Our Parish

Over 20 years ago, when AIDS was mowing down friends left and right, I came to St. John's for the first time. I was meeting a friend who had asked me to join him for the funeral of an Episcopal priest whose name I can't remember. At the time, I was a Catholic priest, a Jesuit, and, after several years of parish work in the Northwest, was plugging away at a doctorate in Berkeley. Shortly before my coming to Berkeley, the Vatican had issued another of its searing letters about gays, one that had left me fragmented and weary and wondering where my own life was heading. Finding my way through the red doors of St. John's with my friend, I slumped into the last pew.

To my surprise, that liturgy, with its many stories about this gay priest, gave me a glimmer of hope that my own disparate life could become whole again.

Fast forward several years: I have left the Jesuits and become an Episcopalian, and my partner, Rob, and I have been together five years. A friend, learning we are moving to San Francisco, suggests we check out St. John's.

We did, and we stayed. In time, we were married here. Later, I was received as an Episcopal priest and began assisting here. Later still, perhaps best of all, our son, David, was baptized here.

I remain at St. John's for three reasons.

• The location. During the week, I'm a technical writer in the Financial District working with some of the brightest minds in the country. But Sunday mornings, on my walk to St. John's, I see life from a different angle: giggly children bantering in Spanish with their playmates; homeless people in doorways; carefree twenty-somethings wandering home from a night at the clubs; shopkeepers sweeping up the windblown newspapers, hypodermic needles, and broken wine bottles; bright, colorful murals telling the joys and struggles of this diverse and lively neighborhood. I gather up all this terrible beauty and press it to my heart on my way to the Eucharist.
  

• The people. Despite our ups and downs, the people of this parish keep inspiring me to learn more about Jesus and what it means to follow him. We try, each in our own small ways, to do this--looking out for each other when we get sick, lending a hand to struggling parishes in El Salvador, helping neighborhood kids get a jump on their math and reading, handing out food and vouchers to people off the street, or just being a little kinder, more joyful, throughout the week. We do what we can.
  

• Our seven-year-old son. He's crazy about the place. He loves his friends and the special treatment they get in Godly Play, the ladybugs and spiders in the garden, and the oatmeal raisin cookies that occasionally appear at coffee hour after mass.