My Story
Roots, rosaries, and realizing I was different
I was born in Gallup, New Mexico, in 1967, into a long story that started centuries before me. My ancestors came from Spain to Central and South America in the 1500s, gradually moving north into New Mexico and Colorado, intermarrying with Apache, Otomí, Southern Ute, and other Indigenous communities. I live in that mixed blood and layered history. I was a cradle Catholic in the most classic Hispanic way. Life was full of statues and images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Francis, and black velvet paintings of Jesus and Mary. Faith was not extracurricular; it was the air we breathed. Catechism on Wednesdays. Mass on Sundays. First communion at six. Confirmation at twelve. I lived two blocks from Sacred Heart Cathedral and spent most of my childhood in and around it—serving as an altar boy and playing piano for the choir. By twelve I knew I was different; by thirteen I had a name for it; by fourteen I had found a small tribe of gay friends who walked with me through all the awkward “firsts” of adolescence. We remained closeted to our families, but we had each other. That community was a lifeline. I also knew early on that I would eventually leave. At eight years old I was already telling people I would live in New York City someday. And I did.
New York: activism, artistry, and the “great emptiness”
My parents didn’t have the money to send me to college, so I hustled for scholarships and landed at the University of Rochester. I was not remotely ready to take academics seriously, but my studies gave me research and writing skills I’d later use as a grant writer and development professional. My senior year I stumbled into the nonprofit world as a development assistant. By graduation I’d already been promoted to manager. From there it was quick promotions to assistant director and then director of development. Eventually I moved to New York City to lead development for the People With AIDS Coalition and to work around the 25th anniversary of Stonewall and Gay Games IV. Those years were full of activism, organizing, and a lot of nightlife. There was real joy and deep friendship, but spiritually it was thin. NYC gave me everything I thought I wanted and quietly hollowed me out. At the same time, another vocation was forming. While producing a big Pride event on the USS Intrepid, I hired a choreographer and fell in love with the creative process. I moved into the performing arts world and eventually launched my own company, Zia Artists, and later founded Gotham Arts Exchange, producing dance festivals across NYC. From the outside, it looked like success. Inside, I was fraying—but God was already starting that slow work. I just couldn’t see it.
Loss, return, and an old-world Catholic immersion
In 2014, everything crashed open. My older brother died unexpectedly at 50. Nine weeks later, my mother died at 68. Four weeks after that, my mentor and dear friend, photographer Tom Caravaglia, died at 86. I mourned three people I loved and, in a way, the city I had become attached to as an identity. I realized I didn’t want to just fly in for funerals anymore. I wanted to live near my family while they were still alive. So I left NYC after twenty-three years and moved to Colorado, to be near my Uncle Charlie and Aunt Pat. Living with them plunged me back into an “old-world” Catholicism—rosaries, strict rules, a deeply embedded sense of sin and a vigilant, almost suspicious God. It was formative and, honestly, constricting. I learned devotion, discipline, and the power of simple faith—but I also learned what kind of religious culture I didn’t want as the framework for my life with Christ. After Uncle Charlie died, my sister asked me to move to Boise to help stabilize her household while my nephew cycled in and out of jail. In Boise I encountered a priest who would shape me: Fr. Len Macmillan at Holy Apostles . He was theologically playful and adventurous. Unafraid to make people uncomfortable in order to move them toward the Gospel. Through his preaching, podcasts, and adult catechism, I started devouring theology again. He gave me a language for faith that could hold complexity, questions, and mystery.
A boat on the Sea of Galilee and a job in the Rockies
During my time in Boise, my aunt invited me on a Holy Land pilgrimage. I didn’t go looking for a big spiritual epiphany. I just prayed, “Let me come home knowing what’s next.” On the first night, eating dinner by the Sea of Galilee, a couple sat down and told us about Domus Pacis, their cancer-respite nonprofit in Colorado. They had been looking for a new director for four years. Two months later, I had the job. I moved to Breckenridge on March 2, 2020. The world shut down a week later and life as we knew it ceased to exist. Domus Pacis kept me on as the only staff person. We rebooted respites months into the pandemic, and I once again threw myself fully into parish life at the local Catholic churches. I cooked, served, helped with liturgy—any warm body was welcome in those early COVID days. Then I met Kevin.
Intrinsically disordered and the day everything broke
Kevin knew from the beginning that my faith mattered to me. The priests knew I was gay. We didn’t hide. But, when Kevin and I got engaged, all hell broke loose. The pastor came to my office and handed me a letter removing me from all ministries. My “acts,” he wrote, were “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to natural law,” backed up with a string of scripture passages ripped from context. It was one of the darkest days of my life. To be condemned by the very church that had formed me—after decades of service and devotion—was gutting. If grace was real, it was nowhere to be found in that moment. Luckily, Kevin was there—steady, loving, refusing to let that letter have the last word. The following Sunday he said, “Do you want to try the Lutheran church?” We walked into Lord of the Mountains Lutheran Church on a day when, as it turned out, two women were about to be married in the service. The sanctuary buzzed. Pastor Kate Davidson preached a sermon that spoke straight to my soul and used my favorite sacramental language for the sign of the cross: In the name of the Lover, the Beloved, and Love Itself. I knew, in my bones, that I had found a new home. We joined Lord of the Mountains and threw ourselves into the life of the congregation. I was elected to the Rocky Mountain Synod Council. For the first time in my life, my queerness, my culture, and my faith lived in the same body without apology. And then another truth surfaced: I was being called to be a pastor.
Call, Kevin, and a seminary that fit
I waited until the sense of call wouldn’t go away, then told Kevin. Without hesitation, he said he’d already thought about it and was all in. As I talked about my calling to colleagues, friends, family, pastors, and my bishop. Every circle echoed the same thing: This fits. We see it. Given my age and my life already rooted in executive leadership of a non-profit, a traditional residential M.Div. wasn’t realistic. The Journey Together TEEM program at Wartburg Theological Seminary was. Contextual, competency-based, woven into the congregation was the model matched my life. Having the Dean of Academic Affairs, Rev. Dr. Cheryl Peterson, as my advisor was a gift. She helped me untangle what I carried from my Catholic upbringing, what was shaped by culture, and what was distinctly Lutheran. She sharpened the difference between knowing theology, thinking theologically, and actually embodying it. Through Journey Together, I discovered Luther’s theology of the cross in a new way. God meets us in our suffering, in our shame, in our weakness—not in spite of it. The Gospel doesn’t free me from struggle; it frees me from needing to justify myself. As a gay, Hispanic, HIV-positive man who has been labeled “disordered” by the church, that theology is not theory. It is oxygen.
Zion Lutheran: kitchen-table Gospel in a tired mountain town
For over two years now I’ve served as vicar at Zion Lutheran Church in Idaho Springs, CO. A small, aging, stubbornly hopeful congregation in a working-class mountain town. Clear Creek County is nearly 90% white. On Sundays, I am the only brown body in the room. My very presence preaches something about who God calls and where the Spirit delights in stirring the pot. Zion has its own wild story of grace. The congregation once called Pastor Don Marxhausen after he was run out of Littleton for presiding at the funeral of one of the Columbine shooters. Where the wider culture demanded condemnation, he chose compassion. Later, they called Pastor Asher O’Callaghan, the first openly transgender pastor ordained in the ELCA. Now they have me—a gay, Hispanic, Native American vicar. This congregation has been shaped by leaders who were “too much” or “too different” for respectable church culture. That history is now in my bones. My internship hasn’t been a tidy one-year box; it’s been full-time ministry over two years, woven together with seminary. I’ve presided at more than ninety worship services, preached around eighty-five sermons, baptized three teenage boys, buried six saints, celebrated weddings, led healing services, washed feet on Maundy Thursday, and sat at countless kitchen tables with faithful and struggling saints.
What I’m ready for
I am called to Word and Sacrament ministry. I love the liturgy. I love preaching. I love breaking bread and pouring wine for people who aren’t sure they belong and telling them that they do. I love being in the neighborhood—collaring up on Main Street, showing up at city meetings, sitting in recovery circles, standing at graves, and stirring soup with people who have been burned by the church but still dare to hope. My theology is unapologetically Lutheran: Christ at the center, grace as the heartbeat, the cross as the place where God’s power hides in weakness, and the world as the arena of our vocation. I care deeply about the future of contextual formation like TEEM because my own story proves that the Spirit is raising up leaders in the field, not just on campus lawns. I am not a shiny, tidy candidate. I am scarred, seasoned, and stubbornly hopeful. I’ve known what it is to be told I don’t belong in the church. Now I am called to stand in pulpits and at altars, in fellowship halls and on sidewalks, and say to others what I desperately needed to hear: You are not beyond the reach of God’s grace. Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ. And there is a place at the table for you. That is who I am. That is the story that has formed me. And that is the story I am ready to preach, teach, and live as a Lutheran pastor.