“Walking with vulnerability and great love matters. I seek to encounter people where they are and seek to understand and grow. I am grateful especially for the flowers of mercy, forgiveness, and love.” Dr. Sarah Probst Miller offers a bouquet of life experiences to compliment spiritual direction, preaching, speaking, and facilitating. Her experiences as veterinarian, creative director, Music Director at Our Lady of the Lake, former D1 college basketball player, writer, mother, and partner grant unique yet rooted perspective. As a veterinarian and creative director of an ag media firm which she founded, Sarah may be found on farm discussing a culture of care, directing a video shoot, reviewing a training project on great animal care, or traveling the world speaking. She has served as a keynote speaker in her backyard in rural Monticello, IL when practicing messaging with her flock of chickens as well as in places as far flung as Japan, Australia, Thailand, China, Brazil, Netherlands and throughout the United States.

Sarah also recently completed a Benedictine Spiritual Direction Training and Certification Program with Benet Hill Monastery. As a spiritual director, Sarah seeks to see divine in everything, grow a more compassionate heart, listen to self and others with a spiritual heart, and love more fully.  “In life, I seek to clothe myself in compassion and open my heart to the horizon. I imagine and believe that when we listen to each other amidst the prompting of the spirit we can see the splendor and wonder of vulnerable love.”

Dr. Sarah also serves as Co-chair of the Women in the Church Working Group and Executive Team with the Association of US Catholic Priests (AUSCP) and is a volunteer leader with Discerning Deacons. With AUSCP she has helped coordinate and host Conversations in the Spirit between priests and women and sent reports to the General Secretariat in Rome and the USCCB. Sarah has also been selected as a member of the inaugural cohort of PROCLAIM, a groundbreaking two-year formation program designed to equip lay women as ministers of the Word. As a founding member of Cohort 1, she will help shape the future of women's ministry formation while developing her own capacity to proclaim God's Word with skill, confidence, and grace.

As mom, she is most found cheering her children and their teammates on the cross-country course or encouraging them in musical endeavors.  When playing the piano, organ, or directing a choir at church, Sarah works to welcome all to discover how the Holy Spirit moves in and through our bodies to unite people through the prayer of song. In her writing, Sarah seeks to birth sacred ground, onto which we can plant seeds.

Sarah loves to hang out with her chickens, write, garden, cook and bond with family at the lake, go on dates with her husband, sing and create music with all who arrive at Church, and read (or take naps) in hammocks. “I acknowledge that it sometime is that which has broken us that widens our soul and expands our journey. I seek to work with others be an instrument of peace and joy.”

YOU ARE INVITED! The AUSCP Women in the Church Working Group would love you to participate in an upcoming Conversation in the Spirit between priest and laity on September 17, 2025 at noon Central to give the USCCB input on the next laity document. Register here! All are welcome.