Hello again!
Last month I offered an initial introduction that mainly contained practical information about how to best contact me, my typical schedule, and the like. I said there I’d follow up with some personal, professional, and spiritual background, and I’m happy to share that with you now.
I grew up in St. Paul, MN, third in a family of four boys. As a youngster I spent countless hours at the local rec center and park, including lots of skating and hockey during the long Minnesota winters. Basketball became my main sport in high school and beyond, and in college I got hooked on tossing a Frisbee, which I still greatly enjoy. I also love nature and the outdoors, and hike and bike whenever possible.
My college educator parents moonlighted as musicians in a liberal Lutheran church in Minneapolis, and though the theology never took I still appreciate the community this provided. With dad the choir director and mom the accompanist/organist I came to appreciate music early. I also started singing while young, and later performed in several high school musicals. Music remains one of my staple soul-foods, and I love attending concerts of many musical genres, preferably outdoors.
While I had many advantages growing up, it wasn’t without difficulties. To share one example, when my younger brother Tim was born with Down syndrome, my late father’s decision that Tim would become a ward of the state and thus not live at home caused a rift and ongoing tension between my parents. They were wonderful people, but the unprocessed feelings of loss, anger, and misplaced responsibility in my small being led me to later emotionally withdraw from my family. And with adolescence I began a decade of self-medicating my inner hurt and confusion. While I don’t recommend the training method, I now know this pain and struggle began to open me to empathy, and later to helpful psycho-spiritual understandings. (Incidentally Tim has now lived in a loving group home for decades, and long been re-integrated into the family.)
Eventually I found my way into restorative recovery—then quickly into places I hadn’t imagined. Because done with college, and wondering why I couldn’t get excited about applying to law schools, in the summer of 1987 a rapid series of synchronicities brought me from St. Paul to a unique graduate program at Holy Names College (now University) in Oakland, CA. Founded and led by renowned progressive theologian Matthew Fox (Original Blessing, et al.), the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality’s focus on an earth-honoring spirituality and ethic emphasizing compassion, creativity, and inclusive justice (including for earth’s non-human inhabitants) was revelatory. It also revealed why I’d hesitated about law school. Because only in encountering this program’s diverse spiritual teachers and traditions (in hindsight the milieu was very UU-like), as well as the critical perspectives these engendered, were the questions of my searching soul finally articulated, and the beginnings of some answers found.
My desire to share what I learned moved me to do further grad work in mass media at San Francisco State. For some years I then worked in various facets of the media field, which included moves to Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. In LA I got married to a lovely woman named Ann, and soon became a dad to a terrific daughter (now 25) and son (22). But our marriage didn’t fully work, and we divorced amicably in 2011.
Though respectful, this was heartrending. It was also becoming distressingly clear to me that the form in which I’d been working wasn’t the best vehicle for the viewpoints I wanted to share. I explored new options (teaching, social work, counseling), but like law school earlier none felt quite right. So in the fall of 2009, newly separated and without work, I visited the UU Fellowship in Thousand Oaks, CA, mainly to explore it as a possible spiritual community for my kids.
Or so I thought. Because sitting alone in the sanctuary before my first service, feeling more than a bit lost and like I had disappointed if not totally failed myself and others on several counts, I flipped through Singing the Living Tradition. I had only been to a dozen or so UU services, and was now astonished to find several poems and readings in the back of the hymnal I’d encountered elsewhere on my own; words that had deeply sustained and inspired me. I began to weep. For the pain and losses, and also because for the first time in what seemed like forever, I felt like I was home.
This led to conversations with the Interim minister there, who after hearing my background and aspirations encouraged me to pursue UU ministry. I ended up attending the UU Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, a mixed on-site/distance learning program that included interning at Neighborhood UU Church of Pasadena. Upon graduating in 2014 I became the minister of the Santa Clarita Valley UUs in northern LA County for five years. I subsequently served the Humboldt County UU Fellowship from 2021-22 as a contract minister, then as Interim minister in Duluth, MN for one year, before serving as UUCPA’s Sabbatical minister the latter half of 2023.
So as it turned out my tears that Sunday morning in Thousand Oaks ultimately heralded a dual homecoming—because they also called me to my true vocational dwelling. I’m grateful this call has now brought me back to your spiritual home—and delighted to begin sharing it with you again.
Many Blessings,
Rev. Peter Farriday
(he/him/his; and “Peter,” or if you prefer, “Reverend Peter,” is fine for casual interactions)