Cabinet Retreat in Tampa

 The FLUMC Cabinet generally meets at the Gasparilla Inn on Boca Grande for a couple of days in December for a little down time after a fall season of charge conferences. But this year Boca Grande is still not ready for tourists after the Hurricane. So we met in Tampa instead. Things got started on Sunday afternoon at Hyde Park UMC for the farewell celebration for Bishop Ken and Rev Pam Carter, celebrating their ten years of service to our conference. 

On Monday we went to lunch at the Albert Whitted Airport in St. Petersburg and then walked to the Dali museum to explore. It had been 20 years plus since Daryl and I had last been there and it was so cool to explore again.  

They had a cool dreams exhibit where you typed in a phrase on a screen and the AI generated a surrealist style rendition and then stitched it together with the other participants dreams (6 people at a time). My phrase was flying high above the beach. 

On our way back Daryl drove me past my childhood home on Wallace Circle (just south of Gandy Blvd on Manhattan and then past the Catholic church we attended (and where I went to preschool) - St. Patrick's. 

We had planned to walk the labyrinth at the Dali museum but they've torn it out and are renovating it. So we visited the labyrinth in the chapel at the University of Tampa. 

Our evening concluded with dinner at the original Columbia Restaurant in Ybor. 

Tuesday morning we met early for breakfast at the Portico, the Hyde Park campus located downtown in Tampa that ministers to the homeless community. After that we met in their prayer chapel for a time of contemplative prayer and worship. It was Bishop Carter's last service with us and Daryl got a picture of the two of us - I'm so grateful to him for seeing these gifts in me and giving me the opportunity to serve the church and the kingdom in this way as a superintendent.