Minister
The
Reverend Julie Denny-Hughes
Autobiographical
Essay
I’m
a Chicago Cubs fan, and for a lot of people, that
says it all. It involves, for me, honouring tradition
(my grandfather, whom we called Colonel although he
never was one, was a Cubs fan), undying hope for the
future (there always is a next season), a love of
beauty (have you seen Wrigley Field?), and an
enthusiastic belief in a Great Mystery that offers
love and grace and the hope of well-being and second
chances to us all, no matter what.
From Birth to Young Adulthood
I was born in Bedford, Indiana April 4, 1946, the
youngest of four children (John, Marc, Susie, and
then me.) Until her death on March 21, 2008, my
mother continued living in that house. I understand
“home” and am quick to put down roots
wherever I land.
My childhood was a happy one, with lots of friends
and family around all the time. We lived just up the
street from my mother’s parents. My father’s
father, one brother and one sister lived around the
corner and down another block from us, so there were
lots of family get-togethers with lots of loving
adults giving us kids attention and advice. Of course
I didn’t get all the attention I wanted all of
the time, so I do have a healthy set of neuroses, but
nothing I get very excited about. I am interested in
myself, and I know who I am.
We had a black housekeeper whom my parents had hired
when Marc was born. She stayed with us for over 20
years. I was a caesarean delivery, so mother had a
chance to choose my birth date. She chose Bertie’s,
so Bertie and I had a special bond until her death a
few years ago. My family’s relationship with her
family over the years has been a unique and great
gift for which we are all grateful.
I was baptized, along with my sister and my brothers
and my father, when I was about ten. I don’t
remember being asked or told, but I knew when my dad
stood up during the closing hymn that I would be
going forward with him to claim Jesus as my personal
Lord and Saviour. I did that because that’s what
you do during the closing hymn when you find yourself
face to face with the minister in the front of the
church. We were all baptized, and then we went to see
The Glenn Miller story. It’s the only time we
all went to a movie together. That was the best part
for me.
I was asked to leave Sunday School once because I was
asking too many questions, but that was OK. I liked
being in church with my parents. It is a beautiful
sanctuary with wonderful stained glass windows of
Jesus with the sheep and Jesus with the children. All
very gentle and comforting. No crucifixes anywhere.
When I was very small I used to lay with my head on
my Dad’s lap and look at those pictures and at
the incredible chandelier.
I don’t have any baggage around my Christian
upbringing. My problem with Christianity now is how
it is being interpreted today by the religious right
in the United States. I haven’t given up
Christianity; so much as I have expanded beyond it
religiously. My life continues to be informed by the
life of Jesus, and I have taken on new teachers: the
Buddha, the reasoned conclusions of the humanists,
the radical wisdom of the marginalized, the cycles of
nature, and my own wisdom and insights.
I graduated from High School in 1964 and enrolled at
Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. I had a
very difficult first year (guess I missed home more
than I was willing to admit). After the second year,
I quit school to marry my childhood sweetheart.
A Young Mother
Suzannah was born within the first year of our
marriage (1966). We were both just 20, and my husband
was a Junior in college. After his graduation, we
moved to Chicago for him to pursue a graduate degree
in English at the University of Chicago. Our son
Phillip was born our first year there, much to my
grandmother’s dismay. “Nobody has a baby in
Chicago,” she warned, but we did and he has
turned out just fine.
I went back to school and graduated from the
University of Illinois (Circle Campus) with a major
in American Studies and minor in Philosophy. It was
good for me, but not good for the marriage. Neither
was Viet Nam and neither was Watergate. We left
Chicago in 1972 after my husband received his Ph.D,
and moved to NJ, where he began his career. This was
a very difficult time for us. We had very little
money, and the culture did not include the concept of
a “working wife.” But I went to work
anyway. We needed the money and I needed the
separations from home. My husband tried very hard to
adjust to my needs, but he had his own expectations
of what married life and a wife were supposed to be.
And at some point we crossed a very fine line into
weariness with each other, and were never able or
willing to go back. We were separated in 1978 and
divorced in 1979.
Both Phillip and Suzannah are attorneys. Suzannah
went to Princeton and then to Indiana University for
Law School. She is Vice President and COO of Planned
Parenthood of Indiana. Phillip went to Kenyon College
and Temple University and works for a firm in
Philadelphia.
Phillip married Suzy Dempsey in 1997; they have two
daughters, Meghan Elizabeth (born in 2002 and Melanie
Grace (born in 2003). They live in Yardley, PA, not
at all far from where Phillip grew up. The girls call
me Looey.
Suzannah married Tony Overholt in the summer of 2002.
They have joint custody of his children Max (born in
1998) and Elise (born in 2000). Their daughter Helen
was born in 2005. These young ones call me Gram.
A Second Chance at Love
I met my second husband in 1982 at the Unitarian
Church I attended. We met, fell head over heels in
love, and were engaged within a few weeks. The
marriage was a happy and fulfilling one until he was
charged for sexual misconduct in the church he
served. We divorced after 12 years of marriage.
Work History
My first career, in the computer software industry,
began in 1973 at Applied Data Research (ADR) in
Princeton, New Jersey. I began as a proofreader in
their in-house Publications Department, and quickly
moved into technical editing and then technical
writing -- a field which was in its infancy at that
time. After about five years, I was managing a
department of technical writers for a product group,
producing technical manuals and marketing material
I left ADR and did free-lance work because as a
single mom after my divorce, I needed to earn more
money and have more freedom. During that time I
worked in the areas of voice-recognition technology,
computer-driven printing processes,
telecommunications, and database technology, the
latter at Information Builders, Inc. (IBI) in New
York City. I’m a good “systems”
person. I see big pictures and am also good at the
details of how the big picture gets put together. It
helps in ministry!
I went to work full-time for IBI in 1983 as Manager
of Customer Communications. There were three and
one-half people in the department: two technical
writers, one administrative person who also bought
printing services, and one part-time artist.
By the time I left IBI in 1987, I was responsible for
all the printed material produced by the company and
the department had grown to about 30 employees:
writers, editors, word processing specialists,
artists, and warehouse workers. The variety of the
work was stimulating to me. We were a dynamic and
diverse group of people that produced award-winning
materials in never-enough time. We faced scheduling
and staffing challenges all the time, but learned to
take time to laugh and enjoy ourselves.
This work paid very well and I justified my long
hours by knowing I was subsidizing my husband’s
salary at the church. The work was intellectually
satisfying, but it did not satisfy my spirit. I was
becoming more and more involved at the church, and
that work did satisfy my spirit.
I heard the call to the ministry from a woman in the
Cakes for the Queen of Heaven class, and her comment
was all it took for me to decide to change direction.
I left the employ of IBI, but worked for them (and
then for AT&T) as a consultant as I began classes
at Drew Seminary in New Jersey. As I was learning a
sort-of Marxist reading of the Old Testament I was
also learning how to install and repair all the
public (pay) phones AT&T sells. I literally
“wrote the book” for technicians on all
those phones.
Writing manuals or training materials in a technical
field has an analogy in the writing of a sermon. Both
are exercises in (among other thins) translation. I
know how to translate technical information into
language that non-technical people can understand,
and I also know how to translate theological and
philosophical concepts into language that
non-theologians and non-philosophers can understand.
Technical instructions are helped by illustrations of
the process or the machine. Sermons are helped by
illustrations that are stories taken from real life.
I am not an orator, but rather a storyteller. And
that’s genetic. My mother and her father
(Colonel) are wonderful storytellers. I use that gift
in my sermons to connect to other people’s
experience. It’s amazing to me that my very
personal stories become universal in the context of a
sermon.
Seminary Training and First Church
I transferred enough credit hours to
Meadville/Lombard that my time there was relatively
short. I arrived for the winter quarter in 1993 and
graduated in May, 1995 with my chaplaincy training
and two internships under my belt. I loved being in
school. It was challenging and wonderful to be with
so many people whose lives were drawn in the same
direction as mine.
Seminary training doesn’t really prepare people
for the practice of ministry. I don’t think that’s
the intent. So I took the opportunity in my first
ministry to dive very deeply within myself to find
strength and wisdom and patience and silence to meet
the challenges ministers face almost daily. I took
classes and attended workshops to develop or hone
skills. The UU Community Church of Glen Allan,
Virginia, was a very exciting place to be, with folks
dedicated to this faith and dedicated to providing
another home for liberal religion to flourish in the
Richmond area. I had great good fortune in landing
there. I cannot imagine a better place to have begun
ministry. They continue to thrive, with a 2009
membership figure in the mid-200s.
My decision to move from UUCC was primarily a
financial one. I was very afraid that the
congregation would not be able to supply me with a
pension any time soon, so I looked for greener
pastures. I was also feeling very far from family so
I included Midwestern congregations in the search. I
was invited to be the candidate at two congregations,
and economy won out over geography. I moved to
Raleigh, North Carolina, in the summer of 1999,
excited at the prospect of serving a much larger,
thriving church. It was a good decision; it was a
challenging and rewarding ministry. I left them with
a brand new (spectacular) sanctuary and in very good
shape to become the “large church” I know
they will become. They, too, are thriving.
My time in Palatine, Illinois, was short -- shorter
than any of us expected. It was a sad and confusing
parting for us all. In retrospect, I now see that my
leaving had little to do with the nature of my
ministry and everything to do with my need to be with
my mother at the end of her life. What I experienced
in Indianapolis as “fallow time” was in
fact precious time spent simply being accessible and
present to the people I love.
A few days after Mother’s funeral I felt a
lifting sensation. I wasn’t swept off my feet or
anything; I just felt a little lighter, especially
around my shoulders. I sensed it to be the removing
of the commitment I had made to my family: to be a
loving daughter, and caring sister, and a supportive
grandmother. The lightness was a cosmic “well
done”. I think.
Not long after that, I learned of the concept of
“consulting” ministry. The ideas of another
settled ministry or of some form of community
ministry had not “closed” themselves”
to me; they were merely taking a back seat to a
greater priority. I am thrilled to think of being
back in the pulpit, back at the hospital bedside, and
back in on the planning and dreaming and striving
from which congregations derive their nourishment.
Something or someone or some combination has given me
a broad, expansive, and hopeful view of religion and
of life, and for that I am very grateful. Maybe it
was the look in Colonel’s eyes as he listened to
those Cubs on Saturday afternoons: excitement,
wonder, joy and tragic disappointment are all a part
of all that is. We are all sustained by forgiveness
and hope.
My
Understanding of Ministry
I
believe Unitarian Universalist congregations have the
capacity to be transformative institutions. We have
the energy, the insight and the tradition to
transform ourselves and our society.
Ministry in that context includes a whole universe of
actions and reactions with individuals, with the
church itself and with the society outside the
church. Ministry is whatever it takes to get all of
us from where we are to being the joyous, loving and
fearless people we deserve to be: People who
celebrate each other and the inner-most reaches of
our own hearts. People who are empowered to change
the world.
Ministry is not confined to ordained clergy, but I
believe that ordained clergy have a special role to
play, and that is to articulate the vision of this
faith and of the local congregation, and to love the
people -- and to do that always in the name of the
church. Articulating the vision can happen in
sermons, in adult and children’s education, in
reports to the board, in fund-raising events, in the
way we design our buildings and in the services we
provide to each other and to the community. It can
happen in the middle of a boisterous pancake
breakfast or in the quiet of a pastoral visit to a
dying person. It can take the form of a speech or
action or silence. And loving the people can be
expressed in the same ways, for what is the vision
but to love our neighbours, and to challenge each
other to be our own best selves.
Unitarian Universalism has this wonderful capacity
for grandness. It offers all we need, but we have not
been very clear about what those offerings are. Thus,
many UUs have difficulty articulating basic tenets of
our faith, except to identify those things which we
are not. Ministry must include, therefore, ministry
to the faith itself, which I see as a carrying-on of
tradition, a lifting-up of our prophets in song and
story, a working-out in individual lives of how this
faith can feed our spirits and at the same time
challenge our minds.
I honour our faith by celebrating our insights and
challenging our assumptions, which is something we
all can do on our own. It’s more interesting,
though, when we do it together in the context of
worship.
I claim Unitarian Universalism without any
qualifiers. I take in the whole diversity of our
faith and believe that it is the fullness of it that
is our saving grace. My ministry, therefore, derives
from many sources and traditions, and springs from
our principles and purposes. I prefer to turn those
principles upside down though, so that we understand
ourselves as relational (part of the interdependent
web) first before seeing each other as distinct
individuals. I believe it is our connections, our
relationships, that will make us whole. That’s
what our faith teaches: that we are one
(Unitarianism) and that everyone has the potential
for wholeness and well-being (Universalism).
I can’t imagine a more exciting time to be a
Unitarian Universalist, and I can’t imagine a
more honoured vocation than to be counted among its
clergy.
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