Anya Sammler-Michael

As an Alumni of Meadville Lombard and in my third year of service to the MLTS Board of Trustees, I (she, her, hers) am committed to effectively and honorably seek the best candidate to serve as the next president. As a Unitarian Universalist minister in final fellowship, I serve with my partner in life and ministry, Rev. Scott-Sammler-Michael in Montclair, New Jersey. Our Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Montclair is a thriving home for religious freedom, justice-making, and powerful, heart-centered worship. It gets loud on Sunday with joy and the drive for liberation.

Our call to Montclair followed ten years of service in Northern Virginia where we served in separate pulpits. 42 years ago, which seems like both eons ago, and just yesterday, I was born in North Branford, Connecticut to a theatre family. In college at the University of the South, I studied philosophy and fine arts, and as one of only five northerners in my class, I worked to build bridges of understanding between diverse social and identity circles. I worked for a while as a fine art photographer, darkroom artist, caterer, and chef, before pursuing the call to ministry that I had felt as a Unitarian Universalist youth.

Now my focus in ministry is split between building interfaith and intercultural relationships, reaching across the partisan divide, cultivating joy in human relations, and honestly confronting the evils of racism, xenophobia, and transphobia. In my writing and speaking, I stress humility, compassion, and the cultivation of connection–both with one another and with that which we deem holy. I believe that the love buried deep within our hearts may be the only savior we know in this life - so our work must be to break our hearts wide open.

Ministry is one way I live into this calling. Other ways include the vegetarian lifestyle that I have cultivated since childhood, practicing all kinds of yoga, resting in meditation and prayer, and racing into the ocean and diving beneath the waves.