In autumn, the lake becomes a haven for Canadian geese on their migration south. For some people, the geese are an irritation: getting underfoot and leaving goose droppings everywhere. I have always loved them, though. I enjoy walking by the lake at dusk and hearing them settling in for the night. Every time a formation passes overhead, I find myself pausing and savoring the moment. One of the first sermons I remember hearing at a Unitarian Universalist church was about how geese honk their encouragement to their leader, and that the leader rotates so that no one gets too tired. Ever since then, seeing geese reminds me of our human community and how our leaders need encouragement, and a break.

Poet Mary Oliver also knows we have much to learn from geese. At this time of year, her poem is often running through my head: "Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-- over and over announcing your place in the family of things."

I hear the geese honk and am reminded of my place in the family of things. I am reminded of the events that led me to realize what my place is, and how happy I am to have found it. Some people like to play sports and spend as much time as they can learning about their sport, practicing it, and devoting themselves to it. Others are the same about their art, or their craft, or their preferred genre of reading. My passion, my place, is church, both as an activity and as an institution.

When I was 5 years old, my parents decided it was time to give their children a religious education. We started attending the local Lutheran Church. My first Sunday School teacher made quite an impact on me and my parents tell me I came home each week proclaiming that I wanted to be like him and teach Sunday School. I remember that going to church was one of my favorite things to do. It filled me with peace, with a connection to a God that was loving and warm.

My later experiences with a non-denominational, fundamentalist church were not as positive as my earlier experiences had been. While attending this church, I vividly remember being asked how I wanted to serve God when I grew up. I immediately said that I wanted to be a pastor; no thought was required on my part - I just knew this is what I wanted to do. My Sunday School teacher, a woman, looked sadly at me in my misguidedness and told me flatly that God did not call women to be pastors, but I could be a music director or teach Sunday School if I wanted.

Though this might have temporarily derailed my desire to be a minister, it became the pivotal event that led me and my unacceptable questions away from not only that church, but away from their version of Christianity as well. It made no sense to me that I had parents telling me that I could be anything I wanted to be, but that God would somehow limit me because "He" had made me a girl.

Even when I left that church, however, my relationship to God sustained me, although my understanding of the nature of God continued to evolve. In college, I briefly attended several different Christian groups, but none of them were able to satisfy both my religious and my intellectual needs. I surrounded myself with a diverse group of friends who struggled with similar issues. I began to explore the feminine aspect of God as represented by the Goddess in neo-paganism.

After college, John (my spouse) and I struggled to find a new community that would meet these needs. When we finally attended a Unitarian Universalist congregation, we had the common experience of "coming home." It was not long until the call to ministry that I had first felt as a young child emerged again for the first time in over a decade. The world had offered itself to my imagination, and I finally heard the call of which Mary Oliver wrote.

At First Unitarian Society in Minneapolis, there is a picture of one of the congregations early ministers- Rev. John Dietrich. Often, when I had meetings in the room in which this picture resides, I would find myself looking at it and thinking about how my own personal religious path mimics, on a smaller scale, the path of modern day Unitarian Universalism. Though I did not have the words or understanding to describe myself as such, in late high school my theology best fit Universalism. College broadened my horizons, and I soon became a universalist, believing that many paths lead to truth. Later, I followed the wheel of the year for a while and developed a reverence to the earth-centered traditions and, to this day, I experience the earth as a sacred mother, supporting life.

My evolving understanding of the cosmos was further broadened when I read the Humanist Manifesto of 1933, for which Dietrich was one of the signers. I resonated with much of what it declared, particularly the seventh item which states "Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant. Nothing human is alien to the religious...the distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained."

Because the sacred and the secular are one, life is sacred. This means, to me, that there is a good-ness about life. At times, I have called this goodness "God," at times I have called it "Goddess," at times I have called it "Mystery." Whatever it is called, this sacred goodness pervades all of life. It is a natural part of life. It is the goal of religion to re-link us to this goodness; to allow us to connect to it. Sometimes the way to connect with this sacred goodness is not clear. Sometimes it takes a struggle to get there. However, there is integrity to that struggle. This is one of the core jobs of a minister - to help people reconnect to that which is sacred.

One of our greatest strengths as Unitarian Universlaists is our ability to engage together in a search for truth and meaning, knowing that we may not agree on the answers that we find. It is the journey that matters, not the destination. As minister, I walk with people on their journeys as they struggle to find their own answers to life's ultimate questions about existence, meaning & purpose, life and death.

This is the ministry that I choose and which chooses me. It is a joy and privilege that excites my being. It is grounded in my experience of the world as sacred and in human beings as an integral part of the interdependent web. It calls me to help people reconnect to one another and to the sacred in life, and by doing so, make the world a better place for us all. Unitarian Universalist Ministry is my place in the family of things and because I have heard the call, the world has offered itself to my imagination.