The Rev. Carol Bodeau

As Assistant Minister of Religious Education and Membership at UUCMP, I have the honor of serving our intergenerational community in the classroom, in the sanctuary, and in the daily workings of congregational life.

CHILDREN’S RELIGIOUS EDUCATION: As the head of our programs for children and youth, I strive to create an environment that facilitates and encourages the growth of each individual’s spiritual self, and that supports the creation of deep community bonds.  Working with our Committee on Family Ministry, and with the congregation as a whole, we create a truly intergenerational community where people of all ages can come together to share, learn and grow in mutually rewarding ways.  Our children and youth participate with the community in all areas of congregational life:  worship, social justice work, celebrations and rites of passage, and taking care of our space and one another.  We work together, people of all ages, to find and share the best of what is within each of us.  And together we strive to co-create a community, a world, which affirms life in all its forms.

MEMBERSHIP: As facilitator of the Membership Team, I support the many ways our community invites, welcomes and recognizes individuals and families who choose to make this community a place to visit, to rest for a while, or to call home.  Membership in a congregation is a covenantal experience, which means that sharing in the life of community is about making promises: promises to ourselves about being present for our own lives and the life of the community as a whole; promises to one another about how we will treat each other—with compassion, open minds and open hearts; and promises to our larger world, about being willing to share our best gifts in the service of all of life.  No matter how long you are with us, we invite you to find this a place to nourish your best self, and to share that self with the community of all creation.

PERSONAL BACKGROUND: I am the happy mother of two wonderful teenagers, Shannon and William, and make my home in San Mateo where their schools and friends are located.  I was raised in Michigan, where my family was active in the local Catholic church.  I discovered Unitarian Universalism in 2001, and graduated from Starr King School for the Ministry in 2008.  I was ordained in 2009.  My own personal spiritual practice is earth-based, and I have been a practitioner of earth-based and energy healing traditions for over 20 years.  I have a PhD in English and Native American Studies, and was a college professor in my previous career.  I have also been a student of Kabbalah, the mystical tradition of Judaism, and consider myself a mystic following the teachings of many visionaries throughout time.  In the history of Unitarianism and Universalism, I am deeply inspired by the Transcendentalist movement, and by the early women ministers who served on the ‘western’ frontier states around the Great Lakes and Midwest.  I love the woods, the wilderness, and spend as much time as possible on the earth with all of my relations, of all species.  I strive to live every moment of my life in harmony with our 7th Principle: deeply affirming the interdependent web of life, of which we are all a part.