MY journey through a camera lens
I’m fond of saying that it’s been a crooked path to ministry. This picture is from 2012, when I helped run the Split This Rock poetry festival in Washington, D.C. The festival is a celebration of the poetry of witness and provocation, and endeavors to center voices normally pushed to the margins. Every festival includes an act of protest. In this case, we are in front of the Supreme Court building, co-creating a poem that speaks against the Citizens United decision. I still look to poets to articulate the things that I feel but can’t quite put into words.
I did my ministerial internship with the Church of the Larger Fellowship, which is Unitarian Universalism’s church without walls. For two years I helped with planning and executing online worship. I have to admit, when I started the internship I asked myself if this is really “real” church. I’m here to say that the CLF is a real church, where folks have authentic religious experiences. I learned a ton about worship and pastoral care. In this picture, my fellow intern Slim Moon and I are leading online worship from the the kitchen table at the Air BnB that we shared in Chicago for a seminary intensive.
During my Act of Ordination, I vowed to “serve with a deep sense of obligation and opportunity, mindful of the privileges and responsibilities of ministry.” I also vowed to remember the most vulnerable among us, and work to make a more just and caring world. Those are not empty words to me. In this picture, I’m participating in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, protesting the conditions at the Erie County, NY jail.
I was arrested for my efforts, along with eight other members of the the Buffalo chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice. This action was part of a year long coordinated campaign to address the ways that racist mass incarceration manifests in Western New York.
For lots of good reasons, this kind of protest isn’t possible for everyone. Regardless, my vision for church is to create a community that is serious about speaking truth to power and that understands and supports the times when civil disobedience is called for.
The arrest shown earlier was part of a day-long series of actions planned to draw attention to conditions at the county jail (ranked by the New York State Commission on Corrections as one of the five worst jails in NY). The picture above was taken the afternoon of the same day I was arrested. I had been released but returned to the jail to speak to a rally of 70 people.
Religion and its symbols are complicated, laden with long, contradictory histories, and subject to misinterpretation depending on the values of the beholder. As a UU minister who uses Christian symbols of authority, I need to acknowledge the ways that dogma was used to marginalize and demean certain identities. Most faith traditions have been sexist and homophobic in theology and in practice in their past (and some in their present). It’s the work of UU communities and religious leaders to undo that history and create faith communities that are life-affirming rather than oppressive.
I have the good fortune to serve South Valley UU Society in Salt Lake City as their interim minister. Here we are on Water Communion Sunday. The culture in Utah can be regressive but I see every day how our congregation is an oasis of love and affirmation. It’s oasis of courage too, as one can see from the prominently displayed pride flag and declaration that “Love is Love.”
This is me speaking at the graduation for my second unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (or chaplain training). I completed four units of CPE overall between 2104 and 2018, working at the VA, a cardiac unit, hospice, the emergency room and the intensive care unit. I had the benefit of excellent supervision and peers and because of that thorough training, I consider pastoral care one of my core ministries.
I took this picture on the first day of my first chaplain training, known as Clinical Pastoral Education. That training was at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in New York City. I was less than a year back from Afghanistan and I was still dealing with my own impacts of my time at war. At the VA I worked primarily in the psych and substance abuse disorder wards. In that place I found not “the price of freedom” but the cost of war. I’ve since worked with the fabulous veteran group Soldier’s Heart. Supporting veterans will always be an important part of my ministry.
Seminary is a washing machine, a crucible, a rocket ship! (The metaphors could go on all day...) I was lucky to receive the Betty and Hardy Sanders Scholarship for Ministerial Excellence from Meadville Lombard Theological School, and even luckier to have classmates like these. I had a great experience at Meadville Lombard. I co-founded a group to match incoming students with older students, a group for white students who wish to be better allies to students of color, and was the student representative to the Board of Trustees. All the while I was challenged and supported by an extraordinary group of students, staff, and professors.
Graduation from Meadville Lombard Theological School is just the end of the beginning of formal formation. Meadville describes itself as “Spiritually grounded and unapologetically progressive,” which seems like a worthy aspiration for me as well.
Ministerial formation takes years and is never truly finished but it’s a significant milestone to be ordained and to receive one’s stole. In this picture, my mentor Rev. Michelle Buhite is placing the stole on me as she tells me that it will be the heaviest garment I’ll ever wear. Writing this during my first year of serving a parish, I have to agree.
I was ordained by First UU in Niagara. The stole I’m wearing is a gift from the congregation and the religious symbols hand stitched on the stole are based on the large banners that hang on the walls of that sanctuary. I love the metaphor for our third principle.
I think OWL (the Our Whole Lives sex curriculum) is one of the best things we UUs do. I saw this ironic pamphlet at my training to become a facilitator of the Adult and Young Adult modules. I think OWL is deeply spiritual work, requiring profound explorations of relationship, identity, and consent. The congregation I serve now has an unusually large number of trained OWL facilitators among the congregation and I think that is partly what accounts for why the congregation is so healthy in its work and processes.
In this picture I’m participating in a rally in Buffalo, NY supporting immigrants and immigration. I love that the man walking next to me is an Episcopalian minister and behind us, in his Franciscan habit, is a Catholic Friar. Both of those folks are friends and part of a network of progressive clergy in Buffalo, NY. Interfaith work is tricky, but there’s great value and power in collaboration. I’ve co-led a day-long training for people of faith with Showing Up for Racial Justice and also co-led a worship service for folks in the Buffalo organizing community called Prayers for Activists. Spirituality and working for justice are completely intertwined, and I’m most comfortable when they are integrated.
I spent 2012-2013 in Afghanistan as a civilian contractor. While I was working in Kandahar, I joined this crew of UUs at the Kandahar Crossroads UU Fellowship. I always loved being UU, but I especially appreciated the deep sense of sanctuary offered by that little congregation in a very difficult place. I applied to seminary from Kandahar and was in Chicago for class less than two months after I got back.
I love ritual and the ways it allows participants to embody the spirit of a particular moment. This picture was taken during our Blessing of the Pets. In a moment of extreme embodiment, one young congregant brought his little brother up front to be blessed!