MY STORY

After graduating from Whitworth University in Spokane, WA where I met professors who had been progressive workers in Brazil, I was inspired to go to Brazil myself. In 1976, I spent a year in Salvador Bahia, Brazil, involved in the student Christian movement and learning Portuguese. There, I was deeply influenced by the liberation theologists Archbishop Ernesto Cardenal, Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, and Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez. My experiences in Brazil influenced my decision to go to Princeton Theological Seminary and to work with liberation theologian Dick Schaull. During my time in seminary, I traveled to Costa Rica, where I served as a Fellow at the University for Peace in San Jose. I took a year to work at UC Davis as an intern in the Chaplain's office and steeped myself in progressive political work on human rights in Central and South America. I found my interest in human rights as well as Chaplaincy.

After graduation from Princeton and ordination in 1982, I took a position and started to work at Columbia University and Broadway Presbyterian Church. I oversaw a program in South Africa as I pursued my doctoral study. Five years after the Rio Climate Summit, I participated in the Summit on Seoul, South Korea as a Theological Reflection Advisor. I bring climate change into the questions I address in my Chaplaincy, especially how we as Christians respond to economic growth in the developing world that we have so damaged already. 

In 1997, I went to Elmhurst University as Chaplain and Dean of Religious Life. Over the last 25 years, I have worked to create a vibrant sense of faith, meaning, reflecting the core values of the institution. Since I arrived at Elmhurst, we have seen the growth of Community Service, Habitat for Humanity, international and regional work trips, Interfaith and inter-religious collaborations, Building of Hillel, the Muslim Student Association’s founding.

Any chaplains office is a site of struggle and conflict - if you want to deal with reality come to the Chaplains office - that is where there is joy, power and love, as well as discord and difference. It is in the Chaplain’s office that we will find our way into a deeply engaged and loving pluralistic world and that has been the gift of 45 years of my career.