Over the summer, I am inviting clergy members connected to our Westwood UMC congregation to serve as guest writers of our Pastoral Notes. This week, we are pleased to share words from Rev. Patricia Farris. I am grateful that she is a part of our community! – Pastor Molly Vetter
I suppose that I first learned about what business leadership coaches call “adaptive change” during my year as an exchange student following high school graduation. This only-child United Methodist from Phoenix, Arizona, went to live with a host family in Marseille, that vibrant, exotically diverse Mediterranean port city in the south of France. Equipped with three years of high school French, I launched into those twelve months away from “home,” long before cell phones, social media, and constant connectivity.
I was immediately immersed in French culture, language, traditions, school, and food. My Catholic host family, of Greek and Italian descent, was large and boisterous. We’d swell to fourteen or more around the table for Sunday midday meals. We ate fish every Friday, fresh caught from the sea, which was in itself a novelty for a girl who’d known fish only in the form of frozen breaded fish sticks when fresh fish was rarely available in the Arizona desert. The first months were super challenging and sometimes lonely, but by Thanksgiving I realized that I was understanding most all conversation, and by the end of the year I was thinking and dreaming in French. And by then, we loved each other in a deep Mediterranean way, with love that continues to this day across miles and generations. My “home” extended half way around the world.
Now, after many chapters of life, and 48 years in active ministry, I have entered what we Methodists call “the retired relationship.” This is another experiment in “adaptive change” for me, with time for reflection, reading, rest, and French movies on TV.
At the same time, I am continuing to serve as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Claremont School of Theology through times of transition in the life of the School. As is true of most all institutions of theological education, CST is immersed in adaptive change and collaboration as we live into new forms of structure, administration, location, and learning. Our staffing configuration is streamlined. Our teaching/learning modalities have expanded to include in-person, hybrid, and on-line modalities. Our enrollment is strong and our graduates are transforming the church and the world.
And, thanks to the wonderful congregation of Westwood UMC with whom we now share a home, our facilities have been relocated and “right-sized” in order to focus dollars on the transformative educational experience that is CST rather than on aging buildings which are no longer needed or helpful. We look forward to a multitude of possibilities in this new missional collaboration with Westwood around our shared commitments to Compassion, Justice and Belonging.
I suppose that from a process theology point-of-view, long a hallmark of CST, the energies of adaptive change are integral to our Creator as well as to the church and to our own lives and families. Thank you for sharing in this holy adventure. May God bless us all with abundant hope, prophetic courage, and contagious joy.
Patricia Farris
Rev. Patricia Farris is a native of Phoenix, Arizona. After an exchange year in France, she graduated from Carleton College and Harvard Divinity School. Her active ministry years included appointments as campus minister, District Superintendent, and several local churches. At the general church level, she served on numerous general and jurisdictional conference delegations and the General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns. Her involvement with the global church was deepened by participation in Assemblies of the World Council of Churches as well as mission trips related to the status of women to Madagascar and Mozambique. She lives in Long Beach with her husband of 44 years, David Bremer, Associate Professor of Literature at the Otis College of Art and Design (ret’d.) She is grateful to now hold her Charge Conference relationship with the Westwood UMC. You may contact her at trusteeschair@cst.edu.
