Elizabeth Maupin

Elizabeth Maupin, a late in life member in discernment in the Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Church of Christ, is a clergy widow with a deep appreciation for lay ministry.  She has a multicultural background, having spent most of her formative years in East Asia, plus a little time in West Africa as a young adult and among the Lakota people of South Dakota during her seminary years.  She is drawn to ecumenical and interfaith work, serving 14 years as coordinator for the Issaquah Sammamish Interfaith Coalition and currently as a board member of the Eastside Interfaith Social Concerns Council in east King County.  Having experienced brief bouts of homelessness, Elizabeth has been active in local efforts to address the needs of unhoused neighbors and to advocate for more affordable housing and is a member of the Washington Lived Experience Coalition, an advocacy and mutual support group composed of people who are currently or formerly unhoused. Having been a lay midwife and emergency medical technician in earlier years, she now uses her health care and pastoral care background as a part time home care aide.

 Elizabeth is passionate about restorative justice, an approach that focuses on healing those harmed, those who have caused harm, and the impacted communities, believing that this models gospel values and the grace of God in a way that our common retributive approach never has.  She believes that the church community has an important role to play in healing the earth and human society by helping us to recognize our capacity for both harm and healing and our tendency to imagine that we are wiser than God, and by encouraging us to have the courage to stand up to evil, the humility to confess our faults, and the compassion that extends grace to all God’s children, even to those we suppose to be our enemies.  She enjoys listening to people’s stories; studying church history, scripture, and the lives and writings of mystics; preaching; preparing liturgy; singing; folk dancing; hospitality to strangers; gardening; and walking in the woods . . . or in a labyrinth.