During our time in San Francisco we visited three very different churches. Several members of our group had read about St. Gregory’s of Nyssa Episcopal Church in Sara Miles’s two books—Take this Bread and Jesus Freak. The big food pantry food bank movement started with her being served a bit of bread for communion. The same altar table that is used in the Sunday services is also used on Friday to provide food for the hundreds in need. Another highlight of the church is the “The Dancing Saints Icon.” It is a 3,000 square foot painting wrapping around the entire church rotunda, showing ninety larger-than-life saints; four animals; stars, moons, suns, and a twelve foot dancing Christ. Their idea of sainthood is simply meant as having God’s stamp on you; being marked and set apart as God’s own. Examples of saints are musicians, workers, missionaries, martyrs, protesters, reformers, judges, builders, scholars, soldiers, couples straight and gay, governors, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Pagan—of many continents, races, classes and eras. The more we looked, the more inspirational it was. We attended morning prayers and then had a chance to talk with Sara Miles.
Grace Cathedral descended from the historic Grace Church built in the Gold Rush year of 1849. The original was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. Work began on the present Cathedral in 1928 and was completed in 1964. Grace Cathedral is famed for its labyrinths—one outside made of terrazzo stone and one inside. Since the theme of this trip was Mary Magdalene, it was nice to see an icon of her here. It had been commissioned in celebration of the first woman Episcopal bishop in the U.S. in 1989, Barbara Clementine Harris.
Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church is located in “little Italy” and is known as “The Italian Cathedral of the West.” It is the home church and cultural center of the Italian-American community and in recent years also the Chinese-American Catholic community. Services are held in Italian, Mandarin, and English. During 1926-27 the church was the target of radical anti-catholic anarchists, who attempted five separate bomb attacks against the building. The church can be seen in several Clint Eastwood movies, Cecil B. DeMilles “Ten Commandments,” and in parts of “Sister Act2.” Joe DiMaggio married his first wife here. Since the church considered him still married, he and Marilyn Monroe could not be married in the church but returned to have their pictures taken on the steps of the church after their civil ceremony. Joe DiMaggio’s funeral was held here in 1999.
We took a “Hop on-Hop off” bus on our free day to see various sites of the city. We were interested in the Haight & Ashbury section of town because of activities there in the 1960’s. We hiked around Presidio Park and then walked across the Golden Gate Bridge. We stopped at Fisherman’s Wharf–among the crowds. We even visited Musee Mecanique (Mechanical Museum) which is one of the world’s largest privately owned collections of mechanically operated musical instruments and antique arcade machines. For a quarter we could play an old player piano, race two bicycles around a track or play any number of other arcade games! Throughout our visit we were fascinated by the steep hills, variety of architecture, fog, and food. (On one street we determined that from the top of the block to the bottom of that block was a difference of five building floor levels!)
