welcome

Dear First Unitarian Church of San José Community,

I am so pleased to be the candidate to serve as your next settled minister. I look forward to getting to know the congregation better during our upcoming candidating week, April 20-28th. And to see what we can create together, as FUCSJ looks towards its future.

I am excited to share with you my vision of ministry:

a ministry rooted in love and justice
a ministry of ever deepening and expanding community
a ministry that honors the interdependent web
a ministry of growth and transformation
a ministry of shared leadership and mutual accountability
a ministry filled with laughter, silliness and joy
a ministry of healing, comfort and support
a ministry of transcendent worship and spiritual exploration
a ministry for old, young and those yet to come
a ministry responsive to the deep needs of our world

I was born on October 8th, 1982 to Maureen McHale and Michael Sallwasser, and grew up in Long Beach, California, where I also spent most of my young adulthood. My parents were raised and married in the Catholic Church. After becoming active in the feminist movement and forming friendships with gay and lesbian activists, coupled with atheist and agnostic beliefs, they decided to leave the Catholic Church. Wanting to challenge patriarchal norms, I was given my mother’s last name instead of my father’s. His first name is my middle name. My father took more of a nurturing role than the average father of that time, and he was dismayed when circumstances prevented him from being a stay-at-home dad. Growing up with my mom’s last name and my parent’s attitudes toward gender roles served as a subtle reminder that societal norms did not have to be followed, especially when they perpetuated inequality.

I am the oldest of three siblings. My sister, Kelly, and my brother, Keenan, are two and seven years younger than me. My sister would prove to have more influence on my life than almost anyone else. Diagnosed as having delayed development by 18 months, and later as autistic and intellectually disabled. (Only recently did my parents learn her disabilities had a genetic origin, Phelan-McDermid Syndrome), Kelly would be an incomparable challenge. As her developmental progress plateaued and then declined, my parents realized that they could not provide the high level of care that my sister required and deserved. Realizing it what was best for Kelly and the whole family, they made an appropriate, but nevertheless painful decision. At seven and a half years of age, Kelly was placed in a group home.

Being raised for seven-plus years with an intellectually disabled sister living at home required me to be mature beyond my years. When she moved out of the house, I felt as though I lost a sister. I’ve continued to experience a sense of disconnection from her, given her extremely limited communication abilities and inability to relate. However my experiences with my sister, both growing up and today, have instilled in me a deeper sense of compassion and awareness of life’s hardships.

I was four when my mom first brought my sister and me to the UU Church of Long Beach looking for a community that shared her values and respected her beliefs. I have been involved in Unitarian Universalism ever since. Going through the Religious Education program and being raised in a liberal community with a strong commitment to justice further instilled a passion for social justice and making a difference in the world.

As a youth, I was active in my local church youth group. Then, the summer after I graduated from high school, my involvement expanded to the wider UU community. Aided by a scholarship from my church, I attended my first General Assembly, in Nashville. The wonderful feeling of connecting to a much larger movement was augmented by attending my first white identity caucus. It transformed me and I sought out other opportunities for anti-racism work. When my home church formed an Anti-Racism Transformation Team, I was honored to be asked to become one of the founding members, and I served on the team for seven years.

Concurrently, my focus in college shifted from Computer Science to American Studies. Because it was a flexible multi-disciplinary program, I was able to choose a focus that complemented the work that I was doing at church: “Race and American Institutions.” Meanwhile I deepened my involvement with anti-racism work within Unitarian Universalism at the local, district and denominational level. This work, along with being asked to be an R.E. teacher during my first year in college (which I did for seven years), and becoming involved in the wider UU youth and young adult community, kept me connected to Unitarian Universalism after high school. Those experiences also laid the foundation for my path to ministry, although I had no clue at the time.

After graduating college, I moved to England for a graduate program in American Studies. With an entirely new set of friends I had the transformative opportunity to redefine myself based on who I wanted to be and not how those who knew me expected me to be. This experience started a long period of personal growth.

Moving back to Long Beach after grad school, I worked as a neighborhood liaison/field representative for a Long Beach City Councilwoman. During my four years there, I began to feel dissatisfied; I had taken the job hoping to make a positive contribution to my community. While I was giving back, particularly around sustainability issues, I was also serving the most affluent district in the city and many of the constituents expressed a sense of entitlement (with the occasional touch of casual racism) around issues that were sometimes trifling, while I knew there were people in other districts that were in greater need of services. And it was not really my place to do anything about it. Nor did I see myself as transforming the city government into a more just institution.

It was during that time, while at an anti-racism workshop in 2008 that—at the suggestion of the Rev. Chester McCall—I first considered the call to ministry. My discernment lasted a year and half, and in 2010 I moved north to Berkeley to attend Starr King School for the Ministry. Though I had a comprehensive religious education growing up, it was at SKSM that I immersed myself in deep life-changing and life-challenging spiritual exploration. In those depths I found the heart of my calling—climate, food and ecological justice work.

In 2012, I met my wife Anna Wagner. We were married in 2016. She is the Development Director for GreenFaith, an interfaith climate justice organization. She loves writing and spending time in nature.

Our daughter, River McHale-Wagner, is 8-years-old and she brings joy, magic and love into our days. She is in second grade, loves cats, reading and is in Girl Scouts. We are blessed to live close to my parents, who live in Long Beach, and are fortunate to have had many backpacking, camping and skiing adventures with them over the years.

I went on my first hike when I was 18 days old, although I didn’t do any hiking. I went on my first camping trip when I was one, although I slept in a camper. I went on my first backpacking trip four days after my third birthday, although I didn’t carry a backpack. In fact, my main contribution was complaining adamantly about how tired I was, only to energetically scramble over the rocks whenever we stopped. From that early age, I thrived in nature, it was a place to relax and reconnect, to renew and recharge, and to see creation in all of its beauty and splendor. I still love hiking, camping, backpacking, and snow skiing, and in 2010, my dad and I backpacked the 211-mile John Muir Trail, from Yosemite to Mount Whitney. Anna, my parents and I took River on her first hike when she was six weeks old.

I love to cook, and regularly disprove the belief that healthy and delicious are mutually exclusive. Combined with my growing environmental awareness and interest in local and seasonal foods, my love for cooking led to what has become an even greater passion: gardening. I can easily spend hours in the garden, and, come harvest time, blissfully see/smell/taste the fruits (and vegetables) of my labor. Gardening/farming is my favorite spiritual practice—weeding is particularly meditative. My spiritual practice has inspired a commitment to Permaculture principles, starting a Food Forest during my internship and my activist work with Occupy the Farm. My backyard is Food Forest/edible garden, and I re-landscaped my front yard with California Natives. I’ve also kept chickens, and I recently started beekeeping, mostly because I wanted better pollination.

I was five when I acted in my first children’s theater production. It was a seminal event, inspiring more children’s theater, a hodge-podge of church plays and skits, ten high school plays/musicals, college theater classes, and community theater. Theater has been a favorite creative outlet, and my social life has often revolved around the theater. Lately, I rarely perform in plays, but theatrical expression is something I strive (and love) to incorporate in worship.

From a very early age, I have had a deep and abiding love of music. I grew up on rock and pop from the 60s onward. As I grew, my musical tastes grew to encompass every genre. As iTunes can attest, I have 55 days worth of music on my computer that I sometimes search for worship service music. I love church hymns and the songs I learned in youth and young adult worship. As a performer, I am a second tenor and have sung in several choirs and appeared in almost a dozen musicals. I have been known to sing with the church band and the occasional solo. I enjoy teaching and leading songs.

As a cultural critic, I love to read, think, write and talk about all manner of pop culture and politics.