[A conversation between myself and my dad over dinner.]
Me: “So I’ve started looking into graduate schools…”
My Dad: “Really? Are you going to pursue a degree in psychology?”
[Ed. Note: My dad recently decided that I should become a psychologist, based on nothing but my ability to talk him down from the ceiling during anxiety attacks.]
Me: “Well… kind of. I did some research, and I found out that I could get a Master’s with an emphasis in counseling while studying other subjects that interest me if I go to a Unitarian Universalist seminary.”
My Dad: “…”
Me: “So I would still basically be a therapist. But you know how friends are always asking me to officiate their weddings? I would get to keep doing that, too.”
My Dad: “So… you’d be a Unitarian minister.”
Me: “Yeah. I would.”
My Dad: “This is very exciting!”
Okay, not quite what I was expecting, since his standard reaction to any career goal I put into words is, “I mean… if it’ll make you happy…” or occasionally, “Have you given any more thought to law school?” But I’m taking his enthusiasm as a favorable omen, and I’ve spent a goodly chunk of time figuring out how to make this happen.
Trothwy and her husband joined a cool UU church not too far from me after their ultra-conservative neighbors started getting suspicious about their religious proclivities, and I’ve been attending their online services, with the goal of steadily ingratiating myself. This particular church does not have a Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans chapter, so once I’m in good with the parish, I’ll petition to establish one. Meanwhile, I’ll get started on the New Wiccan Church and Sacred Well Congregation ordination processes to back up the ministerial credentials I already have, so that my grad school application will be nicely fleshed out with life experience and relevant extracurriculars.
There are currently two Unitarian seminaries in the US: one in Chicago, and one in Berkeley, CA. My family is all but blackmailing me into moving to New England and getting a theology degree from Boston University, but I’m resisting as best I can and leaning towards the Berkeley campus.
If I did go to school in the Bay Area, I’d be able to do a lot of the coursework online, but I would eventually have to move there to finish up and matriculate. This would be pricey AF, but also epic, because I could go through the Lucky Mojo apprenticeship program during my summer break, thus making Doctor Demidaddy an official thing.
Oh. Wait. Y’all don’t know about Doctor Demidaddy.
Right around the time I graduated from the Lucky Mojo Hoodoo and Rootwork Correspondence Course, my friend Christopher and I decided to idly brainstorm what it would look like if I had an online presence as a spiritual worker, and things got a wee bit out of control. We ended up with this:
Demidaddy is an honorific I picked up at the leather bar, signifying that I’m a demiguy who gets routinely labeled as a daddy (mainly because of the beard). But it’s got a liminal ring to it, so I feel like it would work in an occult service context as well.
We were originally going to call it “Doctor Demidaddy’s Four-D Witchcraft,” but then we realized that Doctor Demidaddy actually has five d’s, and we didn’t know if the Fifth Dimension would be touchy about misappropriation of name and likeness. Plus I’m more than a little chagrined about our inability to count single digits. Our credibility would be shot if we ever decided to branch out into numerology.
I also thought about calling myself Reverend Demidaddy instead of Doctor Demidaddy, but Ben says that Reverend Demidaddy sounds a little too rockabilly to be taken seriously. Sarah agrees with him and claims that Doctor Demidaddy is my best brand name to date, but I honestly think she’s just relieved that I’ve stopped retitling my Pagan notary business. (I do kind of regret not going with ThumperStamper, though. Nobody steal that domain until I work through the last of my buyer’s remorse.)
Regardless, what happens next is this: I’ll return to Houston, and the Unitarians will be like, “Welcome back! Hey, that CUUPS group you founded really took off and needs its own space.” So I’ll be like, “Well, is that cute little decommissioned church Northwest of town still for sale?” And the Unitarians will be all, “It is! Here’s $500,000. Go crazy.”
So we’ll get that organization off the ground, and we’ll convert part of the sanctuary into a lady chapel, where we’ll hold spiritualist candle services and Crystal Silence League meditations. And then one day, around 30 years from now, I’ll be like, “Welp, my work here is done,” and I’ll retire and run the church bookstore.
Oh, and we’ll host leather events in the Fellowship Hall.
This is the best plan ever.
PS: The title of this post is a visual pun of the first order, and if you didn’t laugh when you read it, then I just do not know what to do with you.
PPS: DEACON DEMIDADDY. We have a winner.
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