I am a writer, teacher and minister. I live in a hand built house in the redwoods of California's Big Sur Coast. I grew up in the New York area, studied in New Hampshire and California. For ten years I edited and wrote a column for The Pacific, the monthly newspaper of the west coast churches of the United Church of Christ, (the liberal US denomination that is heir to the Pilgrim's congregationalism and was Obama's church). Our proud motto was "Oldest continuously published newspaper in California, est. 1851" - that's old for California. I'm currently very involved in issues of ocean conservation and stewardship as director of Upwellings: A Ministry of Environmental Stewardship. We try to connect folks from faith communities, environmental activist groups and science/education organizations to do education, action, writing and worship around ocean and coastal issues. Before that I worked as a local church pastor, hospital chaplain, campus minister and church bureaucrat. I'm a weekly volunteer guide at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I studied at Stanford University and Pacific School of Religion (Berkeley). I edited Dancing on the Brink of the World: Selected Poems of Point Lobos in 2003.
My weekly column, Blowin' in the Wind: An American View, will look at American cultural and political issues (like money, power, health care, sex and gender, nature, arts, religion, sports) from my experience and outlook: progressive, somewhat hopeful, white, wife and mother, beachcomber, reader, feminist, amateur naturalist and medievalist. Print media I regularly read include the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Financial Times Weekend, the New Yorker, Christian Century and various blogs.