concentrated in Buddhist Studies, and discovered in Unitarian Universalism, a religious perspective that could hold the breadth of my own spiritual convictions and personal history. I continued teaching religion to high school students during the summers at the St. Paul’s School Advanced Studies Program and spent my year-long field education working with teenagers through the Roxbury Youth Programs, at the UU Urban Ministry in Roxbury, MA. Upon the completion my Honors Thesis, “The Way God Feels,” an exploration of the way the divine can be made tangible in addiction recovery, I graduated Harvard Divinity with an MDiv in 2013.

Activism and Youth Work

From my college activism as a Queer Cheerleader to my work with NARAL and TORCH (Teen Outreach Reproductive Challenge) Program in New York, from youth facilitation at Outright Vermont to work as the Director of the Peace and Human Rights Project at the Peace and Justice Center in Burlington, VT, I have long been an activist and advocate for intersectional LGBTQ+, women’s health and rights, and an advocate of youth. More recently, through both personal study and public witness, I have begun the work of raising awareness to my own privilege and participation in white supremacist culture. This work has proved humbling and daunting. As a white woman and spiritual leader, however, it would be irresponsible, dangerous, regressive for me to ignore it. It is my expectation that my future employers and communities will feel the same.

TEACHING

I came to ministry through teaching, and teaching remains at the heart of my vocation. Having worked with teenagers in many different capacities—teaching humanities, mentoring teens in a GLBTQ youth shelter, coaching cross-country at an all girls sports camp, advising youth peer-to-peer sex educators in the Bronx, designing high school World Religions curricula at St Paul’s School, and as chaplain and religion teacher at the White Mountain School—I find something like divine energy to be palpable in the room when youth are having an “a-ha” moment that enlivens their curiosity and empowers their voice and abilities.

MINISTRY

I began my ministerial career as a visiting preacher at the UU Congregation of Franklin, New Hampshire, a wonderful community that will always have a special place in my heart. I still love to preach there whenever I am able. I continued on my path as a ministerial intern and youth group leader at Follen Unitarian Universalist Community Church for two years. Following my internship, I moved to Washington, DC to become the Minister of Lifespan Religious Education at Cedar Lane UU Church. Seeking a ministerial role, I returned to New England (and my family) to serve as the Interim Assistant Minister of Faith Formation at North Parish where I oversaw RE programming and led worship with the whole congregation. Currently, as called minister at First Universalist Church of Yarmouth, I have guided my congregation through these years of the pandemic as we strive to maintain our sense of belonging and connection to greater purpose.

Ordination

My ordination was held at Follen Unitarian Universalist Community Church on June 17, 2017, with members of the Cedar Lane, Franklin, North Parish, and Follen UU congregations participating and in attendance. It was a beautiful day, and I am grateful to many extraordinary people who made it all come together. We were all blessed by a sermon by Lama Rod Owens, whose dharma teachings have deeply influenced my approach to social justice and Buddhist practice, a charge from Rev. Claire Feingold Thoryn, my internship supervisor who continues to mentor me as a colleague and friend, and the Hand of Fellowship from Rev. Abhi Janamanchi, who is a wonderful spiritual friend and teacher.

Other things I love to Do

Alexis and I love to go hiking, preferably with our beloved hound. We are always eager to explore any place wild—whether that’s the White Mountains, the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains near Alexis’s family home in Virginia, or the Middlesex Fells just outside of Boston. Alexis and I also fell in love with boxing with a former MMA fighter in Cambridge. We trained with a small group of fierce women, all of whom loved how strong, confident, and safe we have come to feel in our bodies. We nurture our longstanding Buddhist practices, and enjoy attending retreats at Zen Mountain Monastery in New York or the Milarepa Center in Vermont together and independently as we are able.

For twelve years, I worked as a farmhand at organic vegetable farms throughout New England - and the world. For the past six, I worked at a woman-owned organic vegetable farm in Wayland, MA. Farming means time for me to come back to myself and to my spiritual roots, getting my hands in the dirt, planting and harvesting, putting up and pulling down greenhouses, and working farmer’s markets.

Music and art-making have always been a part of my life. I started playing guitar as a child, recording albums of original songs in high school and college. I also mess around on the ukulele—which turns out to be a great asset in making worship fun and interactive with children and adults!

At Smith, I studied printmaking with Barry Moser and fell in love with woodblock carving and printing. These days, I still make the occasional linocut, and, when I can find the time, I slip into Harvard’s letterpress printing studio to work on a meditative little book, called “Wondering,” about all the questions I want to ask a certain greyhound I know.

I love animals! I love meeting animals, and I love reading books about animals. (Have you read Sy Montgomery’s Soul of an Octopus yet?) Animals have been some of my greatest spiritual teachers and closest friends. And, once, in California, I even kissed a giraffe.

Can you guess what my favorite worship service to lead is? That’s right. Blessing of the animals.