Author: Daniel Ross-Jones

By Conference Minister Diane Weible This is the second part in a series about impressions and thoughts from the trip I took to Alabama with the other Conference Ministers in November. We visited Civil Rights sites in Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham. One of the things that made a huge impression on me last month when Conference Ministers visited the Civil Rights sites in Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham, Alabama, was that slavery did not end with the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation or even the 1865 passage of the 13th Amendment. Slavery just evolved. After slavery was abolished there was a very short-lived…

Our Let’s Talk article this week is by Rev. Cheryl Ward, inviting us to sacred and difficult conversations on race. This initiative is part of the work we have agreed to at our last Annual Gathering—a commitment to difficult conversations in the hopes of bringing awareness and forward movement in hearing other stories and seeing how we are called individually and together to work for racial justice and equality. We invite your participation in this work. Please click HERE to respond to a brief survey indicating your interest and availability to be part of these small group conversations in the…

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By Conference Minister Diane Weible This is the first part in a series about impressions and thoughts from the trip I took to Alabama with the other Conference Ministers in November. We visited Civil Rights sites in Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham. When I was a child, the term “Grandfather Clause” always bothered me. But, not for the reasons it should have bothered me. Whenever someone says, “It was Grandfathered in…” or mentions, “the Grandfather clause,” I quickly say, “Grandparent—It was Grandparented in” or “the Grandparent clause”. I have always been proud of my correction of what I considered to be…

By Associate Conference Minister Daniel Ross-Jones As many of you know by now, your Conference staff is once again on the move. We learned a few months ago that the lease for the Conference House, our beloved ministry home for the past two years, was not being renewed. Moving is never a simple task. Finding a space that works for our evolving ministry needs was only one part of moving, and it will come as a surprise to no one who has moved in the past few years that aligning price, space, value, and amenities within our Bay Area geography…

By Conference Minister Diane Weible Last week in our newsletter, our Moderator, Eppie Encabo, shared information about our 2020 Annual Gathering plans. Today I want to take some time to explain the theme, “The Elephant in the Room.” The decision for the theme comes from a well-known parable that originated in India, “The Blind Men and the Elephant.” The origins of this can be traced to sacred texts of the Buddhist, Hindu and Jain faith traditions. In this parable, several blind men come across an elephant and because they have never encountered an elephant before, they use their sense of…

By Conference Minister Diane Weible My heart goes out to everyone who has been affected by the fires that broke out this past weekend. From the loss of homes and businesses, to the very real and imminent fire danger, to being packed up and ready to go if told to evacuate, to wanting to offer their church building for those evacuated but knowing that they too might soon be in the evacuation zone which would mean disrupting people a second time, to medical devices that couldn’t run without power, to trips to urgent care to get relief from the smoke.…

By Conference Minister Diane Weible When my children were young, one of our favorite movies was, My Neighbor Totoro, a 1988 Japanese animated film by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Early in the movie, the family moves out to an abandoned farm outside of the busy city. They begin to open windows and doors to let in the light and the breeze and then, as they clean their new house, the animated dust bunnies come to life and scurry away. Their darkness, where they were allowed to grow and multiply, has been disturbed. They have nowhere to go but away.…

By Conference Minister Diane Weible As a white, cisgender, female Christian, I live in a world where I take things for granted and don’t always see what I need to see. And, I’m working on it. I’m working on seeing the world around me in new ways and seeking to find new awareness. A few weeks ago, I was trying to explain to my daughters the work I’m doing in this area and I was receiving a lot of pushback. They reminded me that they grew up in Japan where they were the only white children in their school. And,…

By Conference Minister Diane Weible I’ve been thinking about power this week. I’m sure you all have too.   I just want to take a few minutes to reflect on the power of the Holy Spirit. We sometimes get so caught up in our day-to-day “to do” list. It feels that there is so much to do and just not enough hours in the day. When we finally call it quits at the end of a long day, we start thinking about what is going to happen tomorrow. Our personal power sources get depleted quickly.  I recently returned from a wonderful vacation…