This week, Ministerial Intern, Beth Monhollen spends some time speaking with fellow seminary school students. They talk a bit about the work they hope to accomplish in their communities as Unitarian Universalist ministers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
START OF TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:05] Speaker1
Oh, my gosh, there’s people you’re not boxes on a screen, hello, everyone. And for those of you who are boxes on the screen, yeah,
your box is on a screen and you’re here, you’re all here with us today. For those who maybe need a reminder, I’m Beth monHollen. I
am your ministerial intern for the next two years. It’s actually, I’m sad to say, down to a year and a half now, but we’ll forget that part.
This is my friend and colleague Caroline Bright, and she has been so gracious to agree to be with me here today. So in and part of
our series on neighbors and helpers, so we’ve been learning so much. If you’ve been zooming, not zooming, that was an
unintentional link to Zoom. If you’ve been tuning in to the message series where we’ve heard from so many wonderful people in
Montgomery and Chester County counties about the work that we and WellSprings can be part of and are part of doing to make our
community more thriving and vibrant. And I was thinking as part of this more broadly about neighbors and helpers, and I thought, Oh,
as a person new to WellSprings, new to Chester Montgomery counties like so new that I’m not even permanently here. How do how
do I think about not just getting to know people in specific organizations, but who are our neighbors and helpers and Unitarian
universalism itself? And that’s where Caroline comes in, because Caroline is one of my seminary friends and Meadville Lombard
Theological School. And while she is a neighbor in faith, Caroline is a neighbor in truth because she lives just 45 minutes away.
[00:01:53] Speaker2
Caroline, tell them more about yourself.
[00:01:55] Speaker1
They don’t need to hear from me and feel free to sit. We do have the stools. I told Caroline I have a trouble sitting, but she is seven
months pregnant and so she probably wants to stay.
[00:02:04] Speaker2
Or at least perch sometimes. Hello, neighbors, this is exciting. My name is Caroline Bright and I live just down the road in that city.
You may have heard of Philadelphia. I am not originally from Philly. I am originally from Vermont, the frozen north, about five minutes
south of Canada, in fact. But I made the strategic error of swiping right on a nice Philly boy. And now here we are. It happens to the
best of us and I’m so excited to be here in person with Beth. We were saying earlier we’ve been in school together for two years and
this morning was our first time meeting in person. It was very, very exciting. Thank you. So I’m so thrilled to be here and thank you all
for this gracious welcome. And in Philly, I’m a member of the Unitarian Society of Germantown. But in an exciting twist this fall, I will
be starting with mainline Unitarian as their intern. So we’re I’m thrilled to visit WellSprings and I’m like, Wow, maybe I should do a tour
of the whole Philly cluster. Well, we’ll go on the road, but it’s so exciting to be here with you all today to have this conversation about
Unitarian universalism and what that means in terms of this broader umbrella that we fall under. Being part of these individual
congregations. So thank you.
[00:03:21] Speaker1
In addition to Caroline, I actually invited quite a few of my other seminary friends to also be part of this conversation, and I imagined it
and I the invitation I sent out was, Hey everybody, I want your dreams about the future of our faith. What are the aspirations of who we
as a people, no matter where we might be and no matter what congregations we might or might not belong to? Do you dream about
and a number of people answered that call, and what emerged from those conversations was actually three different strands. And so
that’s where we’re going to shape today’s conversation. The first theme was about how we found our way to Unitarian Universalism,
so finding Unitarian universalism. Also, some of what I call a Unitarian Universalist leader, Paula Jones has a brilliant sermon and
and phrase that she uses of community of communities. How even within Unitarian universalism do you find your people within that
and and then wrapping it up with actually, what are our dreams? What are the aspirations of who we as a people of faith and then we
as WellSprings want to be? And so I want to first and I know that the screen might, might not work for us, but I want to I want you to
hear introductions from the other folks who are virtually part of this conversation. So we’ll play that intro video.
[00:04:47] Speaker3
No, here they are. I am Anthony Jackson. My pronouns are she and hers. I am physically situated in Kingston, Jamaica, and I am
doing my internship at Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, California. I am in my second year at Meadville
Lombard Theological School, where I’m studying for my master. Of Divinity, Master of Divinity. I can’t. Would you like me to invite
somebody or do you want to invite Ronnie?
[00:05:27] Speaker4
Hey, my name is Ronnie Boyd, and I use she her pronouns. I am situated in Oakland, California, on a lonely island. I am a first year
student at Daqing School for the ministry. I’m fairly active in Drum. I used to be on the drum steering committee and I have been
E.E.U.U since I was 19. I am now thirty three, so it’s a little over a decade. And my hope is to do spiritual direction, work with young,
young adults of color because I think that demographic of people. If you don’t have college going on and you don’t have a community
support, young folks can get caught up in the ills of society and into capitalism where money becomes their religion. Apart from the
divine and having a divine calling. So I want to help young folks find their calling and to live out their lives with that, with that purpose.
It’s great. I’ll pass it to Sarah.
[00:06:58] Speaker5
Thank you. So my name is Sarah Burrell, Harrop. I use she or they pronounce interchangeably. I am living on stolen Catalan’s, which
is known as Dallas, Texas, and I am a second year student at Meadville Lombard Theological School, working on a call to community
ministry, specifically chaplaincy. And possibly organizing along with that.
[00:07:42] Speaker1
To dream and to and to a plan to share with you. Sarah is what I call a magical unicorn because she is a lifelong you.You. She was
raised your use, she stayed. You, you. She is super active in her home congregation in organizing and with the UUA, the rest of us
found our way to Unitarian universalism in various ways. Ronnie and Angelyne both found their way into Unitarian universalism, and
Angelina will share a little of this. But through organizing and I found my way to Unitarian universalism through a little bit through
activism as well. Twenty five, yup, I had to do the math. Twenty five years ago, I volunteered in Milwaukee with a local organization to
be an escort for patients who were going into reproductive health clinics for services and to be a human barrier between them and
protesters. And I had been raised. Some of you know this. If you’ve heard any of my sermons, I have been raised in Pentecostal
churches and had left that when I started college and was unchurched and I had no concept of progressive or liberal. I didn’t know
you existed. And as I showed up every Saturday morning and donned a volunteer vest with other volunteers, I began to hear their
stories and who they were and how they got involved. And because it was Milwaukee in the cold, snowy days of winter. We were
invited in pairs and in shifts as volunteers to walk down the block, literally a block and a half away to go into a church and get some
coffee and warm up. And I thought and I remember asking, Does that church know what we’re doing right? And they were like, Oh
yeah, it’s a Unitarian Universalist church, and the minister of it actually founded this organization.
[00:09:35] Speaker1
And I said, what? I got to check this out. And so I actually started attending a few services there and was really like, I just did not know
how to take it in. And I distinctly remember one of the services, the minister of that church, giving a sermon about Unitarian
Universalist theology. And he said, Look. Unitarian Universalist, it’s not that we can believe anything we want. We don’t, we have
things we believe, and it’s not that we don’t believe in God, it’s that we don’t have to believe in God. And I sat there like someone had
knocked me over the head and thought this, this is my religious and spiritual home, and when I am ready to commit to church on a
regular basis again, this is the place I’m coming back to. Well, it took another 15 years because I was in my 20s and 30s and doing all
kinds of things that did not make time for Sunday service, but when I was starting to get thirsty, for a connection and for spiritual
growth again, I immediately knew where to go and I looked up a service and I found out there were times and 10 years ago now I
started going to my home congregation and immediately joined and knew this. This faith, this people, is where I belong. So mine was
a stop and start kind of journey, but with a surety from the first message, I heard that it was for me. Caroline, tell us your story.
[00:11:16] Speaker2
Well, I joke that I grew up you.you without actually knowing that I grew up you, you. I come from a family where my mother’s master’s
degree is in religious studies and her doctorate is in wait for it. Female Islamic leadership in Indonesia. So we we spent my entire
childhood traveling all over the globe, and when we lived in England, we went to Anglican services. When we lived in Indonesia, we
went to Baptist Evangelical Church Services in the basement of the local Radisson Hotel, where I watched a lot of VeggieTales and it
was a good time.
[00:11:51] Speaker1
And then when we were
[00:11:52] Speaker2
Home in Vermont, we were Episcopalian and sometimes congregational. Because it’s New England, you can’t be in New England
without being at least a little bit congregational. So that really piqued my interest in how different people kind of do faith and how
churches look. So as I got older, I kind of stumbled into a religious studies minor thinking, Oh, this is interesting because if you
understand religion and people’s spiritual beliefs, you can understand people better. And I found that really intriguing. So I just
started attending random services while I was traveling as a flight attendant, which is what brought me to Philly in the first place. And I
had a great time exploring different churches and different communities all over the country, all over the world. And then one day I
was off and it was a Sunday, and I was like, Huh, that that First Unitarian church has a really deep historical meaning in Philadelphia.
I should see what it’s about. And I sat in that service, and it was the first time in my life that I hadn’t had to edit the theology of a
service in my head. I didn’t have to think, Oh, OK, I’m not going to use that language. It everything made sense. And I thought to
myself, what just happened? And I left. I walked out and I called my mom and I said, Mom, I’m pretty sure we’re Unitarians.
[00:13:06] Speaker2
And she said, Yeah, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that. And I was like, You knew people told people said this and you knew about
it. So from there, I just kind of started exploring Unitarian universalism, learning all about it. And then I got hit over the head with a
called a ministry, which I was like, Whoa, hold on. This is my career in politics, and I took a break to be a flight attendant. And now this
like this is not where I thought we’d be going, which is how I know it’s a true calling because it’s to military chaplaincy of all things.
And I hate running and I hate push ups and it’s going to be an interesting adventure. But that’s kind of how I found my way to
Meadville Lombard because when I was like, Oh, shoot, what do I have to do to be a minister or a military chaplain? Like, what are
the stuff now I have to go back to school. I was so excited to not do that and and I was looking into the different educational options,
and I learned that there are only two Unitarian Universalist seminaries that are still in existence. I also learned that in fact, my
undergraduate institution was founded as a universalist seminary, so I don’t know how I missed that at St.
[00:14:14] Speaker2
Lawrence University in Canton, New York. But that’s fine. It’s fine. So I was like, OK, there are these two schools and there are other
schools where you can go to get an emptive and still be you minister. Absolutely. But it was really important for me because I hadn’t
grown up within this denomination explicitly to have that denominational grounding when I was getting my emptive. So I found my
way to Meadville, which has been a wild ride. For those of you who don’t know, our unofficial mascot is the Honey Badger, so that
tells you quite a bit that you need to know about our school. And so now, now here we are. You know, kind of I’ve gotten to really
know Unitarian Universalism as a denomination through Meadville through visiting all these different congregations, and I continue to
do that after I stumbled into that church while this one was in Sydney, Australia. And that’s I’ll tell you the story of coffee hour. But it
got exciting and it ended with egg curry sandwiches. It was, yeah, it was an adventure, but that’s kind of how I ended up here by
accident, I guess, and then on purpose.
[00:15:19] Speaker1
I want to share with you, thank you, thank you. I forgot that our unofficial mascot is a honey badger. How can I forget that? I want to
share with you. Also a short clip just about three minutes of our colleague Angelina Jackson, who is Jamaican and lives in Kingston,
sharing how she, as a Jamaican, found her way to Unitarian universalism. So that’s our next.
[00:15:45] Speaker3
Coming out of the Brethren Church, I I wanted or is that 20, so 20, I was kind of in the space of rebellion. I don’t want church, I want
church, I’m gay, I don’t want church, I’m gay, I can’t have church. Just a lot of that that was going on. And I I ended up meeting a
couple, an individual specifically and then a community of developing a community of friends that were more along the lines of
agnostic atheist. And so that kind of caught my attention for for a little while and then moving from that into science of mind and the
space of metaphysics and being interested in that and then moving out of that and finding myself in metropolitan community church
spaces and feeling some of that space. But it was a little bit too Christianity to Jesus for me and wanting something that was a little bit
broader in that way. Now, during that space, I was involved in LGBTQ activism, and I met Reverend Adam Darrow, who was doing
his internship at our church in San Diego. And Adam and I got on like a house on fire, and we just kind of kept in touch since 2014,
and we just were really.
[00:17:10] Speaker3
Every month we’d have a talk talk for about an hour or so and. I had met Unitarian Universalism, that’s how I put it, I met you in 2012
when I was doing activism work, and I was housed by a lovely couple from the Arlington, Virginia, church. And that was kind of my
exposure to you. You and I was thinking, Wow, this is amazing. Where can I find this? This doesn’t exist in Jamaica. How do I
connect? And it just kind of fizzled. And it stayed at that interest base 2012 to 2014, meeting Adam, getting back into the space and
then fizzling again with Metropolitan Community Church. And, you know, if what it eventually ended up with was I started reading
some more about Unitarian Universalism. I read it like whole. It was a I call it, a nice little ball that I can put all the pieces that make up
my theological space, my identities, all the things that make me me can just fit into this you.you bowl. And I realized that this is what I
really need. This is a community that that can make sense for me that I can make sense of. I’m not told how things are. I can, you
know, I can work through my things, on my own and in community and.
[00:18:35] Speaker3
Adam then suggested he knew I had to call into ministry, wanted to be in the ministry and he knew I had applied to seminary, I hadn’t
continued forward. And so he asked me one day when he was at GE if I was still interested in seminary. And when I told him yes, he
sent me information about Meadville, read about it, got really interested. And I said, This is this is what I’ve been looking for. And so
from that space, you know, getting into seminary. But when I really knew that you was my place, I went to finding our way home in<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This week, Ministerial Intern, Beth Monhollen spends some time speaking with fellow seminary school students. They talk a bit about the work they hope to accomplish in their communities as Unitarian Universalist ministers. The Company We Keep START OF TRANSCRIPT[00:00:05] Speaker1Oh, my gosh, there’s people you’re not boxes on a screen, hello, everyone. And for those of you who are boxes on the screen, yeah,your box is on a screen and you’re here, you’re all here with us today. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5620,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","ctc_sermon_topic":[138,145,125],"ctc_sermon_book":[],"ctc_sermon_series":[168],"ctc_sermon_speaker":[166],"ctc_sermon_tag":[],"class_list":["post-5697","ctc_sermon","type-ctc_sermon","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ctc_sermon_topic-justice","ctc_sermon_topic-belonging-connection","ctc_sermon_topic-unitarian-universalism","ctc_sermon_series-neighbors-and-helpers","ctc_sermon_speaker-beth-monhollen","ctfw-has-image"],"featured_image_urls":{"medium":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/thumbnail_Neighbors-2022-FACEBOOK-COVER-300x169.png","large":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/thumbnail_Neighbors-2022-FACEBOOK-COVER-1024x576.png","thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/thumbnail_Neighbors-2022-FACEBOOK-COVER-150x150.png","medium_large":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/thumbnail_Neighbors-2022-FACEBOOK-COVER-768x432.png","post-thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/thumbnail_Neighbors-2022-FACEBOOK-COVER-720x480.png","saved-banner":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/thumbnail_Neighbors-2022-FACEBOOK-COVER-1280x400.png","saved-square":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/thumbnail_Neighbors-2022-FACEBOOK-COVER-720x720.png","saved-square-large":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/thumbnail_Neighbors-2022-FACEBOOK-COVER-1024x1024.png","saved-square-small":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/thumbnail_Neighbors-2022-FACEBOOK-COVER-160x160.png","saved-rect-medium":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/thumbnail_Neighbors-2022-FACEBOOK-COVER-480x320.png","saved-rect-small":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/thumbnail_Neighbors-2022-FACEBOOK-COVER-200x133.png"},"appp_media":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/5697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ctc_sermon"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/5697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5699,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/5697\/revisions\/5699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_topic?post=5697"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_book","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_book?post=5697"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_series?post=5697"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_speaker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_speaker?post=5697"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellspringsuu.org\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_tag?post=5697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}