Reverend Julia Older – Biography

A 2002 graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry, Julia Older was overwhelmingly confirmed by UUFRC members as our settled minister in May 2003. In February of 2004, this Fellowship ordained her into the Unitarian Universalist ministry in a joyful ceremony.

Before coming here Julia had completed simultaneous internships at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco and the Napa State Mental Hospital. She also served as chaplain-intern at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin.

The only child of Episcopalian parents, Julia was raised in Atlanta. A 1966 graduate of Duke University, she spent 18 years building a highly successful real estate practice, managing her own corporation with several employees. “I loved being in business,” she reports. “I loved training and being trained. I loved goal-setting and mission statements and strategy sessions and checking off lists. I loved counseling, and being with customers is all about counseling.”

At age 50, heeding a call to “see what truly mattered,” she began a pilgrimage that led to the Great Rift Valley of Africa, across America in a 20-foot RV with Molly the dog, and ultimately, to seminary in Berkeley.

Married to a Jewish man for 17 years, Julia actively practiced and raised her children in that tradition. Today Julia calls herself a “mystical humanist,” saying “We are created out of mystery and we in turn continue to create in an interrelated process. Within such vastness, living our largely earth-bound lives filled with ordinary cares, we struggle to find the answers to haunting questions. What matters? How do we build a moral philosophy? What meaning do we assign sin? Evil? Forgiveness? Suffering? Salvation? My life is a pilgrimage to find understanding.”

Julia is a single woman who revels in her two grown daughters, two sons-in-law and four grandchildren—a set on each coast. She loves cooking, poetry, music, meditation and dogs. She is deeply committed to causes of social justice; particularly those that focus on marginalized members of society.