Quotes from Michelle Huneven

Belinda announced that she had secured four pulpits for Sundays in February and March where our "pre-candidates" would preach; if we only selected three pre-candidates, we'd have to find a speaker for the fourth. "Perhaps you'd like to dust off your preaching skills, Dana," she said. Though pleased, I said, "Oh dear god, let there be four pre-candidates.

Secrets work on me like splinters. I like them out.

My corned beef, a deep meaty magenta, was shaggy tender and served in a wide bowl with boiled cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and turnips.

And just because I was a little more willing and a lot more able to be a parent didn't mean I was itching to become one.

I didn't blame Curtis for coming to what was nominally a Protestant church and expecting to hear about the Bible. I'd also had to adjust to the AUUCC's staunch secularism. Having been drawn there to grieve my mother, I would have loved some divine reassurance, but during my very first visit Sparlo said, "There are no answers, only the eternal questions," and I remember thinking, Damn, one more time, nobody's offering any certainty.

None of the young people knows how to be part of a committee," Charlotte said. "They're basically unchurched.

What about 101 Noodle Express?" This was a favorite dumpling place in Arcadia. Their dumplings were rustic and burly---leek and pork, pumpkin and pork, shrimp and bok choy---and their signature dish, a beef roll, was another life-shifting taste experience: long-stewed beef rolled in a crisp and chewy savory pancake with sweet hoisin sauce and a green chili relish.

Both ministers said their theology was "love." "Love is the doctrine of our church," said Liz. "Love is the thread of the interconnected web," said Phoebe. Both ministers said they attended all committee meetings and most social justice activities. No wonder these women's sermons were so flat: when did they have the time to read and study, think deeply, and hammer out sentences?

Despite spending a whole day on it, my end result read like every boilerplate in the handbook. What church didn't want a superb preacher with a lively intellect and a contagious sense of humor? Who didn't want a warm presence with a progressive social conscience, the management skills of a corporate CEO, and the work-life boundaries of a New Age life coach?

When the search committee named the Reverend Dr. Tom Fox as their candidate, and when the congregation heard him preach and unanimously voted him in—well, almost unanimously, as the usual half-dozen soreheads cast dissenting votes—spirits soared and there was much rejoicing, no small part of which was the enormous pleasure and relief of seeing the interim depart.

So what kind of minister do your folks want?" I asked. "Who cares? They're olds, too. They want someone who will like them more than Tom Fox does. But I think we need someone younger and not some old-school lady minister going on and on with the Mary Oliver and the Annie Dillard." I liked both writers and said so.

Here was a minister who understood the connection between spirituality and food!)

I never knew there was a whole denomination as full of questions as I was.")

I had an idea that becoming a minister would make me an adult with a kind of mystical cachet! My seminary education and internships did make an adult out of me—by challenging and debunking almost all I thought and believed. Today I am far more humbled than exalted by my calling.

Why is it, she said, when you actually do the right thing for once, it doesn't feel good? In fact, it feels so awful you think you are going to die? .... You feel like you are going to die, Patsy, because some part of you is dying.some entrenched tyrant of the soul, and sweetheart, she is not going easy.

Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.

When I started at my first church," Tom went on, "I was on fire with everything I wanted to do. I moved in, opened my office door, and one by one each staff person and maybe half the members came in and complained about everyone else. I called my mentor and said, 'I can't take it! I have ideas! I want to get to work, not be a wailing wall!' And he said, 'This is your work. Listening to people. Managing people.

The AUUCC, I thought, might do well with a cheerful witch.

You know," I burst out, "I would've made a lousy minister. And don't ever let me be church president, either. I'm not sporting enough. It's not a game to me. I lack the nerve for it.

Yes, this is a memoir of a real experience. It is not fiction. I was on a search committee for a senior minister and this is my story of that search. Others might tell it differently.

One great thing about church friends: they buy and read your books.

I could go into some detail about the theological and class differences between the two groups but suffice it to say that Ralph Waldo Emerson was a Unitarian and P. T. Barnum a Universalist.

But I have nothing for her. Not a single idea. I'm not sure I have another book in me. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't." "You said that after the last book." Tom took a big bite, chewed until he could talk again. "Maybe you should come back to church. Lots of ideas there.

What I'd like to know"—Tom set down his eggroll and drew himself up—"is why every time I make a friend in the congregation, they stop coming to church?" The anguish in his voice surprised me. "That is weird," I said. Apparently, I was caught in yet another pattern larger than myself.