Rev. Dr. Kelly Murphy Mason and Castlebay Music at Wilson Chapel Aug. 24
The Rev. Dr. Kelly Murphy Mason will lead the last service of the 2025 summer season at Wilson Memorial Chapel on Ocean Point this Sunday, Aug. 24. Her sermon is titled 'The Poetry of Prayer & the Prayer of Poetry’. Margaret Mceldowney will serve as organist, and special music will be provided by the renowned Maine duo Castlebay. Castlebay weaves together the heritage of New England with Celtic lands in their ballads; their music transcends time and place. The service is at 9:30 a.m. All are welcome!
Since 2022, Rev. Mason has served as Community Minister for Spiritual Direction at the Arlington Street Church in Boston, MA. Over the years, she has occupied a host of roles in higher education, counseling centers, and faith communities in both New York and New England. She holds degrees from Harvard College, Union Theological Seminary, and Columbia University, where she later taught graduate students at the Spirituality Mind Body Institute. She also served as Pastoral Counselor at Union from 2011 to 2013.
Her varied and extensive ministries have all been devoted to integrating spiritual wisdom with psychological insight in the service of healing individuals, helping communities, and fostering human flourishing. Rev. Mason currently trains and mentors students in the Apprenticeship Program at the Phoenix Center for Spiritual Direction. In addition to being an experienced educator, minister, psychotherapist, and Spiritual Director, she is now the Convener and Co-Chair of the Spirituality & Flourishing Interest Group at the interdisciplinary Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University.
Rev. Mason has presented and lectured locally, nationally, and internationally, most recently at the 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago. An anthologized essayist who had published pieces in the the academic and popular press, she regularly writes books reviews for Presence, the quarterly journal of Spiritual Directors International. For more than a decade now, she has blogged at TheReverendDr.com, a site devoted to the topic of "What Heals Us in Our Souls."
She and her husband Benjamin Daniel Unger have enjoyed vacationing at Sprucewold in Boothbay Harbor with dear friends for the past several years. They especially enjoy visiting Maine in August.