Texan Tara’s act of faith as she starts her new life in city
SHE has said goodbye to the Texas heat in exchange for a warm Glasgow welcome.
Tara Granados, the city’s newest Church of Scotland minister, has swapped the Rio Grande for the River Clyde and the Texas Rangers for Glasgow Rangers.
This week American Tara takes over Ibrox Parish Church, having been drawn there because of its work with the LGBTQI community and its foodbank and, in particular, its work with child bereavement service Richmond Hope.
Tara lost her mum, Susie Porr, when she was a teenager. She said: “I was 14 when my mom died. She went three or four rounds with cancer. It was a long battle and she was tired.”
Tara grew up in the Texan town of Tyler. The ministry had been something she had thought about but she had doubts.
She said: “It was a part of my life and I think I had been called but I didn’t want it. My dad told me if it was a true calling I wouldn’t be able to run away.”
After school she went to university to study history before taking a teaching course. After university she had three options: theatre and stage management, teaching or the seminary.
The seminary won out and Tara went to the Ivy League Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey.
Her studies included a year’s internship in Groomsport, Northern Ireland. It was then that she visited Glasgow and Edinburgh, sowing the seed for a move to Scotland.
As part of her training Tara also took part in clinical pastoral education (CPE) to train as a hospital chaplain.
She said: “I worked in Methodist Dallas Medical Centre, in an area with really high gang violence, so we saw a lot of shootings, stabbings, a lot of violent deaths. All of these Christian platitudes – ‘God has a plan for everyone’, that sort of thing – they don’t work in that environment.
“It’s where theology meets the road. And I grew up in hospitals. I know how to navigate them.”
The chaplain responds to emergencies, is the first point of call for families, takes family members for viewings, and pre-