Student of the Prophetic Sisterhood
So I am applying to a few seminaries for Fall 2014. I’m signed up to attend January convocation at Meadville Lombard in Chicago and am planning on visiting the Harvard Divinity campus. But with so much time before I can even make my final decision, I decided to be proactive by beginning the UUA ministerial required reading list.
Many of the seminarians I’ve already met often post on social media about the difficulty in attending courses, internships, writing papers, and all the while, attempting to read and absorb the rather large collection of writings meant to introduce ministerial candidates to the expansive world of Unitarian Universalism.
With a random spattering of documents and books, I’ve chosen as my first reading, a book that touches close to home in my personal journey. The Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women Ministers of the Frontier, 1880-1930 by Cynthia Grant Tucker (Authors Choice Press, 1990.) The women in the book are independent, strong, and always choosing a path with love, difficulty, and leadership in the face of male dominance.
Always one for the unique path in life, and after competing in a few beauty pageants in high school, I graduated early and joined the Marine Corps at the age of seventeen. I was attending boot camp while my friends were attending prom, and I was at my first duty station during our high school graduation ceremony. If that wasn’t enough, I served as a C-130 (Cargo) aircraft mechanic and later did a tour in the Army as a heavy wheeled vehicle mechanic, spending all eight years of my tours as the only female in my workspaces. I followed these with now twenty-plus years in the social work field, working for the American Red Cross in multiple countries and volunteering for many other groups.
Now, much older and wiser from my veering paths in life (I say as I laugh half-heartedly!) I find my faith and family as the touchstones to my life–now merging my social work past, my love of literature (theology is strongly interpretation of the written word, is it not?) and my humble beginnings as a religious lay leader to my fellow recruits while in boot camp.
My path has lost its twists and turns and is now a single road before me. Dusty, rocky, and assuredly over more mountains than I’ve already climbed, but single and chosen by my life’s experiences and my heart’s longings to guide, love, and support my fellow human beings.
So, with the Prophetic Sisterhood, I begin.
traveling tUUsome 