Clergy Spotlight: Meredith Day Hearn

By Kathy Doane

A huge WELCOME to the Reverend Meredith Day Hearn. Meredith’s journey from her childhood in Texas where she was raised Southern Baptist to her appointment as All Saints Priest-in-Charge is a story with more twists and turns than a labyrinth.

I don’t detect a Texas accent.

Occasionally, when I go home or when I preach and get overly excited about something, it will come out. During my three years in Connecticut [Yale Divinity School] is where I lost it, practicing my preaching and oratory skills.

Did you know as a kid that you wanted to be in ministry?

No. My grandfather was a Southern Baptist pastor. I didn’t see women pastors. My Mom, Dad and I attended the Southern Baptist Church in Arlington, but my maternal grandmother attended a Methodist Church. On occasion, we would go to church with her for Christmas and Easter. There was a female pastor there. She was the only woman I ever saw stand up in front of a congregation and preach until I got to seminary. But there was some calling already deep inside of me, because I distinctly remember baptizing my little sister in the bathtub when she was about three and I was six and doing communion at the kitchen table with after-school snacks. I think my parents thought it was strange that I was so oddly devout as a child.

Had you made that career decision by college?

No, it was a long winding road. I went to Belmont University in Nashville, and I wanted to be a musician, a Folk/Americana singer/songwriter. I started writing songs in high school, folksy but with a definite Christian leaning. I went to school thinking that was what I wanted to do, but after my first year, I realized that if I wanted to be a successful musician in Nashville, it had to be everything for me. And it really wasn’t. I changed my major to religion after my first year and entered a program called Religion and the Arts. It has been started by a Professor from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. During my third year, I spent six months at St. Andrews.

What was that experience like?

I lived in St. Salvator’s Hall. St. Salvator’s was where [Prince] William and Kate Middleton lived as students. The spring they married was the 600th Anniversary of the University. The day of the big celebration William was the honored speaker. He and Kate wanted to see St. Sallie’s as it was called. Me and a couple of other students and some workers were the only ones there. They came in, we met them, and they couldn’t have been nicer. The Hall was right on the Castle Sands Beach of the North Sea and overlooked the ruins of [13th-Century] St. Andrews Castle. I used to sit on this bench that overlooked the sea. There was a little Anglican church nearby, and one day I was walking by it and could hear that something was going on. I was curious, so I went in. It was like I experienced something I had been looking for my whole life. I attended an Evangelical church on Sundays, but during the week, I was sneaking into the little Anglican church for communion.

It sounds as if this was a transformational time in your life?

I would pass people on the street who went to those services with me; I didn’t know their names or their stories, but there was an acknowledgement of one another that we were fed by the same hand on Tuesdays at Noon. It was the first time I felt such a strong sense of community by way of the sacraments. That was my junior year. I thought about staying at St. Andrews, but my friends back in Nashville were protesting and wanted me back, so I returned for my senior year. While I was at St. Andrews, I had taken a class from a very well-known theologian. I was the only woman and only American. I survived that class, which convinced me that I could do graduate school. I looked all over and settled on Yale Divinity School.

So, by that point, you knew you want to be an Episcopal priest?

No, I thought at that point I wanted to teach religion on a college level. My professors had been so impactful and opened everything to me. I thought I wanted to do that, but I knew that might mean another nine years of study. And I didn’t really want to be in a library for the rest of my 20s and early 30s. By that point, I was calling myself a recovering Southern Baptist. I was living in an in-between space for awhile. I would go back to Nashville to my friends and home to my family and always felt as if I was too liberal for them. And then at seminary, I was still learning and often felt like I was too conservative for them. My parents really grew to accept my new theology and professional choices and began doing their own deeper, spiritual exploration, which was cool to see.

What or who finally pointed you toward ordination?

While I was in Divinity school, we did clinical pastoral education, 10 weeks in hospital being a chaplain. I had done a pastoral care class in college, but I didn’t think I wanted to do that and didn’t see myself on an ordination track. I had a professor who said, “I know you don’t see yourself on an ordination track, but I see this for you.” So, I returned to Nashville and did the 10-weeks of pastoral care at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. That’s where things really came into focus. When I got back to Yale from that summer, I thought I was being called to the ministry. A lot of my friends there were on a priest ordination track, and I was getting more familiar with Episcopal life, but I still wasn’t sure which denomination I would land in.

It’s like a Netflix drama. What happened next?

I graduated from Yale and moved back to Nashville. I had met my husband, Jackson, during my summer at Vanderbilt Children’s and moved back because he was there. I actually took a job with the Methodist Church in the office of Pastoral Excellence and Leadership that works with people at the beginning of their call to ministry and all the way through the process. I was leading retreats, teaching and doing administrative work. And I did consider becoming a Methodist clergy person. I also was going to church on Sundays at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Chapel on Vanderbilt’s campus. Through the rector, Becca Stevens, who started Thistle Farms that makes soaps, lotions, candles, I met a community of women who had survived sex trafficking and prostitution. Becca was a spitfire. The Episcopal church I had experienced in Divinity school was the high church where priests were formal. Suddenly, I had a new role model.

So, the decision was finally made?

After about a year, [my now husband] Jackson got into med school in Memphis. By the time he was leaving, I was pretty certain I wanted to be an Episcopal priest. In 2017, I moved to Memphis after Becca helped me to find a job as Interim Youth and Young Adults minister at Grace-St. Lukes Episcopal Church and School in mid-town Memphis. I taught 6th grade Bible, and I did school chapel three days a week. A Bishop who saw my calling, said, “Let’s get this (ordination) done,” so it happened very fast compared to the normal process. I was ordained a deacon in June 2018, and then a priest in February 2019. It was a lot of work and study.

Were all of your friends and family there?

Oh, yes. I was ordained at Grace-St. Lukes, and, it ended up being a lot bigger than our wedding. A beautiful liturgy with lots of smells and bells. Jackson, who has a beautiful tenor voice, was the cantor for the prayers. While I lay prostrate on the floor, he was kneeling behind me singing. At that point we’d been dating for about five years but weren’t engaged yet.

Did anything go wrong during the service?

No, not that day. However, the next day, I got to celebrate Eucharist for the first time. When the poor sweet acolyte came over to do the ceremonial washing of my hands, she grabbed the wrong cruet so she poured wine on me. She panicked. The verger saw what was happening, got some water and pulled out some wet wipes while I stood dripping wine.

When did Jackson pop the question?

In December 2019. We were supposed to get married June 13 last year and had invited the whole parish, about 400 people. It was going to be downtown in the big Calvary Episcopal Church in Memphis where Jackson was in the choir. Then COVID changed everything. It ended up being 15 people in the Nave of Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville. And we got married June 6, a week before the original date because Jackson had gotten a residency in Cincinnati at University Hospital and had to start early because of COVID.

He had a job, what about you?

Once we knew we were moving here, I called the Bishop in Memphis to say I would be leaving and she called [then] Bishop Breidenthal in Cincinnati. I had a call with Canon Jason Leo to figure out where I would land and was appointed to Indian Hill Episcopal Presbyterian Church. I served at Indian Hill for the past year but determined in the end that the dual-denominational piece wasn’t the right fit for me. I called Canon Leo to let him know I was thinking about a change and that’s when I found out about this opportunity at All Saints. After talking with the Rev. Jane Gerdsen, I knew I had to meet y’all. Really, I’m so thrilled to take part in this community.

You have described your preaching as “seeking to investigate the sanctity of the ordinary, highlighting life’s inevitable suffering alongside its propensity for great beauty.” It certainly has been a time to explore that idea, hasn’t it?

There is so much to be sad about that can bend us toward despair. Yet, there is this thread of hope. I believe to be a priest is to live with your heart beating on the outside of your chest, to live open and exposed to the world’s great suffering as well as its great joy. To bear witness to all of that is to be a priest.

How does your love of poetry, art and songwriting inform your preaching?

Well, I write my sermons in the same form that I write a song: verse, chorus, verse chorus, bridge, chorus.

Do you devote a lot of time to your creative interests?

I always have. I did a lot of community theater as a kid, musical theater in high school. I started writing songs around 16, then essays when I got older. I read a lot of poetry. I’m reading a Maggie Smith anthology at the moment, not Dame Maggie Smith, but Maggie Smith, an Ohio poet.

What is something that most people don’t know about you?

This past June, I got into throwing pottery and joined Core Clay Studio in Norwood. I find that doing more tactile art really opens something up for me.

Now for the serious stuff: What’s your guilty pleasure?

I love to go to movies alone in the middle of the day. That and HGTV and, ashamedly, Reality TV. I have watched a number of seasons of The Bachelor, unfortunately. My husband gives me the hardest time about that.

And finally, what do you most want us to know about you as we each get to know you?

I love being with people in community. And I love being a priest, it’s the greatest privilege of my life so far.

Meredith and her husband Jackson on their wedding day