The Foundation to Build Upon
Dear All Soulsians,
I write to you from the Bishops Ranch, looking over the golden, amber, and crimson leaves of the Russian River Valley, where I am in attending my final board retreat, finishing ten years of service as a board member. This brief time away comes at an opportune time. After months of prayer and reflection and writing and interviews and reference and background checks, at the beginning of November I took part in the Diocesan Meet and Greets across our diocese. As you might imagine, the last few weeks have been one of the more intensive and demanding stretches of my life. Throughout all of it I cannot fully express how grateful I have been for the kindness and generosity and prayerfulness of All Souls Parish as Sarah and I engaged in that intensive and exhausting process.
And now, after having written all those essays and produced videos and answered a multitude of questions about where I see God at work in our diocese, I am resting, trusting that Diocese of California and the Holy Spirit will come together and call the person who is best suited to next serve and lead our diocese.
One of the gifts of this period of discernment, and there have been many, has been the opportunity to reflect on my fifteen years of service as your Rector. It is hard to believe that it’s been fifteen years, but when I look at a photo of that very first Sunday and see Ben and Jonah both held in my arms, I realize that it has been a while. One of the questions that was asked of some of my references was what, in their view, I should be proud of from my time as Rector of All Souls.
As I have considered that question, I’ve been surprised at my answer. It’s not the unbelievable generosity of the Living Waters campaign, and the transformative capital projects that it will make possible. Or even the faithful response that our parish has taken towards racial reparations in the form of the Isaiah Project. And while I am more and more coming to understand the profound personal, communal, and societal effects that Jordan Court is having and will have for decades for vulnerable elders in our city, as well as for our Parish, that’s not the first thing that came to my mind and heart either. It also wasn’t the decade of growth in our parish, at a time when this was not the norm in Christian congregations in the United States.
As I considered what I have been most proud of in my time serving All Souls, it’s not projects or buildings or fundraising or growth––it’s the way we have collectively kept our Christian community healthy. It’s been the practices over and over and over that have helped us towards faithfulness, stability, and vitality. The moments when people encouraged one another. The times when people asked one another for forgiveness. The occasions when we lovingly and courageously held one another to account. These things are much harder to measure. They don’t show up on a spreadsheet, there are no newspaper articles about them, but to me they are the foundation of everything that follows. Without that bedrock we wouldn’t have been able to take the faithful risks of the Parish House Accompaniment Program for asylum seekers or walked alongside scores of All Soulsians through Stephen Ministry.
Simply put there is no substitute for emotional and spiritual health in Christian community. Without it you it feels like you are building on shifting sand. With it you can move mountains and cure souls.
No matter what happens on December 2nd when our diocese elects our next bishop, it is my sincere hope and desire that we as a parish keep working towards our mutual health and wellbeing. If we are able and willing to do that, God only knows what wondrous adventures await us next.
Peace,
–Phil+
Living Waters Update and an Invitation to Discuss
The Vestry and Property Committee are moving toward the promise of the Living Waters Project. The Vestry has approved a scope of work, including the placement of an elevator, and a budget the Living Waters Project can afford.
Leaders of the Vestry and the Living Waters campaign will offer a more detailed update on Sunday, November 26, starting at about 12:00 in the Parish Hall.
If you have questions you would like answered, you can submit them by clicking on this link: Living Waters discussion prep or at the presentation on the 26th. You can attend in person or by zoom and the meeting will be recorded.
Until then, here are the broad strokes of the Living Waters effort to date. In March, the Vestry and Property Committee set a scope of work that includes:
Elevator service to the nave (church), parish hall and undercroft levels of the church, but not the crows’ nest.
Phased installation of new, higher capacity, electrical service from PG&E, a major step toward campus carbon neutrality.
Complete remodel, though not an expansion, of the kitchen and an appliance upgrade that will make it easier to serve the parish and our broader community.
Renovation of the parish hall, including a new floor, new storage, new curtains and repair of the two large parish hall windows.
Substantial work in the undercroft, making the kitchenette accessible and improving the lighting
Refreshing the chapel with a new heating and cooling system, new lighting and new paint.
Catching up on deferred maintenance by fixing the roof and gutters, water-proofing the walls on the south and west of the parish hall, sealing and replacing the floor in the classrooms used by the preschool.
To fit these projects into the budget available, the current plans do not include:
funding for landscaping,
audio visual equipment,
replacing pews with chairs, or
installing shades over the skylight in the nave.
These were hard compromises, but the Vestry faithfully considered the pros and cons and estimated costs of each project and determined this set of projects is the best way to balance a multitude of competing needs and desires within very real budget constraints.
The elevator placement has continued to present challenges. Plans for the placement and integration into the surrounding area have evolved and will continue to evolve based on new ideas, new cost estimates and the constant desire to make the best possible decision based on the information at hand. The Vestry is working hard to provide access throughout the building, but in 2023 there is no perfect place to put an elevator in a building built in 1924 and 1956.
Over the course of its work, the Property Committee has considered four locations for the elevator, including the northwest corner of the courtyard and the parish hall foyer where the current lift stands.
No matter where the elevator is located, the contractor has made a commitment that we can continue using the nave for services each Sunday during construction. As part of making that commitment, the contractor will need to be working during the hours Heart’s Leap preschool is in session. The Vestry is working with Heart’s Leap to find a suitable temporary space and is taking the costs of any move and lost rent during construction into its budget calculations.
In its September meeting, the Vestry explicitly considered many factors, including reliability of the cost estimates, the suitability of the elevator model, the traffic flow and access within the building, the likelihood of triggering a sprinkler requirement, internal and external aesthetics, the feasibility and cost of displacing the preschool for some months, re-locating the current mechanical room and the ability to hold church services during construction.
After robust and open discussion, aware of the tradeoffs it was making, the Vestry voted 10 - 1 to reaffirm the other projects and to adopt the foyer location for the elevator as long as the final budget for the foyer placement is less than the final budget for the courtyard location. The contractor is refining the budget, based on this decision. Those numbers should be presented to the Property Committee and Vestry within a few weeks.
Making significant changes to an old building, beloved by generations of All Soulsians, is hard. It will be impossible to find unanimity, particularly within a budget that does not allow us to do everything we would like all at once.
The Vestry has made the choice to pursue the foyer elevator option based on all the information it has and is moving toward getting these projects under way. The coming months will have changes and surprises as actual construction draws near. As with the construction of Jordan Court, a project of this size is dynamic and requires learning and adapting as more information and detail emerge.
Though construction is sure to be inconvenient, and at times messy, we can continue to be open to the renewal of this space and to each other. We can trust that we will work as a community to meet this grace-given opportunity. And that in itself can be a living illustration that we make church together.
There is still much to share and say about the changes that will be coming to our space. Hope to see you a week from Sunday.
–Richard Lynch
Love Your Neighbor
as Yourself
Dear All Soulsians,
I have been thinking about what it means to be part of a community, this community of All Souls. There is a certain something here–a warmth and openness–that is hard to express in words but which nonetheless is real and palpable.
I believe this stems from our embrace of the central teachings of Jesus that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. We gather at All Souls to practice both of these commandments. We are invited to find God in our own time and in our own way. Here, we are offered the gifts of our traditions and community and we are invited to participate without obligation, nor is any requirement that would tend to bind or hinder us. We are taught that love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. We love our neighbors by sharing ourselves generously with others in times of joy and times of sorrow. All are welcome here.
Like so many things in life, the web of relationships that we are privileged to enjoy within our community is both strong beyond our comprehension and at the same time, is a fragile and precious good that must be nurtured carefully and protected. Our community norms are based on respect, consideration, acceptance, direct and open communication, and truthfulness. The framework of leadership at All Souls, our clergy, staff and vestry, are not analogous to the checks and balances and representative models of secular government. Instead, our leadership is made up of dedicated individuals seeking divine guidance for how best to meet the needs and support the goals of our community. No human relationship or organization can be perfect and we recognize that there are destructive forces, the harms of judgment, gossip, absolutism, and coercion, that can create dissention, causing pain and damage to individuals and our community. We must renew our efforts again and again to treat one another with respect, kindness, gentleness and thoughtful acceptance. We can change our negatives to positives: fear to faith; contempt for what others do to respect for the potential within them; rejection to release with love; dominance to encouragement; driving to guidance; panic to serenity; false hope, self-centered, to real hope, God-centered; self-justification to self-understanding. As we change in such ways as these, we change the world about us and all the people in our world for the better.
I see this in my own life, recognizing that I must redirect myself from moment to moment seeking to return to a heart of love for my neighbors as well as myself, to healing the breaches in myself and in my relationships, with God’s help. I invite you to join me in turning our attention, again and again, to the foundational work of loving, of seeking the light of Christ in the face of our neighbors.
–Sarah Kern, Senior Warden
The Return of YSA
Tiny Homes
The All Souls Parish collaboration with the tiny house empowerment village continues!
Some of you remember the building phase, in which volunteers from ASP and many local communities helped build 26 tiny homes for formally houseless young adults.
This transformative project of the nonprofit Youth Spirit Artworks now supports and mentors residents in life skills, to help them transition out of the village and into more hopeful futures.
Interfaith organizer and Empowerment Village Co-manager Zae Illo joins Father Phil and Emily Hansen Curran on the Soulcast to talk about life in the village and ways we can continue to support these neighbors.
Throughout the pandemic, Zae has continued to gather an interfaith team in support of the village through Zoom meetings. ASP’s next opportunity to support YSA will be a potluck supper on Saturday, November 18 in the parish hall, where we will host the first in-person interfaith meeting since the pandemic began.
The sign-up link is below.
For more questions or to help out, please reach out to Jenny Kern or Mary Rees, from the Justice and Peace Committee.The All Souls Parish collaboration with the tiny house empowerment village continues! Watch a special edition of the Soulcast, below.
–Jenny Kern
Announcements & Events
Happening This Week
Interfaith Advocacy Dinner for Youth Spirit Artworks All are invited to a potluck dinner in support of the work of the Youth Spirit Artworks Tiny Home Village this coming Saturday evening, November 18th, at 5p at All Souls. RSVP by clicking here.
Reading Between the Lines Bible Study @ 7:00a. Click here to join by Zoom, or join them in-person in the Common Room.
12 Greek Words Every Christian Should Know (taught by L. Deihr and the Rev. Phil Brochard) The cultures that produced the Christian testament are significantly different from 21st century American life. By contextualizing 12 seminal Greek words found throughout the New Testament, we will grapple with the impossibility of translation, consider textual traditions and editions, try to enter into the cultural imagination of the Greek-speaking Mediterranean of the 1st century, and find out what difference that makes for us as Christians right now, today. (October 22, 29 November 12, 19). Happening during the 9:15 teaching hour in the Parish Hall and on Zoom (click here).
Newcomer/New Member Class Anyone who is new to All Souls or is hoping to learn more about what it means to be a participant in the life and community of All Souls is welcome to our Newcomer and New Member Class taught by Emily Hansen Curran and the Rev. Phil Brochard. We’ll spend the four weeks diving into the Membership Expectations of All Souls. At the end of the class, those interested in becoming a member of All Souls have an opportunity to do so. November 19-December 10th in the Common Room, downstairs.
Evening Prayer en Español All are welcome to join our seminarian Michael Drell and parishioner Elena Ramirez for Oración del Atardecer (evening prayer) on Friday evenings at 5p in the Chapel on Cedar St. All are welcome, even if you don’t speak Spanish! Email Michael Drell for more information, mdrell@ses.cdsp.edu.
Hospitality at All Souls Sign-up here (click here) to contribute to Sunday coffee hour food!
Worship This Week
8am, contemplative Eucharist (in Chapel)
10:30am, sung Eucharist (click here to access the live stream)
Wednesday 9am Service. Join the Zoom call here, or join us in person in the Nave at 9a. Password: 520218.
Friday, 5p Oración del Atardecer (evening prayer) en Español (in Chapel)
Children & Family
Nursery The downstairs nursery is open and available to you for your use whenever you’re at All Souls. This is not a staffed nursery, so an adult must be there with your child, but if you need a quiet place to take a time out, change a diaper, let your child play or take a rest, the nursery is open for you to do all of those things. If there is a service going on that’s being livestreamed, you will be able to watch the livestream on the computer in the nursery as well.
Children’s Ministry Sunday School continues each week during the 10:30 a.m. service. Children head downstairs at the start of the service, then return after the “Peace.” See an usher if you need directions.
Children pre-K to 1st grade: Godly Play (in the Godly Play 1 classroom)
Children 2nd-5th grade: Faith Explorers (in the Fiery Furnace room)
Youth Program Regular Youth Group meets on Sundays from 7-8:30 pm in the Parish Hall.
If you are not receiving weekly Youth Program updates but would like to, please reach out to Emily B to be added to our mailing list.
Save the Dates: Summer Camp 2024 at the Bishop’s Ranch Summer Camp 2024 dates are here, so grab your calendars and mark these dates! Registration will open soon and will be announced on the Bishop’s Ranch Instagram and Facebook pages as well as via email.
June 23 – June 28 BREAD Explorers
June 30 – July 5 Intergenerational Camp
July 8 – July 12 READ Camp Week 1
July 15 – July 19 READ Camp Week 2
July 21 – July 26 BREAD Adventurers / Discoverers
You can read more about each camp, sign up for updates and learn about our new tiered pricing structure at the link by clicking here.
Questions about Children, Family, and Youth ministry? Contact Rev. Emily B. (emilyb@allsoulsparish.org)!
Justice & Peace
Ways to help with the Israel-Hamas War, from Episcopal Relief & Development Since the start of the current Israel-Hamas war, Episcopal Relief & Development has been supporting long-time partners in the Holy Land including Al Ahli Hospital, a ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, to provide emergency medical support in Gaza. Despite being hit by two explosions that damaged buildings and claimed hundreds of lives, the hospital is still serving those who are in need of care. Episcopal Relief & Development stands with the brave staff of Al Ahli Hospital as they risk their lives to help others.
Please pray for peace in the Holy Land and consider making a contribution to the Episcopal Relief & Development Middle East Fund to help meet the growing needs of all people in the region.
Stay informed about the Episcopal Relief & Development response at episcopalrelief.org.
Sacred Earth: Growing Beloved Community with author Kim Stanley Robinson When: Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023 at 6:00pm Pacific Time. Pre-Register: click here.
We continue our Fall series at Sacred Earth: Growing Beloved Community, our video webcast series exploring the intersections of faith, ecology, justice, and spirituality.
Kim Stanley Robinson is acclaimed as our greatest living science fiction author with 20 novels to date, many addressing how we can get to a better relationship with the Biosphere. His recent novel, The Ministry for the Future, projects how a climate-disrupted near future might unfold and how the world might respond with an empowered United Nations Minister enacting a best-case scenario for dodging the mass extinction event. Stan writes: “Until the tap runs dry it’s hard to imagine climate change as a lived experience. I try to write for when it really strikes you…the power of imagination is strong enough to change our behavior in the present…the world is a science fiction novel that we are all writing.”
He addressed the world’s leaders at the United Nation’s Climate Summit in Glasgow (COP27) meeting. Stan will also speak at the forthcoming 2024 UN Summit of the Future: Multilateral Solutions for a Better Tomorrow (where the General Assembly is also likely to establish a UN Special Envoy for Future Generations, inspired by his writing). Dr. Robinson is respected for his knowledge of the intersectionalities among political theory, science, economics, finance and history. He writes: “We need to employ a kind of eco-realpolitic that refrains from too much rigorous judgment…There are roughly 2,600 gigatons of fossil fuel assets. If they are burned into the atmosphere, we are dead. Biophysical reality says those assets must be stranded, and economic reality says that can’t be done without causing a super-depression. As part of saving civilization, you have to keep money stable. It’s as simple as that.
He will be interviewed by fellow UN COP Delegates Bishop Marc Andrus, Episcopalian Bishop of the California Diocese and Dr. M. Paloma Pavel, co-founder with Carl C. Anthony of Breakthrough Communities.
Coming up in Adult Formation
Midsentence with Mark: the First Gospel In this class, we will explore the Gospel of Mark including what we know about the origins and authorship of the Gospel, its unique Christology, as well as some of its notable parables. This gospel is also used extensively as a source for the Gospel of Matthew and Luke and we will discuss some of the synoptic parallels. This class is a way to get acquainted with the Gospel of Mark and help understand and interpret the gospel as we move through the readings of the coming liturgical year. (November 26, December 3, 19, 17) in the Parish Hall and on Zoom.
Everything Else
Spaghetti Again Men’s Christmas Dinner Spaghetti Again will hold our annual Christmas Dinner on Monday, December 4 at 6 pm in the Parish Hall. We invite SA friends, spouses & significant others to join us for a holiday celebration (festive attire encouraged- including that colorful sweater you’re reluctant to show in public!) Turkey provided, guests are asked to contribute a special dish and beverage to share. We also extend the invitation to members of the All Souls staff. Please let us know if you are coming or have questions. Bob Cross: rcross@skootskyder.com; Kirk Miller: kirk@kirkmiller.net.
Advent Festival Advent begins on December 3rd. Kick off the season of Advent during the service on Sunday morning and then come back to church on Sunday evening at 5p in the courtyard for our Advent Festival! We’ll have a service of prayer, music, and poetry around a fire and then head into the Parish Hall to green our Advent wreaths, eat cookies, write cards to folks who are incarcerated, and make this year’s All Souls Christmas ornament. Please bring cookies to share.
