Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco

While we were in San Francisco, our friend, Gerry encouraged us to attend the Sunday morning church service at Glide Memorial Church. We didn’t know what to expect. It was Sunday. That’s a perfect day to go to church!

As we approach the church, it is hard to avoid noticing the numbers of homeless or vagrant people that line the pavements of Ellis Street. Colourful, ragged and often filthy clothing hangs roughly on many bodies. Voices of different levels, speaking many dialects can be heard even when there is no one listening. Beautiful faces, contorted by drug use, mental illnesses, and hopelessness roam the sidewalks sometimes overflowing onto the busy, vehicle jammed streets. Through it all there is a feeling of salvation.

Inside the church people gather. It is an overflow from the streets. The wooden pews are packed with colourful people waiting for the service to begin. There is joy and laughter and song. The promise of lively, soulful, and energetic music lends to our anticipation. The service begins.

People are comfortable together, joining hands and hearts and voices. Eyes and palms raise up towards the sky. The music, played by an eight piece band and an 80 voice choir lift us all up together. The overhead screen projects verses of poetry and prose from Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King and Maya Angelou. There are photographs of Abraham Lincoln and Barak Obama and groups of people noticeably making a difference in their world by sticking together. We sing. We sway. We dance. We watch and we listen. We are truly together. We are all the same. We are all so different.

At first glance Glide is unlike the meditative calm of a Hindu Temple. It is not a synagogue where communal prayer joins with the Torah to hear Godly lessons. It does not compare. It is way more boisterous and active than Yoga, meditation and calm. And, yet, the energy created is still the same. There is a joy for life and an appreciation for joy. There’s a communal love for self, for each other and, ultimately for the Universe that provides for us all. I am present and here and content being with others in this place… now.