The Standing Committee and Rev. Heather are delighted to announce that Marianne DiBlasi will be serving as our Ministerial Intern for a two-year part-time internship, beginning in September 2018. Marianne is a local Winchester resident and a former board member of the Winchester Multicultural Network. Marianne was raised Roman Catholic and became a Unitarian Universalist in 2004, fully embracing the radical inclusiveness of our covenantal faith tradition.

Marianne is currently completing her first year of the Masters of Divinity program at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago and plans to graduate in 2020.

Meadville’s low-residency model allows her to live and learn locally and travel to Chicago for intensive classroom time for 2-3 weeks each semester. A contextual learning curriculum is central to Meadville’s model for ministerial development. It requires students to engage in two type of internships – community and congregational – and establish a 3-year relationship with a local Teaching Pastor.

This past year, Marianne served as a community minister intern at Refugee Immigration Ministry in Malden and Rev. Heather was her Teaching Pastor. During the next two years, she will be serving at WUS as a part-time ministerial intern, working 20 hours a week. A signature aspect of Meadville’s internship curriculum is the opportunity for interns to work with the congregation during the first year to design a project that identifies an area where a congregation is uniquely positioned to be a brighter beacon for justice. This project is implemented during the second year of the congregational internship. Marianne writes: