This blog used to be titled “Journey to Jen,” but my family gave me so much grief about this sounding cheesy that I dropped the “journey to” and just added my married name 🙂 I do, however, think of my life as a journey, with every place, work, and encounter/relationship that I open myself to moving me closer and closer to being who I am meant to be: a human being open to Life and Love in all its forms and open and aware of my connection to all beings–which includes every fellow human, even those with whom I don’t agree.

Here are some of the major points/movements of this journey:

-marriage (over 30 years now and counting)

-more than 20 years of teaching (middle-school, high school, college, adults)

-motherhood (to my four “permanent” kids as well as a few others along the way)

-church pastoral work

-formal studies in literature / education / theology / pastoral care and fun “study” that simply means I try to read widely

-writing / editing (both for others and for myself)

-hospital chaplaincy

I currently work as a palliative care chaplain in a large hospital in Chicago, and though I write “work as,” chaplaincy has come to me to mean a way of life, a way of being in the world that impacts me far beyond the hospital walls.

I live with my husband, one of the above-mentioned kids, and two nutty dogs in the Austin neighborhood on the Westside of Chicago (Westside is Best Side!!!!). My interests include spiritual/pastoral care (particularly for people living in vulnerable areas/situations and people who have experienced trauma), story and its healing possibilities, and mindfulness. My hobbies are walking (in ALL kinds of weather), writing, reading, yoga, sourdough bread making, and knitting (nothing too complicated).

I think of my blog as my “life-notes,” which means it hasn’t gotten / doesn’t get a whole lot of attention when my life is extra busy. I’ve been using it as a place to record/dump my wrestlings/wonderings for a number of years now, so it is certainly a reflection of my journey and the significant twists and turns it has taken.

And, on that note, I’m including here a blogpost that I wrote in August of 2025. I thought it would be helpful to also put it on the “about me” page as it expands my reasons for continuing this exact blog which I began as an evangelical Christian (who grew up as an even stricter fundamentalist Christian) and I now post on as a … hmm, I’m really not sure how to “label” myself now. Probably a “Christian Universalist”? Anyway, more on that below. 

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I have thought for several years of letting this blog go, letting it fade out of existence, a “404 not found” message the only thing to be encountered should anyone actually look for it.

I have thought about doing this for several reasons:

1. I no longer agree with or hold as fully true much of the theology that this blog contains. (I’m aware that in my past traditions, that earns me a label such as “heretic” or “backslider” or someone who’s “fallen away.”)
2. I’m no longer the same person I was when I was doing the vast majority of the writing in this blog. Obviously true of course–the hair is grayer, knees creakier, face more lined–but I actually feel like a different person. Freer. Seriously freer. Sometimes I read old journals of mine (from which most of the old blog posts emerged) and I feel deep compassion for that younger me. “Oh honey,” I think, “you were so unkind to yourself. You were so fearful of ‘doing it wrong.’ You were so bound and driven.”
3. Letting this blog go and either starting fresh (or not) would feel a little bit like leaving behind parts of my past and some of my past affiliations. And, honestly, I regret some of those affiliations.

But I also have some reasons for continuing to write on this blog:

1. Those affiliations and my past beliefs are part of my story. They are part of who I am now and part of my continued becoming. I don’t want to deny that or pretend it’s not there. Growth and change are part of my core beliefs–so I’ve grown/changed and continue to do so. That’s life. (Plus SO many cute pictures of my kids–and some funny things they said!)
2. There IS a throughline, a thread that connects all of it. I look back at the “me” from the years of regularly posting here, and even further back to the “me” of my earliest remembered self, and I see in that little girl, that teen, that 20-30-40-something, the same longings and heart desires that urge me forward today.
3. I am still pursuing what I was pursuing then: the Way. I remember being struck very deeply when I learned many years ago that members of the earliest churches called themselves “Followers of the Way.” When I first encountered this phrase, that meant exclusively “the Way of Jesus” to me, and I learned this phrase/descriptor right about the time I started reading the Gospels in earnest, with the intention of encountering Jesus in a fresh way. I asked myself, again and again, “What would it mean for me now in my circumstances to follow the Way that Jesus followed in the Gospels, in all those interactions he had with so many different people? This Way has come to mean something very different for me than a list of doctrinal or theological statements. It’s a way that’s not easily defined and gets impacted by every person I encounter in all their differences. It requires that I ask again and again, “What would justice look like for them? What would full equality look like for them? How do I learn from their story?” My understanding of the Way is also very much impacted by teachers and writers that I would have been afraid of in my past, people “outside” the approved list, people from other faiths and traditions. In all honesty, there have been times I’ve thought about jumping from the Jesus ship and onto one of theirs, but the stories of Jesus are written deep in my heart and psyche, so the Way of Jesus it is for me–with lots of other influences.
4. The Way of Jesus led him into speaking out. Much of that included some pretty pointed words about the very groups with which he was identified. It led to him examining power structures, inequality/inequity, racism, violence, money and its uses… The Way has led me into doing a lot of questioning and examination as well of my own beliefs, of the gaps between my “stated theology” and my “guiding/lived theology.” The Way should also lead to my speaking up about this part of my journey. (The Way also led to Jesus getting killed. I’d like to avoid that, of course.)

When I wrote all of the above out on paper, I discovered more reasons for continuing than for stopping. So “To be continued” it is. I don’t know that I’ll post all that regularly, but when I do, it will be here.

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Glad our “journeys” intersected here–even for a little bit. 

All the best,

Jen