Hello, members of the Starr King UU Church community! I am Roy King, your new ministerial intern, and I’ll be starting at the church in mid-August. I am very excited about this wonderful opportunity and I wanted to begin the process of our getting to know each other.
I just graduated from PSR last May with my MDiv degree, but I also have worn other hats in my career; I’m a psychiatry professor at Stanford, having taught there since 1984. I grew up in Erie, PA and, like many of us, transplanted myself to Northern California in the 1970s to attend medical school. I feel that my life and identity have been somewhat paradoxical. I am African-American and was raised Northern Baptist—but left the church in the 1960s because of its conservative stance on the Vietnam War and its somewhat rigid attitude toward morality. In college, I found yoga, particularly that of Jain community whose ethical position is centered on non-violence. The Jains are strict vegans, but in my faltering attempts to cut out meat from my diet I realized I could never quite live up to these standards. I later applied yoga to my work as a psychiatrist and, ultimately went to seminary to search for the interconnections between spirituality and mental health.
My family is very important to me: my wife, Rebecca, my daughter, Erika, my son, Kai, and grandchildren, Eugene and Desmond. I adore nature and am somewhat a pantheist in my theology, but more about that later.
I am eager to meet all of you and hear your individual stories.

Peace,

Roy