New friends

It's been nice to hang out lately with Bobby and Emily, who live a few miles away and are youth pastors at Forest Grove UMC. Eric and Bobby new they'd be friends when they first met and found they had a mutual love for the Cubs. They've been getting together for coffee every week or two for a while and the four (or five!) of us have hung out a couple of times. Bobby and Emily's little guy, Chase, is about 20 months old and just discovered blowing the seeds of dandelions in our yard last night. Such a sweet little guy.


After dinner at our house, we went to their place to watch the Gonzaga/NC game, play board games and eat ice cream.

Yay for new friends!

Lenten Disciplines

This Lenten season has been a really great time of returning to old practices and turning inward. For Lent, I decided to take on daily journaling as a form of prayer and reflection. After a solid start, I am now journaling only about four times a week--not as often as I had intended, but still significant for me. As a kid, I wrote in my journal sporadically, sometimes writing daily for months, sometimes going a year between entries. In fact, I still have journals dating back to fourth grade--terrifying and hilarious to read, really. In high school and college, I discovered that focused writing was a powerful form of prayer for me, but it was often difficult to keep it up as a regular practice. It was always easier while on a special trip or during my summers with Project Transformation. At the end of my semester in Spain, during my junior year at Albion, my back-pack was stolen and, with it, my journal from those four months of travel and study. It was by far the most difficult thing to have lost and I struggled to journal for some years after that.

So now I am attempting to return to the practice of journaling. After breakfast, I take some time to read scripture and a reflection of someone else on that scripture or I begin with another reading (something I've done for a long time), and then I spend 10-20 minutes writing and sitting in silence. This time has opened up for me some significant questions about life and ministry that were floating around out there, but that I hadn't fully engaged. In response, I have taken some intentional steps forward in my work with the church.

Eric decided to give up coffee. He does not want to be addicted to anything and, he realized, coffee makes him anxious. And he stopped--cold tofurky. After a couple days of headaches, he felt fine. I had no interest in quitting coffee at first and continued to make myself a full-strength cup each morning. After a week, though, I began to cut back, just to see if I could do it. I began to substitute one scoop of regular with decaf until I was drinking only one cup of quarter-caf. This took about three weeks (I know, I'm a wimp). And then I switched to green and black tea. In the past week, I've had a tiny bit of coffee about 3 times but only tea the other days. Sometimes I'm groggy, but it's been nice to give my body what it needs when I'm tired (a nap) instead of what I want (caffeine!!).

Our disciplines are not huge life changes, but I have noticed that the intentionality is spilling over into other parts of life. I like that.

Over the weekend

To kick off our long weekend, we journeyed to Aloha (it's really just down the road) to our friend Ron's place for homemade pizza on Friday. Ron made the crust and sauce from scratch and had lots of wonderful toppings prepared.

A common topping in Argentina, where Ron and Cathy spent 15 years as a missionary, is hard-boiled egg. I wasn't too excited about it, but it was actually pretty tasty with the spinach. Most exciting topping (in my min): Tillamook extra-sharp white cheddar cheese. I cannot get enough of that stuff.

It was great to eat and talk and eat the evening away. Oh, and we had a little local wine. Mmm...


Saturday morning was another great Community Table Food Pantry day with 61 families showing up and over 20 volunteers helping out. That evening was Cornelius UMC's silent auction for mission. I have to be honest, I am not generally a fan of church fundraisers--I really don't believe that it is what we should be about--and I had pretty low expectations for the event. But it was a very nice evening, with lots of lovely baskets put together by church members, delicious desserts, and great music by some folks who have been getting together weekly to play over the past months. They had not yet played in front of people, but they did a great job and everyone seemed to enjoy it!




After two services on Sunday and a golf outing, Goose was pretty exhausted. It had also been a long weekend for me, but I had the chance to nap Sunday afternoon. Monday was a wonderful, relaxing day and now we are energized and back to work!

Fiesta of Hope

Yesterday evening, Eric and I attended Adelante Mujeres's annual benefit, Fiesta of Hope. Adelante is an amazing organization that provides comprehensive education, leadership development and resources for Latina women and empowers them to pursue their dreams. As part of the program, several participants shared about how participating in the organization has made a difference in their lives. Each woman introduced herself by sharing her name and saying, "I am one of the leaders that we need today." I appreciated this declaration so much, especially from the young women who were up there (two of those in the picture above are high school students). Often, in the church and in others settings, we talk about youth and young adults as being the leaders of tomorrow or the future of the church. Sometimes people seem (to me) to be saying, "We've got to teach these people what to do because some day we will die and they'll need to continue our work so the church doesn't die." But our youth, young adults and immigrant sisters and brothers are also today's leaders and we would do well to look to them to teach us something--in the present! As these amazing women shared about progress they've made in their language skills, commitments to serving their communities, new businesses they are starting, educational achievements and increased confidence, I felt inspired. These really are some of the leaders that we need today!

I believe that Adelante Mujeres is doing exceptional things and am supporting their work by volunteering weekly the organization's youth branch--Adelante Chicas. The fourth graders I spend time with every Tuesday are lovely people and I am excited that they will have this community, network of support and caring adults present as they enter adolescence.

The Fiesta of Hope had amazing hor d'oeuvres, fondue, donated local wine and beer, salsa dancing and lots of good people!

Eric, me, Ron (Director of Hispanic Ministries for the OR-ID Conference), Apolonio (amazing Oaxacan guy who works for Virginia Garcia community health center), Kathy and Dan (pastor of the Forest Grove UMC), and good friends Leah and Mat.

At our table: Dan, Kathy, Rhoda (works with me in Western District Hispanic Ministries), Ron.

Ethan Hughes interview

This morning I heard a wonderful interview on the Coming Out of Babylon program on KBOO, a community radio station in Portland. The guest was Ethan Hughes, the founder of the Possibility Alliance, a petro-free, radically simple community in rural Missouri, and of the Super Heroes, a group prepared to respond to different kinds of struggles and disasters.

Hughes shared about his journey toward this kind of life, why he has chosen it, and how it is making a difference for people. This conversation really resonated with me. Though some of the language is different, there are many similarities between his lifestyle and the life I believe we as the church are called to live. Some of the things in the interview that really stood out to me:

--Since chosing to live car-free about 10 years ago, he has only ridden in one 7 times (most were emergency situations). He travels mostly by bike, foot and train (when he and his wife went to Europe, they took a boat).

--He talked about how the community's ability to not rely on petroleum, electricity and similar systems frees them to respond to the needs of neighbors more quickly.

--The Possibility Alliance incorporates simple living with political activism and inner work. At different times during the day, there is a bell that rings to remind people to be present to the moment.

--Hughes talks about Ghandi's approach to his service--that all are connected and that when we hurt another or hurt the earth, we hurt ourselves. He invites folks to consider whether their next action will help the poorest person they know.

--We need to seek out people who will support us in living our hightest dream, our vision, our heart path.

--Most visitors to the Possibility Alliance find that they don't miss the internet after a while. Hughes shares the quote that joy is in us, it's not in things. Relationships and meaningful work are more enlivening. Tools like the internet are secondary to being alive and being with life.

--He talks about how political ideology does not necessarily correlate to how actively people are creating peace around them. For example, some who believe that war is a necessary means to arrive at peace (something Hughes and I both disagree with), but many of those folks are more actively creating peace in their families and communities than many of those who argue that war is wrong. This was one of my favorite parts of the interview (about 2/3 in).

Read more about Ethan Hughes here. Listen to the interview here.

I would love to visit the Possibility Alliance community. I feel that, these days, Eric and I are working more intentionally on living our heart path.

Man-date

A week ago Friday, some of Goose's college friends came to hang out and do some skiing on Mt. Hood. Micah (top left) and Jim (bottom right) drove down from Seattle and Tyler flew up from San Francisco.


It was great that these guys came to us (we don't have many visitors) and that they attended Sunday service at Yamhill, even though none of the three participates in any faith community. It's pretty cool to see some of the different parts of Eric's life come together without any conflict or real tension. His crazy stories from college, his friends on all different paths, his pastoral responsibilities and the eclectic members of Yamhill UMC are all part of who he his. And allowing all those things and people to meet makes for a more integrated life.

And, as always, it is good to have friends who know you over the years and who still put effort into being friends. These are really great guys.