The Strange Call

Everything that I have done in my life prepared me to choose this road and to answer this unusual-at-best-and-exceedingly-risky-at-worst call.  Who would have imagined that my love of and respect for Japanese culture and language and my call to serve God in God’s church would even be possible – especially at the age of 50? 

Well, I sure did not – and yet, here I am.   

I saw the job posting on the Episcopal News Service website in February 2025. After a while of feeling that my then current and beloved parish of almost twelve years was ready for new leadership and after applying for and even interviewing for various calls to executive leadership positions around the continental U.S., the Holy Spirit used my deep desire not to work on the annual parochial report on my train ride from New Jersey to Boston by throwing the biggest wrench of my life on my computer screen: All Souls Anglican Episcopal Church in Okinawa, Japan.  They were looking for their next Rector – someone who has a deep understanding of multicultural ministry, someone who could serve military families, Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) folks, ex-pats from all over and local Japanese and Okinawans, someone who stood for the full inclusion and celebration of LGBTQIA2S+ people, someone who would continue to support the growth of intergenerational ministries, someone who could (if possible) speak both English and Japanese.

“That’s me. They are looking for me.” 

This was my immediate response to reading their profile for the first time – and this notion that they were looking for me scared the living daylights out of me.  Was I not supposed to be moving towards executive church leadership at this stage of my life? Did I not have a child who needs very specific educational supports that she can get right where we were living? Was I not at a point in my life when I should be concerned about my salary staying steady at minimum or increasing at best and not taking a two-thirds (yes, you read that correctly) salary cut?

Yes.  Yes.  And most definitely, yes.  Yet, I knew that All Souls Church in Okinawa was looking for me.  My heart knew it.  My body knew it.  Here’s why. I grew up on the tiny island of Bermuda.  I know what island life is like. Many of my best childhood friends were from two of the three foreign military bases that were on the island at that time and had some knowledge about that kind of life.  My love for the Japanese language and Japanese culture led me to earn two advanced academic degrees, and, as for the matter of LGBTQIA2S+ inclusivity? Ask my daughter.  She has two moms.

As I discerned this call with my Bishop, she had mentioned that, while this was a strange choice, even she saw that it was a deep, Spirit-led call.  Even if All Souls might have ended up calling someone else as their next Rector, I knew that I had to apply.  There did not seem to be much choice about it. That is how I knew the Spirit had her ever present hand in all of this – because everything in me said that this is what I must do.  Thus, a few weeks after I initially saw the posting, I put my packet together.  I answered each of their essay questions from a place of deep clarity and, without having anyone else review my application materials, I sent everything in.

So it went – after a very early morning online interview a few weeks earlier, I got on a plane on Easter Sunday night for my in-person interview.  Nothing about the interviews made me waiver from this already being a “yes” for me – not even the conversation with the Diocesan Bishop in which he made clear his anti-military base stance and thus highlighting the complex relationship that All Souls has with the Anglican Diocese of Okinawa.  In the end, the complex nature of this relationship enhanced my feeling that God was calling me to All Souls (anyone who knows me knows that challenges enliven me).

A week or so after my arrival back in the U.S., I was called as the Rector of All Souls Anglican Episcopal Church.  My official title is “Missioner of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey serving as the Rector of All Souls Anglican Episcopal Church.”  In answer to the question I know some readers might be silently asking, I am, indeed, still an Episcopal priest.  I am still canonically resident in the Diocese of New Jersey.  All Souls was started as a mission church out of the Diocese of Hawaii just after WWII to serve military folks and their families.  

I have now been in Okinawa for four months.  My Japanese is coming back to where I can now do daily life things without my translator, although I still need her to translate my sermons and to attend diocesan meetings with me.  I am learning what my work is and will need to be at All Souls, its surrounding community of US military bases and local people.  I am taking a deep dive into Okinawan history – learning about its unification under the Ryukyu Kingdom in the 15^th century, to then being subjugated by Japan in the early 17^th century, to it becoming a US occupied territory after WWII until 1972 when it was reverted to Japanese rule.  This knowledge is critical to my understanding of the Okinawan identity and the current and continuing tensions around the presence of the 30+ US military bases because I need to learn how to balance all of these complex issues and perspectives so that I can serve this mixed congregation of military, military-adjacent, Okinawan and Japanese folks. 

I also must attend to my family and my own well-being.  While my daughter is in school, things are not as settled in that department as I would have hoped for at this point.  Unpacked boxes and containers reign supreme at the rectory because it took two-and-a-half months for our things to arrive.  There is, to some degree, chaos that abounds. Yet, I am still called.  My body still knows.  The Spirit still has her hand in it, and I trust her with all my being.

Thus, I celebrate.  I celebrate the first time I was able to give communion to my Japanese-speaking parishioners in their native tongue.  I celebrate falling back in love with this language and culture that my heart calls home.  I celebrate my growing collection of children’s in-church drawings on my office bulletin board.  I celebrate the jokes and the laughter that I hear at coffee hour.  I celebrate the continued love, presence and guidance of the God who has known me from before I was in my mother’s womb. I am so grateful for this strange and wonderful calling. Thank you! Thank you!神様に感謝します!