About

Hi! It’s nice to meet you! I’m glad you’re here! Here’s a little bit about me.

Name:  Lena Warren

Passions:  Messy, earthy, Christian spirituality. Theology. Gardening.  A good gin. Games. Justice, mercy, reconciliation and reformation. Hiking. Jesus. The wild God.

About me: I’m a “free range” pastor these days. Filling in at Grace Lutheran Church, Greenwood Lake and St. Peter’s Lutheran in Port Jervis and I still have time to do pulpit supply around the Metro New York area. I love leading retreats. And I’m also a Professional Coach.

I love theology and have an S.T.M. from Yale Divinity School and an M.Div. from Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. For my S.T.M., I specialized in body theology and my thesis attempted the constructive work of articulating an eschatology that valued materiality rather than denying the importance of this world and the sacredness of our current, fleshy, real bodies.  In other words, I think God cares about our bodies—broken, messy, and frustrating as they can be; and, I think that when God makes the world right, our bodies and all of dusty creation will be a part of that right-making.  I’m not interested in spirituality that is separate from the world around me.

Besides theology, I also love agriculture and sustainable development and picked up an M.S. in Plant and Soil Sciences from The University of Tennessee.  I worked on the hydroponic production of Silybum marianum (milk thistle) as a medicinally useful plant.  (It’s good for your liver—really) I also messed around with a bioassay to evaluate the usefulness of S. marianum extracts on controlling tumor growth.  On the side, I became an expert in autoclaved potatoes and cockroach cryogenics, but that’s another story.  Oh, and I grew and helped to grow a WHOLE LOT of tomatoes.  Amazingly, I still love tomatoes.

Even with all this education (which includes a B.S. in Environmental Science from Newberry College), I’m still working on figuring out life, just like everyone else. I wish more education gave you more answers, but I really think it just makes you more aware of all that you don’t know yet.

I have so many things I wonder about. Like how to live as justly as I can in the world. Or what a world might look like without the patriarchy. For that matter, what would Christianity look like? I wonder a lot about cults and how they work and why people stay in them. I wonder how to walk a path of graciousness when some of my commitments (Christianity and veganism) can get so obsessed with orthodoxy and legalism. I wonder why some people find turn signals so very hard to use and how people store those giant skeletons when it’s not Halloween. I wonder how to love enough, how to trust grace enough, and how much is enough.

I am not alone in all my wondering and wandering. I am blessed to have a husband who has been my true partner for over 25 years. We have two cats, Marcella Maple Syrup (Marci for short) and Hildegaard the Wonder Cat (aka Hilde). And we are surrounded by family and friends who mean more than they even know.

I hope that you find what you’re looking for and if I can help, please let me know.