Ministry

My Call

I promote and facilitate a spiritual life of openness, acceptance, and awareness for others; one that engages all the senses, inviting others to truly be alive on the path they are following. I help people reflect on their faith—present and past—and ask why they believe what they believe, what hurts, what feels right, and what they feel they are missing. I affirm that there is no certain way to believe but rather that belief is ever changing, cycling, ebbing and flowing.

MINISTerial experience

I was unanimously called by the First Universalist Church of Yarmouth, Maine to serve as their settled minister in May 2020.

Previously, I served as the School Chaplain at the White Mountain School in Bethlehem, NH, where I lead morning chapel, offer pastoral care and counseling to individuals, manage the Farm and Forest program, and teach courses in World Religions, ethics and nature writing—among many other things! Before that, I served as Interim Assistant Minister of Faith Formation at North Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in North Andover, MA, where I directed a growing religious education program that encouraged intellectual and spiritual growth in kids from pre-school through high school. I facilitated teacher trainings, recruited volunteers, hired and managed a growing RE staff, wrote curriculum, and led middle and high school classes. I worked with the congregation to generate creative thinking and vision among the parish leaders as they discerned their long-term staffing needs to support faith formation into the future. In addition to overseeing the RE program and providing pastoral care for individual adults, families and youth, I loved leading both children’s worship and worship with the whole congregation.

I started out in ministry as a guest preacher at Franklin Unitarian Universalist Church in New Hampshire when I was in the early stages of discerning whether I would return to teaching full time or move towards ordination and parish ministry. When I decided to explore parish work, I began an internship at Follen Unitarian Universalist Community Church, Lexington MA. This vibrant, generous community mentored me into my ministry. I spent two years in the dual role of Ministerial Intern and Youth Coordinator, regularly leading worship services, private marriage and funeral ceremonies, and serving as summer minister. I also provided pastoral care for congregants and youth, planned and chaperoned weekly Follen Unitarian Universalist Youth meetings and trips, and co-taught the Our Whole Lives and Coming of Age programs.

During the summer of 2015, I trained as a chaplain in the University of Virginia Medical Center’s Clinical Pastoral Education program in Charlottesville, VA, working in the pediatric and mental health wards. Ministering in a hospital that served rural and urban areas of Virginia—with a demographic that was different in many ways from the people I grew up around—challenged me theologically, politically, and personally, and it deepened my call.

From Follen, I moved to Washington, DC and into the role of Minister of Lifespan Religious Education at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, MD. There I oversaw the church’s religious education mission, programming, and budget for children, youth, and adults. I supervised RE administrative staff and the church’s youth ministries coordinator. I led weekly Children’s Chapel, worship services, and private ceremonies, facilitated support groups, and coordinated social justice actions and events.

My ordination was held at Follen on June 17, 2017, with dear friends and colleagues from Harvard Divinity School and members of the Cedar Lane, Franklin, North Parish, and Follen congregations participating and in attendance.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

The experiences that feed my approach to religious education are wide and varied at this point. They include: creating and leading children’s worship services; facilitating difficult conversations about sexuality and mental health with teens; sleeping on the floor of the church while chaperoning overnights; jackhammering alongside youth on service trips, and researching and redesigning curriculum that find non-appropriative ways to engage kids in religious practices and beliefs that differ from their own.

My approach to multigenerational ministry is informed by my work as a high school teacher and rooted in my pedagogy: I believe that any space can become a vital place of growth and empowerment when students and congregants feel free to express themselves. If we ask good questions in a space that feels both challenging and safe, people will bring their true and honest selves to the spiritual or intellectual endeavor that lies before them.

Commitment to Justice

I believe in the interdependence of all things, and my commitment to justice is rooted in a mission to be vigilantly aware of my impact on others and the impact of others on me. My ministry calls me to lift up this awareness in others so that oppression is seen clearly and so that we can work to undo it. The most challenging aspect of anti-oppression work from my standpoint – as a white, cis-gendered, able-bodied woman minister – is also the most beautiful: I am doing the work right alongside the members of the congregation. I, too, am working to comprehend the terminology, grapple with my complicity, step out of my comfort zone, and make change inside of myself and out. I am not afraid to preach on such attempts, admit to mistakes, remain open to critiques and model humility in this work. I am committed to seeking out resources to educate myself and others, including reading books, attending trainings, planning guest-led church-wide workshops, engaging in consciousness-raising events beyond the church walls, and developing relationships with teachers and activists leading this push towards justice.

PASTORAL Care

My approach to pastoral care is rooted in a core Buddhist and Catholic value that fortifies my faith and practice: attention. “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” Simone Weil writes. “Attention taken to its highest degrees is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” My spiritual path has required I learn to attend to myself before and as I work to meet others where they are. I believe in the work of finding a place of refuge in our own bodies, speech and mind. I see the work of chaplaincy and pastoral care as opening my heart in order to tend both to myself and others—and to help others to tend to themselves—with attention and compassion.