Dean Letter: Updates

For those who have not yet taken the Regathering Survey CLICK HERE.


To participate in the “Zoom Audience” of the Play Reading on Saturday, June 13, 1 PM CLICK HERE to email Bill.

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Hello St. Paul’s,

Thank you to everyone who has completed our regathering survey: there has been a terrific response! The survey is still open so I don’t have anything to report to you yet: next week I hope to be able to share the main learnings with you. If you haven’t had a chance yet, please do complete it as soon as possible. The link to the survey is elsewhere in this post.

While we are discerning and planning our eventual reunion, we will of course continue to offer worship, formation, and fellowship activities online. This Saturday, the 13th, I am looking forward to participating in a Zoom reading of Dylan Thomas’s play Under Milk Wood. There’s still time for you to get the Zoom link and be part of the audience: you can email Bill Eadie at weadie6@cox.net for the link. We will probably be able to make a recording available for a short time after the event, but it won’t be broadcast.

Next month’s social event will be an actual in-person gathering in Balboa Park. We are still working out the details, but I hope you will come, masked of course, and take the opportunity to see your cathedral friends “live”. I have missed you all and I’m really looking forward to seeing you. Of course, if restrictions are tightened up in the event of a resurgence of the virus, we will move the event online.

We’ve had a tremendous response to the publicity for our upcoming forum series on race. I am encouraged by the level of interest in this conversation. We can each do our bit to better understand the role of race in the past and present of this country, so that we can work to change social dynamics and bring God’s Kingdom a little closer to reality. If you missed the sermon last Sunday by Bishop Mariann Budde, I recommend it: you can find it on the Youtube channel of the Washington National Cathedral.
While we are worshiping online, we have the opportunity to hear some excellent preachers who are not local. This Sunday our preacher is the Rev. Canon Andrew Green, and next Sunday the Rev. Lorenzo Lebrija, both of them joining us from their homes in the desert. On the 28th we will have the honor of hearing the Rev. Canon Harold Lewis, Rector Emeritus of Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh and incidentally father of Chapter member Justin Lewis. And mark your calendar for Pride Sunday, July 18, when our preacher will be the Rev. Naomi Washington Leapheart.

If you’ve wondered what happened to our strategic planning effort, it has gone through some changes but is still moving forward. I’ll tell you more in a future bulletin.

I know that online gathering is not at all the same as seeing each other in person, but I am grateful that we can continue to use this option until we feel safe coming to church. Now that we are several weeks into reopening the local economy we are starting to see an increase in the COVID 19 numbers, and I urge you to continue taking every precaution. Don’t feel pressured to leave your mask at home or to join in large groups. Keep washing your hands! I know that, for some of us, there is a real tension between our desire on the one hand to join in protests and gatherings related to the current outcry against racist practices, and on the other to be as safe as possible. Each of us will have our own threshold for risk and that is OK. I’ll end with a prayer for these times: a prayer for the oppressed (BCP p.826).

See you on Sunday.
Your sister in Christ,
Penny