Mary Oliver, Anne Lamott & Evensong

Last week after three years of working at Grace Cathedral for the first time with much anxiety I officiated at Evensong. Those men and boys are very intimidating. Having grown up in a household that didn't sing much and a church that didn't chant ever - I don't think I was so horrible. I should have practiced more, I hope I'll get other opportunities because with Matt's help I actually began to see the joy in doing it.

For the said prayers at Evensong a book literally fell off my office shelf an hour or so before the service. I flipped through "Thirst" a book of poems by Mary Oliver and the two below felt just right for the week before Thanksgiving, and the approaching season of Advent. Here they are, feel free to "read, mark, and inwardly digest them." Anne Lamott tonight in her reading at a Welcome event I attended called Mary Oliver divine, I agree with her.

Making the House Ready for the Lord

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but

Still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you.  Under the sink, for example, is an

uproar of mice—it is the season of their
many children.  What shall I do?  And under the eaves

and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances—but it is the season

when they need shelter, so what shall I do?  And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard

while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do?  Beautiful is the new snow falling

in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door.  And still I believe you will

come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know

that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon:  Come in, Come in.

Praying

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

~ Mary Oliver ~

waiting pains

Transitions are painful, complicated and confusing. These words of Kahil Gibran the famous poet and artist came to my mind as I considered some of the current struggles going on in the church and other institutions dealing with change. The last part about the value of stability is so helpful to me when so much lacks clarity, and seems up in the air.

Once as a teenager when arguing with my mother I remember picking up "The Prophet" and reading these words to her triumphantly. Now 30 years old I have greater appreciation for their painfulness as well as their blessing.  I don't know where you are (whoever you are reading this) but while there is much to be grateful for (it is one of my frequent Facebook status updates after all) I'm also feeling a lot of stress, pain and impatience while waiting for the "new" to emerge.

On Children by Kahlil Gibran  

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.   You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.   You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

flesh & blood

Last Sunday, I preached at the 11 o'clock service at Grace Cathedral. A special word of thanks to my Uncle Kent back home in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia who first introduced our family many years ago to the "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet" composition by Gavin Bryars. You can check that sermon out here. Click here for the gospel text. Peace!

What's going on...

This summer is turning out to be one of exciting change and growth. A few weeks ago, Bishop Marc Andrus announced as Acting Dean a transition in my role at Grace Cathedral:

The Reverend Will Scott, Associate Pastor at Grace Cathedral since October 2006 has recently been named Cathedral Missioner at St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church and will be part of the emerging North of Market Area Ministry Team. In this role, he will strive to connect all the Episcopal congregations and institutions in the region with one another and help them discern new ways of serving their neighborhoods. Now a small but vital multicultural community, St. Cyprian’s is a historic African-American and Caribbean congregation whose members were active in the Civil Rights Movement and hosted the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he preached at Grace Cathedral in 1965. Will will remain Associate Pastor at Grace Cathedral while embarking on this new mission continuing in his leadership role in the Sunday at Six worshiping community, Dinner with Grace, and Youth Confirmation Program.

You can learn more about St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church here. Tomorrow and for the next few Sundays, Church Divinity School of the Pacific professor the Reverend Sue Singer will be part of our worship life. A few weeks ago, the Reverend Megan Rohrer of Welcome joined us. This new adventure is all about collaboration, relationship building, sharing, listening and learning. Please keep everyone involved in your prayers as we together experience change and growth.


Yesterday, I was interviewed by Liz St. John about Dinner with Grace and had an opportunity to talk more broadly about ministry in San Francisco, including my role at St. Cyprian's. The interview will air August 16th on KLLC’s Sunday Magazine; you can listen to the podcast here. Many thanks to Heidi Zuhl, who coordinates communications at Grace Cathedral, for all she is doing to help support our work.

General Convention - staying connected

Thousands of Episcopalians are gathering in Anaheim, California for General Convention, the triennial meeting in which bishops, clergy and laity make important decisions about our life together. For those of us not attending there's a ton of ways to stay connected to the action. Here's a few of the places I'm trying to visit regularly.

General Convention HUB

Episcopal Cafe

Diocese of California General Convention Updates

Walking with Integrity

An Inch at a Time

Center Aisle

My friend and colleague Rosa Lee Harden even created a Facebook group for all of us not there.
If you are at GC2009, please help keep the rest of us in the loop (thanks to everybody who is blogging & twittering) If you are not there and have sites you recommend for staying up-to-date, please post away.

Big Table

I just received a phone call from Michael Tedrick, the Episcopal Diocese of California's & Grace Cathedral's Mission Partner in the Diocese of Curitiba, Brazil. Michael expressed great joy about his new work and appreciation for the ways his involvement with Dinner with Grace in San Francisco is helping him share in community there. Here's a bit from Michael's blog:

Yesterday, sixty people crowded the small hall to share a meal at Sao Tiago Catedral. The unspoken language of sharing. We meet in the midst of our mutual hunger. Some with hungry bodies and others with hungry souls. Together, we are fed in body, mind, and spirit. Warm, simple greetings and a smile was the language spoken and understood. I used the skills I honed with Grace Cathedral's Dinner With Grace, hand mashing 50 lbs. of potatos, chopping onions, (Will+ & Alex would be glad to know that I didn't cut myself), serving meals, peeling and seeding papayas, washing lettuce and arranging tables and chairs. It is welcoming, reassuring, and comforting for the stranger. I continue to be amazed by the breadth and length of The Table.

Please keep Michael and those he is working with in Brazil in your prayers and visit his blog regularly for updates on his journey.
Also, Dinner with Grace was recently in the news, check out this story here. Many thanks to Carolyn Tyler and her crew, who communicate well what Dinner with Grace is all about.

Now let us praise an inspiring Episcopalian...

My colleague at Grace Cathedral Elaine Belz recently shared this great article from Sojourners, on the influential 20th century Episcopalian Frances Perkins. I've often thought a cool advertising campaign for the Episcopal Church would involve photos of some of the inspiring characters who have hung around with us through the years like Frances Perkins, Margaret Mead, Edward Albee, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Norman Rockwell, John Steinbeck and Georgia O'Keeffe.

Here's a bit from Rose Marie Berger's article:

THOUGH PERKINS GREW up in Boston as a Congregationalist, she was confirmed at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit near Chicago, where she was teaching and volunteering at Jane Addams’ Hull House. With her Book of Common Prayer in one hand and Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives in the other, Perkins waded into the tenement houses and sweatshops to interview immigrant women about their lives. For the rest of her life, she used this triad—liturgy, analysis, and the voices of those at the bottom—as a tool for shaping public policy.

Donn Mitchell, editor of The Anglican Examiner, told me that Perkins had a deeply sacramental spirituality, which helped shape a “politics of generosity”—in which the state was the instrument through which the national community expressed its compassion. This was no small shift, said Mitchell, who published an article about Perkins in May. Her vision of the New Deal was a radical theological shift away from the judging and punitive God of Puritan and Calvinist theologies and toward the community-based solidarity of the immigrant Catholics and Jews.

“Frances Perkins was a social scientist and an artist,” Mitchell said. “She had a strong aesthetic orientation and the sacramental language spoke to her. Beauty was a manifestation of God’s graciousness. She saw that many people were cut off from this beauty by industrial problems and poverty. It became an incarnational act for her to bring provisions to the people who needed it. Since she couldn’t do that for everyone, she developed legal structures through which she could deliver the necessary things of life to those in need.”

Dinner with Grace in today's SF Chronicle

Dinner with Grace, a collaborative program of Grace Cathedral and Episcopal Community Services of San Francisco is featured in today's San Francisco Chronicle check the article out here. Last month, Episcopal Life also covered this growing program. As I type this posting a large crew of Dinner with Grace volunteers are organizing the cathedral kitchen to improve our work together. We're blessed by a dedicated team of lay volunteers, and according to Alex Senchak, our Core Team coordinator this month we have 100 regular volunteers involved in serving and sharing meals in the Tenderloin.

The most important thing Dinner with Grace seeks to do is build relationships. I recently discovered an inspiring quote of Gustavo Gutierrez in Anne Sutherland Howard's book, "Claiming the Beatitudes" which speaks to the significance of friendship and the preferential option for the poor:

The preferential option for the poor is ultimately a question of friendship. Without friendship, an option for the poor can easily become commitment to an abstraction (to a social class, a race, a culture, an idea). Aristotle emphasized the important place of friendship for the moral life, but we also find this clearly stated in John's Gospel. Christ says, "I do not call you servants, but friends." As Christians, we are called to reproduce this quality of friendship in our relationships with others. When we become friends with the poor, their presence leaves an indelible imprint on our lives, and we are much more likely to remain committed.

Many thanks to Meredith May and Brant Ward at the San Francisco Chronicle for their helpful coverage and attention.