Non nobis solum nati sumus: "A Sacred Space for a Busy Life"

The title of this post is St. Paul's tagline on their newcomer cards. I thought it was fitting in this day and age.

This morning, we continued our exploration of area Episcopal Churches at St. Paul's Episcopal Church where a seminarian is doing his field ed. The parish is located in San Rafael which is across the bay from Berkeley and about 5 miles from the infamous maximum security San Quentin Prison.

We had a hard time finding the church because my GPS took us to the wrong road but once we found it, the bigger issue was finding a place to park. Unlike more suburban parishes, this church had a very small parking lot that was completely full when we arrived. If it wouldn't have been that Steve was there and we had driven 30 minutes to get there, we might have left and gone elsewhere but after searching we found a parking spot about 2 blocks away and walked.

The church campus is rather large with a 2 story primary school attached to the parish hall so buildings form a U shape with a nice courtyard on the middle. The parish is in the process of building a memorial garden so the courtyard was full of construction material but one could imagine what it would be like on a nice sunny day. Since we were running late because of the parking issue, the service began almost immediately as soon as we sat down.

The first thing that got my attention inside the beauty of the building. The entire inside of the building, from floor to ceiling was dark wood. There was a very simple but prominent rood screen and the altar was almost up against the back wall. It looked like someone had done some renovations to pull it off the wall but it was still "way up there" The stained glass windows were all very bright and each depicted different scenes from the bible. There is one window in particular that none of us were sure what it depicted. Please look at it and see if you can decide what story it is telling.

The Priest this morning did something that I haven't seen in a church in a very long time. He instructed the congregation to open up the "pew" bibles and turn to a story. Because he was speaking about the old testament, he asked everyone to turn to Exodus 15: 23-25

When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter. That is why it was called Marah. 24 And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 He cried out to the Lord; and the Lord showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.

Think about that passage for a moment. Moses touched an ordinary piece of wood to the water and it became sweet. The priest asked where has an ordinary piece of wood changed things? Of course the congregation said, the cross. The priest then asked a final question for this specific reading. In the bitter times of our lives, how would that be transformed if touched by the wood of the cross?

After church, we took some time to walk around and look at the building and we all were amazed at the rose window in the back of the church. You see, most rose windows that we had seen consisted of reds, blues and purples, mainly darker colors. The most prevalent color in this window was green. No one could answer why that was. But we were told the history of the church. The church was built in 1868 and was originally located in another part of town. In 1927, the building was scheduled to be torn down and the powers that be said no, and had an ordinance passed that allowed them to move the building to its present location. The story goes that the building was broken into three pieces, and put on horse drawn carriages and moved in the middle of the night.

The rose window came about as a bet during a poker game. It is said that during a poker game, a business man ran of funds and asked for a loan to keep playing. Someone offered him money and that if he lost, he would have to purchase the rose window and have it installed. The window is there so apparently he lost.