I was once asked if I could give a description of my role as a priest in one sentence. Here it is – I’m the waiter at God’s party who makes sure everyone’s wine glass is full.

I grew up in the Episcopal Church. My father was a priest in Detroit at the same church for over 20 years. The Church, and by that, I mean, the community of faithful, has always been the air that I breathe. Sometimes that can be painful, but mostly it is heavenly. My faith journey involves a call when I was walking home from high school. Interrupting my train of thought I heard God clearly say to me, “I am going to use you.” I paused in my walk and waited. I thought someone was playing a joke on me. I finally said, “I know who you are. I don’t know what you want to use me for, but, okay.”

It hadn’t occurred to me to be a priest as that is not what women did when I was in high school. In 1984 I became a Corrections Officer for the State of MI at Huron Valley Women’s Facility. Before I entered that service God advised me not to see people the way the world judged them, but to see them as his children. It was a simple matter of treating everyone with dignity and respect even when I had to say “No." I am so grateful for the officers and prisoners who taught me things I needed to know about myself and humanity.

I would have retired from there, but God stirred up the waters by closing that facility. That forced me to re-think my college day thoughts about becoming a priest. I began attending seminary part-time while working full-time and raising a daughter as a single parent. I served in Corrections for fourteen years with three of those as a probation officer.

I was ordained as a transitional deacon December of 2002 and priest in June of 2003 and served as Associate priest at Trinity Episcopal in Belleville. In 2006 I took a position as Rector of Saint Paul’s in Romeo, MI, until August 2015. While in Romeo I also served as Dean of the Oakland Deanery for the last five years of my time at Saint Paul’s. In September of 2015 I was called by the Diocese of Southern Ohio to serve a church that had suffered some trauma over a generation or so and to help them discover a new way of ministering to the neighborhood as it began to gentrify while still maintaining an economically poor population.

I do not believe that the literal Eucharist table is where I find my identity as a priest. All of us should be carrying the Eucharist with us where-ever we go. As I drew closer to retirement, I wanted to discover a new ministry that would serve that eucharistic sensibility. In addition to my new role as Interim Priest at St. James', I am a Certified Music Practitioner at U of M Hospital 20 hours a week. My musical instrument is the folk harp. I give thanks to God for the ways in which I’m led to serve and learn from all of God’s people. You can contact me at [email protected].