Sacramento Bee, CA
Sept 30 2007
Portraits: New beginnings
After her husband’s death, Kathleen McShane re-evaluated her life —
and decided to become a minister
By Bob Sylva – Bee Columnist
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, September 30, 2007
Her eventful life reads like a modern parable. A high-powered career.
A devoted husband with whom she shared a lucrative law practice. A
big house, a beautiful child. Comfort, wealth, all the symbols of
success. Even so, her soul was unsettled.
"I was one of those lawyers who was never quite sure I wanted to do
this for the rest of my life," she says, in a kind of confession. "I
felt like I was part of a process that was destructive to people’s
lives. I can remember coming back to the office, gloating, ‘I just
killed this guy on the witness stand!’ "
She looks remorseful. "Is this how I want to measure my life?" she
grilled herself. "To demean and belittle someone? So, there was this
divide in my life."
Then, in a blink, everything changed. Her husband, the picture of
health, died from a stroke. He was 46 years old. Distraught, she was
left in a darkened quandary. "I used to talk to him," she says of her
deceased husband. "And those conversations turned into prayers. I
like to say his death was both the worst and the best thing that ever
happened to me. What happened is that I found faith again in my
grief."
On a redemptive morning, the Rev. Kathleen McShane is sitting in her
bright office at First United Methodist Church, a stately brick
edifice at the corner of 21st and J. There is a bookshelf, an
arrangement of chairs, some artwork, a portrait of Mary Magdalene.
The Rev. McShane is 52 years old. She has dark features, olive skin,
short brown hair. She is soft-spoken, watchful, candid about her
tribulations. From her tasteful jewelry to her ivory clerical robe,
she is blessed with a great sense of personal flair. In fact, the
Rev. McShane may be the only minister in Sacramento who tools about
town in an Audi TT sports car.
"All those years I practiced law, I never spent money on anything,"
she says. "I was always so practical. But when the TT came out, I
just loved it!" Her life journey, even in an Audi, has been bumpy.
She was raised in an Armenian family and attended St. Vartan Armenian
Church in Oakland. Even today, in a language she can’t understand,
she can recite the Orthodox liturgy by heart. Her grandparents
escaped the holocaust in Turkey. Her father sold carpets. McShane
graduated from UC Davis and Boalt Hall.
She and her husband, Terry McShane, had a nice home in Alamo, a real
estate practice in Walnut Creek. After his death, she experienced
this dream. She was covered in a black veil, huddled in the basement
of a charred house. She was led upstairs to a door. Which she opened.
To this radiance. "I think of it as being my resurrection
experience," she says.
She decided to enter the seminary. She enrolled at the Graduate
Theological Union in Berkeley. Her initial plan was to study ethics.
Then she felt a calling.
In 1998, she was ordained as a Methodist minister. She worked in
development at the Pacific School of Religion and later served as an
associate pastor at a Methodist church in the East Bay. In July 2006,
she was appointed senior pastor of First United Methodist Church in
Sacramento, a church that has a pioneer past and heavenly roll call
of members.
Her mission? "How do we become part of midtown," she says, "instead
of putting up a wall against change?" To that end, the church
leadership has started a homeless ministry, offered its chapel to a
gay and lesbian faith community, reached out to youthful residents.
"I think young people are interested in a traditional worship with a
relevant message," she says.
Ten years ago, the Rev. McShane remarried, and she and her husband,
an educator, live in West Sacramento. Her daughter is off at college.
Every morning, she runs along the levee and offers a prayer to God.
She writes her sermons on Fridays. Still the litigator, she thinks of
her homilies as closing arguments.
She feels comfortable in the pulpit. "I have a peaceful, trusting
nature," she says. "I am able to hear other people’s problems. And I
know it’s not my responsibility to fix those problems. Part of my job
is to listen. To lead people to realize they have a greater resource
accessible to them."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
