Dear Westwood Community, I hope this note finds you all doing well and having enjoyed the past few months of summer. I am excited to be returning to Westwood after my two-month writing leave. And while I was able to finish one essay and make significant...
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. Dr. Sharon Rhodes-Wickett. I am grateful that she is a part of...
After much prayer, voting, and discernment, I'm pleased to say that I will be remaining your Senior Pastor here at Westwood, and that I was not elected to be a bishop in the UMC. I believe that I am where God is calling me to...
Dear Westwood Family, I wanted to let you know, as our Western Jurisdictional Conference for the UMC begins today in Spokane, Washington, that I have decided to let my name go forward as a nominee in our election of new Bishops. This is a very new...
Over the summer, I am inviting clergy members connected to our Westwood UMC congregation to serve as guest writers of our Pastoral Notes. We are so glad that Rev. Dr. James Edwards is a part of our Westwood UMC congregation. Before retiring to Los Angeles with...
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. Karen Clark Ristine. I am grateful that they are a part of...
Dear Westwood Family, I hope this pastoral note finds you all doing well! I am currently in New Orleans researching, writing, and visiting plantations to learn more about the indigenous West and Central African foodways that my ancestors brought to America. It is, perhaps, the Holy...
Dear Westwood Family, This past Sunday, I had the privilege of talking to Pastor Molly in The Loft about my identity and my understanding of God and myself. In our conversation, I referenced the “spiritual crumbs” my relationship with God subsisted on for years as I...
Dear Westwood Family, This weekend, we'll celebrate Promotion Sunday--honoring and recognizing how our young people are all becoming a grade older. We'll give Bibles to our new 4th graders, and celebrate our graduates. I know that our young people attend many different schools, and that the calendars...
Dear Westwood Family, Today, I joined a group of Westwood UMC folks on a tour of the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Craft, on the edge of Rancho Cucamonga. There, we were able to walk through the home that Sam Maloof built. With...
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...