I have been an ordained United Church of Christ pastor for 37 years. I have now entered the next phase of my life as a semi-retired pastor serving the Orient Congregational Church on the east end of the North Fork of Long Island. OCC was founded in 1717 and is the oldest Congregational Church in the state of New York. Orient is a place of stunning natural beauty with the Long Island Sound to the north and Gardiners Bay to the south.

Why have I named this website Rev Ron in exile?  After years of serving churches Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, London and Bath, England, and the suburbs of NYC, I came to Orient feeling that I find most folks are in exile from who the Holy One created them to be. Thomas Merton speaks of our propensity to live trapped by our egos - the "false self."

I have spoken millions of words from the pulpit, in classes that I have taught, and my day-to-day interactions with folks in my congregations. But over the last few years I have become frustrated how much the words the Christian Church speaks have become irrelevant to folks in the pews and of no interest to folks who are not religious.  I want to spend whatever time I have as a pastor helping people discover the divinely created center that is a gift of the Creator of the universe.

I celebrate coming to this historic church at this time in my life. The members and friends of the congregation have expressed a desire to become a vial part of this hamlet. With all that is happening in the world around us we have every reason to feel we are indeed in a kind of exile.  I am not concerned about evangelism that spends inordinate amounts of time "making more Christians." As St. Irenaeus proclaimed in the second century: "the glory of God is a human fully alive." We become alive through silence, solitude, spirituality, and simplicity. When we discover the 'divine spark'* that each of us posses we can live fully, compassionately, and courageously in this time of exile.

• words from Meister Eckhart a 14th century Christian mystic