- The Rev. Clare L. Petersberger I was born in Washington, DC in May 1961, the same month and year the religious denomination that was to influence and shape my life was constituted in Boston as the Unitarian Universalist Association.
A life-long UU, I attended Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Maryland where the youth Sunday school classes offered me a foundation in our free religious tradition. As a senior in high school, I taught the class of five-year-year-olds and entered into a challenging theological dialogue with one of the students named Alice. She, after having listened to my explanation of the festivals of Passover and Easter, was curious to know to know how Jesus rose from the dead since her grandfather had not risen from the dead when he died.
Curiosity being an inherent UU trait, my curiosity about theology was further piqued by an art project in a teacher's training workshop in which participants were asked to draw a time-line of their concept of God from their first childhood memories to the present. I was amazed, along with my fellow participants, how our images of God had changed so often in our lifetimes. We explored different questions of ultimacy which had arisen in our lives. We discovered the varying responses and images which we felt were appropriate and in what contexts and environments our faith had been grounded, challenged, and transformed.
When I arrived at Middlebury College, in Vermont, I intended to continue my theological journey. I asked the chaplain about a local Unitarian Universalist church and he said that the closest church was forty miles away in Burlington, Vermont and that it had beautiful architecture. For a freshman, forty miles without a car was daunting and thus I began a sabbatical from active involvement in a church. (I'm happy to report, twenty years later, that an active UU community has been established and is thriving in Middlebury, VT!) However, theology was never far from my thoughts and during a junior year abroad program in France, I took a course at the local Protestant seminary on the twelve enigmas of the Hebrew Bible. To this day, they remain an enigma to me!
Upon returning from France, I was torn between pursuing an acting career and ministry and applied to graduate programs in both. My minister at Cedar Lane, The Reverend Ken MacLean, advised me that "Nothing in life is ever wasted in the ministry." So off I went to study acting in New York City. That proved to be a soulless experience. The acting teacher entertained the class with crude sexual, religious and racial jokes at the expense of certain members of the class. While I learned little about the craft of acting, I realized the importance of moving with a community through time.
After eliminating acting as a career, I began the Harvard Divinity School in the spring of 1984. I graduated in June of 1989 and was ordained by the Cedar Lane Unitarian Church.
During my studies, I had served as student minister of The First Parish in Cambridge, MA, a congregation with a 371 year history, whose Paul Revere baptismal bowl was displayed in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and which still incorporated a Biblical reading in every worship service. And I did my ministerial internship with Eliot Unitarian Chapel in Kirkwood, MO, a congregation with a 48 year history, which had a tradition of a raucous annual Madrigal Dinner and whose members loved to laugh in every worship service. These experiences introduced me to the diversity of the congregations within our Unitarian Universalist Association. What both had in common was a commitment to our free religious tradition.
This training served me well when I began ministry with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Midland, Texas in August of 1989. This congregation is located in the buckle-of-the Bible-belt. From having the second question a stranger asked be, "What church do you attend?" to having their young children come home from public school parroting, "Swing high for Jesus," members of the UU Church of Midland knew that the mission of a church committed to freedom of conscience in religious matters was not to be taken for granted.
While serving the Midland congregation, I met my late husband Tom Whiles. I was honored to have members of my congregation participate in our wedding on September 20, 1997.
In 1999 I was called to minister with The Towson Unitarian Universalist Church. It is a pleasure to serve a congregation located in a university town, where members and friends, like Alice, reject the idea that to believe in a wildly improbable idea, one simply needs to take a deep breath and shut one's eyes. Here, the mystery of the universe calls us to the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
But the breadth in TUUC’s interest in the relationship of super string theory to process theology is matched only by its depth. Members and friends know only too well how Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle applies to personal life experience. Their response is tremendous care and love. My late husband Tom, and I, experienced this during his terminal illness.
The compassion of members and friends of TUUC extends out into the community and wider world to feed the hungry, house the homeless, educate the illiterate, support recovery from addictions, lobby for civil rights, join with others working for justice around the globe and develop good disciplines to steward the earth.
My own work in the community involves serving as Christian Co-Chair of the Interfaith Dialogues of the Baltimore Jewish Council, to promote greater understanding of religious pluralism; serving on the Board of Planned Parenthood of Maryland to promote quality reproductive health care for women and men; and serving as a volunteer Chaplain for the Baltimore County Police and Fire Departments to provide a nonsectarian religious presence for ceremonial occasions as well as times of crises in the lives of the public.
My personal interests currently include exercising in a warm water pool, learning Bach's Two-Part Inventions, attending local theater productions, reading William Trevor short stories and caring for a 17-year-old calico cat.
I welcome the opportunity to get to know you. Please visit The Towson Unitarian Universalist Church and get to know us! | 
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