enlarge John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Jeff Monroe, Portland’s director of ports and transportation for more than a decade until his layoff last year, will be ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church on Saturday.

The temperature outside was well on its way into the 80s the other day as Jeff Monroe prepared to leave his home in Cape Elizabeth. His daughter took one look at him and said, "Dad ... all black?"

Replied Monroe, "It's the only color I've got, dear."

"Well," his daughter said, "it looks very slimming."

Not to mention spiritual.

Most Portlanders remember Monroe as City Hall's jovial, high-profile director of ports and transportation, who spent more than a decade overseeing everything from the construction of the Ocean Gateway terminal to the post-Sept. 11 operations at the Portland International Jetport. All of that ended in May of 2008, when budget cuts forced the elimination of 98 city jobs – including Monroe's.

It turned out to be, quite literally, a blessing in disguise.

Saturday morning at the Trinity Anglican Church in Rochester, N.H., Bishop Brian Marsh will ordain Monroe, 55, into the priesthood of the Anglican Church in America. For the multitudes who might find that hard to fathom, rest assured it was no lightning-bolt decision.

"Ships come, ships go. Planes land, planes take off. Politicians get elected, politicians get un-elected," Monroe said. "Bottom line – what's the only thing you can depend on?"

Like any good preacher, he paused to let the question sink in.

"God," he finally said.

The word lingered for a moment inside St. Paul's Anglican Church, a 141-year-old sanctuary at the foot of Munjoy Hill where deep-rooted religious tradition is as palpable as the scent of burned incense that hangs in the air.

To understand what brought him here, Monroe explained, you need to go all the way back to his childhood days in New Jersey, where "my whole life revolved around the church."

He was raised a Lutheran, the son of a Scotch-German seafaring father and a half-Mexican, half-Aztec Indian mother. He inherited his mother's high cheekbones – as a young boy, they made his eyes squint "so everybody thought I was Chinese."

"I used to get into a number of discussions with my classmates about that," Monroe said, "some of which were solved with a two-by-four."

Bumps and bruises aside, Monroe said, "everything we did, we did around the church."

His parents were so devoutly religious that they had their pastor agree in writing to be Monroe's legal guardian should anything happen to them. As a teenager, Monroe joined a church youth group called the Luther League. It was while traveling with the group to hear the Rev. Billy Graham preach at Shea Stadium that Monroe first heard "my calling."

"At the end of his service, Billy Graham always used to do the altar call where people came down from the stands," Monroe said. "And all of a sudden I just found myself getting up off my seat and going down. It was a moment in my life when I made a promise to God."

At the time, Monroe hoped to become a Navy chaplain. But then he enrolled at Maine Maritime Academy, eventually got his captain's license, met his wife, Linda, taught at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, went to work for the Massachusetts Port Authority, moved to Maine, had two kids, worked as a merchant mariner, got a job with the city of Portland and what was that about becoming a preacher?

"When you feel a call from God, he doesn't quite let go of you," Monroe said, "even though you let go of him."

In other words, through the years of piloting ships, raising a family and navigating the depths of local politics, the spiritual tug never quite left him.

After moving to Maine in the late 1970s, Monroe eventually became a deacon at the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Cape Elizabeth. He also got involved with the Seafarer's Friend mission on the Portland waterfront, which led him to stop by one day at St. Paul's – also known as The Maritime Church of the Port of Portland.

It was there...