Claudia Giacoma has been part of many churches -- Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian. She has been an evangelical, a charismatic and even helped form a new church, Ecclesia, in Boulder, Colo., in the 1970s and '80s.
Now, at a time in life when most people settle into the familiar, Giacoma is on a new spiritual path.
"The year I was supposed to retire, I became an Episcopal priest," says Giacoma, who was ordained in January 2008 at age 72, the age at which the church typically requires priests to retire.
Today she is an assistant pastor at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Park City and a chaplain at St. Mark's Hospital.
"I'm a woman who is 73 who is loving her life, and I think it says to older people, 'Your life is just beginning,' " Giacoma says. "You can make a real contribution no matter where you are in life. You can be the presence of God to someone."
Giacoma's spiritual journey has been roving and rich.
Born to a Lutheran mother who was an immigrant from Finland and an inactive Mormon father who was a miner in Park City, she was reared in the embrace of the Methodists at the Community Church of Park City.
When she attended the University of Utah, she joined her sister at a small fundamentalist Baptist congregation in Salt Lake City.
While that church gave her the acceptance she sought, she yearned for more.
"I asked, 'Now that I'm saved, what do I do?' They said, 'Now you tell other people,' " Giacoma remembers. "That seemed a little shallow to me. It seemed there ought to be more to this life than trying to convert people to a set of beliefs."
She stopped going when she was asked to stand on a corner and hand out tracts.
But Giacoma remained engaged spiritually. She and other U. students formed a house church, and that led to a chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. She and her friends were evangelical and part of the early charismatic movement, which spread to mainstream Christian churches.
She remembers that time fondly.
"It moved people out of their heads and into a place where they began to experience in their lives something of God. That was important."
She had married her high-school sweetheart, Lou Giacoma, and the young couple lived in Park City and West Valley City. He had an accordion studio and taught business for several years at Westminster College. She finished her interior-design degree and was rearing their three children.
When some old friends from college days invited the couple to Boulder, Colo., to help build a new evangelical and charismatic community, the Giacomas were in.
She laughs now at what she considers the pridefulness exhibited in the name. "To think we called ourselves Ecclesia -- The Church -- is incredible to me."
Nonetheless, Giacoma says, the people loved each other. "We supported each other. Kids on the street found a caring community."
But after seven years, she chafed under what had become a hierarchical, rule-bound church. "People did not have the freedom to choose their lives, and so we left."
For the next eight years, the couple worshipped and held leadership roles at a Colorado Presbyterian church, learning more about theology. When Lou's work managing nursing homes took them to Arkansas, an invitation led them to the Episcopal Church in the late 1980s. The book Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail was influential.
For Giacoma, the Episcopal Church felt like home.
She always had been drawn to liturgical churches. She remembers that, as a child in Park City, she would watch from her front porch as the Catholic priest walked back and forth in front of St. Mary's, a prayer book in his hands.
As a college student, she would go to a noon service at a nearby Episcopal church.
"I didn't know anything ... but to go there and to be in that sacred space was life-giving."
The couple were confirmed as Episcopalians, and when they moved to Nashville, they joined a charismatic Episcopal congregation.
"It embraced all the things I needed to be whole. Worship is not centered around the minister. The focus is on Eucharist, worship, the music, the liturgy," she says. "I liked the accountability of the ministers to each other.
"We are given permission to think. We are not a confessing church," she adds. "We can speak what's on our minds, at least theoretically. The intention is to listen to each other and understand rather than continually force people into a point of view."
At the same time, each congregation is responsible to the larger church. While lay members have as much say as clergy, there are canons to guide conduct.
"None of us can go off by ourselves. We are a community."
When she and her husband returned to Utah in 1991, Giacoma figured she never would get the chance to become what, in her heart, she longed to be: a deacon or even a priest.
In the end, she was ordained both: a deacon in 2001 and a priest seven years later.
Giacoma had trained for years to become a chaplain, and that's a big part of her ministry.
These days, she also is interested in the intersection of art and faith and teaches a class for non-artists, Art and Soul, each Thursday at St. Luke's.
Her goal now, she says, is to simply be a witness.
"I want to embody for people how God loves them," she says. "If we allow ourselves to come near to God, God can transform us in all ways that will make us whole. I want to be part of that in people's lives."
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If you have a story about a person's spiritual journey, contact Peggy Fletcher Stack at pstack@sltrib.com.
