I was born in 1954 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My family moved to Los Angeles when I was just a year old, so essentially I grew up there. My parents were originally from the south – my mother from Texas and my father from Alabama. My older brother, Denis and sister, Gail, were children from my mother’s previous marriage. My parents left their Baptist and Methodist churches of their families and raised my brother, Stan, and me in the UU church starting when we were in grade school in Los Angeles. My parents were both college professors most of my growing years. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s and was passionate about the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement. Visits with my father to Birmingham, AL taught me a great deal about segregation and bigotry. I also loved nature and wanted to be a biologist. Jane Goodall was my hero and I suppose still is. I ended up pursuing “the study of life” in a more spiritual and emotional sense rather than a scientific one.
My mother was a spiritual seeker and brought home all kinds of ideas and books. We were exposed to evangelists, gurus, faith healers, great thinkers from the east and west. My mother’s spirituality gave me a strong sense of my own inner life. I have devoted most of my life to spiritual growth. For 20 years, I was a member of the Spinoza-Gurdjieff Group in Los Angeles, a small spiritual group based on the ideas of Benedict Spinoza, the 17th Century philosopher and G. I. Gurdjieff a 20th century mystic and spiritual teacher. This was a major part of my theological formation. The group was not primarily intellectual in nature but worked to help each other apply the ideas we studied to our own lives for deeper growth.
My brother and I went to the Krishnamurti School in England for a year after I graduated from High School and he was a year into college. When we returned, I earned degrees in Biology and Chemistry from California State University, Northridge. I found I was not able to make a living working as a Biologist without a Master’s degree, and I really wanted to be on my own. I worked in various industries and fairly early settled in a niche of the computer industry related to outsourcing. I was quite successful financially, but never found this work very fulfilling. It did however offer me the chance to develop my administrative, leadership and consulting skills.
In 1998 I found myself at a crossroads. I had left behind the Spinoza-Gurdjieff group because I began to find it too limiting, and began looking for a broader approach. I had left Los Angeles and was living in Dallas away from my family and friends. I decided to attend a UU church again remembering the values that it represented and wanting to make some connections. When I entered Horizon UU Church in Carrollton, TX, it felt like coming home. The doxology was one I recalled from my childhood and the entire service had new meaning for me in the light of my experiences with other groups. I quickly realized that I had not just found a source of friends but had returned to a movement whose values I deeply held; one that encouraged me to find my own direction. There, listening to the Senior Minister, Dennis Hamilton, and a couple of intern ministers at the time, I discovered the possibility of becoming a minister myself. In ministry I saw all the potential that was lacking for me in business—the potential to really use myself and my abilities to the fullest and to do work that I really love. It took some time to build some ‘tenure’ as an adult member of the church and financial preparation, but in 2001, I finally left the business world to start seminary. I also entered into three years of analysis as an inner preparation for this next phase of my life.
In addition to starting seminary, I adopted my daughter, Tealeesha, who was 9 at the time and is now 16. I entered into adoption and parenting with the very real and very naïve desire to give love and care to a child. It has been the most challenging “project” of my life. Tealeesha’s early history of abuse and her particular neurology have made her an extremely challenging child to raise. Being her mother has taken a great amount of emotional, mental and physical energy. It is gratifying that she has made real progress in the almost seven years she’s been with me. However she still has many behavior issues and she has recently been diagnosed with a major mental illness. Consequently she is currently in an excellent residential care facility where she is getting the treatment she needs. Being Tealeesha’s mother has taught me a great deal about myself, my family of origin and forced me to grow significantly. I’m sure my relationship to her will be a continuing source of spiritual and emotional growth in the years to come.
In 2004, Tealeesha and I moved to Framingham, MA for me to do my internship at First Parish in Framingham UU. There Tealeesha met a boy her age on her school van named Ben. His mother Jennifer and I became friends through them, and ultimately embarked on a committed relationship together. I had fully planned to go back to Dallas to finish my last year in seminary at Brite Divinity School, when it dawned on me, when talking to Jennifer, that I could stay in MA and transfer my last few credits to Brite for completion. By that time, I had really fallen in love with New England and in fact had often in my life thought I might like to live here. My seminary cooperated as did Andover-Newton, where I finished my last courses. It’s been a great decision. Massachusetts offers so many more resources for my special needs daughter than Texas did. The private Special Ed schools here are fabulous and we were fortunate that the Framingham Public Schools saw her needs early and were generous enough to refer her. I’ve made some good friends here and am very glad to be in a part of the world where nature is so glorious and it is easy to hike every day.
Jennifer and I bought a house together in 2006 and we live with her three children, Ben (16), Tim (13) and Julia (8).
My sister and brothers still live in Los Angeles where my parents resided until their deaths, my mother in May 2006 and my father in July 2007. They were very supportive of my calling to ministry and my father was able to attend my ordination.
I was ordained on June 18, 2006 at Horizon Unitarian Universalist Church in Carrollton, TX. Since then I have completed one year as Interim Minister at the UU Congregation in Greenville, NC and am now serving as Interim at the UU Metro Atlanta North Congregation in Roswell, GA. I commute back and forth every two weeks to make this possible. Interim Ministry allows me to use my business consulting skills along with my skills for ministry. I look forward to settled ministry where I can get to know a congregation over the long term and can live full time with my family.
My mother was a spiritual seeker and brought home all kinds of ideas and books. We were exposed to evangelists, gurus, faith healers, great thinkers from the east and west. My mother’s spirituality gave me a strong sense of my own inner life. I have devoted most of my life to spiritual growth. For 20 years, I was a member of the Spinoza-Gurdjieff Group in Los Angeles, a small spiritual group based on the ideas of Benedict Spinoza, the 17th Century philosopher and G. I. Gurdjieff a 20th century mystic and spiritual teacher. This was a major part of my theological formation. The group was not primarily intellectual in nature but worked to help each other apply the ideas we studied to our own lives for deeper growth.
In 1998 I found myself at a crossroads. I had left behind the Spinoza-Gurdjieff group because I began to find it too limiting, and began looking for a broader approach. I had left Los Angeles and was living in Dallas away from my family and friends. I decided to attend a UU church again remembering the values that it represented and wanting to make some connections. When I entered Horizon UU Church in Carrollton, TX, it felt like coming home. The doxology was one I recalled from my childhood and the entire service had new meaning for me in the light of my experiences with other groups. I quickly realized that I had not just found a source of friends but had returned to a movement whose values I deeply held; one that encouraged me to find my own direction. There, listening to the Senior Minister, Dennis Hamilton, and a couple of intern ministers at the time, I discovered the possibility of becoming a minister myself. In ministry I saw all the potential that was lacking for me in business—the potential to really use myself and my abilities to the fullest and to do work that I really love. It took some time to build some ‘tenure’ as an adult member of the church and financial preparation, but in 2001, I finally left the business world to start seminary. I also entered into three years of analysis as an inner preparation for this next phase of my life.
In 2004, Tealeesha and I moved to Framingham, MA for me to do my internship at First Parish in Framingham UU. There Tealeesha met a boy her age on her school van named Ben. His mother Jennifer and I became friends through them, and ultimately embarked on a committed relationship together. I had fully planned to go back to Dallas to finish my last year in seminary at Brite Divinity School, when it dawned on me, when talking to Jennifer, that I could stay in MA and transfer my last few credits to Brite for completion. By that time, I had really fallen in love with New England and in fact had often in my life thought I might like to live here. My seminary cooperated as did Andover-Newton, where I finished my last courses. It’s been a great decision. Massachusetts offers so many more resources for my special needs daughter than Texas did. The private Special Ed schools here are fabulous and we were fortunate that the Framingham Public Schools saw her needs early and were generous enough to refer her. I’ve made some good friends here and am very glad to be in a part of the world where nature is so glorious and it is easy to hike every day.