Two months ago I found myself in my New York City apartment surrounded by boxes and feeling the deep anxiety of leaving somewhere familiar and beloved for the unknown. Studying at Union Theological Seminary for the past three years has taught me to think in a new and exhilarating way. I discovered quickly during my first year that it was no longer enough to have a lukewarm understanding of what it meant to be a Unitarian Universalist or a minister.

Whenever I was asked to write about my faith during my first year of seminary I would write about the people in my home congregation. I grew up in Clemson, SC. After my first week of preschool I came home and asked, "Mom and Dad are we saved?" Feeling like they were in over their heads, my parents immediately joined the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Clemson, a small congregation. As I got older I learned the stories of my congregation's elders. For example, Bernice and Albert Holt who had met in a Shakespeare class in college, started Clemson's first integrated kindergarten, which they later expanded into a center for donations and canned goods. Bernice had been arrested repeatedly while fighting for integration of the schools, including the time she relinquished her white middle class right to speak and be heard to a black man at a debate. I carry many of the life stories of my congregational elders in my heart and they are the basis of my theology as well as the side of my faith that I feel rather than analyze. They are the physical evidence of my belief in something life-giving and larger than any individual.

When I first got to seminary I had the feeling of being loved and nurtured by my home congregation but I still could not articulate Unitarian Universalism or my own place in it. My colleagues, who were Christian for the most part, were always pushing me for details about UU theology and practice. As I learned to disagree or agree with various aspects of their faiths, I slowly found my own. I spent time in liberation theology classes, which taught me to listen for the forgotten or stifled voices in my congregation, society and world. Why was all the African American history I learned in high school written by white scholars? Why did I learn only that Andrew Jackson was "a man of the people" and not about his brutal campaign against the lives of Native Americans? Why did the UU history classes I took focus almost entirely on William Ellery Channing, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Hosea Ballou? Why not Clara Barton, Olympia Brown and Egbert Ethelred Brown? (I'd love to tell you about any of these people if you ask me!)

I studied the faith of Christian mystics and how economic systems might incorporate spiritual values. I worked at Bellevue Hospital on a closed psych ward, with Riker's Island prisoners and in the emergency room and ICU trying to understand the intricacies of pastoral care. All the while I have been pressed to answer questions concerning my views on God/higher meaning, human nature, evil and social progress. Much of this is still swirling around inside me, but I have gained the bedrock of my convictions about Unitarian Universalism and my place within our movement through my seminary education. My conversations and interactions with you all will not only help me explore these convictions more deeply but to live them out in community.

Finally, I cannot say something about who I am as a minister-in-training without talking about Ralph Stutzman. When I was 12, I heard him give a sermon. I asked my parents who he was and they told me he was a Unitarian Universalist minister who had moved to Clemson after retiring from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax, VA!! Listening to Ralph preach, I began to think that maybe I wanted to do what he was doing. He was inviting us to engage more deeply with existence; to fill ourselves with gratitude and wonder for the complexity of it all. He wanted us to be kinder to ourselves and to others and to grow in ways that served the world. Ralph's wife, Anita, brought vibrancy and commitment to our small community, making sure more people got involved and felt included. Ralph and Anita often invited me to dinner in their home. They always spoke to me like I was their intellectual and emotional equal rather than an awkward teenager. Ralph saw a minister in me and waited patiently until I realized that I did too. I am thrilled to continue my path toward ministry in a congregation Ralph once served and more delighted still to find such strong, compassionate and inspiring leadership and a warm and committed congregational community here to guide me as I learn. I am humbled by the wonderful opportunity for growth you all are offering me and I'm looking forward to the fun and fellowship we will share this year!

Cheers,
Eve Stevens
Ministerial Intern UUCF