It’s time to lace up those travelling shoes again and get ready to hit the road. It’s time to pack up the van and get ready to head on down to Warren Willis Camp for yet another installment of the All Church Retreat. And this is a trip that I look forward to all year.…
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Part of our responsibility and opportunity as a spiritual community is to nurture health and wholeness for our congregation and our community. All of us are individuals who live with considerable challenges of all kinds. And as well, the resiliency of each of us is enhanced when we know we are not alone in the…
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Sabbath doesn’t always bring rest. And Easter doesn’t always remind me of resurrection. Sometimes, the message of Easter is simply, “endure.” Not the most hope-filled word, I know. But sometimes, it is all we can do. It was hard not to draw correlations between the death of 16-year-old Robert Dentmond and the death of Jesus,…
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Like many of you, I’ve been heartbroken this week. It is hard to imagine Easter arriving by Sunday, but I was also reminded that heartbreak is our natural companion during Holy Week. Any words I could offer feel inadequate, but silence too seems insufficient. I was reading the traditional seven last words of Christ, which…
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When I lived in Honduras, the streets of the town would be decorated for Semana Santa, Holy Week. The long street up to the cathedral door was impossibly pocked with holes and rocks, and in the rainy season, normally sloshed with mud. But for Palm Sunday, it was transformed by the creation of alfombras or…
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Supposedly Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote his book, Between the World and Me for his son. But I’m not sure that’s accurate. In fact, I’m pretty sure he wrote it for me. As I look back through my copy of Between the World and Me I can’t help but notice that I had underlined significant passages on…
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In the fall we completed an All-Church Survey that helped to discern three priorities the congregation has for the direction of our life together over the next three years. Those priorities named by UCG respondents to the Survey had to do with justice action around race, poverty, and the environment; care and nurture of the…
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I have started taking the long way to get places. I don’t go too far off course, but if I can head a couple blocks in the wrong direction before I loop back toward home or the office, I’ll do it. Since adding a baby to my life, it can feel like any time I’m…
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Over the past many months, artists from around the world have been transforming our city walls into giant works of art here in Gainesville, Florida. 352walls has transformed many of our downtown buildings into eye-catching, mind blowing and head scratching murals that have done much to inspire the imagination and spark the curiosity of the…
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Over the last few months I’ve been acutely awake to and aware of a phenomenon that is ever-present in my life–the goodness and dedication of volunteers. Here at UCG, Andy, Vince, and I have the privilege of working as resource ministers with various boards or committees that meet regularly and conduct the business of and…
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“No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light.” – Luke 33:11 When I took my twin five-year old nieces down to the beach on Thanksgiving, I…
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