A Beginning

The blog is up and running! As my profile indicates, I am a United Church of Christ pastor serving a local church in Miami, Florida. I have begun this blog as part of my sabbatical experience from July 1 - October 31, 2008. Having been blessed with a Lilly Foundation Grant for Pastoral Renewal, I will be spending the bulk of my sabbatical in South America with the express of purpose of learning to speak and understand Spanish. My hope is that I will return to Miami, where I have lived and worked for 14 years, better equipped to communicate with and serve a wider variety of people. In my years here I have learned very little Spanish, primarily because I did not need to in order to function. But it has become increasingly clear that if I am to better serve people and if I truly want to extend extravagant hospitality and welcome to people of Spanish heritage and descent, then I need to learn the language and some of the cultures which inform who they are and from where they have come. I will be sharing more thoughts about the importance of language, culture, rest, renewal, re-creation, travel, and on many more topics in the coming months.