As a sports fan, I am not difficult to impress. Paul and I enjoy attending Blazers games at the Moda Center. He is a diehard basketball fan, down to every player’s stats, personalities, contracts, the philosophy of the game, and the strategy of a team in each era.

A committed Portland Timbers fan knows: In the 80^th minute of every Timbers game at Providence Park, a melody emerges from the raucous crowd: You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

“Courage doesn’t always shout but whispers and reminds, when we get up one more morning and we try another time.” - Carrie Newcomer, “A Simple Change of Heart”...

I was taking a break from my tasks this week when I popped onto Facebook to see what was going on in the lives of my friends and acquaintances. One friend had posted: “ Apalachee High School. Winder, GA. Lord, in your mercy.”

As I was working on my sermon for this week, I found myself overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s grief. Not only am I working through my own grief, but I am also living in a world that is crying out in agony over the painful ways we have treated her.

My daughter goes to preschool during the week. While she is there she learns her numbers, her alphabet, and perhaps most importantly, how to interact with her peers. She is learning language to tell us how she feels, what she needs, and how to address those things that she feels most intensely.

I remain thankful at the strength of our community. Your ability to weather the kind of staffing change we have experienced this year (and the last several years) is just one indication of this strength.

For two weeks we have borrowed this title question from the living room and organizing circles of Grace Lee Boggs and Jimmy Boggs. If you imagined 3000 years of human history on an analog clock, each minute could represent 50 years. Perspective is gained of how long something has occurred, really. Describing duration as “a hot minute” has new meaning when held up against millennia of humanity.

There’s an age-old myth that has been debunked for me at Portland First: summers are slow. Summers, according to the myth, are when you downshift, when ‘nothing happens’ and ‘no one is really around.’

Dear First Church,

This past week we celebrated and honored the last of this season’s goodbyes. Most notable was Drew’s last Sunday with us as Director of Children, Youth, and Family Ministries. If you missed worship this Sunday, you can join here:

Dear First Church,

This past week we celebrated and honored the last of this season’s goodbyes. Most notable was Drew’s last Sunday with us as Director of Children, Youth, and Family Ministries. If you missed worship this Sunday, you can join here:

In 1749, Charles Wesley wrote the hymn, And Are We Yet Alive. We sing this near the opening of Annual Conferences across the Methodist connection. In recent years, the third stanza of the hymn has captured me every time we sing it, because each year between the gathering of these conferences has seen and held so much.

Today’s Word is more like a flyby update on all that’s been going on this past week – and what we have ahead. The Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference will begin its work tonight with District gatherings and Opening Worship. You can follow along with our work from tonight through Sunday: umcoi.org

I have the pleasure of participating in multiple Annual Conferences each year, with great thanks to my cross-conference appointment to serve as your pastor. Cross-conference appointments are not uncommon, especially as the United Methodist Church grows stronger in its connection and mutual support.

Like Advent and Christmastide, conferencing in the United Methodist Church really is a season:

• There are particular songs we sing, such as the classic conference opener, “And Are We Yet Alive” (if “Here We Come A-Conferencing” isn’t a song someone has already written for the Methodist conference season, it ought to be).

As a connectional people, Methodists love to get together. Whether through conferences, clergy and lay gatherings, retreats, committees, potlucks, classes, or small groups, it’s life together that brings us the radiance of the Christian faith.

Our summer theme song was written for us in 1965 by that quartet of quirky, crooning poets: The Beatles. As I sat to write this, I replayed the Help! music video; I encourage you to do the same (and to watch Ringo the entire time).

In the waning months of 2016, I stopped listening to NPR on my morning and evening commute. Instead, those long stretches of Houston traffic were traversed slowly and silently, providing much needed space to process and pray over all that the world and our lives held in those days.

The Methodist version of C-Span has been live for the past two weeks and it has been enthralling.

Amidst lengthy processes of nominations and elections, confusion over rules and petitions, and reports from the denomination’s general agencies, there have been numerous electrifying moments on the plenary floor.

I never get upgrades when I’m flying. But for some reason, I was upgraded to first class on my connecting flight to Charlotte, NC on Tuesday. I’m not one to believe that God is in the business of making these kinds of things happen for us.