Shelter in Place, San Francisco, January 2, 2021
The church on Church Street - St. Paul’s - is the anchor of our neighborhood and, oddly enough, most famous for a silly movie I’ve never been able to sit through, one incongruous with the building’s serious facade. For me, the spires of St. Paul’s point to home as we plummet down the hill from the grocery store up on Diamond Heights, and from descending airplanes as they bring me back to my adopted city. At ground level, and just a few blocks from our house, I used to sit on the church’s front steps when my hips were sore, and greet the crossing guard who guided me and St. Paul’s children across the street.
Right now this quiet giant is mostly that - quiet: the schoolyard empty, the bells silent, the madonna locked behind the gate. Now as I walk more quickly past, I remember the quotidian energy and life this place engendered just one year ago, the older version of San Fransisco gathering at its doors - Italians, Germans, Filipinos, come to celebrate their lives and mourn their losses.
Yesterday we turned the corner on the calendar in this time of solitude and trouble. And among the many hopes we’ve piled at the new year’s door is this: may there come a time (and soon) that more than gulls and pigeons find their comfort here.