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Rev. Ralph Blickenstaff Galen
Ralph Galen was called on June 22, 2003 by a vote
of the congregation to serve as the settled minister of the Unitarian
Universalist Congregation in Andover, Massachusetts. He officially took up his
duties on August 1, 2003.
He sees that the UUCiA is a full service congregation dedicated to worship as the celebration of life, being a caring and inclusive community, life span religious education and moral discourse and social action.
Ralph has become associated with the Andover Interfaith Clergy Association, the Merrimack Valley People for Peace, Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty, the Merrimack Valley Project, and Massachusetts Promise the Children.
Awards, honors, and published writings
Denominational and community activities
Non-professional interests
Theological orientation
Personal Statement:
I love the ministry. It is fulfilling to live a life of service in a Unitarian
Universalist community. Ministry requires resiliency and creativity on
everyone's part. It means meeting life's challenges with confidence and love.
When the Dalai Lama said that his religion was kindness he was speaking for me
as well. I fail at it. I am a miserable sinner, but I measure myself by whether
I bring loving-kindness to my relationships or not.
There is a need for Unitarian Universalism in the world. It starts with personal
inquiry and growth. Peace in the world begins with peace in myself. But the
meaning of life is virtually meaningless if not lived in relationship. Unitarian
Universalism is an essentially reasonable, hence non-violent way of life. It
seeks inclusive, evolutionary progress. It respectfully accepts where any person
is but seeks not to leave them there in need. A need that shouts out today is
the need for community. I find my true self by losing my small self in the work
of the beloved community.
UUCiA attracts people who would like to be a
partner in nurturing and building a vibrant community of liberal seekers who
wish to find spiritual fulfillment and outlets for productive social change.
There is no one approved way to be or to act. Spiritual growth and social
justice are as intimately connected as breathing in and breathing out. A
congregation can provide opportunities for self-awareness which invariably leads
to a recognition of our essential interdependence. Humanism, theism, Paganism,
Judaism, Christianity, agnosticism, atheism, etc. - may all be avenues to
greater awareness. Awareness does not depend on a particular belief. We can
practice growing in awareness through study, education, service, contemplation,
meditation, moral discourse, and so on, and verify if in fact we have a greater
understanding of the world as ourselves. Unitarian Universalists are said to be
short on creeds and long on deeds. As William Sloan Coffin once said of us, we
are thin on theology and thick on ethics.
A deep awareness or understanding is the basis
for loving. When we love others as ourselves it is a short step from there to
appropriately helping them and ourselves in the bargain. This is living a life
of devotion, reverencing all life.
Education and
certification:
Lancaster Theological School Parish Ministry, August 1981 to May 14, 1983,
Masters of Divinity
How well I remember the day I graduated. Even
though I was reassured that ministers were entering the ministry at older ages,
after having worked at previous careers, I was anxious to get started. I had
doubled up on courses and was graduating in record time. Sunday May 15 would be
the last service I led as a student minister at the Lancaster UU Church and
there was a baby on the way. Zachary waited for a discrete interval and was born
on May 19th, 1983.
I loved my seminary education. LTS offered more
of a professional than a simply academic education. A Parish Resource Center
provided multi-media resources for any religious program. The Center for
Leadership Development offered courses ranging from time management to conflict
resolution and there was extensive vocational testing.
The school was affiliated with the United Church
of Christ but only half those enrolled were UCC. There were Christians of all
stripes, a smattering of Jews and myself. It was the hope of my New Testament
professor that I would to bring modern biblical scholarship to the UUs. The
Field Studies professor made a big impression on me. Part of that program
included traveling to Greece for a 40-day cross-cultural experience. Also, half
a dozen seminarians who were student ministers, spent a year interning as part
of the Parish Training Program. I served under Rev. Bob Payson of the UU
Congregation of Lancaster, PA, and we met in seminar fashion, where we took the
courses and received the consultation that would best advance our actual
ministries. Instead of learning something that might someday be useful, our
studies could be directed toward real life situations. We daily applied much of
what we were learning.
It was LTS' President, Jim Glasse, who was worth
the price of admission. He was a nationally known innovator and moved the
theologically stodgy seminary, which had its roots in the Evangelical and Reform
Christian churches, well into the 20th century. He actively recruited people of
color and GLBT students. He brought in challenging speakers of international
renown. A gifted speaker and author, he promoted an activist ministry that
reached out into the Lancaster community and included some of the more
economically depressed areas and connected up with the extensive Amish culture.
One of the most important experiences I had while
at LTS was the time I spent doing my Clinical Pastoral Education internship. It
began with a trial by fire, each student assigned as the hospital chaplain for a
shift at St. Joseph's Hospital. It reaffirmed me in my belief that the most
important thing we can do in a pastoral way is to companion people on their
journeys.
While at the UU Congregation of Lancaster I was
the church's liaison to the Metropolitan Community Church, which actively
reached out to and mainly served a gay and lesbian population. I also played
piano for them. I was a member of the Lancaster interfaith clergy group and
conducted outreach to congregations mainly of people of color, building a
coalition on peace and justice issues. I was an official visitor of the
Pennsylvania Prison Society. As a student minister I taught Sunday school and
developed a church pledge drive.
Awards, honors, and
published writings:
Church History prize, Lancaster Theological School
LREDA article on Sexual Abuse Prevention in
Religious Institutions, "Healing in Our Temples"
"How Hard Love Can Be" an album of original songs*
*This I mention that you know how much I value
the role of music in church life and also to say that I have appreciation of the
creative process, of the spiritual nature of the arts, how discipline and
inspiration, imagination and attention to detail interweave themselves in the
expression of beauty. Life itself is in good measure an art form where we need
to know how to step intuitively and boldly, with our whole beings. There is much
beauty inside each of us. It's a sin not to let it out.
Personal and family
situation:
I am a single father of two children, twice married and twice divorced.
My daughter Angela is interning at the Unitarian Universalist Association doing social justice work in the Young Adult and Campus Ministry Office and with Unitarian Unviersalists for a Just Economic Community. She is an artist, piano player, dog and cat whisperer and a born again Beatles fan. She is investigating her college options.
My son is a junior at Clark U. in Worcester, MA, majoring in philosophy and jazz
studies. He is a student representative to the academic council which takes up
thorny ethical issues. He schedules all the recreational music at Clark. He is a
basketball player and singer-songwriter and guitarist.
My philosophy of child rearing was to help bring my children to the feast of
life, even and perhaps especially, to things I did not excel at (basketball,
ballet, mathematics) and then get out of their way. I'm very happy that we can
talk with each other.
I was born on and spent my earliest most impressionable years on the island of
Manhattan, on a street once voted the worst in New York City. I grew up in a multi-generational Greek American home with 9 other family members who shared
our apartment. I feel that I was exceptionally well loved, as if I had received
a permanent inoculation against the worst turns of mind. Even when I'm depressed
I'm hopeful.
It was really a tough neighborhood, but I hardly realized it, as far as being
personally traumatized by it. There were knife fights in broad daylight and
babies fell from their fire escape play pens and I perfected my counting skills
by keeping track of the number of broken windshields I saw on my way to school.
My widowed immigrant grandmother had moved her brood up from Hell's Kitchen, to
the best apartment building they had ever lived in. There was a doorman at 135
West 84th Street. The Ambassador from Argentina lived there. But a wave of
immigrants with nowhere else to live and few job opportunities flooded the
neighborhood and not unlike ourselves, crammed into stifling apartments and
crowded the streets and the blocks lost their prosperity and sense of
self-respect. Our apartment building and the hospital I was born in have all
since been torn down in a program of urban removal. But I remember climbing the "mountains" in Central Park and roller-skating up and down Riverside
Drive and being together and celebrating as a family.
In addition to the regular cast of characters there were people constantly
dropping by and sometimes staying overnight and longer. Once my grandmother
brought home a complete stranger who had been wounded in the Greek civil war. He stayed for a year with us recuperating and I came to think of him as my blood
uncle.
In the middle of my elementary schooling our tight knit family underwent a
diaspora following a violent crime against my uncle and we spread out on an
adjacent island where I wound up graduating from Martin Van Buren High School in
Queens Village at the age of 16. I received my SAT scores back the day Kennedy
was shot.
At 14 I had regular work in a grocery store, stocking shelves, making
I grew up in both the Evangelical United Brethren (later United Methodist) and
the Greek Orthodox Churches and at an early age was theologically
multi‑lingual. We lived in a largely white Catholic neighborhood and
attended schools with predominantly Jewish classmates, on the border of a
largely black Protestant neighborhood. At the age of 10 I was confirmed at
Calvary E.U.B. Church in Queens Village. I was very impressed by our pastor, The
Rev. Frederick Ohms who taught high school science and was probably a closet UU.
He entertained all my questions and promoted me to the adult Bible study class
before I was a teenager.
I wrote, played piano and baseball, sang in the school chorus, the church choir
and on my own, and became an Eagle Scout. I loved the outdoors and our pets,
mostly cats. In our Manhattan apartment we once had at the same time 4 Chow
dogs, a turtle, a parrot and 10 doves. My grandmother could turn no creature in
need away. Not surprisingly I considered a career as a veterinarian. In
the Scouts I worked with a colleague of Euell Gibbons and entered college
wanting to be a botanist and a forest ranger.
In August of 1964 when I was 16, I entered Queens College in Flushing, NY. I
left home and took an apartment in Jamaica, Queens. I worked my way through
school and was financially independent of my parents. My initial interest in
botany switched to philosophy and then psychology. I graduated in February of
1971 with a major in psychology and a minor in sociology.
I majored in psychology to better understand myself and to have a life of
service as a psychotherapist, similar to my ten year old's confirmation dream of
becoming a minister. During my last two semesters I studied in the music
department. I became a student of Zen Buddhism (Mary Farkas gave me my first
formal instructions) and Hatha Yoga (first with Satchitananda) and studied T'ai
Chi Chuan (with William Chen). My first formal contact with Unitarian
Universalism was when the minister welcomed me to run a coffeehouse at the
Hollis Unitarian Fellowship.
In college I volunteered as a tutor in a literacy program, sold Fuller Brush
products door to door, and made travel and lodging reservations for one of the
first companies to computerize. I worked as a research assistant at the William
Menninger Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, investigating
dreaming, gifted children, hypnosis and paranormal phenomena with Stanley
Krippner. I worked as a psychiatric attendant at Creedmoor State, the third
largest mental hospital in the world. Most of the time I was in charge of a ward
of 40 or so patients, trying to make their stay as comfortable as possible in
the era just before the modern medications became available. I worked as the
receiving clerk of the Queens main library.
While the Vietnam War raged on, Queens College was a hotbed of questioning and
outspokenness about the state of the world. I gravitated toward those professors
who actively engaged in critiquing society, and took courses in the philosophy
of aesthetics, the theory of social change, foundations of psychology, oriental
studies, and others because they tossed up everything I had learned in the air
and made me think differently about nearly all that I thought I knew.
After graduating I pursued a career as a singer/songwriter and worked in several
health food stores. I was a truck driver and a construction worker. I
participated in a six months communal organic farming venture that involved
clearing several acres of woodland for cultivation.
I lived in New York City until I was 25 when in 1973 I entered the Clinical
Psychology Doctoral Program at the University of Delaware. I left two years
later having completed all course work and practica toward the Ph.D.
I worked as the Director of Information and Referral for the State of Delaware
and as special assistant to the Director of the Statewide Service Centers,
Charles Debnam, Delaware's first African American director. In 1977 I began
studying to become an associate teacher of Transcendental Meditation, making a
six month long retreat. I worked as an Apprenticeship Officer in Delaware's CETA
(Comprehensive Employment Training Act) program encouraging businesses to hire
minority workers and tried my hand at acting. I acted mainly in local and
regional theater companies, eventually joining Actors Equity, at the time when
People's Light and Theater Company was bringing a play to Broadway. At the same
time I ran my own painting business.
When I met my wife to be and her UU minister, Robert Doss, in Wilmington, DE, in
1979, I was inspired to realize my childhood dream to become a minister, and the
only kind I could become: Unitarian Universalist. Bob would say that he didn't
keep religion in one pocket and science in the other. At last, a religion that
made sense.
In 1983 I was the summer minister for 10 weeks at the Fairfax UU church in
Oakton, Virginia, where I came under the influence of The Rev. Ralph Stutzman.
Twenty years ago Ralph had been engaged in small group ministry for twenty
years. I began my small groups training in leadership and interpersonal
development which continued for the next four years mainly through Laboratory
Trainers/ Consultants Network which included an intensive leadership training
program where we met for six week long sessions over the course of a year. Ralph
was very influenced by Martin Buber, who believed in the power of human beings
to really meet each other, as enlightened witnesses of each other's lives, and
know each other in an I‑Thou manner, and thereby bring each other to life.
Most of our daily interactions are I‑it transactions, where we are dealing
with each other superficially, needing to get something or keep something from
each other. Small group ministry can enables the transformative power of love to
create real community.
Around this time I founded the UU Buddhist Fellowship with the late Henry
Wiemhoff and was active with it from 1983 to 1988. We saw in Buddhism a
comparable religion to UUism, one that was experiential , non‑dogmatic and
did not require faith or belief in the supernatural. It offered
non‑sectarian practices that could be beneficial for humanist and theist
alike.
Beginning in August of 1984 until December of 1985 I was Assistant Minister at
First Unitarian Church in Providence, RI. Most of my work was in religious
education. I gave three chapel services each Sunday to different age groups and
learned the importance of relating to children at their appropriate
developmental levels. I became involved with the Southeast Asian community in
Providence, mainly helping to find housing and resources for immigrants, mostly
from Cambodian refugee camps, and worked with Maha Ghosananda, one of the few
high ranking Buddhist prelates to escape the genocide, and for his humanitarian
work called the Gandhi of Cambodia. I served on the board of the Providence
Interfaith Counseling Center, actively participated in the local Amnesty
International chapter, and was a delegate to the Rhode Island Peace Mission,
which sent a representative to Washington, DC every week congress was in
session, to meet with our legislators. I visited twice.
I trained to lead AYS (About Your Sexuality) and taught human sexuality to
parents of students enrolled in the course. I trained in LIFT (Life Issues
for Teenagers) and trained leaders in our district. I convened a
conference called Strengthening Families which as the name implies was aimed at
developing the positive aspects of family life.
From February 1985 through December 1986 I was the interim minister at the
Universalist Unitarian Church of Brockton, MA, a small and struggling
congregation that was able to call a full time minister by the time I left.
On January 1, 1987 I began my 13 year ministry at First Parish Church, Unitarian
Universalist, of Stow and Acton, Mass. There were about 100 members when I
started and ten years later three times that number, another 100 friends and 200
children registered in the Sunday school. It became a full service church with
regular multi‑generational services, lots of music, a lifespan RE program,
a caring community that looked after its own, a forum for discussing issues of
social justice and programs that met real needs in the community. We built a
separate fellowship building with hall and classrooms. We became one of the
first official Welcoming Congregations and a model sexual abuse prevention
policy was put into effect. I convened a conference in sexual abuse prevention.
A pioneering program to transition inmates from prison was created that required
a year or more commitment from mentors. There was a coffeehouse, a nursery
school, 12 step programs, a food pantry and a lunch program. The church was used
for numerous community and civic events. An Islamic group worshiped in our
facilities while they built their own mosque.
The church grew organically, and mostly by word of mouth, and it had a genuine
community spirit. Roughly half the congregation had taken a course I offered
called Journey in Meaning in which participants wrote and shared their spiritual
autobiographies. We also practiced listening and how to offer constructive
feedback. Most of the Journey groups continued to meet after the initial 12 week
session and shared closely in the joys and sorrows of their group.
In 1990 I completed a 10 week course in hospice care at Emerson Hospital in
Concord, MA, offered to clergy and other volunteer support staff. In 1991 I
became a Social Justice Empowerment Trainer for the UUA. This program is
designed to help congregations discover their potential for unified social
action and help them identify issues they can best work on. I have led 10
workshops all over the country.
In 1992 I interned in Jon Kabat-Zinn's Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program
at U. Mass Medical Center. I then offered similar programs to parishioners and
community members. The key learning here is that pressure is unavoidable but we
can control the way we react to events and manage our stress.
I trained and led an anti-racism course called "How Open the Door"
based on Mark Morrison-Reed's study, "Black Pioneers in a White
Denomination" and did anti‑racism training through the UUA.
I led a course I based on Ram Dass' book "How Can I Help?" to enable
individuals to engage in social action. I designed and taught a lay leadership
course called "Take Me to Your Leader," and a course in lay pastoral
visiting. I taught "Parents as Resident Theologians", "Building
Your Own Theology," and "The New U" orientation course for new
members. I started a meditation group and developed a course called "How to
Meditate" which I offered a dozen times as evening classes and weekend
workshops at my church and 3 others.
I taught a course in Buddhist meditation at Ferry Beach the summer of 1994. I
made three workshops with Thich Nhat Hanh and have been greatly influenced by
his notions of meditation and mindfulness as being part of the routine of our
daily lives. His model of engaged Buddhism, of putting love into action, is one
I hold for engaged UUism.
To sum up, the Unitarian Universalist congregation can be that rare
commodity in our world, a genuine community. In community we have the chance to
grow our fullest as individuals and a community gives opportunities for
individuals to engage in mental and physical activities in which they can bring
their whole selves and transcend their petty concerns. A Unitarian Universalist
congregation can be a powerful force in individual development and
transformation and social change.
Denominational and
community activities:
Wilmington, DE Property Committee member (1979-81)
Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF) Board
Member (1983-5)
NEIDRECOM (New England Inter‑District
Religious Education Committee
Board Member (1984‑6)
Acton Boxborough Stow Interfaith Clergy
Association (1987‑2000) Active Member
Central Massachusetts District (CMD) Social
Justice Chair (1989‑1991)
CMD UUMA Chapter Secretary (1989‑95)
Board Member and President Eliot Community Mental
Health Center (1990‑5)
CMD Board Secretary (1991‑3)
Mental Health Association Central Mass., Board
Member (1995‑6)
UUSC church rebuilding camp (April 1998)
Worcester Peaceworks (an interfaith coalition for
peace and justice), Member (2001 to present)
Blackstone Valley UU Ministers Cluster member
Delighting in family whose interests range from
ballet to jazz to the love of
Theological
orientation: What is your dominant theology, and how do you deal with other
Unitarian Universalist theologies with which you may not be in sympathy?
When asked I call myself a mystical humanist. I
am in sympathy with all Unitarian Universalist theologies and many others
besides. Though not dogmatic or doctrinaire myself I conceive of them as
different dialects of the same basic language. As a mystic I see that there is
much more to this world than I can account for or be in charge of: so much more
to learn, so much to enjoy, and I stand in awe before it. It is a beautiful and
inviting world. As a humanist I realize that if things are going to happen I
might have to be the one to get them started. Freethinking individuals,
following their hearts, drawing on their experience and guided by reason, can
make a lot of improvements and ease a lot of pain in this world and also find a
good deal of joy in life.
I can't say that I ever left the Christian church
and as Christianity is increasingly misappropriated I find myself returning to
the teachings of my childhood and the full blooded role model I imagined Jesus
to be. Since I grew up theologically multi‑lingual and was allowed to ask
questions, I see my religious development not as guarding a particular framework
or jettisoning others but rather a process of continuing to add to the library
of the stories and practices that deeply inspire me. I am to the point now where
I think I see to the universal heart of all religious ways of life. It is not
enough to talk about one's religion. Religion makes an impact.
I have experienced a number of disappointments
and setbacks in my life. I bring to my ministry a seasoned perspective of
compassion and sensitivity to the needs and lifestyles and conditions of others.
I have a sense of strength and resilience that I believe are in us all. Life is
a great adventure and a feast of potentially transformative experiences. Joy and
pain are finely interwoven, but an unquenchable curiosity and a fascination with
people makes ministry well worth the gamble. The aim is to live life to the
fullest, not perfectly. We find our balance by losing it.
What a great and wonderful thing to have the love
and support of a community where people are honest and caring mirrors for each
others' best selves. Fulfilled individuals working together in a common purpose
sounds like heaven on earth.
I suppose every generation can feel that it is
the most challenged but there is no denying that we live in challenging times.
What a shame to sit idly by. A Unitarian Universalist congregation can be a
powerful center of good sense and healing. I would like to be part of a
community where we can find meaning in our lives by living and loving well. I
think I know how to help a congregation be that spiritual community.
Finally,
On April 30th, 2000, I left the church I had loved and served for 13 years. It
was a day made more joyous by these words from my son.
This
church means a great deal to me. I have been able to see so many wonderful
people come here to worship, and in turn have developed many beliefs and, faiths
of my own. Like a great many of you, First Parish has helped make me who I am.
However, my experience here has been quite different from yours. My minister is
the same person who tells me to take the trash out and mow the lawn. He who
tells me that people are innately good is the individual who can't help but see
my faults.
And
yet, I feel luckiest out of all to whom my father has preached. I have heard the
same sermons, sang the same songs, but I have seen much else. I know how nervous
he is on Sunday morning, and how exhausted he is come afternoon. I have watched
him risk his sanity to make this church great. I have heard some of his best
sermons on days in which he bears the most hardships. I see just how much he
cares about your children, because he has looked at me the same way. Now I will
be the first to tell you that our minister is not perfect in his ways, but quite
possibly in his intent.
As I leave this church I hope that you also
have seen some of the same things that I have. Your minister addressed your
troubles and joys with utmost compassion and care. He helped you look at the
darker patches, and revel in and admire the lighter. My father preached here
with great courage and dignity. He has opened up his heart before you all for
thirteen years, and will cherish the ties that he made.
Today
is a sad day for my father. He has been cursed with a good heart and a love for
people. However, I think we all know that his stay here was quite worthwhile. I
am thankful that this church took a chance on him, and that so many people could
appreciate him. But most of all I am glad that my father took a chance on all of
us.
Zac Galen, age 17
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