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Dear PUCC members and friends,   Sunday we had a wonderful celebration for Pastor Larry and his wife Judy.  They have both been a blessing to our congregation for the past two years.  Many good things have happened while they were here and it is my hope that good things will continue to happen in the weeks and months ahead.  Our Search committee continues to recieve new applications  and interview potential candidates. Our hopes and prayers are wuth them as they seek a new Pastoral leader for our congregation.  In the meantime, I have been asked to provide organizational leadership and Read More...

I've always enjoyed change. Judy and I have moved to twenty different houses in 44 years of marriage. But this next change is coming on quickly. In early March (or was it late February?), we decided to retire to Las Cruces, New Mexico. We came back to Goshen on March 17 and put our house on the market March 23, thinking it will take at least two or three months to sell (the best case scenario). It sold in one day! We will have to be out by early May. Blessedly, this is Read More...

"Their fear is the prospect of retirement.  Overnight you're nobody.  The walking dead.  Haven't you sen these dreadful old men, trawling for a committee, angling for a royal commission, a job, any kind of job, as long as it gives them the illusion that they're still important. . . they practically go down on their knees and slaver for it." (From P. D. James' A Taste for Death, p. 184).  I think a little of that "retirement syndrome" is in me but a  month away will help put that in perspective.  See you all back here on St. Patrick's Day! Read More...

Two news items on JFK today sure catch our attention.  First, this is the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's creating the Peace Corps.  A good thing!  Second, the former white house intern's sexual relationship with the former president.  Not so good!  Here's what I remember about him - his inspiration.  Kind of like Ronald Reagan in another era.  When I was in high school, JFK set the tone for physical fitness and challenged us to go on 50 mile hikes.  And we did it!  Young people, all over America, hoofing it for 50 miles!  Amazing!  Makes me wonder - how am Read More...

Happy birthday, Mr. Dickens!  Charles Dickens turns 200 on February 7.  I hope you wil read at least one Dickens' novel this year in honor of the 200th anniversary of his birth or watch one of the PBS shows coming in April.  If I had to recommend only one of his novels, it would probably be David Copperfied.  Great Expectations and Bleak House wouldn't be far behind.  Dickens himself recommends another pretty good book.  He gave a copy of it to each of his children when they left home - the New Testament.  He wrote this in his last will Read More...

Andres Segovia was the world's greatest classical guitarist.  I saw him in concert at Milwaukee, Wisconsin around 1979.  He was eighty-six years old.  The critics were not kind to him.  I was of a different opinion.  Here was this overweight ham-handed "senior" playing Bach, Sor and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, quietly, beautifully, movingly.  No, he didn't hit every note perfectly well.  I figured, "So what? He's out there doing it still."   He responded to his critics: "I practice more now, because of my years . . . otherwise I stumble a little bit with my fingers.  People think that I am no Read More...

When the Golden Globes snubbed "The Tree of Life" for best picture, it surely got its star's (Brad Pitt) attention. It got mine. This film begins with incredible images from the Hubble telescope and the quietly whispered question, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth . . . When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Job's ancient question is brought to life in this beautiful slow-moving drama with powerful photography and intense acting, aptly slow-moving because of the big questions it tries to answer. Read More...

Watching "Downton Abbey" last night, just a couple of hours after the Giant's upset of the Packers, I was struck by the power plays by various members of the abbey compared to the let down of the home crowd at Lambeau Field. If you're hooked on the wonderful PBS masterpiece like I am, then you can't wait to see who gains from the conniving at the abbey. If you're a "cheesehead," you're ending the season in quiet confusion, wondering how its hands-down NFL MVP could have lost to the boyish Eli. But both crowds will move Read More...

. . . when you find yourselves tied up in knots, having long discussions about who believes what, a bit like dogs doing that sniff circle when they meet on the sidewalk, do this: take a cup and some bread  and put it in the middle of the table, and say a prayer and examine yourselves and then make sure everybody's rent is paid and there's food in their fridge and clothes on their backs and then invite everybody to say 'yes' to the resurrected Christ with whatever 'yes' they can muster in the moment and then you take that bread and you dip Read More...

G. K. Chesterton: ""The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year.  It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.  Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions.  Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective."  Happy resolution making!  Happy beginning anew!  A new year - another opportunity to get it right. Read More...