Brian and the Brentwood

Wow!!! Quite the eventful last two days! This is a big emergent week in KC---Tim Keel is leading the Intuitive Leadership workshop yesterday and today at Jacob's Well, and tomorrow evening begins Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change event at Youthfront. It always is a red letter day when I get a hug from Brian McLaren. It was also great to have two of my pastors at the Keel event--Kevin Shelton and Christine Tucker-Key (yeah!) Tonight was one of "those" SPRC meetings that happen at this time of year (but with another wonderful SPRC in a wonderful church). Last night we celebrated Cana's 19th birthday at 75th Street Brewery (no beer consumed, BTW) in Waldo. And then today, at 1:00 pm sitting on the steps of Jacob's Well, Erika, my real estate person, brought me the haggled-over contract to sign on my new abode, where I will be moving with the kids this summer, and where I hope to and most probably will live out the rest of my days until I cannot live alone, which of course, I hope is a long, long time, unless a husband is somewhere lurking (what a joke), and if there is, he will have to like mid-century modern. Which the condo itself is. It is in a 1960s built building two blocks north of the Plaza and here is a picture of the outside:

I know it's a small picture but I think you can see a bit of what it is like. We close on May 30 and will have some renovation stuff done and move in sometime this summer during my renewal leave. I do feel somewhat guilty about this since there is still the parsonage in Liberty (it is being rented out) but since I am asking for no more money from the district, and since this puts me closer to some of my churches that I would be in Liberty I keep telling myself it is okay...I have spoken with the superintendency committee and district trustees about this and I have lived in parsonages for the past 30 years, and ....can you tell that I am trying to justify this? I really have not felt so right about any major decision I have made since I was divorced.

And tomorrow evening, I will be setting up and sitting with the KC Emergent Cohort table before the McLaren event. One of the coolest things today was having three young United Methodist male pastors come up to me and introduce themselves...one had seen me give a presentation several months ago, and two read my blog. We are getting the UMCers at the conference together tomorrow evening.

Well, it's been quite a day...