By Meghan Hatcher

​Many in the United Methodist Church describe this present moment in the denomination as Holy Saturday. I agree. The tomb is too dark and the stone is too heavy, not yet rolled away to reveal new life. The General Conference of the UMC failed gravely this week and in so doing left catastrophe in its wake. If I had the words for it, there is so much I could say about this particular moment and the decades of anguish and pain leading up to it. But what I will focus on in these paragraphs is how the tomb of this Holy Saturday still contains Christ. If I, and my LGBTQ+ siblings, are inside the tomb at least it is good to know that Christ is in here with us.

By Cristin Cooper
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An alternative faith community has been gathering at my house on Monday nights for several months now. We eat soup and bread, which for us is symbolic of breaking bread, and we have conversation that deconstructs and reconstructs our ideas of God, church, and community.

A handful of the community have encouraged me to look into selling the soup we eat. So, earlier this month, I did!

By Jaleesa Hall

Recently, Raising A Village Foundation has secured a paid contract to do education programs in a local DC school. This is our first paid contract and something I have wanted for Raising A Village for a long time, especially when thinking about sustainable revenue streams. Now that we are about to start in two weeks, its time to put up or shut up. In other words, the time my team and I used over the last four months to prepare curriculum, systems, and plans now needs to be implemented. I am a bit nervous, hoping that all things will go as well as it can. So it begins... Let's see if this really works!