MY SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY
THE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES' SECRET
I was raised as a fourth-generation Jehovah's Witness in southern West Virginia. My family religion and the poor, working class, Appalachian culture around me were my formative influences as a child.
I was 14 when I began being aware of something about myself that it would take years to fully understand: I am queer. I quickly internalized the hatred my religion had for queerness, and, as a way to find meaning and purpose, threw myself into the family religion, claiming it as my own. I was baptized at the age of 16, and would go on to spend my later teens and most of my 20s focused almost exclusively on religion and door-to-door evangelism.
But in addition to being queer I had another dirty little secret: I was privately fascinated by Buddhism, and secretly followed certain Zen practices (even though this was considered "false religion" by the Witnesses). I did this because it just felt right, and felt like it augmented my Christianity, but I never told anyone. I've since learned that my parents and elders were "concerned" by my interest in Buddhism, and felt it was one way the Devil would lead me astray.
In spite of the closet Buddhism and even more closeted queerness, I truly did believe in the JW religion. That is why I understand what it is to be a Biblical literalist and a fundamentalist conservative because I truly embraced that way of thinking. At the same time, however, there was this secret of who I truly was. In time a series of events would force me to finally accept who I am, and would shatter my faith in the teaching of the Witnesses. I left the religion in 2004, when I was 29.
FINDING A HOME AND PURPOSE
I would spend the next few years trying to find my footing out of the closet. I also ached for a religious community and some sense of the Holy in my life. I briefly attended an LGBTQ-affirming Episcopal Church, and they helped me move towards a more liberal and inclusive understanding of Scripture and Christianity. However, even their liberal Christianity began to feel too confining. I had long been fascinated by world religions, and now more than ever I found myself looking anywhere I could for insight into my life. I explored, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Neo-Paganism, and this led me to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charleston. In Neo-Paganism especially I finally found a new spiritual language and way of worship that spoke to my full self. Before very long I was president of my congregation's CUUPS (Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans) chapter. I also became involved with SpiralHeart: a Neo-Pagan collective located in Baltimore that followed the teachings of Starhawk. I didn't just attend their events, but soon became an event planner, ritual leader, and teacher.
I began attending the UU church because that's where the local Pagans met. In time, though, the church itself drew me in. Unitarian Universalism grounded my growing mysticism in the “real” world. Through my UU community I was awakened to my social responsibility, and became involved in local activism, especially around LGBTQ+ issues. In all of this, I started to fall in love with the rich history of heretics and radicals of the Universalist and Unitarian tradition. Their story felt like my story.
I graduated from West Virginia State University in 2012 with a BA in English Literature, and with minors in Philosophy and Writing. While in college I was an Americorps-VISTA worker, focused on veterans issues, specifically as related to student veterans transitioning from combat to classroom. I am proud of the work we did establishing a permanent agency at the school for student vets. A mental health literacy journal I wrote was used by the WV State University Extension service to help many rural military families in West Virginia. I would go on to work with the Extension office on nutritional education for poor families and on mental health literacy. I began to feel a deeper longing to make a real difference in real lives.
All this time I was an active lay leader at my UU congregation, increasingly active in both local and district events, as well as representing our congregation at meetings of WV Pride (the major LGBTQ-advocacy group in West Virginia at the time). All of this reawakened the desire to be a minister that I had abandoned after leaving the Witnesses. With the encouragement of many friends as well as my ministers, I decided to take a leap of faith and answer the call.
BECOMING A MINISTER
I began seminary at Andover Newton Theological School in the fall of 2013. During my time at seminary my spirituality would transition again; I shifted from being “UU-Pagan” to being simply Unitarian Universalist. I more and more found my primary spiritual identity in our unique radical heritage, especially the Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Theodore Parker, as well Universalists like Clarence Russell Skinner. While at seminary, I expanded my spiritual horizons by studying alongside rabbinical students in courses co-taught by my seminary and Hebrew College, taking extensive courses in the Qur'an which included spending a week at a Sufi center in California, and revived my Buddhist practice while attending a sangha that met on my campus.
During my seminary training, I lost my father, witnessed and participated in the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, did Field Education in downtown Boston with an emerging Episcopal community of mostly millenial-age seekers, and had other formative experiences that evolved my theology yet further. I
That first semester, I would also meet the love of my life: Amotz. We were married on October 15, 2016, and have two awesome kids.
FROM NEOPHYTE CLERGY TO PANDEMIC PASTOR
From July of 2017 through June of 2021, I was honored to serve as the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Falmouth on Cape Cod, MA. Together, I and this brave band of intellectually curious and open-hearted took strong public stands for our Wampanoag neighbors, took the lead locally on transgender justice and in facing the climate crisis, and did deep internal work on racial justice as well.
In August of 2021 I began my ministry with the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg, where I currently serve. The pandemic has consumed much of our attention, and yet despite the chaos of the ongoing pandemic, we gather, in person and virtually, to remind ourselves of those things that truly matter.
Time would fail me to share how the pandemic has shaken me inside, and made me rethink almost all of my religious assumptions. I realize, now more than ever, how we hold each other's lives in our hands. How there's no point to any religion at all if it's not breaking through our loneliness to connect us to love. That if "sin" means anything it's the broken hearts and broken ways that manifest as white supremacy, the climate crisis, and all these unnecessary pandemic deaths. We need a better way. I don't know where, if anywhere, "God" is in all this, but I know more than ever what we, and where *I*, need to be.
THE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES' SECRET
I was raised as a fourth-generation Jehovah's Witness in southern West Virginia. My family religion and the poor, working class, Appalachian culture around me were my formative influences as a child.
I was 14 when I began being aware of something about myself that it would take years to fully understand: I am queer. I quickly internalized the hatred my religion had for queerness, and, as a way to find meaning and purpose, threw myself into the family religion, claiming it as my own. I was baptized at the age of 16, and would go on to spend my later teens and most of my 20s focused almost exclusively on religion and door-to-door evangelism.
But in addition to being queer I had another dirty little secret: I was privately fascinated by Buddhism, and secretly followed certain Zen practices (even though this was considered "false religion" by the Witnesses). I did this because it just felt right, and felt like it augmented my Christianity, but I never told anyone. I've since learned that my parents and elders were "concerned" by my interest in Buddhism, and felt it was one way the Devil would lead me astray.
In spite of the closet Buddhism and even more closeted queerness, I truly did believe in the JW religion. That is why I understand what it is to be a Biblical literalist and a fundamentalist conservative because I truly embraced that way of thinking. At the same time, however, there was this secret of who I truly was. In time a series of events would force me to finally accept who I am, and would shatter my faith in the teaching of the Witnesses. I left the religion in 2004, when I was 29.
FINDING A HOME AND PURPOSE
I would spend the next few years trying to find my footing out of the closet. I also ached for a religious community and some sense of the Holy in my life. I briefly attended an LGBTQ-affirming Episcopal Church, and they helped me move towards a more liberal and inclusive understanding of Scripture and Christianity. However, even their liberal Christianity began to feel too confining. I had long been fascinated by world religions, and now more than ever I found myself looking anywhere I could for insight into my life. I explored, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Neo-Paganism, and this led me to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charleston. In Neo-Paganism especially I finally found a new spiritual language and way of worship that spoke to my full self. Before very long I was president of my congregation's CUUPS (Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans) chapter. I also became involved with SpiralHeart: a Neo-Pagan collective located in Baltimore that followed the teachings of Starhawk. I didn't just attend their events, but soon became an event planner, ritual leader, and teacher.
I began attending the UU church because that's where the local Pagans met. In time, though, the church itself drew me in. Unitarian Universalism grounded my growing mysticism in the “real” world. Through my UU community I was awakened to my social responsibility, and became involved in local activism, especially around LGBTQ+ issues. In all of this, I started to fall in love with the rich history of heretics and radicals of the Universalist and Unitarian tradition. Their story felt like my story.
I graduated from West Virginia State University in 2012 with a BA in English Literature, and with minors in Philosophy and Writing. While in college I was an Americorps-VISTA worker, focused on veterans issues, specifically as related to student veterans transitioning from combat to classroom. I am proud of the work we did establishing a permanent agency at the school for student vets. A mental health literacy journal I wrote was used by the WV State University Extension service to help many rural military families in West Virginia. I would go on to work with the Extension office on nutritional education for poor families and on mental health literacy. I began to feel a deeper longing to make a real difference in real lives.
All this time I was an active lay leader at my UU congregation, increasingly active in both local and district events, as well as representing our congregation at meetings of WV Pride (the major LGBTQ-advocacy group in West Virginia at the time). All of this reawakened the desire to be a minister that I had abandoned after leaving the Witnesses. With the encouragement of many friends as well as my ministers, I decided to take a leap of faith and answer the call.
BECOMING A MINISTER
I began seminary at Andover Newton Theological School in the fall of 2013. During my time at seminary my spirituality would transition again; I shifted from being “UU-Pagan” to being simply Unitarian Universalist. I more and more found my primary spiritual identity in our unique radical heritage, especially the Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Theodore Parker, as well Universalists like Clarence Russell Skinner. While at seminary, I expanded my spiritual horizons by studying alongside rabbinical students in courses co-taught by my seminary and Hebrew College, taking extensive courses in the Qur'an which included spending a week at a Sufi center in California, and revived my Buddhist practice while attending a sangha that met on my campus.
During my seminary training, I lost my father, witnessed and participated in the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, did Field Education in downtown Boston with an emerging Episcopal community of mostly millenial-age seekers, and had other formative experiences that evolved my theology yet further. I
That first semester, I would also meet the love of my life: Amotz. We were married on October 15, 2016, and have two awesome kids.
FROM NEOPHYTE CLERGY TO PANDEMIC PASTOR
From July of 2017 through June of 2021, I was honored to serve as the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Falmouth on Cape Cod, MA. Together, I and this brave band of intellectually curious and open-hearted took strong public stands for our Wampanoag neighbors, took the lead locally on transgender justice and in facing the climate crisis, and did deep internal work on racial justice as well.
In August of 2021 I began my ministry with the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg, where I currently serve. The pandemic has consumed much of our attention, and yet despite the chaos of the ongoing pandemic, we gather, in person and virtually, to remind ourselves of those things that truly matter.
Time would fail me to share how the pandemic has shaken me inside, and made me rethink almost all of my religious assumptions. I realize, now more than ever, how we hold each other's lives in our hands. How there's no point to any religion at all if it's not breaking through our loneliness to connect us to love. That if "sin" means anything it's the broken hearts and broken ways that manifest as white supremacy, the climate crisis, and all these unnecessary pandemic deaths. We need a better way. I don't know where, if anywhere, "God" is in all this, but I know more than ever what we, and where *I*, need to be.
Pics credits, in descending order from top to bottom:
A pic from August 2017, from the sanctuary of UU Falmouth, taken by a congregant.
Second photo is of me preparing to deliver the benediction at my ordination service in the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charleston, WV (March, 2017).
A pic from August 2017, from the sanctuary of UU Falmouth, taken by a congregant.
Second photo is of me preparing to deliver the benediction at my ordination service in the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charleston, WV (March, 2017).