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Grace Cathedral

Grace Cathedral is an Episcopal church in San Francisco. A house of prayer for all people, and a center for social justice, the arts and service.

Grace Cathedral Blog

A Blessing for Those Caring for Children

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Every day educators are essential and the importance of their work cannot be emphasized enough. Now more than ever, it is important to protect and keep them in our minds, hearts and actions.

Below is a beautiful blessing from The Rev. Kristin Saylor:

O God, who came to dwell among us as a child – bless our children, and those who put their own safety at risk to care for them, especially the students and staff at our Community Preschool. As COVID-19 continues to threaten the fabric of our common life, grant our leaders wisdom and courage to prioritize the well-being of the most vulnerable in our midst, including early childhood educators. Amen.

Prioritize Early Childhood Educators for the COVID-19 Vaccine

Bayview Mission Holiday Giving Tree

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A gathering of the Bayview community years before the pandemic.

Traditions Change Amidst Pandemic

For years, the Bayview Mission Holiday Giving Tree has kicked off the Christmas season following Thanksgiving. Every year Grace Cathedral, in collaboration with the Cathedral School for Boys and Bayview Mission, provides toys and necessities to children and families all across the Bayview community. Unfortunately, like everything else in 2020, this year will be different but thankfully, no less special. 

In years past, a Christmas tree would be set up in the Chapter House, adorned with paper ornaments. These ornaments would have children’s names and their Christmas wishes inscribed upon them. Students from the Cathedral School for Boys and their families would purchase gifts in an effort to make these wishes come true, and the students would make cards for children in the Bayview community. Before mid-December there is an annual gift wrapping party, followed a week later by a holiday party at Bayview Mission where the gifts are distributed. While the pandemic certainly posed an obstacle to tradition, Grace Cathedral modified accommodations to be able to continue on. 

A young bike rider at the Bayview gathering in 2019, before the pandemic.

For the first time in years there would be no physical tree or wishes, but instead an Amazon wishlist. The wrapping party would require a temperature check, masks to be worn and participants to social distance (along with mandatory holiday cheer). However, with San Francisco now in the purple tier of COVID with a more stringent lockdown in place, the wrapping and holiday parties have been cancelled. The outreach ministry, however, will not let a lockdown stop them from making this holiday season bright. 

Despite the parties’ cancellation, the Holiday Giving Tree continues on course. One volunteer and the family within their bubble will now tale on the task of gift wrapping and preparing the family bags for the week following. Two members of one Bayview family will now pick up their family bag and children’s gifts at a scheduled time. Thanks to the flexibility of the outreach ministry, over 350 children and families will still receive toys and necessities this holiday season, with gifts going to 50 infants, 45 preschoolers, 48 elementary students, 26 teens, along with care bags for families that include groceries, hand sanitizer and other assorted items. 

While it may be easy to call 2020 the hardest year of recent memory, the determination shown to preserve this special holiday tradition proves the resoluteness of the human spirit and our desire to help our neighbors in times of need. 

For those who wish to donate for the holidays, we are currently accepting:

  • Unused/unopened toiletries
  • New towels and washcloths
  • New socks
  • Canned food
  • Dental supplies
  • Diapers and training pants
  • New/unused baby clothing (onesies, etc.) and baby blankets
  • New boxed toys, such as Legos

It is also our hope to provide families with paper towels, toilet paper, facial tissue, soap, detergent, adult socks, and non-toxic cleaning supplies. If you are in a position to bring some of these supplies to Bayview Mission, our families would be very grateful. Lastly, handmade Christmas cards would be a lovely touch!

For all other inquiries, please contact Tracee Zyla at 415-749-6351.

Yoga with Grace: The December Reflection Series

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The yoga community at Grace Cathedral is excited to announce a new series of yoga practices for the month of December, with music, uplifting words and asanas to feed your body and soul. This special series will feature a new practice each week, focusing on how the experience of the pandemic connects to cathedral art and architecture, our 120-year history, Christian tradition, and yogic spiritual principles.

The first practice is called Resilience. This moment is an opportunity to learn how to face challenges, bounce back and keep moving forward. The Rev. Canon Jude Harmon shares the remarkable story of a wedding chalice created in 1868, and its heroic rescue from the crumbling ruins of Grace Church in San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake. Join this practice on 12/8 at 6pm PST or later. It will be available throughout December.

We’re calling the next practice in the series Pregnant with Hope. The labyrinth where our Yoga inside the cathedral began is a symbol of deep maternal nurture, designed to help us access our creative potential. This practice will help you unlock your creative self during this time of extraordinary change. What barries are you confronting? How does your practice help you access the beauty and complexity of your inner life, which drives your growth? Join this practice on 12/15 at 6pm PST or later. It will be available throughout December.

The December Reflection Series are a collection of restorative hatha yoga practices led by instructor Darren Main, with music accompaniment by Destiny Muhammad and Amber Field. Yoga with Grace is made possible through the support of yogis like you. Suggested donations are $15, but please give what you can.

Stay safe and strong.

World Tree of Hope

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For over fifteen years, the Rainbow World Fund (RWF) World Tree of Hope has stood as a symbol of global unity to promote peace, love and humanitarianism. For the first eleven years, the tree was displayed at San Francisco City Hall, and for the past four years Grace Cathedral has been honored to host the Tree with the message that we are all one human family.

The RWF World Tree of Hope is a gift to the San Francisco Bay Area and the world from the LGBT community and is the largest origami holiday tree in the world, standing over 23 feet tall and decorated with over 17,000 origami cranes and stars, each hand folded and inscribed with wishes for the future of the world. The cranes are not mere decorations in a holiday display; they are representations of hopes and dreams, which is why it is so fitting that the Tree is displayed at Grace Cathedral. The wishes come from people of all ages, all faiths and all walks of life, from world leaders such as Barack Obama to school children, from San Francisco to Sir Lanka. These wishes make the RWF World Tree of Hope a powerful expression of people coming together to create a better world. 

Founded in 2000, Rainbow World Fund is the world’s first and only all-volunteer, LGBTQ-based humanitarian aid organization. RWF works to help people affected by natural disasters, hunger, poverty, disease, oppression and war by raising awareness in, and funds from, the LGBTQ community to support both LGBT and non-LGBTQ people locally and around the world. RWF’s core values — empowerment, sustainability, peacemaking, and measurable impact — and mission — to promote peace, unity and hope by leading the LGBTQ movement in participating in humanitarian relief efforts — align perfectly with those of Grace Cathedral. 

Grace Cathedral is Celebrating Proposition 17

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by Jim Simpson and Alma Robinson, on behalf of the Social Justice Working Group

On November 3, California voters adopted Prop. 17 restoring the voting rights of persons on parole. The act of voting gives each citizen a voice in choosing our leaders, shaping how resources are allocated and ultimately, owning a stake in our collective future. The record number of Americans who voted this year and the sharp differences revealed by the results remind us how constant we must be in protecting everyone’s right to vote and how sparing we should be in denying voting rights to anyone.

Grace Cathedral is proud to have been one of many faith-based organizations in California that publicly endorsed Prop. 17, including the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco and the Bay Area, Glide Center for Social Justice, and Faith in Action Bay Area. Among the nearly 10 million Californians who voted in favor of this measure, we are confident that many were inspired by their religious convictions. We thank you all for your support.

Accomplishing the goal of Prop. 17 requires re-engaging people who have been excluded from civic participation, often for many years. The Cathedral encourages the Secretary of State and Department of Corrections to notify parolees and people being prepared for release that the people of California have given them back their voting rights and to help them register to vote online or submit voter registration cards as part of the release and reentry process. To the people whose rights have been restored, Grace Cathedral welcomes you to the community of fully enfranchised Californians.

The decision to endorse Prop. 17 came about through the collective efforts of the trustees, clergy and staff, and congregation members who comprise Grace Cathedral’s Social Justice Working Group, aided by the Social Justice Committee of the lay-led Congregation Council. There was an essay on the Cathedral blog, discussion groups, homilies, and a Forum program that featured Dorsey Nunn, who runs Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and the All of Us or None advocacy network, in conversation with Dean Malcolm Young about the impact of this measure.

After an election as fraught as this one, many people need a break from the daily news cycle and some time to reflect. Grace Cathedral’s social justice advocacy team will use this time to identify emerging issues on which the voice of our faith community and like-minded partners can be meaningful and constructive. The Cathedral has previously identified climate change, gender justice, and racial justice as appropriate subjects for advocacy, as well as concerns about gun violence and housing for vulnerable populations.

One way to build on the momentum of Proposition 17 would be to eliminate the penal servitude exception in the California constitution, which authorizes involuntary servitude as punishment for criminal offenses. Voters in Utah and Nebraska struck penal servitude provisions from their state constitutions in November. We have met with leaders in the growing movement to amend similar language in many state constitutions as well as to repeal and replace the the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1865 and abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party therein shall have been duly convicted….” We welcome your thoughts about social justice initiatives at Grace Cathedral and we promise to keep you informed.