In 2016, as the new founding director tasked with creating a connected community in Gulfton/Sharpstown with four non-profits – St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, KIPP Public Schools, YMCA and Legacy Community Health – I spent the first several months meeting everyone I could. But what I heard over and over was, “You need to meet Cece and Sara.” Who were they? How could they help me in my quest to understand what makes the neighborhood tick? Well, I got my first taste when I co-led a parent session at KIPP:CONNECT with the City of Houston Planning department to [...]

Tina Melo left Houston in late August to watch the solar eclipse in Tennessee. That’s also where she watched Hurricane Harvey tear through Houston. Filled with survivor’s guilt, she returned to a damage-free home. She and her daughter signed up for a shift volunteering at St. Luke’s to support the Red Cross. Days later, the Red Cross moved on to the next location, and Tina went back to work, but there was so much more to be done. What else could she do? Her childhood friend, Debra, called from Seattle where she sits on the board for the [...]

My wife always calls me “Bob the bridge builder” and I have never really thought much about it. Pursuing a profession or perhaps obsession for city building all my life (including building cities in my back yard as a kid—pity my poor parents) has been one of the most rewarding and enriching gifts one can experience.  The opportunity to work with so many people from so many walks of life - people with means or without, the powerful and the unempowered, those of all races, gender and age, those of many faiths or no faith, of widely differing [...]

Excellence. A word we hear often and maybe at times even become too casual with our use of it. Merriam Webster defines excellence as, “eminently good.” In every aspect of our lives there is the opportunity to focus on excellence. I think of my Mom who makes every person who walks into her home feel loved and welcomed. Of course, that happens with a warm hug and a listening ear. It also comes from the thoughtfulness in which she hosts a guest. Whether they pop in unexpectedly or she has been planning for their arrival for weeks, every [...]

What determines beauty? Is it intrinsic, as in the beauty of a rose in full bloom, or the giggle of a delighted baby at the silly antics of a parent? Or is it “in the eye of the beholder” - totally subjective, determined by the individual - the reason some prefer Mozart to Stravinsky, symmetry to asymmetry? On Sundays we are surrounded by beauty: majestic organ music filling our Sanctuary, a family’s joy during an infant baptism, 100 voices blended in choral song, friendly faces wreathed in smiles, the corporate affirmation of our beliefs. And it is easy [...]