i am a graduate student, doing a joint program in Master of Divinity and Master of Arts in Pastoral Counseling at the Pacific School of Religion of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. The GTU is a theological consortium on a little hill ("holy hill") a block away from UC Berkeley, composed of 9 seminaries (franciscan, jesuit, dominican, unitarian universalist, episcopalian, american baptist, presbyterian, lutheran and non-denominational---mine, which is predominantly united methodist, united church of christ and disciples of christ and a lot of pagans). in addition to this, we have a jewish center, a buddhist center, a center for women and religion, a center for theology and natural sciences,etc. i am going for ordination in the united methodist church, hoping to do special ministry with survivors of sexual and domestic violence. i am from the philippines and will do my MA thesis on pastoral care to survivors of torture.

last year i wondered why ufos were such a persistent interest of mine, and i thought of doing a special reading course on it. a friend of mine lent me scott mandelker's book, from elsewhere. as i read the book, i had very strong conflicting reactions, one of which was alarm ("don't blow my cover!") and the other was relief ("so that's why...").i went online and searched the web for wanderers, and got jody's page, which, of course, mentioned scott's work. synchronicity... for me it was like finding out that there were dots in my life that suddenly connected, dots that i was not even aware of. i was so upset by scott's book (10 out of 12 of the checklist) that i called him up and said, "if i was from another planet, i want you to know that i'm a 'resident alien' now. i take responsibility for this planet." let me explain that remark. my fear was that people who claim to have been from elsewhere would abdicate responsibility for their actions on this planet, and that they were just escapist, and wanted to escape the earth, Gaia, their bodies, etc. i am an ecofeminist and have often been frustrated by people's wanting to escape accountability. scott was gracious enough to talk me into finishing the book and i realized the people in the book had the opposite attitude, that instead they came to serve. and the dots started connecting for me.

my father was from a shamanic lineage and throughout my childhood kept feeding us books about ufos, esp, reincarnation,lost knowledge and abilities, ancient civilizations, etc. he was actually very bright and accomplished, having topped national boards for electrical and mechanical engineering within six months of each other. he taught us to learn not just physics but metaphysics. not only would we get dragged to observatories and science shows, but also to psychic surgeries, yoga classes, etc. i think he was a wanderer, and so is my mother. she is more into traditional religion, but has a really strong sense of mystical traditions and social justice. so both parents, in their way, respectively gave us children grounding in spirituality and e.t. possibilities. i remember that in kindergarten i stared at a picture of saturn and knew i had to get back there. as a child i often went out looking for spaceships to take me back. in the third grade,an imaginary friend arrived, what i would now call a nordic, who told me he was from andromeda. what i didn't realize at until i read scott's book was that this friend never left me, at least not until i came to seminary. (i came to study feminist theology and women's spirituality, and realized that my 3 significant others were male: Jesus Christ, my dad and my imaginary friend. so i banished them temporarily, wanting to have a feminine image of the divine to work with. my nordic friend is back now.) at any rate, i also realized that in the house i grew up as a child, my father had built a library, a separate structure, which i had always called as a hat, but the neighbors called a flying saucer, because of its shape. it was special to me because that was where we had the encyclopedia which had the image of saturn. before i came to the states, my uncle gave me a power stone that my dad had set aside for me, knowing that i would eventually come for it...a tektite, which was also his power stone. i understand tektites may either have been formed when a meteorite strikes the earth, or they could be pieces of a meteorite. they have no crystalline structure, and form 200 degrees above the fusion of pyrex. as these things came into mind, i was staggered by my bodily reactions to the implications...i felt like my body was trying to stop information from coming out, trying to stuff something back in...my normal bodily reactions to information i am trying to resist is the opposite...i brace against it. it was interesting to have the reverse happen.

i visited scott's group and had another shock. in the course of the meeting they talked about a council of sorts on saturn (mentioned in the ra material). early in my childhood i had read a comic book of a character named green lantern and he was working with a group called the guardians of the galaxies. when i first read that i said "i'm part of that group!"...all through my life i've felt that i was part of some interplanetary/galactic council and always gravitated to the study of ethics, conflict resolution, etc. i worked as a newscaster and journalist and had been very active in human rights groups in the philippines, and had always justified my interest in ethical considerations as part of my work, but inside i knew that it was because i was part of a council and had to remember/relearn the skills of ethical considerations and conflict resolution. to find out that there was a council on saturn and the term "guardians" is significant was the last straw for me that night. i freaked out. the next day, i stayed in my room, exhausted from a sleepless night of not knowing what all this meant. i kept rubbing another power stone, a golden tigereye. my eyes fell on a picture of saturn on my printer ( i always have a picture of saturn in my room)...it was a decal from the planetary society, which says "please act as our interplanetary ambassador by displaying this decal in your car, office or home." then it hit me that the bands of my power stone were like the bands of saturn. that rock was like a piece of home, which is why i was drawn to it.

if i had undergone hypnosis and found out i was from a council in saturn, i would have been very skeptical. in my work with child abuse survivors i realize that the mind can confabulate, and considering my own interest and longing for ufo contact, i would consider this information as "wannabe-ism". but these were parts of my life that i was conscious of...my imaginary friend from andromeda, my reaction to the guardians of the galaxies, my fascination for saturn in particular...my knowing that i was part of a council...my power stones... even my own faith journey in integrating spirituality and justice, and science and ufos...these were things i knew about myself consciously, though i never put them together until i read scott's book. i couldn't dismiss the concept of wanderers...

because of my parents, i thought these things were normal, and it wasnt until we kids were in school that we felt we were different. yes, i think my brothers and sister are wanderers, too.

in seminary i have the reputation of using science fiction to talk about ethical and spiritual/theological issues. in fact, i want to write science fiction and fantasy as parables. i had my special reading course on ufos, and have come out as a wanderer. i have also discovered a few others who are studying here, too. in one chapel service for gay,lesbians, bisexuals and transexuals coming out day, the woman who prayed over me said, "o God, thank you for stella and her gifts. thank you for her concern about the aliens and the other creatures in the cosmos." i guess word gets around! on the day of the dead in 1996, i set up an altar where honored the gifts my father left me, of ufos and spirituality. i expanded it to remember the aliens who came over here and died here, whether in a crash or in captivity,and to honor the wanderers and walk-ins who were/are marginalized, possibly in a mental institution, or in drugs, etc. because they crashlanded (jody boyne's term)or suffered from reentry/culture shock in 3rd density, and for all the earthlings who've felt alienated.

as i approach my first year of acknowledging my self as a wanderer, many things have come to pass. i now correspond with people who claim to have been abducted and do pastoral counseling to abductees. i've also been able to talk about having memories of et encounters, and have been able to come out in some theology classes, and am in the process of working out a theology that incorporates ufos and wanderers. i am very fortunate that my professor in that special reading course, ted peters, is both a theologian and a mufon consultant, and has himself struggled with these things.(he asked me if i had an imaginary friend, and whether or not i grew up with a sense of being monitored regularly...both were true, and two others in my wanderer's support group had the same sense.) my prof in united methodist polity/doctrine/history has also promised to help me negotiate the ordination track...and acknowledged that abductions, if not wanderers, are something the church needs to deal with.

my sense is that we are here primarily 'to be', and 'to do'. as we go into the next millenium i look forward to being in community with other wanderers,churched and unchurched.

stella marie harder-kucera stellak@sonic.net