It has been said that for religious liberals, autobiography is theology. I thought it would be good for me to introduce myself in a sermon that uses my spiritual journey as a way of explaining who I am and what I believe. In addition to making myself known to you, I hope that my sharing my own unique destiny will inspire all of us to share stories, for that is what builds depth of relationship in a church.

There may be life stories that can be seen as a straight line, going from point A to point B, but mine is not one of those. There may be biographies that make perfect sense, where one can easily see how things turned out the way they did. Mine is not one of those, either. Instead, my life has been like a river making its winding way to the sea, doubling back on itself, always on the move, ever-changing. But while my life has not always been straight, logical or orderly, it has always been an adventure.

I was born in New Orleans, to a union organizer of Irish and Creole descent and an Italian-Scots-Irish union secretary originally from Cape May County, New Jersey. My parents were involved not only in organizing, but in civil rights as well, and they decided that though neither was Catholic, they would raise their children to be. It is not as surprising as it first sounds; at that time, New Orleans was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, and my parents thought that we would be getting enough grief, that we ought to at least fit in religiously.

I was baptized, and attended Catholic elementary school, start-ing with kindergarten. Sunday and holy day Mass attendance was required, and in addition, during school there were Friday Masses. By the time I went to high school, I figure I had participated in ap-proximately 846 Masses. I don’t know how else to phrase this so it will be intelligible, but I always felt called. I first began to be aware of a feeling of being meant for something when I was 6, in the 1st grade.

In the late ‘50s, I watched with the rest of the nation the events unfolding in the south, as black people peaceably demon-strating for their rights were set upon by white people with dogs and fire hoses. I saw with horror the courageous acts of schoolchild-ren like myself result in violence and arrest. In 1960, it all came home with the desegregation of New Orleans public schools by little Ruby Bridges, only a year younger than me, and the violent protests by angry working class whites. (My father served on the committee that made the decision to integrate.) I felt somehow connected; something in me was saying, You need to be part of this.

I began having experiences during Mass that I could neither explain nor share. You should be doing this, I would hear in my head as I watched the priest during the Mass. And it wasn’t so much that I felt like I wanted to be doing what he did, I felt like I ought to be, that I needed to be.

I learned to keep these feelings to myself. To share with friends only got me laughed at, and to tell grown-ups got indulgent smiles and careful explanations of why I couldn’t be feeling what I was feeling. Telling the nuns or priests was the worst of all: congratulations on having a vocation to enter the convent. So I hid my feelings from everyone.

Stuffing down intense spiritual yearnings is not a good way to deal with them. I grew more and more alienated. In addition to my sense of call, I was also experiencing serious questions and doubts about doctrine -- questions and doubts I had the temerity to raise in religion classes, thus earning the enmity of my teachers. I wanted to believe and be like everyone else; what was happening did not seem to be by my choice -- but I couldn’t force myself to believe things I didn’t believe, even though a part of me wanted to fit in.

The upshot was, despite my sense of being called and my deep love of Catholic ritual, in my 8th grade year I refused a full-tuition scholarship to a Catholic high school and entered the first public school of my life. And I left my home church and began attending services with a non-parish Catholic group called a “community” -- an innovation allowed by Pope John XXIII and Vatican II.

My connection to the Community of Christ Our Hope gave me a glimpse of a new kind of religion. Lay people worked with the priest to create the Mass, and readings in addition to Scripture were included. We sang folk and rock songs, met in smaller, more inti-mate spaces, and shared social activities. Relationships were non-hierarchical, and lay leaders were elected, not chosen by the priest. Although Catholic doctrine was still present, it was de-emphasized if not ignored. In short, in many ways, it functioned as a sort of Cath-olic UU congregation -- so you won’t be surprised to hear that after a few years, the bishops cracked down, first discouraging the com-munities, then disbanding them. When the end came, I felt disillu-sioned and hurt and once again alienated and devalued by the Cath-olic Church. This time the move was permanent -- I left the church or, as I like to say, it finally left me.

I had absorbed just enough Catholicism to think that I had left “the one true church.” In those days, Catholic children were taught nothing about the rest of Christianity (except of course to say that they were wrong), let alone about other, non-Christian faith traditions. So I was woefully ignorant about religious alternatives. Thinking I had none, I joined the ranks of the “unchurched” and put my feeling of being called into political and social action. That work, sometimes passionate, sometimes contentious, became my church for the next 10 years

I do not regret a moment of those years. The work we did -- against the war in Vietnam, for equal rights for women and gays, in support of the rights of farm workers, against the proliferation of nuclear power and the Bomb, against the systematic exclusion of the poor and people of color from adequate health care, for the election of the first black mayor of New Orleans -- made me feel as though I was on the side of the angels. The relationships I made were power-ful reminders of how religious community should be. And there were moments -- such as when Dutch Morial was elected -- when I felt lifted up above myself, into something larger and more impor-tant. But there was still something missing, a lack I felt deeply but had no words for.

In 1982 I got married and had a baby. That’s a simple enough statement, but my religious and spiritual longings turned my preg-nancy into a kind of ritual. I, who love to eat anything, religiously followed a special diet; I, who hate to break sweat, joined a pregnancy exercise class and attended faithfully. I engaged a midwife and planned a homebirth with the fervor of the newly converted. After a long labor (I’ll spare you the details), Stephen was born and placed in my arms. It was a moment I will never forget; I felt connected horizontally and vertically with all women, living and dead, who had ever given birth. It was powerful, transforming, transcendent.

But the new baby brought a recurrence of the same old ques-tions, with a new urgency. “What will we tell the baby?” his father and I asked each other anxiously. We didn’t have an answer and we felt obligated to find one. We need a church, we decided. We would do it methodically, logically. We would find one that would give our son answers we didn’t disagree with too much, where we wouldn’t feel we were being intellectually dishonest. The trouble was, neither of us knew of such a church.

We started with the Catholic church across the street. It was an exercise in nostalgia, and we knew it could not be our religious home. We went to the religion page of the newspaper and prepared for the next week’s scientific search for the right church. One caught our attention, where Stephen’s father had heard a lecture by anthropologist Ashley Montague, and where I had arranged a forum during the Morial campaign. “Let’s go there next,” we said.

The next Sunday, we showed up, too early and over-dressed, at First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans. It was August 1983; the church was celebrating its 150th year as a Unitarian con-gregation; unbeknownst to us, the minister was on summer leave, and the service was lay-led. But we enjoyed it and the friendly at-mosphere at Coffeehour, when many people made a point of talking to us, and we picked up a lot of pamphlets, which we diligently read at home afterwards. The scientific search for the right church home ended that day. We joined the church within weeks, and rapidly became active.

Some of you may be able to relate to my extremely mixed feelings on first discovering Unitarian Universalism. I was overjoyed to find a religion that I thought I had made up in my head; I had a tre-mendous sense of finally, at long last, coming home. I felt com-forted and happy beyond words to find a church that wasn’t going to deny my experience or ask me to suppress my questions and doubts or tell me to say things I didn’t believe.

But I also felt something close to anger. Where have y’all been all my life? I found myself thinking. This church had been around since 1833, and I never knew anything about it. What a difference it would have made in my life had I known about Unitarian Univer-salism when I felt so lost and so alone. The very depths of my relief and happiness at finally finding UUism riled me up -- I could have felt this years ago, I thought, if only somebody had bothered to tell me there was such a thing.

I became a devout Unitarian Universalist. I threw myself into the life of the church: being a greeter and coffeehost, teaching Sun-day School, taking adult education classes, volunteering for fund-raisers, never missing worship. I had found a church home and it was good.

Meanwhile, my work as manager of the Laura Ashley shop was not everything I thought it would be. There were times I was afraid that my work and my code of ethics were at odds with one another. My district manager suspected I might not have the right attitude to be a good store manager. The pressure grew to the point where al-most every night’s sleep was interrupted by nightmares, and I broke out in a stress-related rash. After months of this, and long talks with my husband about how we might manage, I quit my job. With-in weeks, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer and underwent emergency surgery.

I spiraled into a spiritual and emotional depression. Any chance of having more children was lost; I had given up a job I ought to have loved, and I was afraid of the future. My life had no larger meaning, no purpose. What was it all for, really? Was there nothing bigger I could commit myself to?

Through this difficult period, the congregation and minister at First Church brought me strength and hope and a sense of connec-tion. A few weeks following my surgery, when the church embarked on a search for an administrator, I thought, who could be more suited than a former store manager with a strong social justice bent? If I can run a store with a million-dollar budget, surely I can handle a church with a budget of only 1/10 that.

In 1985, I was hired. I answered the phone, handled all build-ing usage and rentals, edited and published the newsletter on an old mimeo machine, printed the Orders of Service, arranged for guest speakers, and received and processed the mail. I reorganized all the old church files, and kept the church calendar. After a while, the minister was relying on me to pick readings and hymns to go with his sermons, and I even led a service or 2 when he was out of the pulpit. Soon he was jocularly referring to me as the “assistant min-ister.” I began to think what a shame it was I had not found UUism earlier in life, before I married and had a child. “I should’ve become a UU minister,” I thought. “If only I had known about it, I would’ve been a good UU minister.”

During this time, the UUA published the “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” curriculum, and our church was one of the first to pur-chase it. The impact this course on feminist spirituality and pre-Christian goddess religions had on me can hardly be described. For the first time, I recognized that many of the rituals and holidays I loved from Catholicism were actually pagan in origin. I realized how the pervasive voodoo influence on New Orleans culture could be incorporated into my new spiritual life. I felt how the image of a female deity changed the religious picture for me, and I was deeply drawn to this kind of spirituality. I became an enthusiastic UU pagan, and joined the Covenant of UU Pagans.

In the spring of 1986, the first WomenSpirit weekend was held at The Mountain, the UU camp and conference center outside of Highlands, NC. I was sent there as my Mother’s Day present, and was swept away by the mystical beauty of the setting as well as by the spiritual power of the gathered women of all ages. I met a woman my own age who told me she was planning to enter semin-ary in 5 years. I stood as if struck by lightning. It was not too late for her to begin 5 years from now, and I had been thinking it was already too late for me. It was not too late. I could still become a minister -- if it wasn’t the craziest idea in the world. When I arrived home after that momentous weekend, I could only blurt, “I want to be a minister!” when my husband asked me how it had gone. “What a wonderful idea!” was his response.

In the weeks and months that followed, I tried out my idea on everyone and anyone, waiting for someone to tell me why it was a bad idea, why it was stupid, why I couldn’t do it. To my surprise, no one did. My minister was thrilled, saying, “I was waiting for you to find out.” My church friends supported me wholeheartedly, and my old friends were also affirming. My family members were, in their own way, positive about it, and even at my high school reunion, folks said things like, “You were always kind of like a minister to us.”

But UU seminaries were very expensive and very far away. The only distance-learning allowed then was for ministers of reli-gious education, not parish ministers. I did not want to disrupt our home life, so moving away for seminary was unrealistic. The alter-native was to attend one of the local seminaries, either Southern Baptist or the Institute for Ministry at Loyola. A glance at the 2 cata-logs showed that only one would be welcoming to a woman with a decidedly liberal bent, and so it was in 1989, that my spiritual search came full circle as I entered a Catholic institution in order to become a Unitarian Universalist minister.

Christianity had reentered my life the year before. In ‘88, I attended my first General Assembly and heard for the first time a sermon by UU Christian ministers. I was deeply moved by the re-telling of the Jesus story from a Unitarian Universalist perspective. I saw how liberal Christianity was not only historically part of UUism, but a living breathing presence; I saw how it was radically different from the Catholicism of my childhood. However contradictory it may sound to you, I realized I could be Unitarian Universalist, pagan -- and Christian too. I joined the UU Christian Fellowship, and began to reincorporate Christianity into my life.

My work at Loyola brought me great joy and excitement. In many ways, being part of that community was one of the happiest times I can remember -- as long as I ignored the growing distance between Stephen’s father and me.

In May of 1991, my dad died of congestive heart failure. Even though we had been warned, his death was a great blow to me. I felt as though my “protector,” the person who had always loved and supported me no matter what I did, was gone. I was devastated.

That year, after a particularly intense and grueling CPE chaplaincy at a local hospital, I was chosen to intern from January to June 1992 at the prestigious Cedar Lane UU congregation, one of our largest churches, located in suburban Washington, DC. And so I kissed my husband and son good-bye, making pledges of regular phone calls and letters, to begin my 6 months of being alone and learning on the job to be a UU minister.

Those 6 months turned out to be the most painful of my life. My mother, who had always been so solicitous of my father’s health, collapsed and died of cancer in just a few days. I was able to fly back to New Orleans and be with her during her final hours and to help plan her funeral service. The Cedar Lane congregation was a great help to me, as were my internship supervisors, my colleagues at Wesley Seminary, and my mentor and friends at First Church. Then, seemingly out of the blue (but not if I had been paying attention), Stephen’s father announced that he wanted a divorce.

What got me through this terrible period, when I lost, in rapid succession, my father, my mother, and my marriage, was my reli-gious faith and the community of Unitarian Universalists who sur-rounded me. I honestly do not believe I could have survived intact and whole without them both.

I completed my internship and returned home in July of ‘92. I completed my final semester and graduated in December; my div-orce was final that same month. I began a part-time ministry with a small congregation in Ellisville, Mississippi. I threw myself a “New Life” party to celebrate graduation, starting my ministry, becoming single -- and turning 40.

In February 1993, First Church celebrated its 160th anniver-sary and my ordination in a beautiful ceremony that included de-nominational officials, my internship mentor, professors from sem-inary, and my family and friends. Soon I was in search, and was called to the UU Church of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1993 -- thus enabling me for several years to be able to claim myself as the “Chattanooga UU.”

The ministry in Chattanooga -- like all ministries, I suppose -- has had its ups and downs. It is a congregation with a troubled 50 year history, with a tendency towards ministerial turnover. The leadership wanted the church to grow, but some church members became uncomfortable with the changes that were necessary for that growth to occur. All in all, I think it can be called a successful ministry.

Several things occurred during that ministry that make me proud: 2 former presidents of the congregants have discerned a call to ministry (one has been ordained and the other is in seminary), and there are now in the Chattanooga church a Buddhist group, a pagan group, and a spirituality group. This shows me that I can empower congregants to move along their own spiritual paths, and that I can help a church become more theologically diverse. The final thing is more personal: in the 3rd year of my ministry, a long-time member, a staunch agnostic, resigned, saying he no longer agreed with trends in Unitarian Universalism. Nonetheless, he and I kept in touch, and I was at his side when he died at the age of 95 several years later. Among his papers, his family found a note which read: “If Melanie is no longer the minister at the church, fly her in for my funeral.”

A river begins its journey as a small stream, grows in depth, and tumbles in ever-growing and ever-changing twists and turns until it reaches the sea. As with any of you or any human being anywhere, the river of my life is made up of good times and bad, joys and sorrows, that form who I am and how I relate to God and other people. I tried for years to ignore the inner voice that told me who and what I was supposed to be -- and found that the effort fu-tile. The short answer to the question, “How did you become a minister?” is that I finally followed my heart, and did what I had to do, what I believe I was always meant to do.

I recommend that you, too, pay heed to your inner voice and follow your heart, wherever it might lead you and however crazy it might seem at first. You may just find a spiritual adventure that makes life worthwhile. So might this be for all us! AMEN -- ASHE -- SHALOM -- SALAAM -- NAMASTE -- BLESSED BE!

Copyrighted 2002, Melanie Morel Sullivan. This material may be used by other Unitarian Universalist churches with attribution to the author and the Unitarian Universalist Church in Cherry Hill. Commercial distribution is prohibited.