It is not far from a little brick house near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to the Thomas Paine Unitarian Universalist Fellowship’s inviting building. I have not taken the most direct route. My UU path has been long—35 years and lots of miles—with many a twist.
I have been a very active member of six UU congregations in Vermont, Rhode Island, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Germany, and I’ve held the UU banner high at “nondenominational” gatherings in Nigeria. This inclusive faith of ours was a great benefit too when I was a chaplain at a regional trauma hospital in Bethlehem and at a behavioral health center in Sellersville.
The path to ministry goes through Moravian seminary in Bethlehem, and includes credits also from our UU Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California. The experience among the Moravians gave me many opportunities to explain, “What is a Unitarian Universalist?”
My first master’s degree is in Educational Technology from Lehigh University. My undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware is in Geology. As I say, the path is not the most direct.
The route through Germany was provided by civilian work for the Department of Defense; that was ten years long. Nigeria was one year working for a subcontractor in the building of an aluminum smelter. That was all computer stuff. I have an assortment of other résumé entries, including radio news director, audio-visual coordinator for a public school district, newspaper reporter, and educational technologies administrator for Pennsylvania’s largest vocational-technical high school.
Most recently I have been the intern and Summer Minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis, Maryland. The involvement there with a large (by UU standards), dynamic congregation rounds out my experience in UU congregations of various sizes. From all of this experience I find the smaller, wanting-to-grow communities to be the most personally attractive and those I believe hold the most promise for our denomination.
My wife, Maggie, and I make our way to the Washington, DC area where our son, Glen, and his wife, April are, as of very recently, homeowners.
Mine has been the scenic, adventure-filled route to Thomas Paine Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, giving me many stories to share and a solid belief in the value of our UU faith.
