Grace Cathedral

My Dear Siblings, 

I greet you on a spectacular spring day with the tides rising at Ocean Beach before the afternoon wind dissipates the morning surfers. The hills around our city are in motion with the spring grass; the mustard wildflowers are beginning their march down the hillsides. The cumulous clouds have been so magnificent this spring, haven’t they? It’s been one of the best years for clouds in recent memory. 

On Sunday we baptized 7 more infants after baptizing and receiving 24 adults last week at the Easter Vigil. What a blessing it is to be with each of these people on their pilgrimage as Christians walking on the Anglican way that has sustained so many of us over the years. 

 
Above all today I am grateful for you. It would be impossible for Grace Cathedral to function without scores of volunteers. Greeters, Singers, Coffee Hour chefs, Ushers, Sunday School leaders, Congregation Council Members, Trustees, our sewing and knitting volunteers, EfM Scholars, Small group participants, etc. Cathedral ministry is special and requires us all to hone our skills as hosts. I’m so grateful for all that you do here. 

One very important way that you might serve here is as a docent. Please let me know if you are interested in learning more about this ministry. 

This Sunday (April 15) at the 9:30 a.m. Forum and the 11:00 a.m. service we will be hearing from Rev’d Jim Wallis, probably one of the most famous Christians of our time. I’m looking forward to learning his perspective on what is happening now across this country as he visits various churches. 

With the story of Thomas fresh in our minds from our Sunday Gospel reading, below is a poem by Denise Levertov. 

Love, 
Malcolm 

Denise Levertov, “On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus” 

It is for all 
‘literalists of the imagination,’ 
poets or not, 
that miracle 
is possible, 
possible and essential. 
Are some intricate minds 
nourished 
on concept, 
as epiphytes flourish 
high in the canopy? 
Can they 
subsist on the light, 
on the half 
of metaphor that’s not 
grounded in dust, grit, 
heavy 
carnal clay? 
Do signs contain and utter, 
for them 
all the reality 
that they need? Resurrection, for them, 
an internal power, but not 
a matter of flesh? 
For the others, 
of whom I am one, 
miracles (ultimate need, bread 
of life) are miracles just because 
people so tuned 
to the humdrum laws: 
gravity, mortality — 
can’t open 
to symbol’s power 
unless convinced of its ground, 
its roots 
in bone and blood. 
We must feel 
the pulse in the wound 
to believe 
that ‘with God 
all things 
are possible,’ 
taste 
bread at Emmaus 
that warm hands 
broke and blessed.