Yet Another Personality Test...
From http://www.humanmetrics.com...
Your Type is
INFP
Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiving
Strength of the preferences %
44 89 44 56
Note: I border between this and ENFP - but it's the dark half of the year.
And... the promised philosophy...
Worship Associate Application
1. Why are you interested in becoming a Worship Associate?
I enjoy putting together religious services - it’s my primary creative outlet. Because it is an area where I have a good deal of experience, it is where I feel I could best be of service to UUI.
2. How long have you been a UU? At UUI, at other churches?
I’ve been attending services at UUI since last December, and I formally joined the congregation in May. So even though I’ve read and studied about the denomination for at least 9 years, in terms of actual practice I am fairly new. However, while my primary spiritual practice for the past 13 years has been earth-based, my primary outlook on spirituality has always been Unitarian: that there are many paths to Spirit, however one defines that, with value in each of them; that the individual search for truth is by definition different as each individual is different; and that the seeking can be as important as the finding.
3. Going all the way back, I was on the liturgical committee for Butler University’s Newman Center (Roman Catholic college group), 1985-88. However most of my experience has been in the NeoPagan and Wiccan communities.
I’ve been an eclectic Wiccan Priestess since 1992, creating religious services for groups of 7 to 50 people for 13 Full Moons, 8 solar holidays, and various rites of passage (weddings, child namings, coming-of-age ceremonies, and funerals) for more than eleven years. We are eclectic, so our ceremonies are creative and flexible, but we also do celebrate with full structured liturgies, sometimes quite complex.
Also, with the Indianapolis Pagan Resource Network and the Pagan Pride Project, I’ve put together public ceremonies for 50-300 people once or twice a year since 1996. In working with the Pagan Pride Project and with Paganism on a national level, I’ve had experience and training in interfaith language use and in learning to put together services that incorporate and include elements of widely diverse religious traditions, which is certainly helpful in a UU context.
I also have been writing a column called “Words and Wheels: Creating Pagan Liturgy” since 2000 for PanGaia magazine, and am writing a book on Pagan ritual leadership and writing.
4. I am founder and High Priestess of the Thalia Clan Eclectic Wiccan Community. This involves both being primary minister for my direct congregation of approximately 16 people, and also being responsible for ministerial training, new member recruitment and religious education, liturgical creation, policy development, leadership and mentoring for two to three other groups of 9-16 people and their ministers.
I’ve also been part of committees planning and executing regional and national Pagan leadership conferences, working on all the exciting but challenging issues involved in being on the ground floor of a developing religious movement filled with intelligent, creative individualists who are uncomfortable with authority, suspicious of structure, determinedly non-dogmatic, yet still want the resources of religious community (sound familiar?).
I have been executive director of the Pagan Pride Project since 1998, helping put together our non-profit status and coordinating communications among our ever-growing number of events - more than 130 this year.
I’ve always been involved in church; when I was young I was a lay reader at my Catholic church (where I was told I did a good job “for a girl” - and they wonder why they lost me!) and I sang regularly at at least 6 different Christian churches. Since the music director I worked with was a close friend of my family, I heard all the stories about what happened behind the scenes at those churches, and learned very quickly that politics and church went together. :) However, I also saw some sincere people who tried to rise above that to do what they thought served the Divine and their religious community, and that sincerity is what I tried to take away from those experiences.
5. What particular skills would you bring to the Worship Associates committee?
I would bring all that I have learned about creating religious ceremonies in earth-based religious traditions. This covers many areas. When I put together a ceremony, I’m involved in all aspects of it - the staging, the lighting, the supplies, the ‘props’, writing the service (or adapting pre-written sources), and actually leading the ceremony. Certainly I delegate, and I actively encourage other members of my group to participate as much as possible, but I have experience in all these areas, sometimes doing them all myself, sometimes as part of a team. For the most part, the services involve far fewer people than services at UUI. But I do also have experience in designing those sorts of rites for large groups. They are by nature very participatory services, so finding ways to get multiple people involved in a ceremony is experience you might find useful.
Also, because spirituality has always been my greatest passion, my reading on the subject is extensive - from creation spirituality theologian Matthew Fox to the Bhagavad-Gita. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover more than once. I’ve participated in traditional and charismatic Catholic, mainline, non-denominational, and Pentecostal Protestant, Wiccan, Pagan, Druid, and Asatru services. I attend a Jewish Seder with my best friend every year. My household celebrates Hanukkah, Yule, and Christmas. I can find spiritual inspiration in solitude surrounded by nature, or amidst everyday life in a busy city. I have a wide variety of spiritual resources and experiences to draw upon and incorporate into services.
I am also comfortable with public speaking: actually, I’m one of those odd people who is more comfortable talking in public to a group about a subject I’m passionate about than I am with making small talk one-on-one to someone I don’t yet know well.
To the other committee members, I would bring my flexibility in working with people. Generally, it’s difficult to ruffle my feathers. I’m fairly placid; I don’t get irritated easily by people, and I’m generally willing to pitch in wherever I am most useful, though by nature I am better at being the grand visionary and must work harder to follow through on little details. I tend towards leadership in the organizations I’m involved in not because I’m primarily motivated by recognition, but because I’m interested in the job getting done. This means that I also tend to be willing to take responsibility for mistakes I’ve made because that’s the most expedient way to get the situation resolved (which makes customers and co-workers happy but isn’t always popular with supervisors who would rather I have tried to cover things up to make them look good, but I digress). And I try to always keep a sense of humor and perspective close at hand. :)
6. What’s important about worship services at UUI? To you? To the congregation as a whole?
UUs are, as a whole, very intelligent, literate, independent-minded, socially conscious, and creative people. Because of this, a UU service needs to be intellectually stimulating, open to individual interpretation, socially relevant, emotionally satisfying, and aesthetically pleasing - quite the challenge! I’ve found that UUI services live up to these criteria, and would want to help the committee continue this.
7. What would you hope to learn from your experience as a Worship Associate?
For years I have felt, to use the theological language of my childhood, “called to the ministry,” though how I define the Divine has changed quite a bit since then. The Catholics wouldn’t let me be a priest, and I had no interest in celibacy - I always wanted a family. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if at about 18 I had found out that the Episcopals would have ordained me and still allowed me to marry: my life might have been very different. But I could not now go back to a single dogmatic concept of the Divine, so that’s certainly no longer a temptation. However, I have for several years considered the possibility of going back to school for a divinity degree and becoming a UU minister. My primary clergy experience up to now has been small-group worship, which has a different dynamic than congregational worship. Being a worship associate at UUI for a few years would give me the chance to learn through experience, helping facilitate UU services and working with a larger congregation, to find out if this could be something I might want to do full-time.
Your Type is
INFP
Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiving
Strength of the preferences %
44 89 44 56
Note: I border between this and ENFP - but it's the dark half of the year.
And... the promised philosophy...
Worship Associate Application
1. Why are you interested in becoming a Worship Associate?
I enjoy putting together religious services - it’s my primary creative outlet. Because it is an area where I have a good deal of experience, it is where I feel I could best be of service to UUI.
2. How long have you been a UU? At UUI, at other churches?
I’ve been attending services at UUI since last December, and I formally joined the congregation in May. So even though I’ve read and studied about the denomination for at least 9 years, in terms of actual practice I am fairly new. However, while my primary spiritual practice for the past 13 years has been earth-based, my primary outlook on spirituality has always been Unitarian: that there are many paths to Spirit, however one defines that, with value in each of them; that the individual search for truth is by definition different as each individual is different; and that the seeking can be as important as the finding.
3. Going all the way back, I was on the liturgical committee for Butler University’s Newman Center (Roman Catholic college group), 1985-88. However most of my experience has been in the NeoPagan and Wiccan communities.
I’ve been an eclectic Wiccan Priestess since 1992, creating religious services for groups of 7 to 50 people for 13 Full Moons, 8 solar holidays, and various rites of passage (weddings, child namings, coming-of-age ceremonies, and funerals) for more than eleven years. We are eclectic, so our ceremonies are creative and flexible, but we also do celebrate with full structured liturgies, sometimes quite complex.
Also, with the Indianapolis Pagan Resource Network and the Pagan Pride Project, I’ve put together public ceremonies for 50-300 people once or twice a year since 1996. In working with the Pagan Pride Project and with Paganism on a national level, I’ve had experience and training in interfaith language use and in learning to put together services that incorporate and include elements of widely diverse religious traditions, which is certainly helpful in a UU context.
I also have been writing a column called “Words and Wheels: Creating Pagan Liturgy” since 2000 for PanGaia magazine, and am writing a book on Pagan ritual leadership and writing.
4. I am founder and High Priestess of the Thalia Clan Eclectic Wiccan Community. This involves both being primary minister for my direct congregation of approximately 16 people, and also being responsible for ministerial training, new member recruitment and religious education, liturgical creation, policy development, leadership and mentoring for two to three other groups of 9-16 people and their ministers.
I’ve also been part of committees planning and executing regional and national Pagan leadership conferences, working on all the exciting but challenging issues involved in being on the ground floor of a developing religious movement filled with intelligent, creative individualists who are uncomfortable with authority, suspicious of structure, determinedly non-dogmatic, yet still want the resources of religious community (sound familiar?).
I have been executive director of the Pagan Pride Project since 1998, helping put together our non-profit status and coordinating communications among our ever-growing number of events - more than 130 this year.
I’ve always been involved in church; when I was young I was a lay reader at my Catholic church (where I was told I did a good job “for a girl” - and they wonder why they lost me!) and I sang regularly at at least 6 different Christian churches. Since the music director I worked with was a close friend of my family, I heard all the stories about what happened behind the scenes at those churches, and learned very quickly that politics and church went together. :) However, I also saw some sincere people who tried to rise above that to do what they thought served the Divine and their religious community, and that sincerity is what I tried to take away from those experiences.
5. What particular skills would you bring to the Worship Associates committee?
I would bring all that I have learned about creating religious ceremonies in earth-based religious traditions. This covers many areas. When I put together a ceremony, I’m involved in all aspects of it - the staging, the lighting, the supplies, the ‘props’, writing the service (or adapting pre-written sources), and actually leading the ceremony. Certainly I delegate, and I actively encourage other members of my group to participate as much as possible, but I have experience in all these areas, sometimes doing them all myself, sometimes as part of a team. For the most part, the services involve far fewer people than services at UUI. But I do also have experience in designing those sorts of rites for large groups. They are by nature very participatory services, so finding ways to get multiple people involved in a ceremony is experience you might find useful.
Also, because spirituality has always been my greatest passion, my reading on the subject is extensive - from creation spirituality theologian Matthew Fox to the Bhagavad-Gita. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover more than once. I’ve participated in traditional and charismatic Catholic, mainline, non-denominational, and Pentecostal Protestant, Wiccan, Pagan, Druid, and Asatru services. I attend a Jewish Seder with my best friend every year. My household celebrates Hanukkah, Yule, and Christmas. I can find spiritual inspiration in solitude surrounded by nature, or amidst everyday life in a busy city. I have a wide variety of spiritual resources and experiences to draw upon and incorporate into services.
I am also comfortable with public speaking: actually, I’m one of those odd people who is more comfortable talking in public to a group about a subject I’m passionate about than I am with making small talk one-on-one to someone I don’t yet know well.
To the other committee members, I would bring my flexibility in working with people. Generally, it’s difficult to ruffle my feathers. I’m fairly placid; I don’t get irritated easily by people, and I’m generally willing to pitch in wherever I am most useful, though by nature I am better at being the grand visionary and must work harder to follow through on little details. I tend towards leadership in the organizations I’m involved in not because I’m primarily motivated by recognition, but because I’m interested in the job getting done. This means that I also tend to be willing to take responsibility for mistakes I’ve made because that’s the most expedient way to get the situation resolved (which makes customers and co-workers happy but isn’t always popular with supervisors who would rather I have tried to cover things up to make them look good, but I digress). And I try to always keep a sense of humor and perspective close at hand. :)
6. What’s important about worship services at UUI? To you? To the congregation as a whole?
UUs are, as a whole, very intelligent, literate, independent-minded, socially conscious, and creative people. Because of this, a UU service needs to be intellectually stimulating, open to individual interpretation, socially relevant, emotionally satisfying, and aesthetically pleasing - quite the challenge! I’ve found that UUI services live up to these criteria, and would want to help the committee continue this.
7. What would you hope to learn from your experience as a Worship Associate?
For years I have felt, to use the theological language of my childhood, “called to the ministry,” though how I define the Divine has changed quite a bit since then. The Catholics wouldn’t let me be a priest, and I had no interest in celibacy - I always wanted a family. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if at about 18 I had found out that the Episcopals would have ordained me and still allowed me to marry: my life might have been very different. But I could not now go back to a single dogmatic concept of the Divine, so that’s certainly no longer a temptation. However, I have for several years considered the possibility of going back to school for a divinity degree and becoming a UU minister. My primary clergy experience up to now has been small-group worship, which has a different dynamic than congregational worship. Being a worship associate at UUI for a few years would give me the chance to learn through experience, helping facilitate UU services and working with a larger congregation, to find out if this could be something I might want to do full-time.