Minister back in Maine after 9-11 Woman seeks healing after traumatic times

CLINTON – The Rev. Kathleen Allan is back in Maine, working quietly at a factory in Burnham that makes golf tees.

The tranquility of her life is far from what she experiencing as a minister for six years in her suburban Washington, D.C. congregation.

Members of Bull Run Unitarian Universalists, a congregation in Manassas, Va., were reeling from the stress that followed the 2001 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon, the discovery of anthrax in offices, and the pervasive fear caused by the sniper attacks around Prince William County.

Twenty-three people in her congregation lost family members on Sept. 11. She helped postal workers come to grips with the terror of anthrax. And she ministered to teachers, some of whom saw a boy shot down by the snipers outside his school.

A Bangor Theological Seminary graduate, Allan, 52, was a part-time minister at two UU churches in Maine – Westbrook and Edgecomb – before moving in 1997 to Bull Run, a church in the heart of Manassas, 23 miles due west of Washington.

She said her congregation was traumatized after 9-11 and the anthrax scares. But when John Allan Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malvo began their sniper rampage in October 2002, “I think that is when the fear broke through,” she said.

During the sniper attacks – which killed 10 people and wounded three – Allan was “pumping gas with my back pinned to the gas pump, feeling the tick-tick-tick of the pump through my back and scanning the woods. Everyone went berserk with fear. Gas stations were putting up shields, schools were in lockdown. Even going to the grocery store was a nightmare.”

“We were all facing the unthinkable,” she said. “People would have a cavalier attitude one day and then decide to stay home from work the next day.”

But they didn’t stay away from their places of worship.

“Church became the place to go,” she said. Allan found herself ministering to children who couldn’t play outside

“Overall, I would say that whether people articulated it or not, they needed a community. They needed a building that they could walk into and let go,” Allan said.

But as her congregation was doubling, Allan was going through her own crisis. “During the third week of the sniper siege, it suddenly became crystal clear to me: It was time I started taking care of myself,” she said.

“With ministry, you become identified as someone who takes care of other people. That is a great lure; it is seductive. But it is also dangerous.” As she was taking care of the needs of her congregation, Allan concluded, she had insulated herself against feeling the pain and fear.

“I needed to let myself, Kathleen, not the Reverend Kathleen Allan, experience all of it.”

Allan took a sabbatical. “I loved the ministry and I had no idea I was capable of that kind of leadership. But in my heart, I knew I needed to come home to Maine.”

Allan’s time in Virginia had a much deeper and longer-lasting effect than she realized. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, Allan left full-time ministry last year for some healing.

Her faith tells her she is not alone: “We were all victims of 9-11, of anthrax, of the snipers.”