Dear Westwood Family, Yesterday, in Wildwood, New Jersey, the United Methodist Church reinstated Rev. Dr. Beth Stroud as a clergy member of the church. This was twenty years after the UMC tried her for breaking church law by being in a relationship with another woman. Twenty...
Dear Westwood Family, Last week, I attended LA Voice’s leadership assembly and found myself in a crowd of people committed to pursuing justice and equity for their communities, this city, and the world. Sitting in the plaza at Dolores Mission Catholic church, surrounded by people of...
Dear Westwood Community, Last week, at the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, we finally and fully removed anti-LGBTQ+ language and policies from our denominational Book of Discipline. This is a significant shift for the church: when the General Conference last met in 2019, we...
Dear Westwood Community, Recently, while getting lunch with one of my dear Westwoodian friends, he asked what I thought about how to hear God over all the noise- of our lives, our screens, this ever-louder city we all share. And truthfully, I think hearing God among...
Dear Westwood Family, Last month, a beautiful, old, big jacaranda tree on my parsonage lawn fell over. I'm not sure exactly what prompted the fall: it happened just before midnight on a still night. Certainly, the soil underneath was saturated with water from recent rains. The...
Dear Westwood Family, This week, we are finishing up the parent's reading group that I started a few months ago. We read and discussed Dr. Becky Kennedy's book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want To Be. As a new parent and the parent...
Dear Westwood Family, Happy April! As I’m fairly sure none of you know about me, Easter is my favorite holiday. Partially for the birds and bunnies, partially because I love Spring, but mostly for the story behind it and the reminder it brings me each year...
Greetings Westwood Community, Peter doesn’t want Jesus to go to Jerusalem, and he lets him know. Jesus responds, “Get behind me, Satan.” Jesus knows that he must turn his face towards his own death; he has lived a life of dangerous, radical love, and this is...
Greetings Westwood Community, On Easter, we get to open our doors to welcome our community to share the joy that is at the heart of our faith tradition as we celebrate resurrection. In a world that's so often divided by age and race, economic status, gender,...
Greetings Westwood Community, During Lent, we've been on a journey--the Loft has been talking about Pilgrimage, the Sanctuary and our young people have been following Peter's Wandering Heart, and our children even walked a labyrinth last Sunday. Since a beloved undergrad comparative religion class gave me...