Grace Cathedral

I was sitting in a pew near the south transept the other week before the service. The choir had just burst out in rehearsal when the sun broke through the clouds and the light torched the pillars through the windows. I had found myself in a celestial palace. My convalescence was over. And while I may not have developed any particular psychic power after the operation, my brain has felt, figuratively at least, more open.

It was not a change we had expected. We had planned for change when Lisa and I moved here from Boston in 2018. For us, it was a leap of faith that we would find a community in San Francisco that would help make this city our home. Lisa and I started our church shopping here at Grace six years ago, and our search ended quickly. We were welcomed aboard the Stewardship Committee not long thereafter.

What we found here at Grace was a place and a community dedicated to loving constancy. These people aren’t joking when we say all are welcome and come as you are. And that measure of acceptance from you helped me live with a chronic condition called benign essential tremor. Thank you for helping mop up all the coffee I spilt at coffee hour.

But that welcoming thing? Come as you are doesn’t mean you have to stay that way. Through Grace, I became aware that I might be able to do something about the trembling and the falling before anything terrible happened. I needed brain surgery, as they say, like a hole in the head.

It’s been a year since I got the implant. The payoff has not been immediate. I am still very conscious — literally — about standing on my own two feet. And the gastric ulcer that I had nurtured for years brought forth a lymphoma that was zapped with 19 doses of radiation. As a consequence, sadly, I am no longer able to give blood.

But what Lisa and I can and do is support the cathedral as generously as we can because we can testify to its capacity for healing. The signs are subtle, but there — who thought you’d find a labyrinth outside a radiation clinic, for example? And the not-so-subtle, like a visit from former Vice Dean Greg Kimura when I was in hospital, and like running into Steph McNally when I was getting my rads. Healing prayers have helped me with suffering and illness over the past two years in ways I couldn’t have ever imagined.

Lisa and I are here not only because we are members of this congregation, but also because we are proud citizens of San Francisco. Grace is more than just a loving parish, it is a vital organ in the city’s neural network, with an entire chapel devoted to healing. Healing wounds and hearts and minds, healing in the light.

You all know that. As stewards, as members of our cathedral’s congregation, when we give to Grace, we also give to our city. There is a reason why we have a place in the San Francisco skyline. These spires did not build themselves on their own.

All of which is by way of saying, the cathedral is constantly giving us what we need, even when we don’t know it. Our pledges to stewardship offer an important and tangible way of participating in the community, the cathedral, and social force that is Grace Cathedral. Please join us this Stewardship-tide to keep our spires standing tall for years to come.

Consider Pledging to Grace Cathedral