Grace Cathedral

Dear Friends,

Greetings from bucolic Healdsburg, CA, where I’m gathered with clergy colleagues from throughout the diocese at The Bishop’s Ranch. Here, we’re taking part in a listening and visioning process that will lead to a strategic vision to be presented at Diocesan Convention 2025. And I find myself thinking about how we make decisions in the church.

While liturgical decisions can be complex, the resources for and pathway to decisions are quite clear: the body of texts authorized by General Convention (“Common Prayer”), the principal liturgist of the diocese (the Bishop), the principal authority of the congregation (the Dean), the people to whom that work and authority is entrusted, in whole or in part, (liturgists and musicians), and the strong indicators of time, space, history and the people at present assembled. 

In the realm of cathedral liturgy, many of the parameters are given. So if someone in the community urges me to swap a hard gospel text for a relatable Mary Oliver poem, I can cite common sources that require a gospel for the celebration of the Eucharist, explain why that particular text will be read on a given day, and point to the preacher’s role in connecting scripture to daily life. It’s no dismissal of Mary Oliver, and the proclamation of the gospel is not open for debate. 

Moving from Sunday Eucharist to the other 160-odd hours of the week, we need practices of welcome and formation, compassion and justice. We have two millennia of wisdom, trial, and error, not to mention extensive church resources, to shape those areas of our lives. Contrary to the “must” rubrics of the prayer book, this body of work may seem less authoritative, less defining of our Christian identity, and more varied in emphasis. Decisions may be less clear. But whether to do it is not really open for debate.

This week, Presiding Bishop-elect Sean Rowe met with the Executive Council’s Joint Budget Committee to present his plan for a structural realignment of The Episcopal Church, which includes a 5% reduction in staff costs over 3 years. However, the church-wide priorities are unchanged: racial healing, creation care, and evangelism. (Learn more from Episcopal New Service). Even in lean times, justice is an authoritative and defining emphasis for the church.

The same is true at Grace Cathedral. As Dean Malcolm Young announced at the August 25 Town Hall Meeting, one of the priorities in our forthcoming strategic plan is social justice, and specifically the funding and hiring of a priest to direct our justice efforts. Just as we provide an example for the church of liturgical practices that are faithful to our sources of authority and God’s call among us, I believe Grace Cathedral can do that with social justice, too. Just as our liturgy is conducted within the arches and architecture of a neo-gothic basilica, justice will have specific contours: programmatic pillars that are faithful to our own charisms, the overall direction of the church, in partnership with our bishop and the diocese. The foundation is laid; the cornerstone is rock solid. Let the whole structure be joined together.

All good things,

Anna

The Rev. Canon Anna E. Rossi
Canon Precentor
Director of Interfaith Engagement