I grew up on the northwest side of Chicago where I didn’t know I needed an ocean. As a child, my family consisted of 2 older siblings – Mary Ellen and Patrick, both of whom are dear to me, my lovely parents who had tragic lives, my maternal grandmother, and a German Shepherd named Duke.
Until I was old enough to understand the theology, and despite the fact that the priests got all the good parts of the Mass, my Catholic childhood gave me a love of ritual and a deep sense of the innerness of the holy, which once was lost but now is found. By fifth grade, in St. Robert Bellarmine Grammar School, I was raising questions about transubstantiation and I have been thinking theologically ever since. At Notre Dame High School for Girls I’m sure a few of the nuns had been influenced by liberation theology – even though I was busy reading Ram Dass and Alan Watts and qualifying for 12-step recovery, that was where I first saw the link between religion and social justice.
Growing up, I spent many hours at the beach in the summer, riding my bike along the lake and through Lincoln Park. I loved taking the train downtown to spend hours at the Art Institute visiting my good friends Claude Monet and Ivan Albright – such contrast between the impressionist color of Monet and shadowy details of Albright. Like life.
Further Formation
In my 20’s I made my way to recovery, became a certified counselor, and began a successful 20-year career in chemical dependency treatment. In 1987 the company I was working for made me an offer I couldn’t refuse and I moved to California to manage adolescent treatment units. Eventually my work with adolescents, families and women led me to an analysis of the systemic issues of sexism, racism, and classism that impacted my patients’ opportunities for recovery and wholeness. I never lost my theological leanings and had discovered a joyful mystical connection with the rest of nature, and this all brought me to ecofeminist theology. Antioch University radicalized me further as I rode in on the third wave of feminism.
When I was looking at graduate programs a professor of mine suggested Unitarian Universalist ministry. I’d already had intriguing encounters with Unitarian Universalism. My professor was a UU, had a strong sense of social justice along with a realistic hope, and I knew when she talked about God she did not mean an old white man. I was claimed by this living tradition that could hold me in the multiplicity of who I am and in which I could live my call to serve Life.
In 1995 I dove into the depths of mystery through breast cancer and successful treatment. I was companioned on that journey by a small orange tabby named Lil’ and our remarkable friendship turned me into an animal defender and liberator. I made my way to Claremont School of Theology in 1999 where process metaphysics allowed me to theorize my practice and experience and prepared me well for the ministry. I completed Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees there.
So Much Love
I think life is so beautiful that my heart is broken wide open...there is so much beauty everywhere – it’s excessive really. Doves whose coos have the power to stop me in my tracks, sunsets at the Pacific Ocean that splay outrageous colors across the sky, watching dogs walk in that determined way that they do, the way I feel when I’m home with my family where I’m most known and loved in spite of that, the Chicago skyline, that new crescent witchy moon that you hardly ever get to see when it’s so thin and pointy – it’s all just so lovely. And life is tragic – loves leave, pandemics plague us, bad things happen to good people, death comes to us all, and all we love. I walk in that awareness all of the time. Once I opened to the beauty and love around me, I could hold tragedy as in the nature of things. It is evil that must be resisted and thwarted. In these unprecedented times, it is love and a vision of what could be that will guide and sustain us.
I have robust spiritual practices that keep me grounded and connected. I enjoy great friendships with humans and other animals. I am close to Mary Ellen and Pat and their spouses and children. I have four nieces, two nephews, three grand nieces and three grand nephews, all of whom I adore. I think this world is beautiful and fragile, and worth defending. I think that people are capable of heroic good and debasing evil, and all deserve my compassion. My purpose in this life is to live with radical love, fierce compassion, and eyes-wide open hope. To be a hospice worker and a midwife - saving what we can and should be saved, holding with tender love all we will lose, and helping to birth and nurture a shift in consciousness, and spiritually grounded, justice loving communities of resistance, resilience, love, and joy. To bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice, and to love the world and all beings extravagantly and with abandon as a sacred activist.
I have been fortunate to be able to live that love in my parish ministries. I served the UU Church of the Verdugo Hills half time in 2003-2004. In 2004 I was blessed to have been called as the settled minister of Palomar Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Vista CA - North San Diego County. I served that wonderful congregation until February 2023. In addition to serving the congregation I served the wider community in social justice work.
In March 2023 I made my way back to Chicagoland to serve the lovely Unitarian Church of Hinsdale.
At some point I took this vow, the words of which are stitched into my ordination stole:
"For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, may I too, abide to dispel the misery of the world." Shantideva
Until I was old enough to understand the theology, and despite the fact that the priests got all the good parts of the Mass, my Catholic childhood gave me a love of ritual and a deep sense of the innerness of the holy, which once was lost but now is found. By fifth grade, in St. Robert Bellarmine Grammar School, I was raising questions about transubstantiation and I have been thinking theologically ever since. At Notre Dame High School for Girls I’m sure a few of the nuns had been influenced by liberation theology – even though I was busy reading Ram Dass and Alan Watts and qualifying for 12-step recovery, that was where I first saw the link between religion and social justice.
Growing up, I spent many hours at the beach in the summer, riding my bike along the lake and through Lincoln Park. I loved taking the train downtown to spend hours at the Art Institute visiting my good friends Claude Monet and Ivan Albright – such contrast between the impressionist color of Monet and shadowy details of Albright. Like life.
Further Formation
In my 20’s I made my way to recovery, became a certified counselor, and began a successful 20-year career in chemical dependency treatment. In 1987 the company I was working for made me an offer I couldn’t refuse and I moved to California to manage adolescent treatment units. Eventually my work with adolescents, families and women led me to an analysis of the systemic issues of sexism, racism, and classism that impacted my patients’ opportunities for recovery and wholeness. I never lost my theological leanings and had discovered a joyful mystical connection with the rest of nature, and this all brought me to ecofeminist theology. Antioch University radicalized me further as I rode in on the third wave of feminism.
When I was looking at graduate programs a professor of mine suggested Unitarian Universalist ministry. I’d already had intriguing encounters with Unitarian Universalism. My professor was a UU, had a strong sense of social justice along with a realistic hope, and I knew when she talked about God she did not mean an old white man. I was claimed by this living tradition that could hold me in the multiplicity of who I am and in which I could live my call to serve Life.
In 1995 I dove into the depths of mystery through breast cancer and successful treatment. I was companioned on that journey by a small orange tabby named Lil’ and our remarkable friendship turned me into an animal defender and liberator. I made my way to Claremont School of Theology in 1999 where process metaphysics allowed me to theorize my practice and experience and prepared me well for the ministry. I completed Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees there.
So Much Love
I think life is so beautiful that my heart is broken wide open...there is so much beauty everywhere – it’s excessive really. Doves whose coos have the power to stop me in my tracks, sunsets at the Pacific Ocean that splay outrageous colors across the sky, watching dogs walk in that determined way that they do, the way I feel when I’m home with my family where I’m most known and loved in spite of that, the Chicago skyline, that new crescent witchy moon that you hardly ever get to see when it’s so thin and pointy – it’s all just so lovely. And life is tragic – loves leave, pandemics plague us, bad things happen to good people, death comes to us all, and all we love. I walk in that awareness all of the time. Once I opened to the beauty and love around me, I could hold tragedy as in the nature of things. It is evil that must be resisted and thwarted. In these unprecedented times, it is love and a vision of what could be that will guide and sustain us.
I have robust spiritual practices that keep me grounded and connected. I enjoy great friendships with humans and other animals. I am close to Mary Ellen and Pat and their spouses and children. I have four nieces, two nephews, three grand nieces and three grand nephews, all of whom I adore. I think this world is beautiful and fragile, and worth defending. I think that people are capable of heroic good and debasing evil, and all deserve my compassion. My purpose in this life is to live with radical love, fierce compassion, and eyes-wide open hope. To be a hospice worker and a midwife - saving what we can and should be saved, holding with tender love all we will lose, and helping to birth and nurture a shift in consciousness, and spiritually grounded, justice loving communities of resistance, resilience, love, and joy. To bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice, and to love the world and all beings extravagantly and with abandon as a sacred activist.
I have been fortunate to be able to live that love in my parish ministries. I served the UU Church of the Verdugo Hills half time in 2003-2004. In 2004 I was blessed to have been called as the settled minister of Palomar Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Vista CA - North San Diego County. I served that wonderful congregation until February 2023. In addition to serving the congregation I served the wider community in social justice work.
In March 2023 I made my way back to Chicagoland to serve the lovely Unitarian Church of Hinsdale.
At some point I took this vow, the words of which are stitched into my ordination stole:
"For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, may I too, abide to dispel the misery of the world." Shantideva