I came to Unitarian Universalism in 1981 as an unchurched, almost middle-aged guy looking for community and companionship on the journey as much as—OK, more than—I was looking for a religious home. But it was the depth of this religious tradition that held and carried me and that helps me find meaning. The opportunities to serve something larger than I am—God—and the support of a community were transformative.

After a decade of lay leadership in UU congregations, I acknowledged the call to the ordained ministry. I moved from the Pacific Northwest, where I had developed a life-long love of the landscape, to pursue formal preparation for ministry at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, CA.

I was born and raised in Bremerton, Washington, a Navy town. My Dad was a master carpenter. Mom was a homemaker and an active volunteer. From both of them I learned frugality, generosity, and integrity. My ancestors were Norwegian, German, and English. Mostly Norwegian.

As a kid I loved activities that promoted close connection with nature in a reflective and collaborative mode more than a conquering one. I hiked, skied (cross country), and sailed.

I have undergrad degrees in zoology and biological oceanography and masters degrees in fisheries, organization development, and divinity. I worked for about 20 years as a senior research ecologist at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory and for a much shorter time as an administrator and editor at IN CONTEXT magazine (now titled Yes!).

I've been a city councilman and chaired a local planning commission. I’ve worked for justice, environmental sustainability, and effective land use planning and conservation.

When I arrived at seminary, I met Judy Welles, who was just finishing her course of studies. We were married soon after, and I have been blessed with her love, counsel, and support in integrating my life and work and in finding respite and renewal.

Judy and I accepted an appointment to be the New Congregation Ministers for the Unitarian Universalists of the Cumberland Valley and moved to Carlisle in 1997. Four years later the congregation called us to be their settled parish co-ministers.

We live in a house built a century ago in Carlisle's historic district, where we also have a large garden. Gardening is my primary spiritual practice and form of exercise. The bounty of the kitchen garden is often found in my cooking and I volunteer as a Master Gardener.

I am the father of three adult children, all of whom live in the Pacific Northwest. Judy and I keep company with a large dog.

I serve as a member of the board of the Clean Air Board of Central Pennsylvania, co-chair of our mayor’s task force on sexual orientation as part of the Carlisle Inclusive Community Initiative, and in various roles that support my ministerial colleagues and our religious movement.

Among the things I appreciate about my ministry with this congregation are the relationships that have developed over time, the role of supporting lay leadership, the on-going challenge of preparing worship, and the opportunity to help guide the development of what I hope will be an enduring institution for liberal religion in the Cumberland Valley.

It's hard to remember a time when I wasn't deeply involved with church. As a child in Wellesley, Massachusetts, I attended Sunday School at the Unitarian Church in the center of town. It was very mainstream; many of the community's leaders were Unitarians, and going to that church was about as unusual as going to elementary school or being a Girl Scout. My parents were sporadic attenders at best, and my brothers begged off as soon as possible, but I loved the old stone building with its dark wood pews and stained glass Rose Window in the chancel; I loved my Sunday School teachers; and I loved getting the gift of a reading book every spring for "faithful attendance."

As a high school student, my Unitarian (soon to be Unitarian Universalist) identity was further reinforced by my activities in Liberal Religious Youth. This continental youth group was where I learned about such issues as civil rights (it was the late1950's), pacifism and the peace movement, and racism. As an officer in the New England region of LRY, I also developed leadership skills, the ability to speak easily in public, and a high tolerance for committee meetings. Even at the age of sixteen, it seems that I was headed for the ministry, though it would be decades before I figured that out.

Because we Unitarian Universalists paid less attention to young adults then than we do now, I was essentially lost to church for many years after I graduated from high school. During my years at Smith College, I attended church only once and then lost interest. My life was already full with scholastic work, choral singing, anti-war and anti-racism activities, and a little bit of social life around the edges. Spending my junior year in Hamburg, Germany, where I traveled around Europe in my little VW "beetle" as much as possible, enlarged my world immeasurably and gave me a taste for travel that I have never lost. Despite language barriers, I found most people friendly and eager to be helpful, thus reinforcing my firm belief that people are much more alike than different despite their countries or cultures of origin.

Living my childhood in the fifties and my impressionable young adulthood in the sixties has given my life a quality of ambiguity and tension that I don't regret. As a woman, I could never quite decide whether I wanted to be June Cleaver or Gloria Steinem. I have always loved being a homemaker, puttering in the kitchen or garden and taking pride in the clumsy but priceless children's art projects that decorated my refrigerator door. Yet I always knew that the world needed my energy, my intelligence and my commitment to somehow "make things better," even though I had no particular career plans when I finished college. It was many years before I found my true work in the world.

The first two years after college were spent working as a secretary at Harvard Medical School. Then restlessness set in, and I decided to move as far from Boston as possible without leaving the country. I threw my sewing machine and clothes into the back seat of my trusty VW (the same one) and set out for California along with thousands of bearded and tie-dyed young people who knew (though I had somehow missed the message) that San Francisco was the place to go with flowers in your hair. It was the summer of 1967, and although I had spent my childhood in New England, it was in California for the next thirty years that I really grew up.

I met my first husband in California, and after a few years in the Bay Area and the birth of our first child, we moved to Ventura, California (on the coast north of Los Angeles) where he had found work as an attorney for the county. Shortly after the birth of our second daughter, I realized that it was time for us to find a church home. The deciding moment came when Anne, then about three years old, asked me, "Mommy, how did George Washington make the sky without falling through?" I knew it was time for Sunday School.

In a classic pattern which I have heard repeated countless times ever since, I came back to the church seeking religious education for my children, and discovered that a huge hole in my own life was suddenly filled again. I threw myself into church life with great joy, serving in many Board positions, teaching Sunday School, working on a capital campaign and filling my social life with my new-found Unitarian Universalist friends.

When my ten-year marriage ended and life became more than a little chaotic, it was my church life that kept me grounded when everything else was suddenly insecure and unpredictable. Over the next few years I held down a variety of part-time and full-time jobs, including two years as a telephone installer and another two behind the counter in a print shop. I tried to be home when my daughters returned from school, tried to scrape by financially, tried to discover my true self as a person separate from any relationship with a partner. During this time my devotion to (and need for) the church was unswerving; this was the place where my values were reinforced and my gifts were welcomed; where my friends received my tears and my minister encouraged my search for meaning in the face of chaos.

During these confusing years, I started to think about entering the Unitarian Universalist ministry. It was a likely choice - I loved the church, my U.U. identity was strong and deep, I was skilled in writing and public speaking, I had strong organizational and leadership skills. But I also had two school-age daughters whom I could neither leave behind nor take with me. After months of struggling with this dilemma, I finally decided that the timing was wrong and I would simply have to wait.

Soon I began working with a group of other volunteers to bring a Planned Parenthood clinic to Ventura County. As the project took shape, it gradually became obvious to me and everyone else involved that I was the most likely candidate for the position of Director of this new birth control and women's health center. I jumped at the opportunity, and discovered that I had found at least a temporary "ministry" as an advocate for choice, a sex educator and a community organizer in the field of reproductive health.

For six years I worked to build Planned Parenthood in Ventura County. By the time I left at the end of 1989, what had begun as one clinic with one full time and two part time paid staff had grown to two clinics and a full time staff of six, several part time staff, and a large cadre of volunteers. I was both satisfied and burned out, proud and unfulfilled. As my administrative responsibilities increased, I missed the one-on-one encounters with patients that had made the work so meaningful in the early years; I missed knowing that my work and my words had made a difference in someone's life.

A diagnosis of thyroid cancer served as a wake-up call which forced me to begin thinking about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, however long that might be. Fortunately the cancer was controlled by surgery, but the call to "something else" became louder and louder. At this time I was participating in a weekly writing workshop for women led by Deena Metzger. Beginning to envision myself as a serious writer, and with enough money saved to live very frugally for a year without working, I left Planned Parenthood to write a novel. Though I worked hard on the novel for several months, eventually I understood that I needed work that would engage me more with the world. And so the thoughts and dreams of ministry came to the surface once again.

I entered Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, CA in the Fall of 1990, the same year that my oldest daughter started college. The seminary years were personally challenging, intellectually daunting, and creatively satisfying beyond my wildest dreams. To put it mildly, I was thrilled. Although I was in my late 40's by then, I understood that ministry at a younger age would not have worked as well for me; I needed those years of challenge and struggle, illness and recovery, loneliness and solitude to prepare me for the work of accompanying others on their own search for wholeness and meaning.

My six month church internship at Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church in Charlottesville, VA in 1993 was followed by a return to seminary in Berkeley for one more semester, and an unexpected encounter with a first year Starr King seminarian named Duane Fickeisen. Much to our mutual surprise, for we had each been divorced and successfully single for fifteen years, we decided to marry and serve in ministry together. While Duane completed his seminary studies and his church internship in Palo Alto, I served the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Redwood City part-time as its first minister in eleven years.

My two and a half years in Redwood City were a time of professional growth for me and a time of numerical and maturational growth for the congregation. We had a wonderful time together. It was difficult to leave them, but Duane and I had plans to serve as co-ministers somewhere, and when the opportunity arose to come to south central Pennsylvania to work alongside the people who had started the Unitarian Universalists of the Cumberland Valley, all our instincts said "Go!" It's a decision we have never regretted for an instant.

It seems unlikely to me that I will ever work as anything but a minister. It took a long time, but I have clearly found my calling. However, life has taught me that the unexpected lies around every corner just waiting to take my breath away. Though the path itself is clear, I don't know where the end of it lies, and I wouldn't predict how or when I will arrive there. I will say this though: it's been a great trip so far!