It was Maundy Thursday 1983. That is the service before Easter Sunday that celebrates the last night Jesus spent with his disciples. I was sitting in the choir at St. Mark United Methodist Church in Santa Barbara, California. Jimmy Gibson was preaching. Jimmy was an Irish-born evangelist then in his 70s. He’d retired to Santa…
Tag: camino
Relationships Bring Hope
The team of 11 missionaries — all from Westside Journey UMC — returned from the Dominican Republic July 29th, 2019. We experienced great cross-cultural training and a great week of missions work and life impact. The best moment for me in cross-cultural training was when our group was divided into four different “cultures” for which…
Stop the Madness
Those weeks — there are too many things to do, too many directions to go, emails flow in, text messages arrive, phone calls pull at us, needs hit like Dorian hit the East Coast — you know those weeks and those days. So do I. Distraction in those times is like a masked intruder…
The Next Step
Many of you know, I took a sabbatical in 2016. It was time for me to slow down, to walk more than 1,000,000 steps on the Camino de Santiago, and get in touch with my own heart. What happened was I discovered emotions I had not felt, and learned how much I valued silence, and…
Just Plain Lost…
“Just plain lost.” That’s what this guest in worship had written on his prayer request card. Life was tough with surgeries, with financial issues, with housing, then he wrote those three telling words which caught my heart. I had never read a clearer lament. Lost. That pervasive sense of hopelessness and despair. I reached out…
Cancer, Control and Freedom
I have many partial blog posts that I’ve written but haven’t published any for a month. This has been for multiple reasons — the heart, the mind, the stress, the feeling of inadequacy, the dealing with shame, or more likely, shame dealing with me. When I read this post by brother David Beck, a man…
Declassified
On Tuesday, February 26th, the UMC made a decision to go with what was titled the “Traditional Plan” in regards to the ongoing conversation regarding the church’s approach to those among us who are LGBTQ+. The challenge has been for us, as an international denomination, to approach this question of ministry and ordination in a…
God’s “no one knew was there” Path
(Reprinted from David Beck’s blog)– I’ve shared thoughts from David previously. This dear brother and pastor from Bellevue battling pancreatic cancer is a witness to the faith from the “valley of the shadow.” His words struck home to me today. Sometimes when we are hitting tough situations it helps to hear from a fellow traveler…
Thank You, Cheryl
Some weeks just create a pile up. I suppose it depends on how a person responds. But sometimes things just get tough. That’s what last week was like for me. I was scheduled to be out of town three Sundays; I still had details to complete for each of those weeks. I’m in charge of…
