This topic came about because it suddenly occurred to me that I only have a few months left to speak to you on Sundays, and there are lots of things I've written and thought about that might make good Reflections. So I started going through some of my old computer files, which date back to 1990, and one of the earliest ones I found contained the letters I wrote and a talk I gave when I was at the beginning stages of preparing for ministry. My rationale for digging this material up and passing it on to you is two-fold. First, I'm often asked about how I became a Minister, and sometimes people are interested in the process for becoming a Unitarian Minister - so this is one of those times when I know at least a few people will be glad to hear what I'm saying. Second, as I put it in the newsletter, "Your life story includes decisions about ministry, too," so some of what I say, though it's thoroughly personal, I hope may touch chords for you and resonate with your own experience. Also, I've found that personal stories seem to be welcomed, even sought out - which is why I encourage you to share yours with one another!
I'll begin with the letter I wrote to the Department of Ministry in the UUA, in the Spring of 1990. It was called, Why I Want To Be A Unitarian Universalist Minister, and was my application for acceptance as a candidate for ministry. Here's what I said, and I've only changed the verb tenses to make it more easy to follow:
As a child in England, I had Roman Catholic schooling, went to church alternating between Methodist and Church of England, and attended evangelical Sunday School. The earliest effect I can remember of this mish-mash was the desire to sort out what was true. I am grateful now for all that conflict and confusion: it helped me to see a theme informing my life, to which I now want to give fuller expression.
I have always been a bit rebellious, and I left school in England when I was 16. I worked for 3 years in offices in London, and soon found that I had chosen a very unrewarding form of rebellion. During this period, I joined the [very liberal and inclusive] local Congregational Church, which became more of a spiritual home to me than any of the many denominations I'd tried out. I was profoundly influenced by the minister of this church, who was the first person to encourage my truth-seeking; he also helped me find some relief from my rather unhappy home life and made me feel valued by drawing me into congregational activities.
It was as a member of this church, aged about 17, that I preached my first sermon and experienced the great "high" of knowing that I did it well and was approved by people I respected in the congregation. I still remember (this is now 47 years ago) starting out, "This is not going to be a sermon. It would be a topsy-turvy world indeed if I were to preach to you." It was a sermon, but at least I knew that standing in that pulpit was potentially an act of arrogance. I'm always aware of that when I'm speaking to you - that I have as much to learn as to teach.
My teenage rebellion ended in the realization that it really would be a good idea to get a bit of academic/professional grounding, and I went into a 2-year teacher's training programme, persuading the Principal that I was acceptable partly (she told me) by my enthusiastic description of the work I had recently done with the church youth group on restoring an old church building. It had been largely a matter of tearing down the inside walls, exposing the brickwork; I wonder now if that was symbolic of my approach to religion.
At Teachers College, my subjects of specialization were Religious Knowledge (of course) and Environmental Studies. I began to build on the bits of theology which I'd picked up from my own rather peculiar reading habits, and found that there was deep satisfaction and joy to be found in studying a subject in depth. The hours I spent in the library of a nearby theological school, researching (for instance) the life of a 19th century Congregational Minister, were some of the most fulfilling I had ever had, echoed years later at McMaster University as I worked on essays and papers and, eventually, my M.A. thesis on Genesis III.
I also met my future husband while at college, and in 1962, after I had spent one year teaching at an inner-city secondary school, we married and came to Canada. We had a family very quickly and for ten years I led a satisfying domestic life, supplemented by much involvement in volunteer activities in the United Church, peace and environmental groups, and teaching assistance. When my youngest daughter entered Grade One, I found a job as Programme Co-ordinator with the McMaster Campus Ministries Council.
I worked with four denominational chaplains and a Council made up of students and faculty members interested in campus ministry. They were nearly all delightful people, as were the many students who came into the office for conversation, counselling, complaints, crises, etc. I learned a lot about student life, interdenominational dynamics and group process, and also began to see how sketchy my academic background was. I soon knew I should study again and, with my husband's support, I entered a B.A. programme in 1973.
The academic environment was close to my idea of heaven. I blossomed intellectually in a Year One programme which integrated studies in English, Philosophy, Social Sciences and (of course) Religious Studies. It was one of the best years of my life. Unrecognized, though, a huge cloud was gathering: I fell in love with one of my teachers and this would (much later) destroy my marriage. My expanding horizons were directly proportional to the loss of tranquillity.
In second year I gained entry to the combined B.A./B.S.W. programme and for the next three years I worked very hard in academic and professional courses, taking some time out for my husband's sabbatical in France in 1975 and graduating in 1978 with the combined degrees. I had done well in the Social Work part of my programme, but I wanted to continue with my Religious Studies: I was accepted into the M.A. programme with a Canada Council Scholarship. Academically, things were good, but my family and personal life was a mess, and by 1979 I felt I had to leave my marriage because of the conflicts I was experiencing.
I moved into an apartment alone and began to look for work. A Unitarian friend helped me into a job as a Social Worker at the University Hospital; I spent a year there quite unhappily (the medical environment is not where I belong) but I managed to do the work which eventually produced a useful little publication, "Losing a Baby", and also finished my M.A., as well as spending a lot of time agonizing over my personal situation. I returned to my family within a year and stayed another five. I left the hospital and returned to work at the University, this time in administration with occasional teaching in Religious Studies, and resigned only in March 1990, feeling the need for more challenges.
The breakdown of both my marriage and the other long-term relationship was the most painful experience of my life, but also one of the most growth-producing; I have often felt I was going through the very process I'd written about in my thesis on Adam and Eve, which was called "Naked and Afraid", as I found myself without my accustomed covering of social identity, mothering role, sense of self-esteem and relatedness. I was divorced in 1985, and the end of the other relationship followed not long afterwards. It was one of the blackest periods of my life; there were long stretches of time where I thought I would never stop crying. But I got through it.
I had found First Unitarian Church, Hamilton, in 1978 and felt immediately at home. My membership in the United Church had ended some years previously as I found myself less and less able to suppress my intellectual doubts about Christianity, but I wanted a church community. I found it, and became involved and active in the congregation. I was Chaplain (in the current Lay Chaplaincy sense) for four years, and part-time Chaplain to students on the McMaster campus for one year. I was President of the Board in the year that we moved from one building to another, served for many years on the Church Services Committee and the Pastoral Care Committee, and Chaired the Ministerial Relations Committee. Friends in the church helped me make some sense of my life at times when there wasn't much apparent sense to be found, and I felt welcomed in turn as a friend and also as a speaker -- preaching and leading services has always been one of my most satisfying activities. I began to see that ministry would bring together my teaching, counselling, searching and worship interests: I became steadily clearer that this is what I wanted -- and ought -- to do.
Shortly after giving that talk, I submitted it in written form as part of my application to the Department of Ministry at the UUA. I described the academic and practical work I had done in my Social Work and Religious Studies programmes. To give you some idea of what's required for Unitarian ministry, I'll tell you what I wrote:
I propose that I do the following work to complete the Core Curriculum requirements [for Ministerial credentialling]:
A course at McMaster Divinity College on Religious Development of the Adolescent in Canada. Although McMaster is a Baptist College, there are faculty sympathetic to liberal religion, of whom the instructor of this course is one, and I anticipate no trouble maintaining a liberal orientation in my work in the course.
Attendance at "Eagles" [in August 1990] to supplement my practical experience in Worship and Preaching.
A course to be taken this Fall ..... on Development and Leadership of Voluntary Groups.
Reading courses in U.U. History, Polity and Professional Ethics, to be taken either in this area under supervision to be approved by the Fellowship Committee or, if necessary, at a UU-affiliated theological school.
Internship (ideally an extension internship in Canada.
At age 50 (I wrote), with no assured income at present, I want to avoid going heavily into debt if possible, though I am certainly prepared both to relocate and to borrow money as may be necessary.
In a few more months I had decided to take the courses in UU History, Polity and Professional Ethics at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I wrote to 3 people asking them to recommend me for admission there. (One of those people was Rev. John O'Connor, the Chaplain at the McMaster University Medical Centre, with whom I had a good, platonic friendship at that time.) Here's what I wrote in August of 1990:
I am bold enough to ask for a recommendation to Harvard Divinity School. I'm hoping to attend there from February to May 1991, to take four courses which should (if all goes according to plan) complete my "equivalent to M.Div." programme. In case you're curious as to what I would be studying, I'll list the four courses I hope to get into:
Thematic Preaching
New Directions in the Psychology of Religious Experience
Ministry: Theological Perspectives on Power, Authority, and Abuse
Unitarian Universalist Polity and Practices
I'm so excited about this that even the prospect of having to take out a hefty loan, not to mention being unsure of whether there will be any job for me if and when I'm ordained, is relatively undaunting!
I did take out a hefty loan, and I've never regretted it! And I did find a Canadian internship, and after that there was a job for me. If I have any regrets at all about my path to ministry, it's perhaps that I wasn't quite brave enough to do it earlier - though of course that would have altered everything and I just love the way it actually turned out! Here are words I spoke to the Hamilton congregation, where I was a member, in October of 1990 - leaving out the parts I've already covered this morning:
A few weeks of unemployment in the Spring gave me plenty of time to think about where I wanted to go with the rest of my life. The idea of parish ministry had crossed my mind many times in the past, of course, and had been suggested to me by people with more insight than I had. But there always seemed to be good reasons why I couldn't or shouldn't be a Minister. By this Spring I no longer had any good reasons. I discussed the possibility with people whose opinions matter to me, and they mostly wondered what had taken me so long.
Even in the current climate, with many people moving into second careers, I've left it a bit late to do this, and I've been especially grateful for the amount of positive support and encouragement which people in this congregation have given me. So far, no-one has said "You're crazy", even though there would be many good reasons for saying that. ... Thanks to all of you for being the kind of community that I hope I may one day find for my ministry.
There are many wonderful UU congregations, and I've been privileged to work with one of the best here in Waterloo. There are many wonderful kinds of ministry, too, and only a tiny minority are labelled "professional Minister." As you've listened to this story of one stage in my own ministerial development, I hope it may have helped you in some small way to ask questions of yourself about how you are finding out, whatever stage of your life you're in, what is your deepest calling and how you can grow into that. And in case you've noticed that I called these Reflections "Part One," please be assured that I'll leave a break before the next part - but I will tell you about it, because the later stages were at least as important, and if this one didn't ring bells for you, maybe the next one will! Meanwhile, I thank you for the privilege of sharing my life's journey with you - and for the ways in which you let me share yours. May we remember that as one of our loveliest readings says, "All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us." May we respond to each other's needs. So may it always be.