San Francisco… The City of Saint Francis.  It was Shane’s birthday (33!), so we had some good grub and good times.  It was also the Feast Day of Saint Benedict, the holiday that Christians around the world celebrate the life of Benedict, another cultural refugee who went to the desert in pursuit of God.

We sure wish our host committee could have found a better space for the event…what a dump!…all they could come up with was Grace Cathedral (hahaha).  Grace Cathedral is a landmark in San Francisco, the largest Episcopal Cathedral in the United States, with a rich history or working for peace and justice and the Kingdom of God.  We shared a pulpit that Dr. King spoke from in 1965, and Desmond Tutu spoke from earlier this year.  Magnificent. Glorious stained glass and wood work everywhere.

Over 1000 folks packed out the cathedral on a Friday night in San Fran to dream God’s dream.  The folks responsible for the artistic design of Jesus for President joined us today — Ryan and Holly Sharp [sharpseven.com], along with our brotha Paul Soupiset whose ink and watercolor images are sprinkled throughout the book [paulsoupiset.com].  Ryan and Holly played the Half-time show wearing their musicial hat as The Cobalt Season [thecobaltseason.com].

It was an eclectic mix of mainliners from liturgical backgrounds, Catholics, and evangelical protestants.  We even had some wild charismatics in the house– one of the sponsoring organizations was the Pentecostal  Charismatic Peace Fellowship – another brilliant sign that this movement is crossing all streams of faith traditions and weaving together a Church that embodies the Good News, that is closer to the poor, further from the drums of nationalism and war, and reminds the world of Jesus. We pray, as Jesus did, that we would continue to become one as God is one.