Lindsay Borden has been an actress performing Shakespeare next to woolly mammoths 🦣, a chef in some of New York's hottest kitchens 🍳, and a Presbyterian pastor preaching to congregations that needed her most. 🙏 In this episode, she traces a winding path that looks improbable on paper but feels inevitable in hindsight: dropping out of an Ivy League college to chase acting, retraining as a chef in her 30s, and eventually feeling called to seminary after volunteering with AIDS patients in 1990s New York. She reflects on Marymount as the stepping stone that gave her the confidence to believe a "mature" student could still reinvent herself 🎓, and on sixteen years of parish ministry that taught her how to feed people in every sense of the word. 🌟 Now retired, she still preaches, writes, and records her sermons as a podcast 🎙️ — staying curious, staying connected to younger generations, and chasing whatever brings her joy. Her advice for anyone who doesn't have life figured out yet: try things. See what works. You don't have to know the ending to take the next step. 👣✨
Lindsay Borden is a reformed actor (the more obscure the venue, the more likely she was to appear there), a former chef (having cooked in temples of haute cuisine as well as soup kitchens), and a semi-successfully-retired late-adult onset Presbyterian pastor. She lives in New York City where she preaches, protests, volunteers, and writes about things that trouble her and things that bring her joy.
Recent publications include the CNF piece, “Inheritance,” in The Twin Bill magazine (https://thetwinbill.com/), which also featured Lindsay’s flash fiction piece, “Glimmering,” in its first anthology publication, Early Innings. Audio of her sermons can be found on You Tube @revlindsayborden and at https://revlindsay.podbean.com/.
You can contact her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-borden-a6b74315b/