I am a lively worship leader, energetically drawing congregations into effervescent collective experiences, but I am also skilled at bringing a community into equally important spaces of contemplative quiet and sustained reflection. My leadership style is collaborative, and I think worship is best when it is a shared creative endeavor. I am at my best in concert with fellow ministers, lay leaders, musicians, and youth.
I draw inspiration from many places: the needs of the community, fellow ministers, the news on the radio, and the racial, gender, and environmental justice activists I follow. I am also inspired in my sermons and worship planning by the farmers I have worked with and the land itself that we worked, by the animals I have met, the dharma teachers I have sat with and learned from, and the stand-up comics I follow, especially feminists, queer folks and people of color who perform comedy as a means to get a crowd to see themselves and the world they share in a new light. Humor, when engaged with care and compassion, is a powerful medium for inviting a community into relationship with uncomfortable truths.
From communion rituals (sometimes using flowers or water, and sometimes breaking bread), baptisms and blessings, to holding spaces for mourning and heavy-hearted reflection, I see worship as a time for people to come into contact with their own bodies and feelings and with one another. I want the congregations with whom I worship to find ways to feel at ease in their bodies as well as their spirits. Finding a home in our bodies is not unconnected to feeling at ease together in community.
April 1, 2020
Leading a Physically Distant Hymn During Virtual Morning Chapel Service at White Mountain School
“I Find You”
May 8, 2016
Follen Unitarian Universalist Community Church
Lexington, MA
https://follen.org/services/i-find-you/