We've only just begun

It’s Sunday evening and I am pleased with my weekend.

With 13 of the 15 pages that were required for my Teacher as Prophet class written, two threshold worksheets, three pieces of felt for a chalice lighting project and my two-page reflection paper for Bibliodrama complete, I feel that I have made a big dent in what is required of me to finish out my semester.

And I managed to heed my friend’s advice to get in a little relaxing. After spending an hour or so on a threshold worksheet this morning, I was out of the rest of the day.

Upon the invitation from my cousin, David, I attended Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco this morning. Located in the heart of the Tenderloin (See “Saturday on the Soup Line” in the September archive), Glide is a diverse, cutting-edge church and nonprofit organization offering innovative programs to poor and marginalized people, according to their website.

The Sunday morning 11:00 a.m. service was a marvelous experience of people actively participating in a connection to wholeness through spirited music and “gospel” truth. With a choir of over 30, accompanied by keyboards, guitar, bass, saxophone, trumpet and drums, the service featured one spiritually themed song after another. And while I understood that we were in church because of the stained glass windows and the pews, there was a point when the announcer was encouraging applause for the singer that I had to remind myself that I was not attending a musical performance.

But after the Reverent Douglas Fitch gave his message, which contained at its core a two-letter, 10-word message of “If it is to be it is up to me,” everyone in the church was well aware that in order to live in our joy or God’s purpose for us on earth, we need to become committed to being a change agent of positive energy.

“It’s like a breakfast of eggs and ham,” he said. “The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.”

David and I, and his friend Coleman, then traveled to a Deem Sum restaurant located at the other end of the financial spectrum in a posh mall. We leisurely lunched on a variety of appetizers that “teased the palate” with interesting flavors. We wondered together whether science could co-exist with religion and the meaning and purpose of God in our lives.

We rounded the day’s activities with the viewing of “Casino Royale,” the new James Bond movie. We watched the trailer for “Pursuit of Happyness,” a movie which tells the true-life story of a homeless man finding his way to the Glide Memorial Church and working his way into a million-dollar stockbroker’s job. This is one of the movies that will be released this Christmas season and Glide is hosting the premiere of the movie, complete with Will Smith, as a fundraiser with tickets ranging from $250 to $500 a person.

Starr King School for the Ministry has an emphasis on Educating to Counter Oppression (ECO) and actively maintains a mission to help its students understand that there is a invisible white privilege that functions in the world.

I wondered, as I sat in the balcony of the Centre Theater, located in a five-story opulent mall, whether the rags-to-riches true story of a black, single father’s journey from homelessness to millionaire, is part of the perpetuation of the myth that everyone has equal opportunity if they work hard and an encouragement to be part of the energy which strips us all of our ethnicity in order to be successful.

Who could know?

In my ECO class two weeks ago, visiting professor Archie Smith encouraged us to acknowledge the complexity of that which surrounds us.

As my first semester winds to a close and I successfully complete my assignments, I find that my questions and my quest have just begun.

And I am pleased with the wonderful day that I spent today.