I grew up in an Indiana cornfield. The straight and narrow rows of green and gold shaped the young man I would become. As part of a rural farming and working class family, my youth was characterized on all fronts by monoculture. We were Bible-based Baptists surrounded on all sides by white rural Protestantism.

Though I could see it only in hindsight, my youth was defined by its striving against the threats that diversity might impose on the monoculture. Like the weeds that plagued my grandpa’s fields, effeminate qualities in boys, and the converse in girls, were rooted out through ridicule and worse. Life in the monoculture was hard for everyone. Many a heart’s desires were buried or closeted, sometimes for a lifetime.

Despite being a doubting Thomas theologically, I adored congregational life. I served as church pianist from age 14 and did my best to move worshipers to join the altar call. After losing touch with my traditional faith and family influence during my college years, I gradually shed my conservative values, replacing them with a love of the world and a fascination with religions and cultures different from my own. Travel abroad was a formative experience, expanding my world view at a ferocious pace. Returning home, I wanted more — more connections, more diversity, more sustenance from other languages and cultures — to fill in the blank spaces between the rows of my childhood monoculture.

I met Betsy, the person who would become my spouse and life partner, in Washington, D.C., and we married in her faith tradition, Unitarian Universalism. Upon relocating to her family’s hometown of St. Louis, I embraced the UU practice of congregational, covenantal religion whose theology felt liberating and multicultural, not confining. It was in the UU family that I was able to reclaim elements of Christianity, this time in a historical context, along with the Buddha and Coyote, Theodore Parker and Olympia Brown, and so many other sources of spiritual truth. I was the zealous convert, pouring myself into learning UU history and embracing committee work, including for our Partner Church mission in Transylvania and the church’s Music Committee.

Various spiritual influences conspired to begin calling me to ministry. Beginning In 2012, I began to feel the call to a more spiritual life that would transcend the intellectual. I started a spirituality blog, wrote poetry, and continued to create lay-led worship services at my church. I took up the spiritual practice of trail running and experimented with yoga. A pivotal experience in that period was my repeated confrontation with a large Barred Owl on my favorite running trail. I believe the owl’s message was that the person I had been was dying, to be replaced by a new person who could glimpse people’s souls. My other companions on that journey were the naked trees in winter. Their bare branches reaching to the heavens, unashamed, with all their scars and gnarled imperfections on display, spoke truth to me. To be my true self, I had to be naked and unashamed before the world. And this led me to wrestle with the biggest moral dilemma of my life—how, once and for all, I would deal with my sexual orientation—the truth that had caused me to wrap my otherwise happy life in lies of omission.

Betsy and I got involved with the welcoming congregation movement in our congregation in St. Louis and began marching the local pride parades. Finally, in 2013 at age 46, I broke down the door and released my terrified and exhausted heart into the world, finally coming out. Shattering my wife and family’s world was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. No one knew what was next as we felt our old life dying. But with hard work, counseling, and deep communication, we found our way forward into a transformed future. Family and faith held me as I learned that being whole and accepted for who we are is the foundation of joy and spiritual well-being.

Now free to pursue ministry with a whole heart, I never looked back. I enrolled in the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, attracted by their arts and theology program. Earning my Candidate status was the second hardest thing I’ve ever done, as I studied while continuing to work full time in my career as a communication consultant and putting two kids through college. My spouse Betsy is my partner and support in ministry, now and into the future: she supports our household while also scouting out and sharing new spiritual insights and sermon ideas. She’s all in for what comes next, and that is a great blessing both to me and to any future congregation that we serve.

As I turn toward my future, I know I want to devote my life to parish ministry and to create a ministry that fosters wholeness in people by centering love, relationship, and community care. I have grown spiritually alongside the UU faith tradition. We are both struggling toward wholeness. Both my home church and I have come to an increased awareness of white, cisgender privilege and are finally facing the task of actively dismantling systems of oppression, starting within ourselves. I have come to love my many other growing edges, too. Most of all, I’m coming to the countercultural understanding that more love means more bravery—in my own heart, in my relationships, and in the public square.

With the support of my esteemed colleagues, with the strength of my congregational bonds, and with companionship of my life partner, I stand ready to serve this faith with humility, compassion, and life-affirming joy.