The Forum at Grace Cathedral: Recent Episodes
Grace Cathedral
Recorded live at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith, ethics and culture in relation to the important issues of our day. Host and Dean of Grace Cathedral Malcolm Clemens Young invites artists, inventors, philosophers, pop culturists, elected officials and other inspiring guests to share in a civil, sophisticated discourse that engages hearts and minds to think in new ways about the world.
Anne Lamott and Neal Allen Forum: Good Writing
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
Join bestselling author Anne Lamott and writer and spiritual coach Neal Allen for an inspiring and entertaining conversation that will change the way you think about language. Drawing on their new book Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, they offer powerful techniques for transforming worthy sentences into unforgettable ones.
With humor, candor, and a touch of creative tension, Lamott and Allen explore how writing and language shape not only our creativity, but also our relationships and everyday lives. Bringing together Neal's finely honed insights from a career in journalism and business, and Anne's beloved wit and wisdom— familiar to readers of Bird by Bird and her many bestselling books —the two explore both the fundamentals and nuances of great prose, offering practical techniques, real-life examples, and an honest look at the writing process. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, as he hosts a lively dialogue with Lamott and Allen about their shared passion for better sentences and the deeper question beneath it: why certain words stay with us, echoing long after they are spoken or read. Even when they don't agree on every detail, their exchanges reveals a fresh perspective and a renewed sense of curiosity, generosity, and joy in writing. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on May 10, 2026. Give to Grace
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About the Guests
Neal Allen is a spiritual coach and writer. His wife, Anne Lamott, and he wrote Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences. Other books are Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic, from Namaste Publishing (2023) and Shapes of Truth, which describes a recent, spectacular discovery about the human soul. Every once in a while a short story of his gets published. They've appeared in two Flash in the Attic anthologies that Amazon carries, and The MacGuffin. His literary heroes are all over the place: Faulkner, Henry Miller, Ishmael Reed, Virginia Woolf, Poe, Yeats, Olds, Dostoevsky come to mind. His spiritual heroes likewise: Lao Tzu, T.S. Eliot, Dogen, Jed McKenna, A.H. Almaas, Gurdjieff, Trungpa, Adyashanti, Patanjali, and whoever wrote the Gospels, Mahabharata, and early Buddhist discourses. More at shapesoftruth dot com.
Anne Lamott is the New York Times bestselling author of Help, Thanks, Wow; Small Victories; Stitches; Some Assembly Required; Grace (Eventually); Plan B; Traveling Mercies; Bird by Bird; Operating Instructions; Dusk, Night, Dawn; and Somehow: Notes on Love. Her most recent book is Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, co-written with her husband, Neal Allen. She is also the author of several novels, including Imperfect Birds and Rosie. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California. About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Forum with Bill Fontana: Resonance
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
San Francisco artist Bill Fontana is internationally recognized for his pioneering experiments in sound. Since the late 1960s, he has consistently used sound as a sculptural medium to interact with and transform our perceptions of visual and architectural spaces. Applying his knowledge of composition, he draws out patterns of sound from natural and constructed worlds to create sound works that have the potential to conjure up visual imagery in the mind of the listener. Many of Fontana's works create live listening networks that collect information from sources as diverse as the slowly vanishing sounds of Japan, the Bosporus River in Istanbul and its cisterns, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the Millennium Bridge in London, the sounds of the sea of the Normandy coast, fog horns in San Francisco, old growth forests, hydroelectric turbines, diverse urban and marine environments, the silent bells of both Notre Dame and the Great Bell of the Vatican; the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, rain forests from three continents, and the melting Dachstein Glacier in the Austrian Alps.
As Grace Cathedral's 2026 Artist in Residence, Fontana will create a sound sculpture with our silent bells, his first bell project in the United States.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Fontana about his illustrious career and his fascination with resonance.
Recorded at Grace Cathedral on May 3, 2026.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give
Become a GraceArts Member
Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join.
About the Guest
In a career spanning 55 years, Bill Fontana has become internationally recognized for his pioneering experiments in sound. Since the late 1960s, he has consistently used sound as a sculptural medium to interact with and transform our perceptions of visual and architectural spaces. Applying his knowledge of composition, he draws out patterns of sound from natural and constructed worlds to create sound works that have the potential to conjure up visual imagery in the mind of the listener. He has realized sound sculptures and radio projects for institutions, museums, and broadcast organizations around the world. His work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in both Paris and Shanghai; the Vatican, Rome; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Arc de Triomphe, Paris; Arter, Istanbul; MAAT, Lisbon; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; the Blanton Museum, Austin; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Post Museum, Frankfurt; the Art History and Natural History Museums in Vienna; both Tate Modern and Tate Britain and the Palace of Westminster in London; the 1999 Venice Biennale, MAXXI Rome; Madison Square Park, New York; Soundscape Park, Miami Beach; Kunsthaus, Graz Austria; the National Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; the Art Gallery of NSW Sydney; the Kolumba Museum, Cologne; Ennova Art Museum, China. He has done major sound art projects for the BBC, the European Broadcast Union, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio, West German Radio (WDR), Swedish Radio, Radio France, and the Austrian State Radio. Many of these works create live listening networks that collect information from sources as diverse as the slowly vanishing sounds of Japan, the Bosporus River in Istanbul and its cisterns, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the Millennium Bridge in London, the sounds of the sea of Normandy Coast, fog horns in San Francisco, old growth forests, hydroelectric turbines, diverse urban and marine environments, the silenced bells of both Notre Dame and the Great Bell of the Vatican; the imagined sounds of the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, rain forests from three continents, and the melting Dachstein Glacier in the Austrian Alps. Fontana's projects have explored hybrid listening technologies using acoustic microphones, underwater sensors (hydrophones), and structural/material sensors (accelerometers). His more recent works are explorations of the relationship between image and sound, expressed through the combined mediums of audio and video.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Dave Evans Forum: How to Live a Meaningful Life Grace Cathedral, San Francisco In a world grappling with major societal shifts and increasing isolation, it's easy to feel like nothing we do matters. So many of us feel like something is missing, disconnected, and stuck. There must be more to life than simply surviving each day—but how do we uncover it? Bestselling author Dave Evans, with Bill Burnett, the "empowering" (Publishers Weekly) visionaries behind Stanford's renowned Life Design Lab, have already inspired millions of readers to use design thinking principles to craft lives and careers they love. Now, in How to Live a Meaningful Life, they take on the most profound design problem of all: how to make a life rich with meaning and purpose. Evolving their revolutionary framework, Burnett and Evans present the latest research on what makes life worth living, showing us how to bring wonder, coherence, flow, and community into our everyday experiences. Instead of cramming more into an already packed life, they give us the steps we need to extract more out of it, moment by moment. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Evans about how to transform your ordinary days into ones brimming with joy, purpose, and meaning. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on April 12, 2026. Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Dave Evans is all about helping you design a life and a way to live it that brings you fully alive. After 30+ years in tech (led the Apple mouse, a co-founder of Electronic Arts, etc.) he pivoted from making things to designing lives in 2007 and co-founded the Stanford Life Design Lab, then co-authored the worldwide bestseller, Designing Your Life. He and Bill Burnett lead a movement to help people get unstuck and design the meaningful lives they deserve. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Ana Raquel Minian Forum: In the Shadow of Liberty Grace Cathedral, San Francisco Many Americans have watched in horror as children are torn from their parents and American citizens have been killed under the current administration's immigration policy. But as historian Ana Raquel Minian reveals in In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention, this is only the latest chapter in a saga tracing back to the 1800s—one in which immigrants to the United States have been held without recourse to their constitutional rights. Braiding together the vivid stories of four migrants seeking to escape the turmoil of their homelands for the promise of America, In the Shadow of Liberty gives this history a human face, and explores how sites of rightlessness have evolved, and what their existence has meant for our body politic. Though these "black sites" exist out of view for the average American, their reach extends into all of our lives: the explosive growth of the for-profit prison industry traces its origins to the immigrant detention system, as does the emergence of Guantanamo and the gradual unraveling of the right to bail and the presumption of innocence. Through these narratives, we see how the changing political climate surrounding immigration has played out in individual lives, and at what cost. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Minian about the hidden story of immigrant detention in the United States, and what history can teach us in the current moment. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on March 22, 2026. Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Ana Raquel Minian is a Professor in the Department of History at Stanford University and an award-winning author. They are the recipient of numerous prestigious honors, including the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship (2020), awarded to the nation's most creative thinkers, and PEN America's Nonfiction Award (2025) for their second book. Their first book, Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration (Harvard University Press, 2018), won wide acclaim and multiple awards. Minian's second book, In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention (Viking, 2024), winner of PEN America's Nonfiction Award, was widely reviewed, including by the American Bar Association, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the New York Times, which selected it as an Editors' Choice Book. In 2022, Minian launched and now co-directs the Migration and Asylum Lab, which brings together scholars from multiple disciplines and institutions to support asylum adjudication processes. At Stanford, they teach courses on migration, Latinx history, Mexican American history, social movements, and the histories of incarceration and detention. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Rebecca Solnit Forum: Notes on a World of Change Grace Cathedral, San Francisco As white nationalist and authoritarian movements push toward isolation and individualism, other currents continue to gather strength. Antiracism, feminism, expansive understandings of gender, environmental thinking, scientific discovery, and Indigenous and non-Western ways of knowing resonate across borders and generations, pointing toward a more relational and interconnected world. Few writers trace these converging currents with the clarity and moral imagination of Rebecca Solnit. A writer, historian, and activist, Solnit is the author of more than twenty books exploring feminism, western and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and catastrophe. Across her work, she listens for the deeper frequencies of change—the ways ideas, struggles, and solidarities echo across time. In The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, a sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit reflects on the profound shifts that have unfolded since 1960, and the long vibrations of change that often go unheard in the moment. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Rebecca Solnit about how social, political, scientific, and cultural transformations resonate across the past seventy-five years—and how listening for those resonances can help us imagine what comes next. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on March 15, 2026. Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and catastrophe. Her books include Orwell's Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and recently launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com). About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
The San Francisco Symphony performed Mozart's Requiem with guest conductor Manfred Honeck, in a special version that reimagines the piece in the context of an 18th-century funeral service. In collaboration with the Symphony, Dean Malcolm Clemens Young gives a preconcert talk before the performance.
Adam Hochschild Forum: American Midnight Grace Cathedral, San Francisco Between World War I and the Roaring Twenties lies a largely forgotten chapter of American history—one whose tensions still echo a hundred years later. In these turbulent years, democracy was tested by war, pandemic, and violence driven by conflicts over race, immigration, and labor rights. In American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, legendary historian Adam Hochschild brings this moment vividly to life, revealing both the repression that darkened the era and the Americans who struggled to repair a fractured nation. The forces they confronted did not disappear; they continue to reverberate. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Hochschild on how the past resonates into the present, and shapes the questions we're asking today. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on March 1, 2026. Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Adam Hochschild (pronunciation: "Hoch" as in "spoke"; "schild" as in "build") is the author of eleven books. American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis is his most recent. His preceding book, the biography Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes, was published in 2020. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, appeared in 2016. Of his earlier books, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 were both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels and the recent Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essays collect his shorter pieces, including magazine reporting from five continents. Earlier in his career, he was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, a commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," and a co-founder, editor, and writer at Mother Jones magazine. He has received the Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award from the American Historical Association and in 2014 was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a three-time winner of the California Book Awards' Gold Medal for Nonfiction. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
The Forum with Eugene Kirpichov Grace Cathedral, San Francisco Many believe today's economic model is failing. There is a science-based, hopeful alternative: a regenerative model that works like a living system, helping leaders, communities, and citizens navigate climate chaos, inequality, and ecological breakdown with clarity and purpose. Instead of reacting to crisis after crisis, a regenerative economy creates the conditions for systems to thrive, adapt, and evolve. Eugene Kirpichov left a rewarding and fulfilling career as a machine learning engineer at Google because he could no longer justify working on anything other than climate change. He founded the community Work on Climate with a mission to mobilize humanity's talent to build a regenerative green economy. Work on Climate quickly built the world's largest and most successful community of its sort – with tens of thousands of members around the globe, thousands of whom have found purposeful work that heals the planet, getting hundreds of millions of people to contribute their talent to fixing climate change. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Kirpichov about how regenerative economics can bring our economic systems back into tune with the living systems they depend on. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on February 22, 2026. Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Eugene leads Work On Climate, managing staff and driving top-level strategy and partnerships. In his past life as a software engineer, he worked on Google's bigdata and AI systems. Eugene dedicates his free time to climbing, enjoying art and music, and his two cats This One and That One. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
The Forum with Randall Balmer Grace Cathedral, San Francisco The 1st Amendment to the US Constitution codified the principle that government should play no role in favoring or supporting any religion, while allowing free exercise of all religions (including unbelief). More than 200 years later, the results from this experiment are overwhelming: The separation of church and state has shielded the government from religious factionalism, and the United States boasts a diverse religious culture unmatched in the world. But changes have been taking place at an accelerating pace in recent years. The current Supreme Court has shifted away from excluding the influence and practice of religion at public institutions and in our laws and policies, and moved dramatically toward protecting the inclusion and promotion of religion in publicly funded undertakings. Moreover, adherents to a Christian Nationalism ideology have grown more vocal and emboldened, and are increasingly moving into positions of power. Randall Balmer, one of the premier historians of religion in America, reviews both the history of the separation of church and state and various attempts to undermine that wall in his New York Times bestseller, America's Best Idea: The Separation of Church and State.Despite the fact that the 1st Amendment and the separation of church and state has served the nation remarkably well, he argues, its future is by no means assured. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Balmer about everything you need to know for shaping and defending your own beliefs on the role of religion in American life. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on February 15, 2026. Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Randall Balmer (Ph.D., Princeton University), a prize-winning historian, Emmy Award nominee and ordained Episcopal priest, is the John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College. He was professor of American religious history at Columbia University for twenty-seven years, and he has been a visiting professor at Princeton, Yale, Drew, Emory, and Northwestern universities and in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Evangelicalism in America and Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, now in its fifth edition, was made into a three-part series for PBS. He is writing and will host his third PBS documentary, a history of the Orthodox Church in Alaska. His commentaries about religion in America appear in newspapers across the country. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
The Forum with Maggi Dawn
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
Author, professor, and priest Maggi Dawn has written two guides to the church year: Beginnings and Endings (and what happens in between): Daily Bible readings from Advent to Epiphany and Giving It Up: Daily Bible Readings from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day.
Our everyday lives are full of small-scale beginnings and endings – births, deaths, marriages, careers, house moves and so on. How do the grand-scale beginnings and endings of Advent help to guide us as we seek to follow Jesus in the 21st century?
The idea of 'giving something up for Lent' is widely known, but how many know that the ancient discipline of the Lenten fast had several purposes? – a reminder of our daily dependence on God for all our needs, to draw us closer to God in prayer, to reconnect with the idea of community, and to help us follow Christ's journey through the wilderness and on to Jerusalem.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Dawn about how Lent can be a time for exploring a different kind of 'giving up' – one that can transform our lives – and how ancient wisdom informs the human experience that happens inbetween beginnings and endings, grand and small scale.
Recorded at Grace Cathedral on February 8, 2026.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give
Become a GraceArts Member
Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join.
About the Guest
The Rev. Dr. Maggi Dawn is an author, songwriter, professor, and priest in the Episcopal Church, currently serving as Diocesan Theologian in the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island. Maggi travels widely throughout the USA, leading clergy and parish retreats, and giving sermons and lectures. After a first career as a writer and performer in the music business, Maggi studied theology at the University of Cambridge (UK), and since then has taught and researched at the Universities of Cambridge and Durham in the UK, and at Yale University, where she was Associate Dean and Professor at the Divinity School.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum
The Forum with David Richo
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
When you feel you have been wronged, the urge to retaliate can feel overwhelming and justified. In the groundbreaking work Sweeter Than Revenge: Overcoming Your Payback Mind, acclaimed author and psychotherapist David Richo explores the complex dynamics of retaliation, offering profound insights into why we seek revenge and practices to help us break free from this destructive cycle.
Drawing from psychology, principles of emotional intelligence, Christian and Buddhist teachings, and years of therapeutic expertise, Richo illuminates the web of emotions and triggers that drive retaliatory behavior. He challenges readers to examine their own patterns of retaliation and provides practical tools for responding to conflict with wisdom rather than reactivity. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Richo about how to transform vengeful impulses into opportunities for growth and healing.
Recorded at Grace Cathedral on February 1, 2026.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum.
gracecathedral.org/give
Become a GraceArts Member
Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join.
About the Guest
David Richo, PhD, is a psychotherapist, teacher, writer, and workshop leader whose work emphasizes the benefits of mindfulness and loving-kindness in personal growth and emotional well-being. He is the author of numerous books, including How to Be an Adult in Relationships and The Five Things We Cannot Change. He lives in Santa Barbara and San Francisco, California.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
LifeAfterDeath #Resurrection #Grief #Requiem
Discover what Jesus really teaches about life after death through a deeply personal story about loss and hope. In this moving All Souls Day sermon from Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, Dean Malcolm Clemens Young shares the story of his beloved dog Poppy's peaceful death and explores Jesus' profound answer to the Sadducees' question about resurrection.
What You'll Discover:
✅ The story of Poppy's last walk and what it teaches about grief and loss
✅ Why the Sadducees tried to trap Jesus with their question about marriage and resurrection
✅ What "Levirate marriage" reveals about ancient strategies for dealing with death
✅ Jesus' response: why human conventions don't apply in the age to come
✅ The meaning of being "like the angels" and "children of God"
✅ How God's kingdom is already here, even amid our grief
✅ A beautiful vision of what awaits those we love (including our pets)
This message offers comfort for anyone grieving a loss or wondering what happens after we die.
About This Sermon:
Preached: November 9, 2025
Location: Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, California
Service: All Souls Requiem, 11 am. Eucharist with Mozart Requiem
Series: Proper 27C Scripture: Job 19:23-27a, Luke 20:27-38
Preacher: Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean
Related Topics: Life after death, resurrection, grief and loss, pet loss, do dogs go to heaven, All Souls Day, Sadducees and Pharisees, Levirate marriage, Luke Gospel, children of God, Christian hope, Mozart Requiem, comfort in grief, eternal life, Grace Cathedral sermons
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#LifeAfterDeath #Resurrection #Grief #PetLoss #AllSoulsDay #ChristianHope #LukeGospel #Comfort #EternalLife #GraceCathedral #EpiscopalChurch #SanFrancisco #Sermon #Christianity #Faith #Hope #Heaven #MozartRequiem #SpiritualComfort #ChristianFaith #BiblicalTeaching
In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives.
Odell is an artist, writer, and educator whose work focuses on close observation of the everyday world. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock and How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell about sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. How to Do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book will change how you see your place in our world.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Odell about paying a new kind of attention, undertaking bolder forms of political action, reimagining humankind's role in the environment, and arriving at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.
"She struck a hopeful nerve of possibility that I hadn't felt in a long time."—Jia Tolentino, THE NEW YORKER
"This book will change how you see the world."—Malcolm Harris, author and Forum guest!
BUY THE BOOK.
About the Guest Jenny Odell is an artist, writer, and educator whose work focuses on close observation of the everyday world. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy and Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. Her other writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Paris Review. Odell has been an artist in residence at the San Francisco Planning Department, the Internet Archive, and Recology SF (otherwise known as the dump), and her work has been exhibited internationally. From 2013 to 2021, she taught digital art at Stanford University.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum and upcoming discussions. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum.
Rebecca Lyman is the Samuel Garrett Professor of Church History emerita at The Church Divinity School of the Pacific, at the ecumenical and interfaith Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She is also an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of California. Rev. Lyman is an historian of ancient Christianity, focused particularly on the use and abuse of the category of "heresy" in antiquity. In her book, Early Christian Traditions, she introduces us to the world of the early church. Beginning with the Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures in which the first followers of Jesus lived and worshiped, she traces the growth of the Christian church's theology, worship, leadership, and ethics through its first six centuries.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Lyman about the often thin line between orthodoxy and heresy, true and false teachers, and the early church's "family quarrels."
About the Guest The Rev. Rebecca Lyman is the Samuel Garrett Professor of Church History emerita at The Church Divinity School of the Pacific, at the ecumenical and interfaith Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She is also an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of California. She is a historian of ancient Christianity, focused particularly on the use and abuse of the category of "heresy" in antiquity. She has a B.A. in Religion and History from Western Michigan University, an M.A. in Medieval and Byzantine Studies from The Catholic University of America, and a D. Phil in Theology from Oxford University. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, and is a member of the Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology Group at the University of California Berkeley. She is completing a new history of the "heresy" of Arius . Her next project is a novel about a lost gospel as traced through a sequence of women's communities from the second to the twentieth century.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum and upcoming discussions. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum.
Every year since 2012, we have offered a residency to artists to create work illuminating the cathedral's vision and annual theme and reimagining church as they do so. Our 2025 Artist in Residence, for our Year of the Future, is composer, DJ, and curator Mason Bates.
Mason Bates is imaginatively transforming the way classical music is created and experienced. He is the composer of the Grammy-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, which San Francisco Opera presented last year, and most recently The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera last month. Named as the most-performed composer of his generation, Mason is a visible advocate for the modern orchestra, and imaginatively integrates it into contemporary culture.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Bates about composing, his unique integration of electronic sounds into his work, the spectacular events he curates, and his residency with us.
Watch: Mason Bates On Composition
About the Guest Mason Bates – composer, DJ, and curator – is imaginatively transforming the way classical music is created and experienced. He is the composer of the Grammy-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, and with electro-acoustic works such as Mothership and the animated film Philharmonia Fantastique, Bates has become a visible advocate for the modern orchestra and imaginatively integrates it into contemporary culture. Named as the most-performed composer of his generation, his symphonic music is the first to receive widespread acceptance for its unique integration of electronic sounds. Highly informed by his work as a DJ, his curatorial approach integrates adventurous music, ambient information, and social platforms in a fluid and immersive way. His SF-based nonprofit Mercury Soul creates spectacular events in iconic spaces, such as at Grace Cathedral. Raised in Virginia, Bates' first musical experiences occurred as a choirboy at St. Christopher's School.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum and upcoming discussions. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum.
At age twenty-one, the pain of losing her mother to cancer sent Laurel Mathewson—with a naturally skeptical and questioning outlook—on a years-long existential journey. Laurel began to read The Interior Castle, Saint Teresa of Ávila's book about the "dwellings" within our souls that we move through to develop an ever-deepening relationship with God through prayer.
In An Intimate Good: A skeptical Christian mystic in conversation with Teresa of Ávila, a beautifully written and moving memoir, she illustrates an ancient reality still very much alive today: the love and closeness of a good God, as known through Jesus Christ, who seeks to move out into the world, into our very bodies and lives. Not by nature or training inclined to believe such a wild claim, Laurel discovered that God is full of surprises.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Mathewson about bringing to life the complex frameworks and ideas of The Interior Castle and also the living God who is at the heart of it.
Buy the Book
About the Guest Born and raised in Oregon, Laurel Mathewson developed a deep love for nature, rural life, and social justice. At Stanford, she discovered her intellectual passion in the intersections of literature and landscape, faith and politics, and social transformation. After losing her mother to cancer at 21, she pursued careers in academia, media (as an editorial assistant at Sojourners in Washington, D.C.), and ministry. She eventually became an Episcopal priest, serving at St. Luke's, a vibrant multicultural church in San Diego. During her time there she's written award-winning pieces for Sojourners, Geez, and The Christian Century. She is also the editor of The Interior Castle: Exploring a Spiritual Classic as a Modern Reader.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum and upcoming discussions. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum.
San Francisco is home to some of the nation’s most important and forward-thinking arts institutions. What is their role in shaping a city in the process of revitalization? How are they themselves being shaped by this fast-evolving landscape? Especially against a backdrop of shifting national values, with provocative questions being asked at the highest levels, which directly impact the role and autonomy of museums and culture.
Join us for a candid dialogue between some of San Francisco’s pre-eminent arts and civic leaders, moderated by Cathedral Dean Malcolm Clemens Young. The panel includes:
Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Alison Gass, Founding Director & Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco
Dr. Soyoung Lee, The Barbara Bass Bakar Director and CEO, Asian Art Museum
Ned Segal, Chief of Housing and Economic Development, San Francisco
This will be a not-to-be-missed conversation for anyone who cares deeply about our city — and nation. The first in a series of conversations and convening at Grace Cathedral in support of civil dialogue and mutual understanding, this discussion will provide insights into why vibrant arts and cultural institutions are integral to hope, understanding, and urban regeneration.
About the Guests Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Serving for over fifteen years as Director and CEO of two major US art museums—the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2009–2017, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco since 2018—Thomas P. Campbell has dedicated his life to the preservation, study, and promotion of art as a gateway to human understanding. A distinguished art historian, and authority in the field of European tapestries, Campbell was educated at Oxford and the Courtauld Institute.
Alison Gass, Founding Director & Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco
Before founding ICASF in 2022, Alison Gass served as the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art San José, University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, and chief curator of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. Gass began her museum career at the Jewish Museum in New York City and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She obtained her BA from Columbia University and MFA from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.
Dr. Soyoung Lee, The Barbara Bass Bakar Director and CEO, Asian Art Museum
Dr. Lee joined the Asian Art Museum in April from the Harvard Art Museums, where she served as the Landon and Lavinia Clay Chief Curator since 2018. Before her time there, Dr. Lee spent 15 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as the Met’s first-ever curator for Korean art. She received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, Dr. Lee has lived in Seoul, Tokyo, Stockholm, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Cambridge, MA.
Ned Segal, Chief of Housing and Economic Development, San Francisco
As Chief of Housing and Economic Development for San Francisco, Ned Segal is leading the revitalization of downtown, with a strong focus on arts, culture, and businesses of all sizes, driving economic growth. Previously, Ned served as Twitter’s Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President of Finance for Intuit, and Chief Financial Officer of then-public RPX Corp. Ned began his career at Goldman Sachs, most recently as a Managing Director and Head of Global Software Investment Banking. Ned earned a BS from Georgetown University in Spanish.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum and upcoming discussions. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum.
john powell Forum
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
john a. powell (who spells his name in lowercase in the belief that we should be “part of the universe, not over it, as capitals signify”) is an internationally respected expert in the areas of civil rights, racial identity, fair housing, poverty, and democracy. He is director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, where he holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor's Chair in Equity and Inclusion, and is a professor of law, African American studies, and ethnic studies. He is the author of Racing to Justice, coauthor of Belonging without Othering and The Power of Bridging, and cofounder of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Professor powell about an actionable path through “bridging” that helps us communicate, coexist, and imagine a new story for our shared future where we all belong.
Recorded at Grace Cathedral on September 28, 2025.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give
Become a GraceArts Member
Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join.
About the Guest
john a. powell is an internationally respected expert in the areas of civil rights, racial identity, fair housing, poverty, and democracy. He is director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, where he holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor's Chair in Equity and Inclusion, and is a professor of law, African American studies, and ethnic studies. He is the author of Racing to Justice, coauthor of Belonging without Othering and The Power of Bridging, and cofounder of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council. For more, visit johnapowell.org.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
The Rev. Dr. Paula Nesbitt was ordained a priest (1992) and then taught and directed an ethics institute at the University of Denver prior to serving as a visiting associate professor of sociology at U.C. Berkeley for 10 years. She also serves on the Steering Group of the Anglican Communion’s Anglican Peace and Justice Network as well as the International Anglican Women’s Network, and as a research consultant for varied Anglican and Episcopal projects. Her books include Indaba! A Way of Listening, Engaging, and Understanding across the Anglican Communion (Church Publishing, 2017), Feminization of the Clergy in America: Occupational and Organizational Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 1997), and Religion and Social Policy, an edited collection (AltaMira, 2001).
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Nesbitt about her transformative work in relationship-building, conflict transformation, and reconciliation across differences of culture, belief, and points of view.
Buy Indaba! A Way of Listening, Engaging, and Understanding across the Anglican Communion
About the Guest The Rev. Dr. Paula Nesbitt has served as an Assisting Priest at All Souls since 2002. Following her M.Div. and Ph.D. (Harvard), she was ordained a priest (1992) and then taught and directed an ethics institute at the University of Denver prior to serving as a visiting associate professor of sociology at U.C. Berkeley for 10 years. Her current appointment is at the Graduate Theological Union (Visiting Professor of Sociology of Religion). She also serves on the Steering Group of the Anglican Communion’s Anglican Peace and Justice Network as well as the International Anglican Women’s Network, and as a research consultant for varied Anglican and Episcopal projects. Her books include Indaba! A Way of Listening, Engaging, and Understanding across the Anglican Communion (Church Publishing, 2017), Feminization of the Clergy in America: Occupational and Organizational Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 1997), and Religion and Social Policy, an edited collection (AltaMira, 2001). Interests include religion and multicultural societies, ethics and social justice, spirituality, and congregational studies.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum and upcoming discussions. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Bonnie Tsui about her latest book, On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters.
In On Muscle, Tsui brings her signature blend of science, culture, immersive reporting, and personal narrative to examine not just what muscles are but what they mean to us. Cardiac, smooth, skeletal—these three different types of muscle in our bodies make our hearts beat; push food through our intestines, blood through our vessels, babies out the uterus; attach to our bones and allow for motion. Tsui also traces how muscles have defined beauty—and how they have distorted it—through the ages, and how they play an essential role in our physical and mental health.
Buy the Book About the Guest Bonnie Tsui is a longtime contributor to The New York Times and the author of the new book On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters, a vivid, thought-provoking celebration of musculature that was named one of NPR’s “Books We Love” 2025 and an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Nonfiction of 2025; it is currently being translated into six languages. Her bestselling books include Why We Swim, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Time magazine and NPR Best Book of the Year, and American Chinatown, which won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. Her work has been recognized and supported by Harvard University, the National Press Foundation, and the Best American Essays series. She lives, swims, and surfs in the Bay Area.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum and upcoming discussions. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum.
Jack Clark is the iconic varsity rugby coach at University of California. His team-building abilities are considered legendary within university circles and throughout the corporate sector.
Since becoming head coach of the Golden Bears in 1984, Clark has led the rugby program to 30 national collegiate championships. Entering his 45th year overall and 43rd as head coach in 2025-26, he holds an all-time record of 732-106-5 (.870) in 15s and 230-23-0 (.909) in 7s. He has also produced 157 All-Americans, 60 players who have made 805 combined appearances on the United States National 15s Team, one two-time Olympian and six players who have earned their “Blues” at Oxford.
Clark is also a former head coach of the U.S. National Team, which won an improbable 16 victories, the most in the history of U.S. rugby, during his term as coach. He has also coached the All-American team and led the All-Marine rugby team to the Silver Medal at the Armed Forces Championship.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral and a Cal Rugby player, for a conversation with Clark about the art of team and culture building.
About the Guest Jack Clark, legendary varsity rugby coach at the University of California, has led the Golden Bears since 1984, securing 30 national collegiate championships. Entering his 45th year overall and 43rd as head coach in 2025–26, he boasts a record of 732-106-5 in 15s and 230-23-0 in 7s, producing 157 All-Americans and numerous national team players. Clark’s athletes excel academically and professionally, with alumni in leadership across sectors, including the late Mark Bingham, honored for heroism on 9/11. Former head coach of the U.S. National Team, Clark achieved a record 16 victories and has coached at all elite levels. Inducted into both the U.S. Rugby and Cal Athletic Halls of Fame, he’s recognized as one of Cal’s most influential sports figures. A sought-after lecturer and corporate consultant, Clark shares his expertise in building high-performance teams with industries from biotech to finance, applying lessons from elite athletics to organizational success.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum and upcoming discussions. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum.
Focus on Abortion: Americans Share Their Stories is a book and a traveling exhibit by author and photographer Roslyn Banish.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Banish about what she has learned through the creation of this work, and giving voice to the often-missing and most important voices in the abortion conversation: the voices of those who have experienced abortion.
The exhibit is on view in the cathedral during regular opening hours, Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm and Sunday 1 to 5 pm. There is an admission fee. Plan your visit.
About the Artist Roslyn Banish is an author and photographer. She found her passion when she enrolled in a photography course at the Institute of Design in Chicago, where she received a Master’s degree in Photography. From the beginning, she was drawn to photographing people. Over time she realized that she wanted to include what her subjects had to say, along with the photographs. This approach of combining photographs and text has allowed her to more fully document human issues.
Published works include Focus on Living: Portraits of Americans with HIV/AIDS (UMass Press). An exhibit of photographs and interviews from the book travelled to 35 community-based venues, from colleges to health centers to LBGTQ centers to a cafe.
Other books: City Families: Chicago and London, and children’s books A Forever Family, Let Me Tell You About My Baby, Just Gus: A Rescue Dog and the Woman He Loved. Roslyn has exhibited her work in England and the US and has taught photography in the US, England, and Italy. Learn more: https://focusonabortion.org/
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
Dr. Russell M. Jeung, professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and a leading sociologist of race, religion, and social movements, was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2021, in recognition of his work launching Stop AAPI Hate.
Stop AAPI Hate is a U.S.-based coalition dedicated to fighting racism and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. As the nation’s largest reporting center tracking anti-AAPI hate acts, the coalition works to create a safer, more equitable future for all.
Jeung, who learned to integrate social activism and faith as a community activist in his East Oakland’s Murder Dubs neighborhood, asks difficult questions about longing and belonging, wealth and poverty, and how living in exile can transform your faith.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Jeung about vital issues for us today: immigration, inequity, and taking faithful action.
Gary Dorrien, the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University, is the author of 24 books and more than 300 articles that range across the fields of social ethics, philosophy, theology, political economics, social and political theory, religious history, cultural criticism, and intellectual history.
Social critic Michael Eric Dyson called him: “the greatest theological ethicist of the twenty-first century, our most compelling political theologian, and one of the most gifted historians of ideas in the world.” Dorrien himself says: “I am a jock who began as a solidarity activist, became an Episcopal cleric at thirty, became an academic at thirty-five, and never quite settled on a field, so now I explore the intersections of too many fields.”
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Dorrien about his newest book, Over from Union Road: My Christian-Left-Intellectual Life, a rich memoir of his unusual journey.
Crystal Williams – writer, poet, advocate, leader, and President of the Rhode Island School of Design – believes that education, art and design, and commitments to equity and justice are essential to transforming our society. For more than two decades, her work to elevate and amplify the multiplicity of human experience in higher education has galvanized the imagination about who we have been and who we can become.
In her inaugural address, she asked: “Can you imagine a single national or international movement in which the arts were not a motivating and defining force? … For instance, in this country, the civil rights movement is often characterized as being driven by orators, attorneys, and activists; and yet when you unpack the requisite strategic components of the movement, beside the visionaries, activists, and strategists we typically call, were yet other visionaries, activists, and strategists, these narrating, depicting, influencing via graphic design, visual arts, performance, literature, film and television. Their worked galvanized the imagination, influenced perception, helped drive strategy, and helped to drive change. … This is not superficial work, it’s serious work.”
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Williams about the power of art in a changing world.
Recorded on April 30, 2025.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give
Become a GraceArts Member
Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join!
About the Guest
Crystal Williams believes that education, art and design, and commitments to equity and justice are essential to transforming our society. For more than two decades, her work to elevate and amplify the multiplicity of human experience in higher education has galvanized the imagination about who we have been and who we can become. The daughter of an educator and a musician, Williams was raised in Detroit, MI and Madrid, Spain, where she was immersed in arts and culture from an early age. Today, when not on campus or connecting with RISD alumni and friends of RISD around the globe, one can often find her wandering art galleries or museums, at live theater—one of her first loves—reading or watching British murder mysteries and spending time enjoying the company of beloved friends, both human and canine. Williams earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Cornell University. In April 2022, she became the 18th President of Rhode Island School of Design. Learn more.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Malcolm Harris Forum
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
Just as humans have caused climate change, we hold the power to avert a climate apocalypse, but that will only happen through collective political action.
In WHAT’S LEFT: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis, bestselling author Malcolm Harris cuts through the noise and gets real about our remaining options for saving the world. Harris outlines the three strategies—progressive, socialist, and revolutionary—that have any chance of succeeding, while also revealing that none of them can succeed on their own.
WHAT’S LEFT is a vital and transformative guide for collective political action against the climate apocalypse, from “a brilliant thinker and writer capable of making the intricacies of economic conditions supremely readable” (Vulture).
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Harris about his meta-strategy, one that will ensure we can move forward together rather than squabbling over potential solutions while the world burns.
Recorded at Grace Cathedral on April 23, 2025.
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About the Guest
Malcolm Harris is the author of the national bestseller Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials; and Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit: History Since the End of History. He was born in Santa Cruz, CA and graduated from the University of Maryland.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Mariann Edgar Budde is the bishop and spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., and the Washington National Cathedral. On January 21, 2025, many Americans were introduced to Bishop Budde thanks to what The New York Times called “an extraordinary act of public resistance.” During her prayer service for Donald J. Trump’s second inauguration, Bishop Budde addressed the president directly, imploring him “to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now,” from those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, to immigrants and refugees.
But for Bishop Budde, this moment was the culmination of a lifetime spent thinking about and acting when we’re called on to push past our fears and act with strength. In her most recent book, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith, Bishop Budde explores the full range of decisive moments, and seamlessly weaves together personal experiences with stories from scripture, history, and pop culture to underscore both the universality of these moments and the particular call each one of us must heed when they arrive.
Join Bishop Austin K. Rios and Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Bishop Budde about how being brave is not a singular occurrence; it’s a journey that we can choose to undertake every day.
How do we cultivate collective flourishing? When facing the monumental challenges of our world, we often end up disconnecting to focus on our mental health. Dr. Yuria Celidwen explains this focus on our state of mind alone is precisely why so many of us struggle to flourish. “What’s been overlooked is the Indigenous perspective of relationality,” she says. “It is the understanding that happiness is only possible in community, when we cultivate our relationships toward all kin, from human to more-than-human, and our living Earth.”
Dr. Celidwen’s research shows the tremendous benefit of integrating Indigenous approaches into our approach to well-being, while recognizing the gains made by Western positive psychology, mindfulness, and neuroscience. In Flourishing Kin, she identifies seven key principles found in Indigenous cultures worldwide that embrace virtue, ethical living, and spirituality. Dr. Celidwen invites us to experience a path to fulfillment that allows us to meet the world in all its complexity with reverence and joyous commitment to participate in the flourishing of all living beings.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Celidwen about how we can overcome isolation and climate anxiety, nourish healthy relationships with our communities and environment, and build strong foundations of well-being that elevate our life choices for the benefit of our whole planet.
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco The internet is broken, and it’s urgent that we fix it. We can – and must – do more to safeguard the health and well-being of our children, our democracy, and our society as a whole.
Project Liberty is stitching together an ecosystem of technologists, academics, policymakers, and citizens committed to building a better internet—where the data is ours to manage, the platforms are ours to govern, and the power is ours to reclaim.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Sheila Warren, Chief Strategy and Operations Officer for Project Liberty and CEO of the Project Liberty Institute, about reimagining an internet that is designed for people and the collective good.
Every day the news is filled with stories of extreme weather that threatens our cities, our health, our futures: tornadoes wiping out whole communities; droughts that ignite catastrophic wildfires; storms flooding roads and destroying infrastructure; rising water levels that jeopardize entire nations; new climate-related diseases that threaten our health. Just as World War II raised an existential threat that united Americans in a common cause, the dangers of climate change are similarly challenging all of our previously held notions of the future—and our only hope is to unite together to take action in a collective movement akin to a war effort.
Tom Steyer has been on the forefront of the climate war for well over a decade, leveraging his investment expertise, business knowledge, and community-organizing skills to support sustainable climate solutions. In his first book, Cheaper Faster Better: How We’ll Win the Climate War, he tells his own story of coming to understand the urgency of climate action, and he showcases the inspiring work of people on the front lines, whose innovative approaches provide hope for meaningful change.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Steyer about why immediate action on the climate front will not only be our key to a healthy and viable future but also an investment in the future of our economy.
Recorded on March 23, 2025.
In her book Jesus For Everyone, Not Just Christians renowned biblical scholar and author Amy-Jill Levine uses stories told by and about Jesus to address the issues dividing us today: economics, family values, the legacy of slavery, nationalism, healthcare, and politics.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Dr. Levine about why Jesus’s historic and cultural influence makes him fascinating, provocative, and relevant for everyone, not only Christians.
Recorded on April 12, 2025.
Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give
Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join!
About the Guest Dr. Amy-Jill Levine is the Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Hartford International University for Religion and Peace; University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies Emerita, Vanderbilt. Dr. Levine is the first Jew to teach at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute and the recipient of the 2023 Hubert Walter Award for Interfaith Cooperation awarded by the Archbishop of Canterbury. She is the author of many books, including The Misunderstood Jew and Short Stories by Jesus, and she is the co-editor of the Jewish Annotated New Testament.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Dietary guidelines, alcohol, ultra-processed foods. It seems like new recommendations come out every day. Who is making our food choices?
Marion Nestle, one of the seven most powerful foodies (Forbes Magazine), is a molecular biologist and nutritionist who started the country’s first academic food-studies program at NYU, bringing attention to the roles that culture, capitalism, and politics play in what and how much we eat.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Nestle about how to navigate the science, what we might expect from the next administration, and sneak previews of her next two books.
How do we live with fire?
Fire is an essential part of California’s ecology. Humans have been using it to shape the California landscape for thousands of years. But today many Californians’ relationship to fire is one of fear. Obi Kaufmann, author of the best-selling California Field Atlas, now asks: How do we live with fire? What makes fire essential to a healthy and biodiverse Golden State, and how do we benefit from its teachings? With the same solution-minded ethic as his much-admired The State of Water: Understanding California’s Most Precious Resource, in The State of Fire: Why California Burns Kaufmann presents fire as a force of regeneration rather than apocalypse. He considers the long history of ecological burns, the varied ways fire behaves across the state, and the lessons we can learn from California’s largest fires of recent decades. Packed with Kaufmann’s signature watercolor maps and paintings, The State of Fire confronts one of California’s most pressing social and ecological challenges. From this maelstrom Kaufmann emerges to share a deepened love for the natural world—and a refreshingly hopeful vision of California’s future.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Kaufmann about stewardship, resilience, and hope.
At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? For many, it’s simply comfort, respect, love. On November 10, as we celebrate All Souls’ Day at our Choral Eucharist service, please don’t miss the opportunity to hear also from renowned hospice and palliative care specialist, public speaker, and connector BJ Miller.
On this day of prayer and remembrance for those we love and see no longer, who better to hear from than this deep thinker about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life.
Miller is the co-author with Shoshana Berger of the book A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death; the executive director of San Francisco’s Zen Hospice Project from 2011 to 2016; and the founder of the Center for Dying and Living, a web site designed for people to share their own stories related to living with illness, disability, and loss or caring for those who are.
What does God have to do with nuclear weapons? Nothing and everything.
In his new book God and Nuclear Weapons: Meditations at the End of the Atomic Age, the Rt. Rev. William E. Swing, 7th Bishop of the Diocese of California and founder and President Emeritus of the United Religions Initiative, offers an original meditation on the threat of annihilation and how faith offers a way to encounter the end of everything. If humanity stays on its present trajectory, he proposes, a nuclear war is inevitable. While life teeters on the edge of extinction, this book offers the full biblical scope of hope in the face of that extinction. Swing calls on readers and leaders to change course and raise our voices to press for a world free of nuclear weapons.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Bishop Swing about the complex relationship between belief in a life-creating God and the reality of a life-denying nuclear arsenal.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give
Become a GraceArts Member
Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join!
About the Guest
The Rt. Rev. William E. Swing is the Founder and President Emeritus of the United Religions Initiative. Bishop Swing had the original vision of URI in 1993 in response to an invitation from the United Nations, which asked him to host an interfaith service honoring the 50th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter. Bishop Swing, along with 50 others, shaped the URI purpose (to promote enduring, daily interfaith cooperation, to end religiously motivated violence and to create cultures of peace, justice, and healing for the Earth and all living beings). URI is currently the largest interfaith grassroot organization. Bishop Swing served as the 7th Episcopal Bishop of California from 1980 until his retirement in 2006. In that capacity, he was a national and international leader in response to the AIDS crisis, co-founded Episcopal Community Services to address San Francisco’s homeless problem, and co-founded Community Bank of the Bay to support local businesses and the economy.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum
The Rev. Canon Dr. Stephanie Spellers is one of the Episcopal Church’s leading thinkers around 21st-century ministry and mission. She is a priest, author, speaker, and friend who currently serves as the Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Evangelism, Reconciliation, and Creation Care. She is the author of Radical Welcome: Embracing God, The Other, and the Spirit of Transformation as well as The Episcopal Way; Church’s Teaching for a Changing World and Ancient Faith, Future Mission: Fresh Expressions in the Sacramental Tradition. She has worked for many years at the intersection of practice and reflection, renewal and justice.
The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry stated that her latest book, The Church Cracked Open; Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community, “will make a profound difference for the church in this moment in history.”
In this critical yet loving book, Canon Stephanie explores the American story and the Episcopal story in order to find out how communities steeped in racism, establishment, and privilege can at last fall in love with Jesus, walk humbly with the most vulnerable and embody beloved community in our own broken but beautiful way. The Church Cracked Open invites us to surrender privilege and redefine church, not just for the sake of others, but for our own salvation and liberation.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Canon Stephanie about who we are, why God placed us here, what difference that makes to the world, and what the Episcopal Church will look like over the next 50 years.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give
Become a GraceArts Member
Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join.
About the Guest
The Rev. Canon Dr. Stephanie Spellers is one of the Episcopal Church’s leading thinkers around 21st-century ministry and mission. She is a priest, author, speaker, and friend who currently serves as the Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Evangelism, Reconciliation, and Creation Care. She is the author of Radical Welcome: Embracing God, The Other, and the Spirit of Transformation as well as The Episcopal Way; Church’s Teaching for a Changing World and Ancient Faith, Future Mission: Fresh Expressions in the Sacramental Tradition. She has worked for many years at the intersection of practice and reflection, renewal and justice. Her latest book, The Church Cracked Open; Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community is an important response to the question, “What will The Episcopal Church look like over the next 50 years?” Prior to accepting her current position as Assisting Priest at St. Bart’s Church Center, she taught at General Theological Seminary, served as a Canon in the Diocese of Long Island, and founded The Crossing, a ground-breaking church within St. Paul’s Cathedral in Boston. Canon Stephanie spent five years as Chaplain to the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops, co-chaired the Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism, and directed new ministry initiatives for the Center for Progressive Renewal. Canon Stephanie began her career as an award-winning religion journalist in Knoxville, Tennessee; a job she took after graduating from Harvard Divinity School, where she studied religion and social change movements. She later graduated from Episcopal Divinity School and, in 2018, received an honorary doctorate from The General Theological Seminary for her contributions to the Christian faith and the wider Church. She grew up in Frankfort, Kentucky, and maintains close ties to her extended family there.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum
What is it like to be blessed with riches in an era of stark political divisions and near-Dickensian economic differences? How mind-boggling are the opportunities and access, how problematic the downsides? Does one’s experience differ depending on whether the money is made or inherited, whether you are male or female, white or black? Does being a have among have-nots make someone a bad person? Finally, how does our collective thirst for financial “security,” and our stubborn belief in our opportunities for social mobility, explain how we got to the point where nearly half of Americans have no wealth at all? These are some of the questions that Michael Mechanic, a longtime senior editor and writer at Mother Jones magazine, set out to explore in his book, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All. Jackpot is the product of deep reporting and dozens of interviews with fortunate citizens—company founders and executives, superstar coders, investors, inheritors, estate lawyers, lobbyists, lawmakers, academics, sports agents, wealth and philanthropy professionals, concierges, luxury realtors, Bentley dealers, and even a woman who trains billionaires’ nannies in physical combat. Among other plaudits, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer described Jackpot as perfectly timed—”an entertaining and eviscerating peek behind the velvet curtains.” Salesforce founder Marc Benioff wrote that the book “skillfully explores the impact of great wealth on people’s lives and society.” And Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist David Kay Johnston opined, unsolicited, that Mechanic’s “writing is elegant, his storytelling sublime. Well worth the time of anyone who wants to understand the effects of our make-the-rich-richer policies.” Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Mechanic about his compassionate, character-rich, perversely humorous, and ultimately troubling journey into the American wealth fantasy and where it has taken us. Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/gracearts. About the Guest Michael Mechanic is a longtime senior editor at Mother Jones magazine, where he writes and edits everything from breaking news to award-winning essays and feature stories. Born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, he earned degrees in biochemistry and cellular biology from UC Berkeley and Harvard before heading back to Cal for a master’s in journalism. Michael lives in Oakland with his wife, Laura, and a few oddball animals. He plays five musical instruments in his spare time. Jackpot is his first book. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum at gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Note: The music stops at 0:50. September 29, 2024 at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco Join Grace Cathedral Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for an engaging conversation with the Ninth Bishop of California, The Rt. Rev. Austin Keith Rios, who was installed as Bishop in August. As the chief pastor of the diocese, Bishop Rios is entrusted with leading, supervising, and uniting our congregations, ministries, and diocesan institutions. Notably, he is the first Latino bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California. Discover more about his journey from his birthplace in Texas to the other places he has called home: Rome, Italy; North Carolina; Wisconsin; Louisiana; and now, the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn about his previous role as the rector of St. Paul’s Within the Walls Episcopal Church in Rome — a vibrant, multilingual community that supports The Joel Nafuma Refugee Center. Find out what Bishop Rios is looking forward to as he becomes part of the region’s fabric and discovers how its many wonderful people and places will shape the trajectory of his life. Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join! About the Guest The Rt. Rev. Austin Keith Rios was ordained and consecrated Bishop Coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of California on May 4, 2024. He served in the coadjutor role until after the retirement of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Marc Handley Andrus on July 31, 2024. Following Bishop Marc’s retirement Bishop Rios assumed the role of Ninth Bishop of California, becoming the diocese’s chief pastor. He is responsible for leading, supervising, and uniting our congregations, ministries, and diocesan institutions. Bishop Rios is the first Latino to be elected as a bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California. His heritage includes Mexican American ancestry from his father’s side and Scottish and English ancestry from his mother’s side. Although English was spoken at home, Bishop Rios decided to embrace his Latino heritage at an early age by learning Spanish, which he now speaks fluently along with Italian. Before joining the Diocese of California, Bishop Rios served for 12 years as the rector of St. Paul’s Within the Walls Episcopal Church in Rome, Italy, a multilingual and multicultural community that houses and offers The Joel Nafuma Refugee Center as its primary outreach. Additionally, he spent five years as the Rector of La Capilla de Santa Maria, a Spanish-speaking congregation in Hendersonville, North Carolina, while also serving as the Canon for Spanish-Speaking Ministries in the Diocese of Western North Carolina. Bishop Rios has served the wider Episcopal Church in various capacities, including multiple terms as a deputy to the General Convention. In 2018, he was elected to a six-year term as a trustee of the Church Pension Fund and served as Vice Chair of its Investment Committee. In 2024, he was elected Vice Chair of the Church Pension Fund and re-elected as a trustee. Bishop Rios calls several places home, including Texas, where he was born; Rome, Italy; North Carolina; Wisconsin; Louisiana; and now, the San Francisco Bay Area. With its distinct character and tremendous diversity, Bishop Rios looks forward to becoming part of the region’s fabric and discovering how its many wonderful people and places will shape the trajectory of his life. Bishop Rios holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, and a Master of Divinity degree from The Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. He was ordained as a priest in 2005. He is married to Maleah Rios and has one child. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about The Forum: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
When your faith begins to feel too small, too confining, you could choose to leave it. But what if the faith we inhabit is roomier than we'd thought? What if our collapsing faith is just a closet in a much larger dwelling?
Disillusioned by narrow theologies, church dysfunction, and constricted readings of Scripture, people are leaving Christianity in droves. But Jesus describes the reign of God as a house with many rooms, writes author Debie Thomas, one of the most auspicious voices in religious writing today. In this work of sprawling spiritual and literary imagination, Thomas claims that wherever God dwells, there is expansiveness and belonging.
Thomas knows what a cramped faith feels like, what it's like to wrestle your way out of fundamentalism and toward a more capacious faith. From the diasporic church in which she grew up, which traces its lineage to the doubting disciple in India in the first century, to the disorientations of a deconstructing faith, to an ample yet orthodox Christianity that makes room for all her identities, Thomas takes readers on a deeply personal and profoundly theological odyssey. In A Faith of Many Rooms: Inhabiting a More Spacious Christianity, she talks back to jaundiced versions of faith and finds evidence that the gospel insists on its own roominess.
Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Thomas about what sorts of ruptures and revisions it would take to find a more spacious faith -- and then to inhabit it with authenticity and joy.
When your faith begins to feel too small, too confining, you could choose to leave it. But what if the faith we inhabit is roomier than we'd thought? What if our collapsing faith is just a closet in a much larger dwelling?
Disillusioned by narrow theologies, church dysfunction, and constricted readings of Scripture, people are leaving Christianity in droves. But Jesus describes the reign of God as a house with many rooms, writes author Debie Thomas, one of the most auspicious voices in religious writing today. In this work of sprawling spiritual and literary imagination, Thomas claims that wherever God dwells, there is expansiveness and belonging.
Thomas knows what a cramped faith feels like, what it's like to wrestle your way out of fundamentalism and toward a more capacious faith. From the diasporic church in which she grew up, which traces its lineage to the doubting disciple in India in the first century, to the disorientations of a deconstructing faith, to an ample yet orthodox Christianity that makes room for all her identities, Thomas takes readers on a deeply personal and profoundly theological odyssey. In A Faith of Many Rooms: Inhabiting a More Spacious Christianity, she talks back to jaundiced versions of faith and finds evidence that the gospel insists on its own roominess.
Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Thomas about what sorts of ruptures and revisions it would take to find a more spacious faith -- and then to inhabit it with authenticity and joy.
In this special summer Forum, meet Addicted To Noise founder and former Rolling Stone senior writer Michael Goldberg and get a firsthand account of the first-ever collection of his photographs in the new book JUKEBOX: 1967-2023 Photographs.
In all the many conversations about climate change, sometimes the story of what nature’s value is to us can get a bit lost. We have a lot to learn from the kinds of traditions that see nature as relatives, not resources; as communities, not commodities. We need a narrative that places us back within the natural world as actors in this multi-million-year drama. If we're able to do that — if we can put ourselves into that drama — then we can see that we have a role to play in a thriving future, not just for people, but for the entire biosphere, for all life on Earth. And there's perhaps no better place to start than urban settings like San Francisco!
Dr. Scott D. Sampson is the Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences, where he leads the institution’s world-class museum as well as its programs of scientific research, sustainability, and education. A renowned paleontologist, passionate science communicator, and seasoned museum leader, Sampson may be best known, especially to preschoolers and their parents, as “Dr. Scott the Paleontologist,” the on-air host for the Emmy-nominated PBS KIDS television series Dinosaur Train. He is the author of multiple books for general audiences, including: Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life; How to Raise a Wild Child; and You Can Be A Paleontologist.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young, dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Dr. Sampson about falling in love with nature, his mission to regenerate the natural world, and helping it become wilder each year.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give
About the Guest
Dr. Scott D. Sampson is the Executive Director and William R. and Gretchen B. Kimball Chair of the California Academy of Sciences, where he leads the institution’s world-class museum as well as its programs of scientific research, sustainability, and education. A renowned paleontologist, passionate science communicator, and seasoned museum leader, Sampson joined the Academy in September 2019. To some, namely preschoolers and their parents, Sampson may be best known as “Dr. Scott the Paleontologist,” the on-air host for the Emmy-nominated PBS KIDS television series Dinosaur Train. Outside of this enthusiastic audience, however, Sampson is better known for his many other contributions to scientific research and public engagement. Among his peers in the scientific community, Sampson is highly regarded for his expertise on Late Cretaceous dinosaurs, from theropods in Madagascar to horned dinosaurs in North America. And in the museum community, Sampson is celebrated as a skilled organizational leader, a passionate advocate for connecting people to nature, and a champion for the critical role that collections-based scientific institutions like the Academy play in global efforts to understand and sustain life on Earth. Before joining the Academy, Sampson served as President and CEO of Science World British Columbia, one of Canada’s premier science centers. There, he launched a suite of bold new programs designed to dramatically scale STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art/design & Math) literacy across the province and facilitate a more sustainable future. He also focused on operating a sustainable, equitable institution, which included introducing a number of new initiatives aimed at increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion, including community access and engagement programs for underserved and Indigenous communities. Sampson has also served as the Vice President of Research and Collections at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and, prior to that, Chief Curator at the Natural History Museum of Utah. He has also worked as an independent museum and media consultant, advising on fundraising and exhibition design for clients including the American Museum of Natural History and the Oakland Museum of California.
In addition to his role as a science advisor and host for Dinosaur Train, Sampson has extensive media and science communication experience, including as the science advisor and host of the four-part Discovery Channel series Dinosaur Planet and as the author of multiple books for general audiences, including: Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life (University of California Press, 2009); How to Raise a Wild Child, a book aimed at helping parents, teachers, and others foster a deep connection with nature in children (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015); and You Can Be A Paleontologist, a book for young enthusiasts of dinosaurs, science, and nature (National Geographic, 2017). Sampson has won numerous awards and honors, including the Public Service Award from the Geological Society of America, the Lifetime Legacy Award from Environmental Learning for Kids, and Time Magazine Canada’s “Who Defines the new Frontiers of Science” list. He also served as the National Ambassador for Nature Rocks, a global initiative of The Nature Conservancy aimed at inspiring families to explore nature.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum
The internet of today is a far cry from its early promise of a decentralized, democratic network of innovation, connection, and freedom. In the past decade, it has fallen under the control of a small group of powerful companies. But the dream of an open network for fostering creativity and entrepreneurship doesn’t have to die. And it just might be saved by blockchain networks, which create a radical new way to design fair and freely accessible internet services that put users in charge. There is more to this technology's story than crypto scams!
Michele Benedetto Neitz is a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law. She is the Founder and Academic Director of the Blockchain Law for Social Good Center, the first of its kind in the United States. The Center's four pillars — education, community, policy, and research — are creating a new model of blockchain as a tool for social good.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Professor Neitz on the ethical, regulatory, and social impact issues in blockchain technology, the power of blockchains to reshape the future of the internet, and how that affects us all.
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About the Guest
Michele Benedetto Neitz joined the University of San Francisco School of Law in January 2022. She is the Founder and Academic Director of the Blockchain Law for Social Good Center, the first of its kind in the United States. She teaches Blockchain Technology and the Law, Business Associations, Legal Ethics, and other classes. Prior to joining USF Law, Professor Neitz was voted “Most Outstanding Professor” by the graduating class of Golden Gate University School of Law six times, most recently in 2022. Professor Neitz was appointed to advise the California legislature as a member of the California Blockchain Working Group in 2019. She publishes and lectures on the ethical, regulatory, and social impact issues in blockchain technology. Professor Neitz gave a keynote address on the topic of emerging technology law at the SHINE Summit at Harvard University in October 2023. Professor Neitz graduated as a Root-Tilden-Scholar from New York University School of Law. Before joining academia, she clerked in the Southern District of California for Judge Napoleon Jones. She also worked as an Equal Justice Works fellow at the Legal Aid Society of San Diego and was an associate at Morrison & Foerster.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online: gracecathedral.org/the-forum
The history of Silicon Valley, from railroads to microchips, is an “extraordinary” story of disruption and destruction, told for the first time in this comprehensive, jaw-dropping narrative (Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of the Myth). Palo Alto’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually and materially ambitious and demonstrably world-changing. Palo Alto is also a haunted toxic waste dump built on stolen Indian burial grounds, and an integral part of the capitalist world system.
In PALO ALTO: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism, from IQ tests to the “tragedy of the commons,” racial genetics, and “broken windows” theory. The Internet and computers, too. It’s a story about how a small American suburb became a powerful engine for economic growth and war, and how it came to lead the world into a surprisingly disastrous 21st century.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Harris about his urgent and visionary history of the way we live now, and his radical proposition for how we might begin to change course.
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You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guest
Malcolm Harris is the author of Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials (2017), Shit Is Fucked Up and Bullshit: History Since the End of History (2020), and most recently, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World (2023). He is a journalist, critic, and editor at The New Inquiry. Harris’ materialist analysis frames and re-casts prevailing narratives surrounding the development of the United States within a global economic context, offering an incisive Marxist reading of the contemporary history of California.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
The Oxford English Dictionary is one of mankind’s greatest achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered. Who were the people behind this unprecedented book? As Dr. Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway, a female anti-slavery activist in Philadelphia . . . and thousands of others.
The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary is a history and celebration of the many far-flung volunteers who helped define the English language, word by word. Of deep transgenerational and broad appeal, a thrilling literary detective story that, for the first time, unravels the mystery of the endlessly fascinating contributors the world over who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read and write and speak. It was the greatest crowdsourcing endeavor in human history, the Wikipedia of its time.
Along with being a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, a Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction Finalist, and the New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, responses to the book include: “The pages come alive with humor, surprise, passion, charm, empathy, intrigue, humanness, and love” (Anna Deavere Smith); “This is an exquisitely written book” (Jamaica Kincaid); “An unmissable wonderful achievement” (Stephen Fry); and “Utterly fascinating, entertaining, astonishing, and as clever as a box of monkeys” (Joanna Lumley).
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Ogilvie about the previously untapped archives she discovered and the never-before-heard full story of the making of one of the most famous books in the world.
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You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guest
Dr. Sarah Ogilvie is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics at the University of Oxford. She is the Director of Oxford’s MSc in Digital Scholarship. Before Oxford, she taught at Stanford and Cambridge Universities, and worked at Amazon’s innovation lab in Silicon Valley. Dr. Ogilvie is a linguist, lexicographer, and computer scientist who works at the intersection of technology and the social sciences. Her research focuses on lexicography, endangered languages, language documentation, field methods, historical development of language, corpus linguistics, and digital humanities. She directs the Dictionary Lab, a lab for digital research on dictionaries and language. She completed her doctorate in linguistics at the University of Oxford, and is originally from Australia where she studied for a BSc in computer science and pure mathematics at University of Queensland and MA in linguistics at the Australian National University. Dr. Ogilvie is a former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and has written books on its history and making, including The Dictionary People: the unsung heroes who created the Oxford English Dictionary (Chatto & Windus (UK), Knopf (USA), 2023) and Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Prayer is a convergence of absence and will. A poem is a kind of prayer. — Dr. Tonya M. Foster
Dr. Tonya M. Foster is a poet, essayist, editor, and Black feminist scholar. Her writing and research focus on poetry, poetics, ideas of place and emplacement, and on intersections between the visual and the written. She uses all types of words in her poetry: big and small, beautiful, and vulgar. It is a key tactic of her ongoing study of language.
Every year we choose a theme to inspire us and to create new ways to grow as a community. Last year was our Year of Poetry. In 2024 we celebrate the 175th anniversary of the founding of Grace Cathedral with the Year of Memory. Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Foster about poetry as memory and poetry as prayer.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guest
Tonya M. Foster is a poet, essayist, editor, and Black feminist scholar. She is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire des Os, and coeditor of Third Mind: Teaching Creative Writing through Visual Art. Her writing and research focus on poetry, poetics, ideas of place and emplacement, and on intersections between the visual and the written. Forthcoming publications include the poetry collection—Thingifications (Ugly Duckling Presse), as well as a two-volume compendium on the Umbra Writers Workshop --The Umbra Galaxy (Wesleyan University Press) and an anthology of experimental creative drafts (Nightboat Books). Raised in New Orleans, she is a Louisianian from generations back on the maternal and paternal lines. Dr. Foster holds the George & Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry at San Francisco State University and is a member of an Emeryville Artists Co-op.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
History and ecology teach us the inevitability of change. And in this century, the climate is changing faster than ever. Warmer temperatures and record low precipitation in the recent California drought left 100 million trees dead in the mountains, and California cities and agriculture vulnerable. David Ackerly, climate change biologist and professor at UC Berkeley, has been studying how fast plants and animals may need to migrate uphill or northward as the planet warms. These velocities could be as high as five miles per year — exceeding the ability of most species to find new homes and establish new populations.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Ackerly about our responsibility in a changing climate, and how to prepare the next generation for a changing world.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guest
David Ackerly is a climate change biologist and professor in the departments of Integrative Biology and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management and Dean of the Rausser College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley. Ackerly’s research group studies the impacts of climate change and wildfire on biodiversity in California. Rausser College has an interdisciplinary focus on solutions to the challenges of climate change, with a focus on nature-based solutions, economics and policy, and climate equity and environmental justice. Ackerly is a recipient of the 2011 Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award, a Senior Fellow with the Berkeley Institute of Data Sciences, a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Join us for an exclusive sneak peek of “Sign My Name to Freedom,” a feature documentary about iconic National Park Ranger Betty Reid Soskin, her hidden life as a singer-songwriter, and her family’s experiences confronting Jim Crow-style segregation on the West Coast. Betty gained fame as the oldest Park Ranger in the country after starting that job at the age of 85, and she continued working at the Rosie the Riveter National Historic Site as an interpretive oral historian until she retired at 100. Through her experience as a WWII file clerk for an all-black union auxiliary in Richmond, she helped to reshape the national narrative about home front segregation in the workplace, labor unions, and in the armed forces. The documentary takes Betty’s work for the Park Service as its jumping off point, and then it explores lesser-known aspects of her personal story, focusing in large part on her family’s role as the first African Americans to cross the color line into Walnut Creek, and her hidden life as a singer/songwriter in the years that followed. The film also looks at Betty’s journey in her 90s to reexplore the music she left behind fifty years earlier and her collaborations with younger musicians to give her songs life again. Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Director and Producer Bryan Gibel and Betty’s daughter Di’ara Reid about the making of the film, and about Betty Reid Soskin, an icon in the Bay Area and beyond. The film team is currently raising funds through a crowdfunding campaign to complete the documentary while Betty is still with us to experience it, which she very much hopes can happen. Their goal is to finish the project by the end of this year. Although Betty is doing well at 102, the clock is ticking given her advanced age. The campaign will run through mid-March, but if the team doesn’t hit their fundraising goal by then, none of the donation pledges they have secured will be processed. https://seedandspark.com/fund/sign-my-name-to-freedom#story Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join! gracecathedral.org/gracearts Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give. About the Guests Bryan Gibel is a director, producer, and cinematographer in Oakland, CA. He shoots, directs, and often edits his own projects, which range from investigations into the criminal justice system to visual experiments capturing movement and dance. His half-hour film of the Zaccho Dance Theatre project at Grace Cathedral, Love, A State of Grace, premiered at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival in October 2023. Originally from New Mexico, he worked as a bilingual reporter in Albuquerque before earning a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism documentary film program in 2012, where he was awarded the Mark Felt Fellowship for Investigative Reporting. Di’ara Melite Kitty Reid is Betty Reid Soskin’s eldest daughter, and proud parent of four children. She was Betty’s successor to Reid’s Records, California’s first black-owned record store established in 1945, for 30 years till doors closed October of 2019. Since then, Di’ara served on the board of the San Francisco PRIDE Parade from 2022-2023, and is currently a Youth Counselor to trans and non-binary youth at The Pacific Center of Human Growth, the oldest LGBTQIA+ center in the Bay Area, the third oldest in the nation. She is one of the main characters of Sign My Name to Freedom and has been involved with the film from the very beginning About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online: gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
From the acclaimed author of Dog Whistle Politics, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America is an essential road map to neutralizing the role of racism as a divide-and-conquer political weapon and to building a broad multiracial progressive future.
“Ian Haney López has broken the code on the racial politics of the last fifty years.”―Bill Moyers
In 2014, Ian Haney López in Dog Whistle Politics, named and explained the coded racial appeals exploited by right-wing politicians over the last half century―and thereby anticipated the 2016 presidential election. Now the country is heading into what will surely be one of the most consequential elections ever—again — with the Right gearing up to exploit racial fear-mongering to divide and distract, and the Left splintered over the next step forward. Some want to focus on racial justice head-on; others insist that a race-silent focus on class avoids alienating white voters.
Can either approach―race-forward or colorblind―build the progressive supermajorities necessary to break political gridlock and fundamentally change the country’s direction?
Over two years, Haney López collaborated with a research team of union activists, racial justice leaders, communications specialists, and pollsters. Based on conversations, interviews, and surveys with thousands of people all over the country, the team found a way forward.
By merging the fights for racial justice and for shared economic prosperity, they were able to build greater enthusiasm for both goals―and for the cross-racial solidarity needed to win elections. What does this mean? It means that neutralizing the Right’s political strategy of racial division is possible, today. And that’s the key to everything progressives want to achieve.
Two days before the Presidential Primary Election, join Grace Cathedral Trustee Tobias Keller for a conversation with Haney López about the upcoming political season and the larger fight to build racial justice and shared economic prosperity for all of us.
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Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join! gracecathedral.org/gracearts
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guest
Ian Haney López is a law professor at UC Berkeley who studies racism. His focus for the last decade has been on the use of racism as a class weapon in electoral politics, and how to respond. In Dog Whistle Politics (2014), he detailed the fifty-year history of coded racism in American politics. Ian has since actively promoted the idea of a race-class fusion as the basis for a multi-racial progressive majority. He co-chaired the AFL-CIO’s Advisory Council on Racial and Economic Justice, along with Dorian Warren and Ana Avendaño, and founded the Race-Class Narrative Project, along with Anat Shenker-Osorio and Heather McGhee. In his latest book, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America (2019), Ian explains Trump’s complex relationship with dog whistling and further develops the race-class response. Ian is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published four books and two anthologies, and has been a visiting professor at Yale, New York University, and Harvard. He lives in Richmond, California.
About the Moderator
Tobias Keller counsels clients in a variety of industries dealing with financial distress, advising on dislocations arising from excessive leverage, uncontrolled litigation or unanticipated employee or vendor problems, and the governance questions that arise in connection with those challenges. He regularly lectures for organizations on governance, distressed mergers and acquisitions and various restructuring topics. He is a fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy and has been recognized as a leading lawyer in publications including Chambers USA. He is the Vice Chair of the Grace Cathedral Board of Trustees.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Many American policy makers are squeamish about religion’s role in diplomacy. Nevertheless, religion plays a crucial and complex part in global affairs, such as in sustainable development, various human rights issues, and fomenting and mitigating conflict. Shaun A. Casey, the founding director of the US Department of State’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs, makes a compelling case for the necessity of understanding global religion in his book, Chasing the Devil at Foggy Bottom.
In this fresh and provocative narrative, Casey writes frankly about his work integrating sophisticated, research-driven policy into the State Department under Secretary of State John Kerry. Their new strategy went beyond older paradigms that focused myopically on religious freedom or countering violent extremism. Such reductive approaches, Casey insists, cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars in the US’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq in 2003. Witty and astute, Casey recounts his team’s challenges in DC politics as well as in the major global events of his tenure, including climate change, the rise of ISIL, and the refugee crisis.
On a global stage with higher stakes than ever, effective diplomacy is imperative. Yet in this critical moment, the United States’ reputation has faltered. Chasing the Devil at Foggy Bottom offers a path forward to better foreign policy.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Casey about how understanding the role of religion in global politics is crucial for effective diplomacy.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Gracecathedral.org/give
About the Guest
Shaun Casey was Special Representative for Religion and Global Affairs at the US Department of State and Director of the Office of Religion and Global Affairs from 2013 to 2017. He has taught at Harvard Divinity School, Wesley Theological Seminary, and the Walsh School of Foreign Service and directed the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
January 21, 2024
Join Malcolm Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, in conversation with leading peace activist, author, and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Rev. John Dear, talking about his new book, The Gospel of Peace: A Commentary on Matthew, Mark and Luke from the Perspective of Nonviolence.
“John Dear is one of the few towering figures in the Christian nonviolent freedom and peace movement in our time! This powerful book should not be missed!” — Cornel West
“Prepare to be inspired, as John Dear guides you on a journey into the nonviolent revolution grounded in Jesus and his Way of Love. Along the way, you will encounter anew the steadfast fearlessness of figures like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Oscar Romero . . . and find yourself ready to join them in this holy work.” —The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church
In this original and inspiring new commentary Father John Dear walks us through every line of the three synoptic Gospels, pointing out Jesus’ practice and teachings of nonviolence each step of the way.
As Dear shows us, Jesus is—like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. —nonviolent to the core, a disarming, healing presence toward those in need. This Jesus is also a revolutionary disrupter of the unjust status quo and a political threat to the ruling authorities. Those authorities succeed in killing him, only to push Jesus to the heights of nonviolence through his death and resurrection. This original commentary brings a fresh new approach to the Gospels for all those who preach or engage in social ministries. It is sure to inspire everyone in this time of permanent warfare, gun violence, racism, poverty, and climate change.
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Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guest
Rev. John Dear is an internationally recognized voice and leader for peace and nonviolence. A priest, activist, and author, he served for years as the director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. The author of forty books, including They Will Inherit the Earth and Lazarus, Come Forth!, Father John is founder and director of The Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus, where he hosts and offers virtual workshops on Jesus and nonviolence. He was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, including by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He lives in Cayucos, CA.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
November 15, 2023
Poet, speaker, and one of the UK’s foremost transgender theologians, Jay Hulme, joined us on a rare visit to the United States. Author of the viral poem ‘Jesus at the Gay Bar,’ Jay read from his new collection of poetry, The Vanishing Song; shared his vision of cathedrals as queer/trans; and talked about transgender politics across the Atlantic.
This program was part of our celebration of The Year of Poetry, Grace Cathedral’s 2023 theme. During the Year of Poetry we explored the walls that separate us from each other and the words that help connect us.
More about Jay Hulme
His books for children have been nominated for some of the UK’s oldest and most prestigious writing and illustration awards. His books for adults are published by one of the UK’s leading Christian publishers and are widely reviewed and praised, with his poem ‘Jesus at the Gay Bar’ becoming an international sensation. When he isn’t writing, speaking, or caring for the 1144 year old church where he serves as Churchwarden, Jay enjoys exploring (and climbing up) the ancient churches and cathedrals that litter the British landscape, finding inspiration in their beauty, and in the faith, which has been practiced there for centuries. jayhulme.com
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San Francisco Contemporary Music Players is performing the Bay Area premiere of Raven Chacon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition, Voiceless Mass, at Grace Cathedral on November 11, with a preshow talk with Chacon on how music is made.
Chacon is a composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. His mesmerizing, original work for organ and ensemble, Voiceless Mass, considers the spaces in which we gather, the history of access of these spaces, and the land upon which these buildings sit. In exploiting the architecture of the cathedral, Voiceless Mass considers the futility of giving voice to the voiceless, when ceding space is never an option for those in power.
At The Forum the next morning, join Malcolm Young for a conversation with Chacon about his career as an artist and mentor; and how his heritage influences his work.
Become a GraceArts Member
Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join! gracecathedral.org/gracearts
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guest
Raven Chacon (b. 1977) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. Currently, he lives in Red Hook, New York and Albuquerque, NM. A recording artist over the span of 22 years, Chacon has appeared on over eighty releases on national and international labels. He has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Whitney Biennial, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SITE Santa Fe, The Kennedy Center, and more. As an educator, Chacon is the senior composer mentor for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP). spiderwebsinthesky.com
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Edmund G. Brown Jr. is the son of Governor Pat Brown and great-grandson of August Schuckman, a German immigrant who settled in California during the California Gold Rush. He is the longest serving governor in California history, first elected at 36 years old and again at 72. He has served as Secretary of State, chairman of the state Democratic Party, Mayor of Oakland, and California Attorney General. Brown has spent over five decades in public service, tackling climate change and inequality, among many other issues.
Join Malcolm Young for a conversation in the Nave with Brown about his long career, protecting the earth and serving the people.
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Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join! gracecathedral.org/gracearts
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guest
Jerry Brown was born in San Francisco on April 7, 1938. He graduated from St. Ignatius High School in 1955 and entered Sacred Heart Novitiate, a Jesuit seminary. He later attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1961 before earning a J.D. at Yale Law School in 1964. Brown was elected Trustee for the LA Community College District in 1969, California Secretary of State in 1970, and Governor of California in 1974 and 1978. After his governorship, he lectured and traveled widely, practiced law, served as chairman of the state Democratic Party, and ran for president. Brown was elected Mayor of Oakland in 1998 and California Attorney General in 2006. He was elected Governor again in 2010 and 2014. Brown currently serves as chair of the California-China Climate Institute at UC Berkeley; executive chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; chair of the Oakland Military Institute College Preparatory Academy, a public charter school he founded more than 20 years ago; and on the boards of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Council on Criminal Justice. Jerrybrown.org
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Edmund G. Brown Jr. is the son of Governor Pat Brown and great-grandson of August Schuckman, a German immigrant who settled in California during the California Gold Rush. He is the longest serving governor in California history, first elected at 36 years old and again at 72. He has served as Secretary of State, chairman of the state Democratic Party, Mayor of Oakland, and California Attorney General. Brown has spent over five decades in public service, tackling climate change and inequality, among many other issues.
Join Malcolm Young for a conversation in the Nave with Brown about his long career, protecting the earth and serving the people.
Become a GraceArts Member
Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join! gracecathedral.org/gracearts
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guest
Jerry Brown was born in San Francisco on April 7, 1938. He graduated from St. Ignatius High School in 1955 and entered Sacred Heart Novitiate, a Jesuit seminary. He later attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1961 before earning a J.D. at Yale Law School in 1964. Brown was elected Trustee for the LA Community College District in 1969, California Secretary of State in 1970, and Governor of California in 1974 and 1978. After his governorship, he lectured and traveled widely, practiced law, served as chairman of the state Democratic Party, and ran for president. Brown was elected Mayor of Oakland in 1998 and California Attorney General in 2006. He was elected Governor again in 2010 and 2014. Brown currently serves as chair of the California-China Climate Institute at UC Berkeley; executive chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; chair of the Oakland Military Institute College Preparatory Academy, a public charter school he founded more than 20 years ago; and on the boards of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Council on Criminal Justice. Jerrybrown.org
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
How do we overcome polarization in American society? How do we advocate for justice when one side won't listen to the other and cycles of outrage escalate?
These questions have been pressing for years, but the events of January 6, 2021 and the emergence of a vocal, virulent Christian nationalism have made it even more urgent that we find a way forward.
In her incisive new book, The Psychology of Christian Nationalism: Why People Are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide, Pamela Cooper-White uncovers the troubling extent of Christian nationalism and explores its deep psychological roots.
Join Malcolm Young for a conversation with Cooper-White about the ways in which advocates for justice can safely and effectively attempt to talk across the deep divides in our society.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
Experience the Exceptional
GraceArts connects a wider community of people through art and cultural events held in our awe-inspiring space. If you have a passion for the arts, become a GraceArts member and enjoy discounts and benefits while supporting our cathedral. Sign up today to be part of GraceArts! gracecathedral.org/gracearts.
About the Guest
Pamela Cooper-White is the Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychology and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York. She holds PhDs from Harvard University and the Institute for Clinical Social Work, Chicago, and is the author or coauthor of five books and over seventy scholarly and professional articles. An Episcopal priest and pastoral psychotherapist, Dr. Cooper-White is a certified clinical fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, a national board-certified counselor, and a licensed clinical professional counselor in the state of Illinois.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
In 2018, the great behavioral scientist Robert Sapolsky came to The Forum to discuss his bestselling book Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad. That program has over 221,000 views.
Now, in his new book Determined, Sapolsky mounts a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity of science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Sapolsky about his insights into free will, the monumental task of living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will, and how that could make for a much more humane world.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
Experience the Exceptional
GraceArts connects a wider community of people through art and cultural events held in our awe-inspiring space. If you have a passion for the arts, become a GraceArts member and enjoy discounts and benefits while supporting our cathedral. Sign up today to be part of GraceArts! gracecathedral.org/gracearts.
About the Guest
Robert M. Sapolsky is the author of several works of nonfiction, including A Primate’s Memoir, The Trouble with Testosterone, and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. His 2017 book, Behave, was a New York Times bestseller and named a best book of the year by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of biology, neurology and neurosurgery at Stanford University and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.” He and his wife live in San Francisco.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online: gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
In the famous photograph of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of Memphis’s Lorraine Motel, one man kneeled down beside King, trying to staunch the blood from his fatal head wound with a borrowed towel.
This kneeling man was a member of the Invaders, an activist group that was in talks with King in the days leading up to the murder. But he also had another identity: an undercover Memphis police officer reporting on the activities of this group, which was thought to be possibly dangerous and potentially violent. This kneeling man is Leta McCollough Seletzky’s father.
Marrell McCollough was a Black man working secretly with the white power structure, a spy. This was so far from her understanding of what it meant to be Black in America, of everything she eventually devoted her life and career to, that she set out to learn what she could about his life, his actions, and his motivations. But with that decision came risk. What would she uncover about her father, who went on to a career at the CIA, and did she want to bear the weight of knowing?
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Seletzky about her book, The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and her quest for the truth about her father.
“Get comfortable, because once you start reading you will not be able to put this book down. The Kneeling Man is a spellbinding account of a daughter piecing together her father’s mysterious role witnessing the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. With gorgeous prose and emotional honesty, Leta McCollough Seletzky brings us on her journey to uncover deeply hidden family secrets and better understand our own.” —Jennifer Taub, author of Big Dirty Moneyand Other People’s Houses
Lee Herrick is California’s 10th Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role. A former Fresno Poet Laureate, Herrick’s work explores the diversity and vitality of the California experience. Born in Daejeon, South Korea and adopted as an infant, he writes eloquently on the immigrant experience – bringing to life the smell of chapchae and the sound of mariachi trumpets, the farmers market at midnight, and the small talk of Armenian neighbors. Herrick’s work is a Whitmanesque celebration of the best spirit of our state, the vibrancy of the Central Valley, and ourselves. Every year Grace Cathedral chooses a theme to help provide focus and create new ways to grow as a community. In 2023, our theme is the Year of Poetry. During this year we will explore the walls that separate us from each other and the words that help connect us.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Herrick about poetry as a bridge to social justice, and its enduring power.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
Experience the Exceptional
GraceArts connects a wider community of people through art and cultural events held in our awe-inspiring space. If you have a passion for the arts, become a GraceArts member and enjoy discounts and benefits while supporting our cathedral. Sign up today to be part of GraceArts! gracecathedral.org/join.
About the Guest
Lee Herrick is the California Poet Laureate. He is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award; Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire. He is co-editor of The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (Orison Books 2020). His poems appear widely, in The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed, Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice with a foreword by Common, HERE: Poems for the Planet, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, among others. Herrick serves on the advisory board of Terrain.org and Sixteen Rivers Press. He co-founded LitHop in Fresno. He has taught in Qingdao, China, and for Kundiman. He was born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted as an infant. He lives with his family in Fresno, California and served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. He teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe. He is the 10th California Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Join us for a special online conversation with The Very Rev. Dr. David Monteith, the dean of Canterbury Cathedral--England's first cathedral.
Canterbury Cathedral is a unique place of worship, a major pilgrimage destination, a masterpiece of art and architecture, and one of the UK's most-visited historic sites. It is the principal seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury who now leads the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion.
What is the role of the cathedral in times like these? Cathedrals have a distinctive capacity and calling to bring people of all spiritual and political backgrounds together to pray, mourn, learn, and act in times of crisis and change. Dean David Monteith and Dean Malcolm Clemens Young of Grace Cathedral will reflect together on the cathedral’s unique role and the ministry of cathedrals in our time.
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give.
Experience the Exceptional
GraceArts connects a wider community of people through art and cultural events held in our awe-inspiring space. If you have a passion for the arts, become a GraceArts member and enjoy discounts and benefits while supporting our cathedral. Sign up today to be part of GraceArts! gracecathedral.org/gracearts.
About the Guest
The Very Reverend Dr. David Monteith was appointed Dean of Canterbury in December 2022. Previously he was Dean of Leicester (from May 2013), and before that served as Canon Chancellor and Acting Archdeacon of Leicester. David grew up during ‘The Troubles’ in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. He studied Zoology at Durham University and Theology at Nottingham University, after which he served as a priest in the Diocese of Birmingham, in London where he was Associate Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and as a Team Rector and Area Dean in Wimbledon, Diocese of Southwark. During his time at Leicester, David oversaw work on reordering the Cathedral and the establishment of Cathedral Gardens, and the Leicester Cathedral Revealed Project which, with NLHF funding, will complete the re-ordering work and provide a new Chapter House. The reburial of the remains of King Richard III, which were rediscovered in the nearby Leicester car park overlaying the remains of a medieval Franciscan Friary, was another major project completed successfully. David was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Leicester in 2016 acknowledging his service and leadership in the community. Until 2018 he served as Chair of the St Philips Centre for Interfaith Dialogue. In 2020 he was elected as Chair of the College of Deans and is an ex-officio member of the AEC Executive.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online: gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Kick off Pride Month with a conversation with Nguyen Pham, the first Vietnamese president of San Francisco Pride, the non-profit organization founded to produce the SF Pride Celebration and Parade. SF Pride is a world leader in the global Pride movement and one of the largest LGBTQ+ celebrations in the world. Pham talks with Grace Cathedral’s Canon Pastor, the Rev. Canon Mary Carter Greene, about recent challenges for the queer community, how the backdrop of anti-trans legislation across the country is informing his local leadership, and Pride’s 53rd annual celebration of diversity, equality, and love.
About the Guest
As the first Vietnamese president of SF Pride, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded to produce the SF Pride Celebration and Parade, Nguyen Pham works to uplift, center, and protect marginalized queer lives. Prior to his election as President, he served as Vice President of the organization for one year and as Board Secretary for five. In 2019, he helped to produce the inaugural SF Pride Golf Tournament, the first and only PGA-endorsed event ensuring queer visibility in one of the most cis-heteronormative spaces in the world – as well as SF Pride’s most lucrative board-led annual fundraiser to date. He continued that tradition with the tournament’s fourth annual return in 2022, which was a resounding success.
Nguyen is also Director of Philanthropy at Frameline, a San Francisco-based heritage organization aimed at changing the world through the power of LGBTQ+ cinema. Additionally, he performs with CHEER San Francisco, the Official Cheer Team of SF, and an all-volunteer nonprofit performance group that raises charitable funds globally for community members facing life-challenging conditions. He is also the first openly-LGBTQ+ member of the Mensa Foundation Board of Trustees. Adding to his already impressive resume and philanthropic endeavors, Nguyen produces and emcees national events to raise charitable funds for numerous nonprofits.
About the Moderator
The Rev. Canon Mary Carter Greene is Canon Pastor at Grace Cathedral.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Give to Grace
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give
Become a Cultural Member
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Celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with Chinatown Community Ambassador and lifelong activist Rev. Norman Fong. A captivating storyteller and truth-teller, he talks with Vice Dean of Grace Cathedral, Greg Kimura, at The Forum, and preaches from the pulpit at the Choral Eucharist service, also on May 28.
About the Guest
The Rev. Norman Fong is the Parish Associate of the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, which is the oldest API Church in America. He was ordained as a Presbyterian Minister and has been serving his home church since 1981. He has also worked from1990 to 2023 for the Chinatown Community Development Center, including serving as its Executive Director (and since 2020 as its “Community Ambassador”). Born and raised in Chinatown, he continues to serve his home base doing justice and loving kindness, which is his lifelong commitment. Norman (little Dragon) is also the recipient of the White House Champion of Change award during the Obama administration. Currently, he also is part of the Coalition for Community Safety & Justice (CCSJ) serving API victims of hate crimes in San Francisco.
About the Moderator
The Rev. Greg Kimura, Ph.D. (Cantab.) joined Grace Cathedral as Vice Dean in 2022. He is a fourth-generation Alaskan with a Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, and is an international expert on philosophical pragmatism. Most recently Kimura served as the Rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ojai, California. Before that, he was President and C.E.O. of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Kimura also served as the President and C.E.O. of the Alaska Humanities Forum, and he has taught at Alaska Pacific University and at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. He is married to Joy Atrops-Kimura with two children.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Please go to Gracecathedral.org/give.
The poetry itself sizzles on the page.” — New York Journal of Books
On May 13, Grace Cathedral and the International Readers of Homer present a 10-hour reading of The Iliad, in classicist Caroline Alexander’s translation, called a new gold standard by New Criterion. Alexander is also the author of two New York Times bestsellers, The Endurance, a riveting account of Shackleton's famed Antarctic expedition, and The Bounty, the true story of the mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh.
With her virtuoso translation of The Iliad, Alexander brings to life Homer’s timeless epic of the Trojan War. As told by Homer, this ancient tale of a particular Bronze Age conflict becomes a sublime and sweeping evocation of the destruction of war throughout the ages.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Alexander about the relevance of the story of The Iliad to us today and the enduring power of its poetry.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Please go to Gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guest
Caroline Alexander is the author of the international bestsellers The Endurance and The Bounty and, more recently, The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of the Trojan War. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, where she was a contributing writer, and in The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and Outside, among other publications. Alexander received her doctorate in classics from Columbia University and was the founder of the Department of Classics at the University of Malawi in East Africa.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
The Abortion Talks is a documentary film about the secret dialogues that took place between pro-life and pro-choice leaders in the Boston area, in the wake of shootings that left employees dead at two clinics. Disillusioned by the rhetoric and postering from both sides, three pro-life and three pro-choice leaders meet secretly to see if together they could fix their broken worlds.
As the timely, relevant title indicates, on one level this film is about the complex topic of abortion. But on a much deeper level, what this film is really about is showcasing the power of dialogue to replace dangerous and divisive stereotypes, strategies, and rhetoric with empathy, tolerance, and genuine friendship. Directed by Sarah Perkins and Josh Sabey, whose 2019 film American Tragedy won Best Documentary at the Boston Film Festival, it's a powerful, true, and timely story of six women and how their brave decision to meet changed their lives.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Perkins and Sabey about the story behind the covert meetings, the abortion debate then and now, and finding common ground across our deepest divides.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Please go to Gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guests
Josh Sabey and Sarah Perkins are a husband-and-wife filmmaking team; their organization is J&S Ltd. They have overseen the entirety of The Abortion Talks project from development to post-production as co-directors, co-editors, and camera operators. Their previous film, American Tragedy, won Best Documentary at the Boston Film Festival. It was one of three films selected to premiere opening night alongside Taika Waititi’s Jo Jo Rabbit and Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life. It has since been screened around the country at festivals in Heartland, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and others. It was acquired by Gravitas Ventures and has been viewed over a million times. It is regularly the best performing documentary for their distributor and has ranked in the top 20 most watched documentaries on Amazon.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Recently, the United Nations released a report stating that the Earth is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next ten years, and that we need to make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from overheating dangerously beyond that level. As we prepare for major changes in how we live, what can we learn from emerging conversations about “green consumption” and a “new economy” focusing on visions of resilience and sustainability, in which stronger, more connected communities become the social fabric for an ecologically balanced economy?
Juliet Schor is an economist and sociologist at Boston College. Her research focuses on work, consumption, and climate change. Her most recent book is After the Gig: how the sharing economy got hijacked and how to win it back, which won the Porchlight Management and Workplace Culture Book of the Year. Previous books include the national best-seller The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, widely credited for influencing the national debate on work and family; and True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy. She has served as a consultant to the United Nations, and is a co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream (newdream.org), a national sustainability organization.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young in honor of Earth Day for a conversation with Schor about the intersection of climate change and the economy, and what it means to be a green consumer.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Guest
Juliet Schor is an economist and sociologist at Boston College. Her research focuses on work, consumption, and climate change. She is currently leading a global research team studying companies around the world who are giving employees 4-day, 32-hour schedules with 5 days of pay. Her most recent book is After the Gig: how the sharing economy got hijacked and how to win it back, which won the Porchlight Management and Workplace Culture Book of the Year. Previous books include the national best-seller The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, widely credited for influencing the national debate on work and family; and True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy. She has served as a consultant to the United Nations, and is a co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream (newdream.org), a national sustainability organization where she served on the board for more than 15 years. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Schor received her Ph.D. in economics at the University of Massachusetts. Before joining Boston College, she taught at Harvard University for 17 years, in the Department of Economics and the Committee on Degrees in Women's Studies.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Gracecathedral.org/the-forum
“The awareness that we explore here, the capacity for being more present to the relationships in our lives, is basic to the human experience. Whatever our background, as humans, we share the ability to be more engaged, and to wake up more fully to the moments of our lives.”
– from The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness
Rhonda Magee is a Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco and an internationally recognized mindfulness teacher and innovator. For more than 20 years, Magee has been exploring how mindfulness and other contemplative practices support engagement in the world in the face of the multiple interlocking challenges of our times, including systemic injustice, climate distress, political polarization, migration, war, and their effects on us all. A prolific author, she draws on law and legal history to weave storytelling, poetry, analysis, and practices into inspiration for changing how we think, act, and live together in a rapidly changing world. Her book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice, which has been called “brilliant…useful…essential right now,” offers a road map to a more peaceful world.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Magee about how inner work is essential in order to have the difficult conversations necessary for healing the conflicts that divide us.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Please go to Gracecathedral.org/give.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
We are thrilled to announce the gift to the cathedral of Our Lady of the Flowers, a photographic work by artist David LaChapelle, which we will be celebrating at an opening reception in the cathedral on March 11, 2023. Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with LaChapelle about the story of Our Lady of the Flowers, and his storied career.
David LaChapelle was born in Connecticut in 1963 and attended high school at North Carolina School of The Arts. Originally enrolled as a painter, he developed an analogue technique by hand-painting his own negatives to achieve a sublime spectrum of color before processing his film. At age 17, LaChapelle moved to New York City. Following his first photography show at Gallery 303, he was hired by Andy Warhol to work at Interview Magazine. Through his mastery of color, unique composition, and imaginative narratives, LaChapelle began to expand the genre of photography. His staged tableau, portrait, and still life works challenged devices of traditional photography and his work quickly gained international interest. By 1997, The New York Times predicted, “LaChapelle is certain to influence the work of a new generation...in the same way that Mr. Avedon pioneered so much of what is familiar today.” In the decades since, LaChapelle has become one of the most published photographers throughout the world with an anthology of books including LaChapelle Land (1996), Hotel LaChapelle (1999), Heaven to Hell (2006), Lost & Found and Good News (2017). Simultaneously, his work has expanded into music video, film, and stage projects. His 2005 feature film Rize was released theatrically in 17 countries. Many of his still and film works have become iconic archetypes of America in the 21st century. In the past 30 years, LaChapelle has exhibited internationally in galleries and museums including the National Portrait Gallery (London), Musée de Monnaie (Paris), Barbican Centre (London), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Musee D’Orsay (Paris), Groninger Museum (The Netherlands), Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome), Palazzo Reale (Milano), National Portrait Gallery (Washington D.C.), Casa dei Tre Oci (Venice), La Venaria Reale (Turin), MUDEC (Milan), and Fotografiska (New York). .davidlachapelle.com.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Please go to Gracecathedral.org/give-form.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
“Our breath is a beautiful, healing, mysterious gift, and so is this book. I already feel like it’s going to change my life.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.
James Nestor is an award-winning author and journalist who has written for Scientific American, Outside, The New York Times, and more. His latest book,Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, was an instant New York Timesand London Sunday Times bestseller.
Breathturns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Nestor about his new book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly—and how to get it back.
St. Augustine is perhaps the most significant Christian thinker after St. Paul. Often pictured by Western painters holding in his hand his heart blazing with passionate love, he consistently and repeatedly insisted―from his earliest writings until close to his death―that the essential characteristic of God is love. Yet he also insisted on the doctrines of original sin and everlasting punishment for the damned. How did he reconcile this apparent contradiction? And can it bring us any closer to understanding a God seemingly indifferent to human suffering?
Margaret Miles is the Emerita Professor of Historical Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where she also served as Dean for six years. She was the first tenured woman at Harvard University Divinity School, where she taught from 1978 to 1996. The author of more than twenty-five books, she has studied Augustine for over fifty years, and while deep in writing her latest and perhaps last book, Beautiful Bodies, she joins Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation about some of her exciting findings.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Visit https://gracecathedral.org/give-form/ or text THINK to 76278. Thank you!
About the Guest
Margaret R. Miles is Emerita Professor of Historical Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She was Bussey Professor of Theology and the first tenured woman at Harvard University Divinity School from 1978 to 1996, and Dean of GTU from 1996 until her retirement in 2002. Recent books include both research books and books that explore a problem that is both personal and social: Reading Augustine: On Memory, Marriage, Tears and Meditation, Augustine and The Fundamentalist’s Daughter, Getting Here From There (with Hiroko Sakomura), The Wendell Cocktail, and The Long Goodbye: Dementia Diaries.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.
Gone With the Wind, a nostalgic tale full of the myths of the Southern belle, Southern culture, ‘good food and good manners,’ is still the second most popular book in the USA after the Bible. And the story of slavery in America is not over. It lives on in how we speak to one another, in how we treat one another, in how our societies are organized. Our ability to dehumanize one another can be traced all the way from the plantation to a US President’s Twitter account.
Patricia J. Williams is University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University, and Director of Law, Technology and Ethics Initiatives. Her award-winning column, "Diary of a Mad Law Professor," appeared in The Nation Magazine for two decades, and she is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates and a MacArthur fellowship. She is the author of six books, including The Alchemy of Race and Rights, whichwas named one of the “feminist classics of the last 20 years” that “literally changed women’s lives” by Ms. magazine; and one of the 10 best non-fiction books of the decade by Amazon.com.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young in a conversation with Williams about her latest book Giving A Damn: Racism, Romance and Gone With the Wind andhow when you begin to unpick current debates around immigration, freedom of speech, the culture wars and wall-building, beneath them lies the unexamined history of enslavement in the West.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Visit https://gracecathedral.org/give-form/ or text THINK to 76278. Thank you!
About the Guest
Patricia J. Williams is University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University, and Director of Law, Technology and Ethics Initiatives. A graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, she is also Professor Emerita at Columbia University School of Law. She is the author of six books, her latest being Giving A Damn: Racism, Romance and Gone With the Wind, from Harper Collins. Her award-winning column, "Diary of a Mad Law Professor," appeared in The Nation Magazine for two decades. She is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates and a MacArthur fellowship.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online
Awe is mysterious. How do we begin to quantify the goose bumps we feel when we see the Grand Canyon, or the utter amazement when we watch a child walk for the first time? How do you put into words the collective effervescence of standing in a crowd and singing in unison, or the wonder you feel while gazing at centuries-old works of art? Up until fifteen years ago, there was no science of awe, the feeling we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that transcend our understanding of the world. Scientists were studying emotions like fear and disgust, emotions that seemed essential to human survival. Revolutionary thinking, though, has brought into focus how, through the span of evolution, we’ve met our most basic needs socially. We’ve survived thanks to our capacities to cooperate, form communities, and create culture that strengthens our sense of shared identity—actions that are sparked and spurred by awe.
Dacher Keltner is a foremost expert on the science of emotions and consultant to Pixar’s Inside Out. A professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and the faculty director of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center, he is the author of the best-selling books Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life and The Compassionate Instinct.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Dacher Keltner about his new book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life and how greatly we need this elusive emotion.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Text THINK to 76278 or go to gracecathedral.org/give-form.
About the Guest
Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and the faculty director of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. A renowned expert in the biological and evolutionary origins of human emotion, Dr. Keltner studies the science of compassion, awe, love, and beauty, and how emotions shape our moral intuition. His research interests also span issues of power, status, inequality, and social class. He is the author of the best-selling book Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life and of The Compassionate Instinct.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
One of the United States’ most provocative public intellectuals, Dr. Cornel West is a philosopher, social critic, political activist, and a champion for racial justice through the traditions of the black Church, progressive politics, and jazz. He has written and edited over thirty books, including theclassics Race Matters and Democracy Matters. He is a radio host; has appeared in two Matrix films; has made several spoken words and hip hop albums; has held professorships at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, and currently is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. He has been called one of the world’s top 50 thinkers for the COVID-19 age. He is, as he describes himself, “a bluesman in the life of the mind, a jazzman in the world of ideas, forever on the move.”
Join Malcolm Clemens Young online at the final Forum of the Fall season in a conversation with Dr. West about democracy, race, religion, and living & loving out loud.
About the Guest Dr. Cornel West, affectionately known to many as Brother West, is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. West teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects – including but by no means limited to, the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music. He has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice. Dr. West is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Cornel West graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He has written 20 books and has edited 13. He is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies. Dr. West has partnered with MasterClass.com to provide teachings on several influential courses including a class with Pharrell Williams on Empathy, MasterClass’s first-ever multi-instructor class on Black History, Black Freedom & Black Love, as well as Dr. West’s standalone class on Philosophy. Visit www.cornelwest.com and click the MasterClass banner to learn more.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online
Give to Grace Your gift helps Grace Cathedral realize its vision: a spiritually alive world. There are many ways to give including texting “GRACE” to 76278 from your phone!
Join our Dean, Malcolm Clemens Young, and Miguel Bustos, Senior Director for the Center for Social Justice at Glide, and celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with a conversation with workers’ and civil rights hero and feminist icon Dolores Huerta. Ms. Huerta will also preach at the 11 am Choral Eucharist service.
Dolores Huerta founded the Agricultural Workers Association and launched the National Farm Workers Association with César E. Chávez, now called United Farm Workers of America. She was instrumental in the enacting of laws to protect workers and has worked to elect numerous candidates including President Clinton, Governor Jerry Brown, Congresswoman Hilda Solis, and Hillary Clinton. While breaking down one gender barrier after another, she has also had a tremendous impact, not only on farmworker women but also on young women everywhere. At 92, Huerta continues to work tirelessly to develop leaders and advocate for the working poor, women, and children. As founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, she travels across the country engaging in campaigns and influencing legislation that supports equality and defends civil rights. Among the many recognitions and awards for her work, in 2012 President Obama bestowed upon her The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.
About the Guest Dolores Clara Fernandez was born on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, a small mining town in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Her father Juan Fernández, a farm worker and miner by trade was a union activist who ran for political office and won a seat in the New Mexico legislature in 1938. Dolores spent most of her childhood and early adult life in Stockton, California where she and her two brothers moved with their mother, following her parents’ divorce. Dolores found her calling as an organizer while serving in the leadership of the Stockton Community Service Organization (CSO). During this time, she founded the Agricultural Workers Association, set up voter registration drives, and pressed local governments for barrio improvements. In 1955 CSO founder Fred Ross, Sr. introduced her to CSO Executive Director César E. Chávez, a like-minded colleague. The two soon discovered that they shared a common vision of organizing farm workers, an idea that was not in line with the CSO’s mission. As a result, César and Dolores resigned from the CSO and launched the National Farm Workers Association in the spring of 1962. Dolores’ organizing skills were essential to the growth of this budding organization. The first testament to her lobbying and negotiating talents were demonstrated in securing Aid For Dependent Families (“AFDC”) and disability insurance for farm workers in the State of California in 1963, an unparalleled feat at the time. She was also instrumental in the enactment of the Agricultural Relations Act of 1975. This was the first law of its kind in the United States, granting farm workers in California the right to collectively organize and bargain for better wages and working conditions. Robert F. Kennedy acknowledged her in helping him secure the 1968 California Democratic Presidential Primary just moments before he was shot in Los Angeles. Throughout the years, she has worked to elect numerous candidates including President Clinton, Congressman Ron Dellums, Governor Jerry Brown, Congresswoman Hilda Solis, and Hillary Clinton. While Dolores was busy breaking down one gender barrier after another, she was seemingly unaware of the tremendous impact she was having on, not only farm worker women but also young women everywhere. She traversed the country for two years on behalf of the Feminist Majority’s Feminization of Power: 50/50 by the year 2000 Campaign encouraging Latinas to run for office. The campaign resulted in a significant increase in the number of women representatives at the local, state, and federal levels. She also served as National Chair of the 21st Century Party founded in 1992 on the principles that women make up 52% of the party’s candidates and that officers must reflect the ethnic diversity of the nation. At 89, Dolores Huerta continues to work tirelessly to develop leaders and advocate for the working poor, women, and children. As founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, she travels across the country engaging in campaigns and influencing legislation that supports equality and defends civil rights. She often speaks to students and organizations about issues of social justice and public policy. She was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in March 2013. She has received numerous awards: among them The Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award from President Clinton in l998, Ms. Magazine’s One of the Three Most Important Women of l997, Ladies Home Journal’s 100 Most Important Woman of the 20th Century, The Puffin Foundation’s Award for Creative Citizenship: Labor Leader Award 1984, The Kern County Woman of The Year Award from the California State Legislature, The Ohtli Award from the Mexican Government, The Smithsonian Institution – James Smithson Award, and nine Honorary Doctorates from universities throughout the United States. In 2012 President Obama bestowed Dolores with her most prestigious award, The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
Miguel Bustos is the Senior Director of the GLIDE Center for Social Justice at Glide. He previously served as policy adviser for President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore; Deputy District Director for Congresswoman Barbara Lee; Director of Boards and Commissions for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom; and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for Oakland Mayor Ronald V. Dellums. He is a Deacon at Grace Cathedral.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors, and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum
As the Senate’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson made clear, an understanding of the judicial system is more important than ever. In Her Honor: My Life on the Bench...What Works, What's Broken, and How to Change It, Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell provides a rare and thought-provoking insider account of our legal system, sharing vivid stories of the cases that came through her courtroom and revealing the strengths, flaws and much-needed changes within our courts.
Judge Cordell, the first African American woman to sit on the Superior Court of Northern California, knows firsthand how prejudice has permeated our legal system. And yet, she believes in the system. From ending school segregation to legalizing same-sex marriage, its progress relies on legal professionals and jurors who strive to make the imperfect system as fair as possible.
Join attorney and Grace Cathedral Trustee Tobias Keller in a conversation with Judge Cordell about what our legal system, for better or worse, means to the everyday lives of all Americans.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Text Think to 76278 or go to gracecathedral.org/givetograce.
About the Guest
Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell is a legal commentator and police reform advocate, who is a frequent commentator on news outlets including NPR, CNN and MSNBC. A graduate of Stanford Law School, she became the first African American woman jurist in Northern California, a position she held from 1982 to 2001. Prior to her time on the bench, she was the first lawyer to open a private practice in East Palo Alto, a low-income community of color, and was an Assistant Dean of Stanford Law School where she implemented a highly successful minority admissions program. Following her retirement from the bench, she was a Vice Provost at Stanford University and, in 2010, was appointed the Independent Police Auditor for the City of San Jose. Judge Cordell’s public service record spans decades, during which time she has overseen commissions that investigated violence and mental health care in the jail system, as well as accounts of racism in the San Francisco police department. She has received numerous awards, including Silicon Valley NAACP’s William E.B. Dubois Award, the Iola Williams Public Service Award, the National Council of Negro Women’s Public Service Award, the Social Justice Award from Legal Advocates for Children & Youth and the Rose Bird Memorial Award from the California Women Lawyers. Judge Cordell founded the African American Donor Task Force to increase black participation in the national bone marrow registry. She is the co-founder of the African American Composer Initiative and CA Parks for All. An artist and pianist, she resides in California with her partner and is the proud mother of two daughters.
About the Moderator
Tobias Keller counsels clients in a variety of industries dealing with financial distress, advising on dislocations arising from excessive leverage, uncontrolled litigation or unanticipated employee or vendor problems, and the governance questions that arise in connection with those challenges. He regularly lectures for organizations on governance, distressed mergers and acquisitions and various restructuring topics. He is a fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy and has been recognized as a leading lawyer in publications including Chambers USA.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
On October 8, Grace Cathedral’s 2022 Artist in Residence Lee Mingwei presented his work, Our Labyrinth For Grace. It is an epic twelve-hour performance by three dancers, the Men of the cathedral’s Choir of Men and Boys, and organist Susan Jane Matthews.
In Our Labyrinth, dancers use a broom to sweep a mound of rice along a labyrinthian path, to the subtle sound of ankle bells. At each location, the performance has changed, as the space and time where it takes place infuses the work with a different feeling and character.
Join Malcolm Clemens Young in a conversation with Lee Mingwei and the dancers who performed *Our Labyrinth For Grace* about the creation of the work, what it feels like to perform it, and how the work has evolved over time and space. For more about Lee’s residency, visit gracecathedral.org/air2022.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/givetograce.
About the Guests
Born in Taiwan in 1964 and currently living in Paris and New York City, Mingwei Lee creates participatory installations, where strangers can explore issues of trust, intimacy, and self-awareness. leemingwei.com.
Jean-Gabriel Manolis is a French dancer-performer. He has taken part in the performances of Our Labyrinth at Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) and provided artistic advice and supported the new performers at Museum MACAN (Jakarta, Indonesia) in 2018, at Gropius Bau (Berlin, Germany) in 2020 and more recently at Tate Modern (London, UK) in 2022.
Born in Kyoto, Japan, Aya Sone started taking ballet class at the age of four. In 2021, she performed Our Labyrinth for the first time at Museum Villa Stuck in Munich and since then at Intermediatheque in Tokyo and at Tate Modern in London (2022). Wu Cheng-Lung has studied Taichi Dowing, Chinese martial art, Chinese drum, meditation, Gurdjieff movements, Mevlevi Sema Ceremony, and Jerzy Grotowski’s physical training. He has performed Our Labyrinth at Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Museum of National Taipei University of Education (MoNTUE) in Taiwan (2015 and 2016); Center Georges Pompidou, France (2017); and Tate Modern, UK (2022). About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Sunday, October 2, 2022 Grace Cathedral’s mission is to reimagine church with courage, joy, and wonder. Art is an integral part of that vision and mission. In our Year of Connection, art can connect us to others and also to ourselves in ways we can’t imagine until we see it. Every year since 2012 we have offered a residency to artists to create work illuminating the cathedral’s annual theme, and reimagining church as they do so. When we thought about this year’s theme of Connection, we immediately thought of the phenomenal New York and Paris-based artist Lee Mingwei. Mingwei’s work draws people in, it asks people to engage with the work and with each other, it is infused with ritual and beauty, and is about the space and time in which it happens. He began as a weaver, and he sees his work in the context of warp and weave, relationship, and connection. His work has been shown around the world, and in 2024, the de Young Museum is offering the first US retrospective of his work. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young in a conversation with Lee Mingwei about the connections between his personal story and his art. For more about Lee’s residency, visit gracecathedral.org/air2022. Your gift helps Grace Cathedral realize its vision: a spiritually alive world. There are many ways to give including texting “THINK” to 76278 from your phone! About the Guest Born in Taiwan in 1964 and currently living in Paris and New York City, Lee creates participatory installations, where strangers can explore issues of trust, intimacy, and self-awareness. His projects are often open-ended scenarios for everyday interaction, and take on different forms with the involvement of participants and change during the course of an exhibition. The projects also often express a sense of sacredness, ritual, and beauty. Lee received his BFA at California College of the Arts and an MFA from Yale University in 1997 and has held solo exhibitions internationally including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Mori Art Museum, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art and has been featured in biennales in Venice, Lyon, Liverpool, Taipei, Sydney, Whitney, and Asia Pacific Triennials. In the spring of 2024, the de Young Museum is offering the first US retrospective of his work. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors, and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Sunday, October 2, 2022 Grace Cathedral’s mission is to reimagine church with courage, joy, and wonder. Art is an integral part of that vision and mission. In our Year of Connection, art can connect us to others and also to ourselves in ways we can’t imagine until we see it. Every year since 2012 we have offered a residency to artists to create work illuminating the cathedral’s annual theme, and reimagining church as they do so. When we thought about this year’s theme of Connection, we immediately thought of the phenomenal New York and Paris-based artist Lee Mingwei. Mingwei’s work draws people in, it asks people to engage with the work and with each other, it is infused with ritual and beauty, and is about the space and time in which it happens. He began as a weaver, and he sees his work in the context of warp and weave, relationship, and connection. His work has been shown around the world, and in 2024, the de Young Museum is offering the first US retrospective of his work. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young in a conversation with Lee Mingwei about the connections between his personal story and his art. For more about Lee’s residency, visit gracecathedral.org/air2022. Your gift helps Grace Cathedral realize its vision: a spiritually alive world. There are many ways to give including texting “THINK” to 76278 from your phone! About the Guest Born in Taiwan in 1964 and currently living in Paris and New York City, Lee creates participatory installations, where strangers can explore issues of trust, intimacy, and self-awareness. His projects are often open-ended scenarios for everyday interaction, and take on different forms with the involvement of participants and change during the course of an exhibition. The projects also often express a sense of sacredness, ritual, and beauty. Lee received his BFA at California College of the Arts and an MFA from Yale University in 1997 and has held solo exhibitions internationally including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Mori Art Museum, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art and has been featured in biennales in Venice, Lyon, Liverpool, Taipei, Sydney, Whitney, and Asia Pacific Triennials. In the spring of 2024, the de Young Museum is offering the first US retrospective of his work. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors, and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum
Sunday, October 2, 2022 Grace Cathedral’s mission is to reimagine church with courage, joy, and wonder. Art is an integral part of that vision and mission. In our Year of Connection, art can connect us to others and also to ourselves in ways we can’t imagine until we see it. Every year since 2012 we have offered a residency to artists to create work illuminating the cathedral’s annual theme, and reimagining church as they do so. When we thought about this year’s theme of Connection, we immediately thought of the phenomenal New York and Paris-based artist Lee Mingwei. Mingwei’s work draws people in, it asks people to engage with the work and with each other, it is infused with ritual and beauty, and is about the space and time in which it happens. He began as a weaver, and he sees his work in the context of warp and weave, relationship, and connection. His work has been shown around the world, and in 2024, the de Young Museum is offering the first US retrospective of his work. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young in a conversation with Lee Mingwei about the connections between his personal story and his art. For more about Lee’s residency, visit gracecathedral.org/air2022. Your gift helps Grace Cathedral realize its vision: a spiritually alive world. There are many ways to give including texting “THINK” to 76278 from your phone! About the Guest Born in Taiwan in 1964 and currently living in Paris and New York City, Lee creates participatory installations, where strangers can explore issues of trust, intimacy, and self-awareness. His projects are often open-ended scenarios for everyday interaction, and take on different forms with the involvement of participants and change during the course of an exhibition. The projects also often express a sense of sacredness, ritual, and beauty. Lee received his BFA at California College of the Arts and an MFA from Yale University in 1997 and has held solo exhibitions internationally including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Mori Art Museum, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art and has been featured in biennales in Venice, Lyon, Liverpool, Taipei, Sydney, Whitney, and Asia Pacific Triennials. In the spring of 2024, the de Young Museum is offering the first US retrospective of his work. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors, and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum
September 25, 2022
After World War II, President Truman signed the 1949 Housing Act, which authorized the demolition and reconstruction of urban neighborhoods that were considered slums. This policy — quote unquote “redevelopment” — specifically targeted neighborhoods that were low income and not-white. In the 1960s, the Fillmore became a focus of San Francisco’s urban renewal, one of the largest projects of its kind on the West Coast. It impacted nearly 20,000 people. And by the time new housing and storefronts were finally completed in the 1980s, most of the former Fillmore residents couldn't afford to move back in.
We see its legacy today in the chronic number of people living on the streets, and in controversies over housing development projects like Plaza East in the Western Addition, and the plan to replace its 193 units of public housing with a larger 755-apartment, mixed-income complex. Is there too much focus on how to build more buildings, and not enough on how to create thriving and resilient communities?
Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is an architect specializing in community-led design and sustainable architecture, and Managing Director at Mumbai-based Community Design Agency, which works alongside communities on the margins, addressing cultural and societal inequalities through the built environment through building trust, participatory planning, community-led action, and human-centered design.
In this conversation with Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, they talk about innovations in housing and community building, and what we in the housing-crunched Bay Area can learn from her inspiring work in India.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Click here to give.
About the Guest
Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is an architect with 12 years of experience in community-led design and sustainable architecture. Managing Director at Community Design Agency, she is working with a diverse group of disadvantaged communities, civic agencies and designers to address inequities in the built environment. Licensed and educated in India, Sandhya is also a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a TEDIndia Fellow. Her previous work spans multiple countries, in both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors – including landscape architecture and design for a Singapore-based interdisciplinary design firm, and post-earthquake reconstruction in Haiti for a US Based non-profit.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
September 25, 2022
After World War II, President Truman signed the 1949 Housing Act, which authorized the demolition and reconstruction of urban neighborhoods that were considered slums. This policy — quote unquote “redevelopment” — specifically targeted neighborhoods that were low income and not-white. In the 1960s, the Fillmore became a focus of San Francisco’s urban renewal, one of the largest projects of its kind on the West Coast. It impacted nearly 20,000 people. And by the time new housing and storefronts were finally completed in the 1980s, most of the former Fillmore residents couldn't afford to move back in.
We see its legacy today in the chronic number of people living on the streets, and in controversies over housing development projects like Plaza East in the Western Addition, and the plan to replace its 193 units of public housing with a larger 755-apartment, mixed-income complex. Is there too much focus on how to build more buildings, and not enough on how to create thriving and resilient communities?
Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is an architect specializing in community-led design and sustainable architecture, and Managing Director at Mumbai-based Community Design Agency, which works alongside communities on the margins, addressing cultural and societal inequalities through the built environment through building trust, participatory planning, community-led action, and human-centered design.
In this conversation with Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, they talk about innovations in housing and community building, and what we in the housing-crunched Bay Area can learn from her inspiring work in India.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Click here to give.
About the Guest
Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is an architect with 12 years of experience in community-led design and sustainable architecture. Managing Director at Community Design Agency, she is working with a diverse group of disadvantaged communities, civic agencies and designers to address inequities in the built environment. Licensed and educated in India, Sandhya is also a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a TEDIndia Fellow. Her previous work spans multiple countries, in both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors – including landscape architecture and design for a Singapore-based interdisciplinary design firm, and post-earthquake reconstruction in Haiti for a US Based non-profit.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Following December 7, 1941, the United States government interned 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry evicted from scattered settlements throughout the West Coast states, yet why was a much larger number concentrated in the Hawaiian Islands war zone not similarly incarcerated?
Tom Coffman is a political journalist and leading historian of modern Hawai‘i, author of six books, and director of six documentary films. His latest book is Inclusion: How Hawai‘i Protected Japanese Americans from Mass Internment, Transformed Itself, and Changed America. In making sense of the disparity between Island and mainland, Inclusion unravels the deep history of the U.S. “sabotage psychosis,” the causes of the internment , and the unique set of forces in Hawai‘i that preserved its interracial harmony through the depths of war.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2022 our theme is connection. Marking Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young and his wife Heidi Ho - a native Hawaiian - for a conversation with Coffman about how small groups with a common goal and working cooperatively can result in wondrous social change.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Text "grace" to 76278 or go to gracecathedral.org/givetograce.
About INCLUSION “Brilliant and meticulous, Tom Coffman reveals the people and forces that spared territorial Hawai‘i’s Japanese populace from mass removal after Pearl Harbor and enabled its sons to serve America gallantly in World War II. The heroes of this true story…were inspired by an idealism and aloha that the world can learn from today. Based on groundbreaking research, Coffman’s compelling account gives them recognition that they richly deserve.—Mark Matsunaga, Hawai‘i journalist, and World War II historian
About the Guest Tom Coffman is a political reporter and author of six books, including Nation Within, Catch a Wave, Island Edge, and Tadaima! His widely aired documentaries include First Battle, Arirang, and Ninoy Aquino, and the Rise of People Power. His most recent film, with Meleanna Meyer, is Mauna Kea: Sacred Mountain/Sacred Conduct. His book in progress is titled Social Justice Work. He is a three-time recipient of the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association’s award for nonfiction, and for his cumulative work, he received the Hawai‘i Award for Literature.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Malcolm Clemens Young, ThD is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the critical issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors, and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials. Still, the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum
This Forum kicks off an evening of Grace Cathedral’s advocacy to End Slavery for Good. Join Presiding Bishop Curry on screen from New York and Bishop Marc live from Grace Cathedral. They discuss the Free at Last Coalition, and how the national movement to change the 13th amendment has gathered a diverse group from across the political spectrum under its banner. Following the Forum, stay for a special contemporary service with Bishop Marc preaching, and SFJAZZ musician Destiny Muhammad, joined by a quartet, hallowing the long struggle for justice.
While President Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation, state and legal law still allow for involuntary servitude — slavery by another name — as punishment for a crime. This is enshrined in the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. Disproportionately applied to Black and Brown people, this “punishment clause” subverts justice, and needs to be removed to free this nation from the institution of slavery.
Following Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and Diocesan Bishop Marc Andrus, Grace Cathedral endorsed the movement. Through November 2022, there will be opportunities to learn the issues, frame them in light of Anglican Christian ethics, develop meaningful relationships and advocate with elected officials. An issue of this magnitude invites the active participation of the whole community, and has a place for everyone, including you.
THE VINE: FREE AT LAST
Our Diocesan Bishop Marc Andrus will preach, reflecting on his Forum conversation with Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, ongoing slavery and the demands of justice in our time. This contemporary service features music by Destiny Muhammad and a vocal quartet singing the praises of God and hallowing the long struggle for justice and concludes an evening of Grace Cathedral’s advocacy to End Slavery for Good.
David Kyuman Kim is a professor of religious studies and American studies, the author of Melancholic Freedom: Agency and the Spirit of Politics and has been called by Cornel West “the leading philosopher of religion and culture of his generation.” He is founder of Radical Love Productions, a media platform dedicated to building a common culture dedicated to social justice and to living our best moral selves.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2022 our theme is *connection*. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month for a conversation with Kim about cynicism, racism and violence, and the radical love it takes to see the humanity in others and to reach across to bridge that gap.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Text Think to 76278 or go to gracecathedral.org/givetograce. Thank you! About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Abby McEnany is a writer, comedian, actor and Chicago improv mainstay. She is the co-creator, writer, executive producer and star of the Showtime television series Work in Progress,a semi-autobiographical comedy-drama about a self-identified "fat, queer dyke" entering into a transformative relationship during a time of crisis. Much of the story of Work in Progress, which ran for two seasons 2019-2021, is about Abby, the character, finding opportunities to live, when she has just about given up hope.
Each year Grace Cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2022 our theme is connection. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with McEnany about what it's like to be one of the few people like her in film and television, and how her work deepens our connections to each other.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Text Think to 76278 or go to gracecathedral.org/givetograce. Thank you!
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
In his book What Schools Teach Us About Religious Life, The Rev. Daniel R. Heischman, Executive Director of the National Association of Episcopal Schools, finds schools to be important guideposts in the process of understanding religious life in this country, and the degree to which they are able to balance both tradition and contemporary reality can teach us a great deal about not only how to be more fluent in our religious literacy, but how to be better citizens in an increasingly complex world.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2022 our theme is connection. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Heischman about what Episcopal school life and culture tells us about the contemporary American religious landscape and how to strengthen our connection to a more spiritually alive world.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Text Think to 76278 or go to gracecathedral.org/givetograce. Thank you!
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Malcolm Clemens Young, ThDis the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
**About The Forum**
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.
Bruce Cockburn, the award-winning songwriter and pioneering guitarist, whose life and music has been shaped by politics, protest, romance and spiritual discovery, is revered by fans and fellow musicians alike as one of the most important songwriters of his generation. Best known for “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” and “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” he has released 35 albums spanning five decades that have sold over 11 million copies worldwide. For Cockburn, music has always been a key way to explore culture, politics and the nature of the spirit. As a long-time activist, he believes that we can, and should, be dedicated to our shared humanity, and to saving ourselves, each other and this earth – we just need to find the will. And that journey, for Cockburn, has been marked in music.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2022 our theme is connection. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Cockburn about the connections between taking action, music and faith.
About the Guest
For 50 years, this Canadian musical legend has been capturing in song the essence of human experience – while fiercely striving to make it better. One of Canada’s finest artists, Bruce Cockburn has enjoyed an illustrious career shaped by politics, spirituality and musical diversity. His remarkable journey has seen him embrace folk, jazz, rock, and worldbeat styles while travelling to such far-flung places as Guatemala, Mali, Mozambique and Nepal, and writing memorable songs about his ever-expanding world of wonders. He remains deeply respected for his activism on issues from native rights and land mines to the environment and Third World debt, working for organizations such as Oxfam, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and Friends of the Earth. For his many achievements, the Ottawa-born artist has been honored with 13 Juno Awards, an induction into both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, as well as the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, and has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.
Silicon Valley is known for its lavish perks, intense work culture and spiritual gurus. Over the past forty years, highly skilled workers have been devoting more time and energy to their jobs than ever before. They are also leaving churches, synagogues and temples in droves—but they have not abandoned religion. Are tech companies bringing religion into the workplace in ways that are replacing traditional places of worship, blurring the line between work and religion and transforming the very nature of spiritual experience in modern life?
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2022 our theme is connection. Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation about what can happen when work becomes religion, and the workplace becomes the institution that connects us.
About the Guest Carolyn Chen, a sociologist, is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she grew up in Pennsylvania and Southern California. Carolyn received her A.B. from Brown University, and her Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Berkeley. She previously taught at Northwestern University in the Department of Sociology, as well as in the Program in Asian American Studies, where she served as Director. Chen’s research focuses on religion, spirituality and work in the new economy, as well as Asian American religions. She is the author of Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience (Princeton 2008) and co-editor of Sustaining Faith Traditions: Religion, Race and Ethnicity among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation (NYU 2012). She has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and spoken on National Public Radio. She is Co-Director of the UC Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, and a founding member of the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI), a scholarly community committed to the advancement of public knowledge of Asian Pacific American religions. Carolyn and her family live in the Bay Area.
About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.
Daniel Darling, the spokesperson for National Religious Broadcasters, an organization for members of Christian media, wrote a column for USA Today about his decision to get vaccinated against COVID-19. He wrote: “There are not many things in the world today that are worthy of our trust, but I sincerely believe the Covid-19 vaccine is one of them…as a Christian and an American, I was proud to get it.” The column cost him his job.
Author of A Way With Words: Using Our Online Conversations for Good, and now director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Darling helps shape conversations on faith, ethics, public policy and other cultural and philosophical issues. He has said: “I think you can have both courage and civility at the same time…this incessant need to fight and tear people down for sport is really unhealthy.”
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2022 our theme is connection. In a time when even a public health emergency is divisive, and public discourse is coarse beyond belief, join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Darling about how to get back to connecting courage of conviction with courtesy.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/givetograce
About the Guest
Daniel Darling is an author, pastor and leader. He is the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a bestselling author of several books, including The Original Jesus, The Dignity Revolution, The Characters of Christmas, The Characters of EasterandA Way With Words.He is the general editor, along with Trillia Newbell, of a small group study on racial reconciliation, The Church and the Racial Divideand is a contributor to The Worldview Study Bible. Darling is an award–winning writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications. He is a columnist for Worldmagazine and a regular contributor to USA Today.His work is often featured in Christianity Todayand The Gospel Coalition and his op-eds have appeared in The Washington Post,CNN, Washington Times, Time, Huffington Post, National Review, First Thingsand other leading outlets. Darling speaks and preaches around the country and is regularly interviewed on radio and television, including MSNBC’s Morning Joeand CNN and Fox. He is the host of a popular weekly podcast, The Way Home, where he interviews Christian leaders, politicians and journalists. Darling holds a bachelor’s degree in pastoral ministry from Dayspring Bible College, has studied at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and is a graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has served churches in Illinois and Tennessee. He and his wife Angela have four children.
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/forum
Can the wisdom of Celtic spirituality help heal the earth, overcome our conflicts, and reconnect us to the sacredness of the earth and one another?
John Philip Newell (born 1953) is a Celtic teacher and author of spirituality who calls the modern world to reawaken to the sacredness of the earth and every human being. In his most recent book, Sacred Earth Sacred Soul, he writes: “The crises that we are in the midst of today, whether ecological, political, or societal, stem from the fact that we treat the earth and one another as less than sacred.”
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2022 our theme is connection. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Newell about how his earth-based spirituality can help us rediscover our connection with God, with each other and with the earth.
In February 2022, Opera Parallèle presents the one-act opera, Sophia’s Forest, at Grace Cathedral. It is the story of a young girl who has recently immigrated to the United States, having survived a traumatic journey through the chaos of a civil war in her homeland. With music by Lembit Beecher, Sophia’s Forest is an exploration of both the lasting effects on families of the immigrant experience, and the ways in which children use their imaginations to deal with trauma. Composer Lembit Beecher’s music has been praised as “hauntingly lovely and deeply personal,” combining vividly imaginative colors with striking emotional immediacy. Indre Viskontas is a neuroscientist, opera stage director and science communicator across all mediums. Malaak Malikyar Sills is a leader in the Afghan diaspora. Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2022 our theme is connection. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Beecher, Viskontas and Sills about the lasting effects on families of the refugee/immigrant experience, the ways in which children use their imaginations to cope with trauma, and how art can help us connect with ourselves and with others. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/givetograce. About the Guests Noted for his collaborative spirit and “ingenious” interdisciplinary projects (The Wall Street Journal), Lembit Beecher is currently the composer-in-residence of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, having previously served a three-year term as the inaugural composer-in-residence of Opera Philadelphia. Recent premieres include Sky on Swings, a chamber opera for Opera Philadelphia starring Frederica von Stade and Marietta Simpson, which was nominated for Best World Premiere at the 2019 International Opera Awards. Many of his latest projects involve the incorporation of untraditional elements into opera, symphonic works and chamber music, including baroque instruments, sampled interviews, animation, and technology. Malaak Malikyar Sills is a leader in the Afghan diaspora. She works to make visible and connect ideas, people and initiatives towards a common purpose. She does this through her role as a trustee of the Sills Family Foundation, where she works with refugee and immigrant communities, survivors of human trafficking, families affected by incarceration and environmental advocates. She further serves as an advisor on the Welcome.US fund and Board Chair of Refugee and Immigrant Transitions, where she previously worked as Afghan Community Senior Advisor. Her prior work at the International Rescue Committee, coupled with her lived experience, inform her understanding of the systemic barriers newcomers face. As a result, Malaak works on advancing deep engagement and solidarity work with refugee communities. She continues to serve as a volunteer case manager for newcomer Afghans. Indre Viskontas is a neuroscientist, opera stage director and science communicator across all mediums. Combining a passion for music with scientific curiosity, she is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of San Francisco where she runs The Creative Brain Lab, and the Creative Director of Pasadena Opera. She leads the Communications Core at the Sound Health Network, promoting research and public awareness of the impact music can have on our health and well-being. She directed Kat’a Kabanova at the California Shakespeare Theater for West Edge Opera in the summer of 2021. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Malcolm Clemens Young, ThD, is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/forum.
Can the threat of climate change bring together the political left and right in the United States? In the partisan politics that have become so divisive in our country, climate change is usually seen as a progressive issue, disregarded by conservatives. For those who believe that climate change is a very real threat -- to the world’s environment, security, economy, agriculture and people – they know that the world must come together quickly to enact durable solutions before it is too late. Yet how can we build consensus for action globally, when in our own country we remain divided? Tonight’s guest, Bob Inglis, is a former member of Congress, and the founder of republicEn.org, a grass roots organization whose mission is to educate, recruit and organize conservative voices for action on climate change. Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2022 our theme is connection. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Inglis about bringing the right and left in the United States together, and leading the world to solutions on climate change. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Text Think to 76278 or go to gracecathedral.org/givetograce. About the Guest Bob Inglis is the Executive Director of republicEn.org. He was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1992, having never run for office before. He represented Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, from 1993-1998, unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings in 1998, and then returned to the practice of commercial real estate law in Greenville, S.C. In 2004, he was re-elected to Congress and served until losing re-election in the South Carolina Republican primary of 2010. In 2011, Inglis went full-time into promoting free enterprise action on climate change and launched the Energy and Enterprise Initiative (“E&EI”) at George Mason University in 2012, later rebranded as republicEn.org. For his work on climate change Inglis was given the 2015 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/forum.
Kristi Yamaguchi has had a long and successful career in professional figure skating – she is an Olympic Gold Medalist and two-time World Champion figure skater, among many other honors. She hails from Fremont, a fourth-generation descendant of Japanese emigrants, whose family was sent to the internment camps during World War II – in fact her mother was born there. In 1996, she founded the nonprofit organization, Always Dream, whose mission is to ensure children from low-income families have access to high-quality books in the home environment and extensive family engagement and support. Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 202 our theme is connection. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Yamaguchi about sports, fostering reading as an integral part of children’s lives and acceptance of difference among people—and their importance to connecting with others. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Text Think to 76278 or go to gracecathedral.org/givetograce. About the Guest Kristi Yamaguchi is an Olympic Gold Medalist and two-time World Champion figure skater. She went on to become a member of the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame, World Figure Skating Hall of Fame, and the US Olympic Hall of Fame. Following a long and successful career in professional figure skating, Kristi took to the dance floor to win top honors with partner Mark Ballas on the popular TV show “Dancing With The Stars.” In 1996, she founded the nonprofit organization, Always Dream, whose mission is to ensure children from low-income families have access to high-quality books in the home environment and extensive family engagement support. Kristi added New York Times Best-Selling author to her list of achievements with three children’s picture books, “Dream Big, Little Pig!”, “It’s A Big World, Little Pig!” and “Cara’s Kindness.” Kristi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Bret Hedican and their two daughters, Keara and Emma. About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/forum
The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a heartbroken letter to their mutual friend Raphael Gould. He said: “I did not sleep last night. . . . They killed Martin Luther King. They killed us. I am afraid the root of violence is so deep in the heart and mind and manner of this society. They killed him. They killed my hope. I do not know what to say. . . . He made so great an impression in me. This morning I have the impression that I cannot bear the loss.” Only a few years earlier, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote an open letter to Martin Luther King Jr. as part of his effort to raise awareness and bring peace in Vietnam. There was an unexpected outcome of Nhat Hanh’s letter to King: The two men met in 1966 and 1967 and became not only allies in the peace movement, but friends. This friendship between two prophetic figures from different religions and cultures, from countries at war with one another, reached a great depth in a short period of time. Dr. King nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. He wrote: “Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.” The two men bonded over a vision of the Beloved Community: a vision described recently by Congressman John Lewis as “a nation and world society at peace with itself.” It was a concept each knew of because of their membership within the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an international peace organization, and that Martin Luther King Jr. had been popularizing through his work for some time. Thich Nhat Hanh, Andrus shows, took the lineage of the Beloved Community from King and carried it on after his death. Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Bishop Marc about his book Brothers in the Beloved Community, the little-known story of a friendship between two giants of our time, and the healing potential of the Beloved Community. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Go to gracecathedral.org/givetograce to give or text Think to 76278. About the Guest The Rt. Rev. Dr. Marc Handley Andrus is the eighth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California. Prior to his election in 2006, he served as Bishop Suffragan in the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama. Andrus is from Oak Ridge, Tennessee and has a BS in Plant Science, a Masters in Social Sciences and a Master of Divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary. He received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2019. His leadership has focused on key issues related to peace and justice, including immigration reform, civil rights for LBGTQ+ persons, health care, and climate change. His advocacy work has taken him to the Paris UN Climate Conference in 2015 (COP21), the 2016 conference in Marrakesh (COP22), as well as the Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrations at Standing Rock, North Dakota. Bishop Andrus is a member of the We Are Still In Leaders’ Circle, a diverse group of ambassadors for American climate action. He also serves on the boards of the Episcopal Impact Fund, the Episcopal School for Deacons, Episcopal Community Services, the Bishop’s Ranch, St. Dorothy’s Rest, and the American Bach Soloists, among other organizations. Andrus is married to Sheila Andrus, Ph.D., former director of the Sparkman Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s School of Public Health, and they have two adult daughters, Chloé and Pilar. About the host The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
Can words change us? Poetry can help us understand and appreciate the world around us. Poetry’s strength lies in its ability to shed a sideways light on the world, so the truth sneaks up on you. Poetry can teach us how to live—it bares open the vulnerabilities of human beings so we can all relate to each other a little better.
Brought up in the South Carolina lowcountry, Atsuro Riley is the author of *Heard-Hoard* (2021), which McSweeney’s called “The essential collection of our moment—what we’ve needed most without knowing it.” His first collection, *Romey’s Order* (2010), was the winner of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, The *Believer* Poetry Award, and the Witter Bynner Award from the Library of Congress. US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan says of Riley “*he’s pursuing something a lot more ambitious that has deeply to do with sacred properties of language or language that could cast a spell against harm.”*
In his own words: “All the best old tale-tellers of my Carolina upbringing could play righteously upon their (many) Englishes, deft as fiddlers bowing the strings. How they could pierce you with a lyric phrasing; how crackerjack they were at conjuring—for maximum reverberation and haunt. To my ear, a poetry unkillable as kudzu. I aspire to their example in everything I write. At the same time, I hear the admonishment of the Japanese master Basho (1644–1694), echoing from my mother’s side of the cultural ledger: — Is there any good in saying everything?—”
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Riley about poetry and the healing power of words.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Go to gracecathedral.org/givetograce or text Think to 76278. Thank you.
About the guest
Atsuro Riley is the author of Heard-Hoard (University of Chicago Press, 2021), winner of the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, and Romey’s Order (University of Chicago Press, 2010), winner of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, The Believer Poetry Award, and the Witter Bynner Award from the Library of Congress. His work has been honored with the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and the Wood Prize given by POETRY magazine. His poems have been anthologized in The Mind Has Cliffs of Fall, The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of POETRY Magazine, The Oxford Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Poems of the American South, The McSweeney’s Book of Poets Picking Poets, Poems from Far and Wide, Vinegar and Char, Gracious,andHome: 100 Poems. Brought up in the South Carolina lowcountry, Riley lives in San Francisco.
About the host
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. https://gracecathedral.org/forum/
Sports don’t exist in a vacuum, and sometimes it is whether you win or lose and not how you play the game. Injustice and inequity are reflected and reinforced in sports as they are in all areas of our society. And sport has long served as an arena for the struggle for racial justice. Athletes such as Tommie Smith and John Carlos, to Colin Kaepernick have served as powerful agents for change. But even many of their fans continue to be uncomfortable about their protests on the podium at Olympic medal ceremonies or on the field during the National Anthem. What does the activism of athletes and our reception of it tell us about who we are?
Dr. Harry Edwards has had an outsize influence over the history, culture and understanding of the role of sports in society. Professor at UC Berkeley for 30 years, he invented a field of study, the sociology of sports, and provided the foundation for all its assertions. He was the lead organizer behind the Olympic Project for Human Rights which led to the most widely recognized protest in sports history – when American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised Black Power salutes atop the Olympic medal stand in Mexico City in 1968. Beginning in the mid-1980s, he began consulting on issues of diversity for the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball. He arranged seminars on finances and social interactions and essentially invented the modern system of player counseling and support.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Dr. Edwards about sports, athletes and how they play a role in healing racial injustice and inequity.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Visit gracecathedral.org/givetograce and choose The Forum as the fund designation or text Think to 76278.
About the guest
Dr. Harry Edwards is considered the leading authority on developments at the interface of race, sport, and society and a pioneer in the development of the sociology of sport as an academic discipline in America. He was awarded an athletic scholarship to San Jose State University, and completed a M.A. and a Ph.D. in sociology at Cornell University. He was professor of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley from 1970-2000. He was the lead organizer of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, and advocated a Black athlete boycott of the 1968 Olympics among other protest efforts to dramatize the racial inequities and barriers confronting Blacks in sport and society. Edwards became a consultant on issues of diversity for all three major sports. The programs and methods he developed for dealing with issues and challenges facing professional football player personnel were adopted by the entire NFL in 1992. The NFL also adopted the Minority Coaches Internship and Outreach Program that he developed with Coach Bill Walsh at the San Francisco Forty Niners in 1986. He has written scores of articles and four books: The Struggle That Must Be, Sociology of Sports, Black Students, and The Revolt of the Black Athlete.
About the host
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online at gracecathedral.org/the-forum.
La frontera nos divide, pero la tierra nos une.
(The border divides us, but the land unites us.)
We may not be a nation of immigrants (listen to Forum guest and historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz discuss her book of that title on September 29, 2021), but immigration continues to impact us all. Natural disasters, war, corruption and oppression continue to drive migrants’ continued pursuit for an opportunity to live with a sense of dignity and hope for a future. Under the Biden administration, there have been policy changes that have been welcomed by immigrant advocates. At the same time, migrants seeking asylum have overwhelmed the federal system for processing them, including thousands of unaccompanied minors. What is life like on the border today? What can and should be done about this humanitarian crisis?
The Rev. Canon David Chavez has spent nearly all his life breathing in the culture, customs and geography of the United States’ southern border, from his childhood in the 1980s growing up between border communities in Arizona and California to his current role as the Diocese of Arizona’s Canon for Border Ministries.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is *healing*. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Rev. Chavez about how to heal the divides our borders cause, and rediscover what unites us.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Click here to give or text Think to 76278.
About the guest
The Rev. Canon David Chavez serves as Canon for Border Ministries for the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona. A native of Arizona, Padre David was raised in both Arizona and southern California. A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv. 2004, ThM. 2005), Fr. David is a member of the Association for Borderland Studies, and serves the wider church as a member of the council of advice for the Hispanic/Latino Ministries and as a member of the Mexico Covenant Committee. A proud father of two amazing boys and an avid reader (mostly philosophy and cozy mysteries), Fr. David also enjoys playing alto saxophone and hiking. **About the host**
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online
Artificial intelligence is embedded in our everyday lives: It influences which streets we walk down, which clothes we buy, which articles we read, whom we date and where and how we choose to live. It is ubiquitous, yet it remains obscure. Amid increasing scrutiny of technology’s role in everything from policing to politics, “ethics” has become an industry safe word, but no one seems to agree on what these ethics are. How are the teams working on A.I. determining what kinds of ethics and principles to pursue? What sets humans apart from machines? Is the development of A.I. changing us? Can A.I. teach us anything about what it means to be human?
Linda Kinstler, a journalist and Ph.D candidate in the Rhetoric Department at U.C. Berkeley, has been reporting on the relationship between the digital and the divine for over a year and has had dozens of conversations with religious leaders, programmers and believers of all faiths about how our devices are indeterminately altering our interior lives.
Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Ms. Kinstler about ethics in technology, the question of what makes us human and the future of mankind.
READ Linda Kinstler’s essay in the New York Times: Can Silicon Valley Find God?
READ Isaac Asimov’s favorite of his stories, The Last Question
The Rev. Dr. Megan Rohrer is Bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod (ELCA). The first openly transgender pastor Bishop in a mainline Christian denomination, Megan is an award-winning filmmaker, musician and historian. They were a finalist for the Lambda Literary award, received an honorable mention as an Unsung Hero of Compassion by Wisdom in Action with His Holiness the Dali Lama and have been featured on Queer Eye, Cosmo, People and in Wittenberg, Germany for the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Bishop Megan about the healing that comes from being our best self and being louder than other people’s fear. You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Click here to give or text Think to 76278. About the guest The Rev. Dr. Megan Rohrer (they/he) is Bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Bishop Megan, the first openly transgender pastor ordained in the Lutheran church, was ordained Extraordinarily in 2006, one of 18 pastors ordained during the time when the ELCA did not allow LGBT pastors to serve openly. In 2010, Bishop Megan was one of the first seven pastors received into the ELCA after their policies changed. On May 8, 2021 they were elected as the first openly transgender Bishop in a mainline Christian denomination. Before serving as Bishop, they served as Pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in San Francisco, Community Chaplain Coordinator for the San Francisco Police Department and Executive Director of Welcome with the LGBTQ+ Homeless Community in San Francisco. Bishop Megan is an award-winning filmmaker, musician and historian and has been featured on Queer Eye, Cosmo, People and in Wittenberg, Germany for the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. Bishop Megan lives near Golden Gate Park with their wife Laurel, two children and two cats. About the host The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.
Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. Are we indeed living in a land of opportunity—founded and built by immigrants? Or does this benign narrative of progress mask and diminish the US’s history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is an historian and the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment and most recently, Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Dunbar-Ortiz about how embracing the more complex and honest history of the United States can lead to healing.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Click here to give or text Think to 76278.
About the guest Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades, working with Indigenous communities on sovereignty and land rights and helping to build the international Indigenous movement. She is professor emerita of Ethnic Studies at California State University, East Bay. She is the author of numerous books and articles on indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination, including Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico; The Great Sioux Nation; and An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, which received the 2015 American Book Award. She is also the author of Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment and most recently, Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion.
About the host The Very Rev. Malcolm Clemens Young, ThD is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online
Whether it’s meditation or a walk in nature, reading a sacred text or saying a prayer, there are many ways to tap into a heightened awareness of the world around you and your place in it. In The Awakened Brain, psychologist Dr. Lisa Miller weaves her own deeply personal journey of awakening with her groundbreaking research, revealing that humans are universally equipped with a capacity for spirituality, and that our brains become more resilient and robust as a result of it. The Awakened Brain combines cutting-edge science (from MRI studies to genetic research, epidemiology, and more) with on-the-ground application for people of all ages and from all walks of life, illuminating the surprising science of spirituality and how to engage it in our lives.
Dr. Lisa Miller is the New York Times bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and Professor and Founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University. A graduate of Yale and University of Pennsylvania, she is a leading national expert in spirituality, health and thriving in development.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Dr. Miller about the neuroscience of spirituality and a bold new paradigm for health, healing and resilience.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Click here to give or text Think to 76278.
About the guest
Lisa Miller, Ph.D., is the New York Times bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and a professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the Founder and Director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program and research institute in spirituality and psychology, and has held over a decade of joint appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical School. Her innovative research has been published in more than one hundred peer-reviewed articles in leading journals, including Cerebral Cortex, The American Journal of Psychiatry, and the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Dr. Miller is Editor of the Oxford University Press Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality, Founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of the APA journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice, an elected Fellow of The American Psychological Association (APA) and the two-time President of the APA Society for Psychology and Spirituality. A graduate of Yale University and University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her doctorate under the founder of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, she has served as Principal Investigator on multiple grant funded research studies. Dr. Miller speaks and consults around The Awakened Brain and The Spiritual Child for the US Military, businesses (including tech, finance, HR and sales), personal development, faith-based organizations, schools and universities, and for mental health and wellness initiatives.
About the host
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online
Restorative justice, an approach to justice that seeks to restore and repair the people and relationships impacted by crime, has seen worldwide growth since the 1990s. Rather than focusing on punishment, this philosophical approach to justice relies on values such as respect, participation, trust, accountability and healing.
Deanna Van Buren is one of only 500 black female architects in the U.S. and is a nationally known advocate for magnifying the role of design in creating social change. She is the Executive Director, Design Director and Co-Founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, whose bold idea is that by transforming the spaces and places where we do justice, we can transform the culture of justice in our society.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Deanna van Buren about building the change that we believe in.
About the guest
Deanna Van Buren is the Executive Director, Design Director, and Co-Founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, and one of only 500 black female architects in the U.S. She is a nationally known advocate for magnifying the role of design for ending mass incarceration, and her work includes the creation of multi-use hubs for restorative justice and workforce development across the country. Deanna received her BS in architecture from the University of Virginia and her MArch from Columbia University, and she is an alumna of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
About the host
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.
June 2021 is Pride Month. While there won’t be a parade this year, there is still much to celebrate. And there’s still much work to be done in the struggle for true equality and acceptance for LGBTQ+ people.
We are proud to be joined this month by Kim Jackson, as a guest at The Forum and to preach on Pride Sunday, June 27. Jackson is a State Senator for District 41 in Georgia, an Episcopal priest, and with her spouse, Trina, a lifelong advocate for social justice.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Senator Jackson about social justice, getting things done, and the celebration of Pride.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Text Think to 76278.
About the guest
Kim Jackson serves as Senator for Georgia State Senate District 41, representing portions of Dekalb and Gwinnett counties. Kim works every day to build a safer, fairer, and more prosperous Georgia, and bring the diverse voices of her district to the Capitol: immigrants, refugees, and people living on the margins. An Episcopal priest from the rural South, Kim made Georgia home over a decade ago. After graduating from Furman University, Kim volunteered as an EMT and led her colleagues at Emory’s Candler School of Theology to advocate for Criminal Justice Reform in Georgia. Upon receiving her Master of Divinity, Kim commenced her vocation as an Episcopal priest. Over the past 10 years of ministry, she has served as a college chaplain, a nationally renowned consultant and preacher, and a parish priest. As the Vicar of the Church of the Common Ground, Kim co-creates Church with people who are experiencing homelessness in downtown Atlanta. She and her spouse live on a small urban farm in Stone Mountain with goats, ducks, honeybees, and chickens.
About the host
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world
Grace Spring Forum Online with Lenny Duncan — United States of Grace: Celebrate Pride
Monday, June 7, 2021 “The dreamers—those of us still engaged in building and often rebuilding the promises and vision of this country, those of us who are wrestling… we are America. We are the America that I’m writing about.” — Rev. Lenny Duncan At thirteen, Lenny Duncan was a poor, queer Black teenager from Race Street in West Philadelphia, who climbed aboard a Greyhound bus and left his family behind. What Duncan found, in small towns and big cities across America, is what makes his new memoir so rich, so heartbreaking and so surprisingly patriotic. Lenny Duncan is a pastor of the Jubilee Collective, a community in Vancouver, Washington; the board chaplain for ReconcilingWorks; and the author of Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US and United States of Grace: A Memoir of Homelessness, Addiction, Incarceration, and Hope. Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Duncan about America, and survival, hope and grace. Support the author and local booksellers — buy his books at The Collective – Oakland. #TheForum #USofGrace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Text Think to 76278. About the guest LENNY DUNCAN (he/him) is a writer, witness, agitator, and pastor of the Jubilee Collective, a community in Vancouver, Washington, where he lives, organized around the idea that maybe Jesus is an anti-racist and loves queer, trans, and two-spirited people, too. Duncan has spent time in all 48 contiguous states, sleeping by the side of the highway or in penthouses along the way. His first book, Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US (2019), was a surprise hit for his publisher. Duncan is the board chaplain for ReconcilingWorks. He has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and Code Switch. About the host The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreauand The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. https://gracecathedral.org/the-forum/
Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, Louise Little. Virtually nothing has been said about these extraordinary women until now, but the fundamental belief in equal justice and dignity came above all else from the three mothers of James, Martin Luther and Malcolm. Celebrate Mother’s Day and Black motherhood by hearing the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America’s most pivotal heroes.
Anna Malaika Tubbs, author of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation, is a Cambridge Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge Scholar, with a BA in Anthropology from Stanford and a Master’s from the University of Cambridge in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with the author about how her book stands against the women’s erasure, a monument to their historical importance. As Malcolm X put it, “All our achievements are mom’s.”
Support the author and local booksellers — buy her book at Books Inc. Laurel Village or wherever fine books are sold!
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Click here to give or text Think to 76278.
About the guest
ANNA MALAIKA TUBBS is the author of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. She is also a Cambridge Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge Scholar. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a BA in Anthropology, Anna received a Master’s from the University of Cambridge in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies. Outside of the academy she is an educator and DEI consultant. She lives with her husband, Michael Tubbs, and their son Michael Malakai.
About the host
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online
Humans, unlike other animals that are drawn to water, are not natural-born swimmers. We must be taught. Our evolutionary ancestors learned for survival; now in the 21st century we swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranhainfested rivers to test our limits. Swimming is an introspective and silent sport in a chaotic and noisy age, it’s therapeutic for both the mind and body, and it’s an adventurous way to get from point A to point B. It’s also one route to that elusive, ecstatic state of flow.
Bonnie Tsui, a swimmer and surfer, is a longtime journalist for The New York Timesand the author of American Chinatown; her first children’s book, Sarah and the Big Wave, about the first woman to surf Mavericks; and Why We Swim.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with the author about what seduces us to water despite its dangers, why we come back to it again and again, and what that says about being human.
You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. Click here to give or text Think to 76278. About the guest Bonnie Tsui is a longtime journalist for The New York Timesand the author of WHY WE SWIM, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a TIME Magazine Must-Read Book of 2020, an NPR Best Book of 2020, and a Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe bestseller. It is currently being translated into seven languages. Her first children’s book, SARAH & THE BIG WAVE, about the first woman to surf Mavericks, will be published in May. She lives, swims, and surfs in the Bay Area.
About the host The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host, Malcolm Clemens Young, the dean of Grace Cathedral, and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online
In the 1960s, three-quarters of American children lived in families with two first-time married, heterosexual parents. Today fewer than half do. The conventional family has broken into a multitude of perfect families, including gay families, multiparent families, adoptive families, foster families, families built through assisted reproduction, single parent-headed families, and child-free families. What does it mean to be an “ideal family” in America today? And for families learning to deal with their exceptional children, to what extent should parents accept their children for who they are, and to what extent should they help them become their best selves?
In his books New Family Values and Far from the Tree, the Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology and bestselling author Andrew Solomon explores the startling proposition that diversity is what unites us all. The experience of difference within families is universal; these stories are everyone’s stories. And themes of generosity, acceptance, and tolerance expand our definition of what it is to be human.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Solomon about how to make peace with difference across generations.
About the guest
Andrew Solomon, Ph.D., is a writer and lecturer on politics, culture and psychology; winner of the National Book Award; and an activist in LGBTQ rights, mental health, and the arts. He is Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University Medical Center, Lecturer in Psychiatry at Yale University, and a former President of PEN American Center. He is the author of the best-selling Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (2012), Far and Away: How Travel Can Change the World) (2016) and New Family Values (2018) among others.
The vital signs of the planet – CO2, global temperatures and sea levels rising – are telling us that it is in the midst of a medical emergency. What does it mean to be a human being on Earth when every living system is declining, and the rate of that decline is accelerating? What is our role in setting the planet on the path to healing?
Ellie Cohen is the CEO of The Climate Center, and a leader in catalyzing cross-boundary, collaborative, and just responses to the climate crisis. She is leading the campaign to help California, the world’s fifth largest economy, serve as a model for the rest of the country and the world.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation in advance of Earth Day about where we are today, where we need to be tomorrow, and how we’re going to get there.
About the guest Ellie Cohen, CEO of The Climate Center, is a leader in catalyzing cross-boundary, collaborative, and just responses to the climate crisis. She oversees the statewide Climate-Safe California campaign to achieve net-negative emissions by 2030, to capture more carbon than we are emitting, catalyzing the nation and the world into accelerated climate action. Ellie served as President and CEO of Point Blue Conservation Science for 20 years where she and the organization’s 160 scientists developed climate-smart conservation solutions for wildlife and people. Under her leadership, the organization grew five-fold to a workforce of 200 and was invited as an Observer NGO to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. An honors graduate of Duke University (botany) and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (MPP), Ellie has received numerous accolades including the Beyond Duke Alumni Award for Service and Leadership (2019), the National Park Service Pacific West Region Partnership Award (2018), and the Bay Nature Environmental Hero Award (2012). Ellie currently serves as an appointed member of the San Anselmo Sustainability Commission. You can follow Ellie on Twitter and LinkedIn.
We are living in times of immense challenge on every front - socially, politically, ecologically and spiritually. We are destroying the natural systems on which we rely, making many of us feel alienated and lost. We are in one of the most profound transitions in human history - we need a new story to reorient and ground ourselves to meet these challenges.
Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim are co-directors of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, a project which evokes the spiritual wisdom and ecological ethics from the world’s religions for the healing of both people and the planet. They are also creators, with Brian Thomas Swimme, of the multimedia project Journey of the Universe, which weaves together the best of modern science with literature, history, philosophy and religion to inspire people to preserve, protect, and heal our common planetary home.
Join Dean Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation about the journey of who we are, how we got here, where we are headed and how we belong. You can also hear Mary Evelyn Tucker guest preach on Sunday, March 14 at our 11 a.m. Choral Eucharist.
Buy Journey of the Universe.
As we approach the tenth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, inequity and inequality continue to be on the rise. Join us to hear from Judith Butler, UC Berkeley’s Maxine Elliot Professor Emeritus in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory on her latest book The Force of Nonviolence.
As featured in the New Yorker,Butler argues that our times, or perhaps all times, call for imagining an entirely new way for humans to live together in the world—a world of what Butler calls “radical equality.” Dean Malcolm Clemens Young and Dr. Butler will discuss how this radical ideal might help heal our divided world.
Buy her book.
Larry Brilliant is a physician and epidemiologist, CEO of Pandefense Advisory, senior advisor at Skoll Foundation and former professor of epidemiology and WHO medical officer. He is also a person of abiding faith.
He joined Dean Malcolm Clemens Young in March of 2019 to reflect upon what we could learn from the history of smallpox as we face pandemics of the future. Just one year later, COVID-19 entered our lives.
Each year Grace Cathedral chooses a theme for reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. As we enter the second year of the pandemic, we need more than healing. We need strength, endurance, steadfastness, the ability to hang on, and finally — hope. In this second conversation with Dean Young, Dr. Brilliant will put the pandemic in the perspective we need, discuss what’s really happening now and what we can expect next.
What is the role of philanthropy in our community, and has that role changed during the pandemic? Can philanthropy be an agent of social change in the community? Join us to hear from Nicole Taylor, president and CEO of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young about the work of SVCF and the future of philanthropy.
Betty Louie is a first-generation Chinese-American retired businesswoman, community leader and philanthropist, and as the Year of the Ox begins she will be in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young to reflect upon the spiritual and secular traditions of the Chinese New Year, Chinatown revitalization in the context of pandemic and beyond and her family’s fascinating history in San Francisco.
Hilary Pennington is the Ford Foundation’s executive vice president for program and responsible for the BUILD program, which aims to strengthen social justice organizations, reducing inequality in all its forms.
She will be in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young about philanthropy in the 21st century.
Tom Steyer, businessman, climate activist and NextGen America founder will be in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young to reflect on politics in the 21st century in the first week following the inauguration of the 46th President.
Each year Grace Cathedral chooses a theme for reflection, and in 2021 our theme is healing. Dean Young and Steyer will discuss the current state of our country as we head into a new year with the same problems of COVID-19 and new challenges of 2021, and Steyer’s hopes for healing in our divided country.
Join us for a panel discussion with Clayborne Carson of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford and Eva Paterson of Equal Justice Society, moderated by Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of California, presented in partnership with The Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Foundation. Organized around the MLK2021 theme of Justice and Hope, the conversation is designed to create a space to critique, analyze and thoughtfully question assumptions about King and faith, King and community and King and society, and to ignite greater dialogue and programs of action that will infuse the positive force of justice.
Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2020 our theme is bridges. In this landmark year—the 150th and 100th anniversaries of the amendments granting the vote to men of color and to women—in the midst of a divisive presidency, and in an election year, the need for reconciliation in our country – and city – is urgent. Join us to hear from San Francisco Mayor London Breed in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young about San Francisco post-pandemic and post-election. About the guest Mayor London Breed is a native San Franciscan, raised by her grandmother in Plaza East Public Housing in the Western Addition neighborhood. In June 2018, Mayor Breed was elected to be the first African American woman and second woman in San Francisco history to serve as Mayor. She was re-elected for her first full four-year term in November 2019. She led San Francisco’s emergency response to COVID-19 and is currently guiding the City’s phased reopening and economic recovery. Recently, Mayor Breed announced her vision to fundamentally change the nature of policing in San Francisco and issued a set of policies to address structural inequities. Since becoming Mayor, she has focused on helping the City’s homeless population into care and shelter; adding more housing for residents of all income levels; helping those suffering from mental health and substance use disorder on San Francisco’s streets; ensuring that all San Franciscans have access to a thriving economy; making San Francisco a cleaner and safer city; and furthering San Francisco’s leadership in combating climate change. Prior to public service, Mayor Breed served as Executive Director of the African American Art & Culture Complex in the Western Addition for over a decade. She also served as a San Francisco Redevelopment Agency Commissioner and in 2010 was appointed by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom to be a San Francisco Fire Commissioner, where she served until her election to the Board of Supervisors. In 2013, Mayor Breed was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representing District 5 for six years, including three years as President of the Board.
Twenty-five years ago, Alan Jones, then Dean of Grace Cathedral, founded The Forum to create a space for civil conversations on issues that matter. At this most divisive time in our country, when civil discourse is more needed than ever, we couldn’t think of any way we’d rather spend the eve of the election than sharing in a conversation between Dean Emeritus Alan Jones and Dean Malcolm Clemens Young on faith and politics, bridging the divides that separate us, the pandemic and their hopes for 2021.
“It is a Christian obligation to vote, and more than that, it is the church’s responsibility to help get souls to the polls.”— Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, The Episcopal Church
The United States locks up more people per capita than any other nation, at the staggering rate of 698 per 100,000 residents. And the poor and people of color are dramatically overrepresented in our nation’s prisons and jails. Once released from prison, former prisoners are punished again, discriminated against in housing, employment and in voting. Something needs to change.
Proposition 17, on the November ballot, would amend the California constitution to restore the right to vote to convicted felons who are released on parole from state or federal prison. Under current law such persons are not eligible to vote until the terms of their parole are completed. Can even narrow policy changes, like this one, meaningfully reduce our society’s use of incarceration? And what else can we do?
Join us to hear from Dorsey Nunn, Executive Director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, co-founder of All of Us or None, in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young about Prop. 17, amending the 13th Amendment and the movement to win full restoration of human and civil rights for formerly and currently incarcerated people.
In the courtroom, there are always—and only— two irreconcilable sides of the same story. When the wrong story prevails, justice is perverted and an innocent person is condemned. When there is an exoneration, we expect a happy ending. But an exoneration can be an earthquake that leaves behind upheaval and ruin. What is the way forward?
Join us to hear from Lara Bazelon, attorney, professor and director of the Criminal & Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinics at USF, and author of Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young about breaking down stereotypes and preconceptions about crime and justice, and asking the hard questions about what is right and fair and possible in our lifetime.
The Forum is the cathedral’s flagship conversation series, celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2020. Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration. In 2020 our theme is bridges. We are challenging ourselves to explore and reflect upon reconciliation in this very divisive time in our country.
Join us to hear from San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who, in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young, will talk about his work building bridges that promote justice and safety in our community.
About the guest:
Chesa Boudin is the recently elected District Attorney of San Francisco. Personally impacted by parental incarceration and the failings of the criminal justice system, DA Boudin was inspired to become a public defender, and now, decarceral prosecutor. He is focused on reforming the criminal justice system and making our communities safer by developing data-driven policies to expand alternatives to incarceration and treat the root causes of crime. In his first few months in office, DA Boudin ended the office’s practice of asking for cash bail, eliminated status enhancements, implemented California’s first diversion program for primary caregivers, and ended the prosecution of charges resulting from racist pre-textual traffic stops. He has also implemented numerous police reforms, started an innovative Economic Crimes Against Workers Unit to protect workers from exploitation, and has succeeded in reducing the jail population in San Francisco even as crime rates declined. He remains committed to additional reforms that promote justice and protect public safety. Check out DA Boudin’s podcast, Chasing Justice: https://www.chasingjusticepodcast.com/
Are you stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in your own country? As we approach election day in November, how can we connect with a crucial set of workers –and voters? How can we bridge the differences in gender, class, race and work?
Join us to hear from Joan Williams, described as having “something approaching rock star status” in her field by The New York Times, in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young about her central role in reshaping the conversation about work, gender and class — and why we won’t fix US politics until we talk about class.
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in conversation with Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of California.
As we enter our seventh month of sheltering in place, when community is more precious and urgent than ever, go deeper with the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church into his understanding of the Beloved Community – where the term come from, how he first encountered it, how his understanding of the Beloved Community has changed over time, among other questions – in conversation with Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of the Diocese of California.
Join us for a conversation presented by Grace Cathedral and City Lights, with Michael G. Long, editor of We the Resistance: Documenting a History of Nonviolent Protest and Miguel Bustos, Senior Director of the GLIDE Center for Social Justice, moderated by Patrick Thompson, veteran antitrust litigator.
Join us for Grace Cathedral’s flagship conversation program online with ethicist, author and award-winning teacher Grace Kao.
The COVID-19 public health emergency is also causing a human rights crisis, with its economic and social effects disproportionately impacting the poor, the elderly and people of color. Even if “we are all in this together,” some enjoy more safety, shelter, resources and care. How does moral thinking about the common good challenge these disparities? Do conceptions of the common good differ across national and cultural contexts? How can religious communities and theological ethics teach us to address them?
Join us to hear from Grace Kao, Professor of Ethics at the Claremont School of Theology and co-director of the Center for Sexuality, Gender and Religion, in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young about individualism and inequality, solidarity and the common good, and discerning a sense of the global common good in a time of crisis.
Join us for Grace Cathedral’s flagship conversation program online with University of Oxford professor and one of the editors of the eleven volumes of Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks.
In this era of fake news, what can we learn from Kierkegaard’s “truth as subjectivity”? Does 19th century philosophy have something to teach us? Join us to hear from Joel Rasmussen, Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young about why the writings of Søren Kierkegaard matter today. Rasmussen’s studies focus on the interconnections between religion, philosophy, history and literature in modern culture. Kierkegaard (1813–1855)—Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic and religious author widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher— epitomizes these interconnections.
In the Bible, Jesus and the prophets call out the powerful in society for their injustice towards the poor and vulnerable. What do the ancient words of Scripture, calling for change, mean for our lives today?
Join us to hear from Herman Waetjen, author of The Reordering of Power: A Sociopolitical Reading of Mark’s Gospel andThe Letter to the Romans: Salvation as Justice and the Deconstruction of the Law, in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young about what to do with the Bible in the current political and cultural climate. Waetjen is professor emeritus at San Francisco Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union, and spent his academic career exploring the Gospels for their revolutionary insight.
Join us for Grace Cathedral’s flagship conversation program online with one of the world’s foremost scholars on Hinduism.
What is Hinduism, a religion practiced by over one billion people? Join us to hear from Wendy Doniger, one of the world’s foremost scholars of Hinduism, in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young about one of the world’s oldest major religions. Holding doctorates in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard and Oxford, Doniger is Professor Emerita of the University of Chicago and a prolific author, translator and editor, publishing almost thirty books in as many years. Recent works include Against Dharma: Dissent in the Ancient Indian Sciences of Sex and Politics, Redeeming the Kamasutra, and Pluralism and Democracy in India: Debating the Hindu Right. Her groundbreaking work The Hindus: An Alternative History elucidates the relationship between recorded history and imaginary worlds, the inner life and the social history of Hindus.
Join us for Grace Cathedral’s flagship conversation program online with the science, philosophy and theology scholar and activist Dr. Philip Clayton who is working toward a genuinely ecologically sustainable civilization.
Could COVID-19 help us win the fight against climate change? The pandemic has elicited a global response unlike anything we’ve seen before, and carbon emissions have dropped worldwide. This crisis also presents an opportunity, so how can we all―scholars and activists, secular and religious leaders, the private sector as well as the public―begin to live and think right now the way our grandchildren will have to live and think, impacted by the climate crisis? Join us to hear from teacher, speaker, author and activist Philip Clayton in conversation with Dean Malcolm Clemens Young as he reflects on what actions we can take to shift the structures of human life on this planet toward a genuinely ecological civilization. As a scholar, Clayton (Ingraham Professor, Claremont School of Theology) works at the intersection of science, philosophy and theology. As an activist (president of EcoCiv.org, and the Institute for Postmodern Development of China), he works to convene, facilitate and catalyze multi-sectoral initiatives toward ecological civilization.
Join us for Grace Cathedral’s flagship conversation program online with the dean of St. John the Divine, a cathedral in the heart of Manhattan.
New York City is at the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic in the US, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine — the largest cathedral in the world — is in the heart of Manhattan. What is the role of the cathedral in such overwhelming circumstances? How is St. John the Divine responding to the pandemic? How is their community finding ways to pray, mourn, learn and act in this time of crisis and change? Dean Clifton Daniel, III and Dean Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral will reflect together on a cathedral’s unique calling.
Who is God? What does it mean to be human? Why do we believe what we believe? These are questions that systematic theology attempts to answer. Join us to hear from Katherine Sonderegger, Virginia Theological Seminary’s William Meade Chair of Systematic Theology and author of Systematic Theology: Vol. 1, The Doctrine of God, in conversation with Dean Malcolm Young.
Disproportionately impacting people of color, the pandemic has revealed the ongoing, disastrous consequences of racism and inequality in our country. As people of faith, we must ask: is there a relationship between Christian religion and white supremacy in the United States? And how might we start to disentangle them? Join us to hear from Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Professor of Theology at Fordham University and author of The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism and Religious Diversity in America, in conversation with Malcolm Clemens Young, dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. In her book, Hill Fletcher proposes strategies to foster racial healing in America, leading with the demand that white Christians accept their responsibility for racist policies and structural discrimination in America.
Cathedrals have a distinctive capacity and calling to bring people of all spiritual and political backgrounds together to pray, mourn, learn and act in times of crisis and change. Dean Malcolm Clemens Young will talk with Dean Hollerith of Washington National Cathedral, the second-largest Episcopal cathedral in the United States and seat of the bishop of Washington. Washington National Cathedral serves as a spiritual home for the nation, from holding Inaugural Prayer Services and presidential funerals to interring the ashes of Matthew Shephard. Dean Hollerith has reoriented WNC toward radical welcome and hospitality, with a particular focus on racial reconciliation and outreach to the nation’s veterans. Dean Young and Dean Hollerith will reflect together on a cathedral’s unique role in a time of crisis.
Teens today are suffering from an epidemic of anguish that cannot be ignored. Last year, nearly one-fifth seriously considered suicide. We’ve always known that teenagers can be moody, but that is notwhat is going on today. Today’s teenagers and preteens are growing up in an entirely new world, and understandably, many parents are paralyzed by problems that didn’t exist less than a decade ago. The good news is that we do understand why this generation is different and why they are suffering, and this means that we understand what we can do to reverse the scary trends in mental illness. A highly acclaimed sociologist at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, Dr. Christine Carter melds research—including the latest findings in neuroscience, sociology, and social psychology—with her own real-world experiences as the mother of four teenagers. In The New Adolescence, she gives parents and educators realistic ways to help preteens, teens and college students find focus and fulfillment.
Avshalom Weinstein, Jake Heggie and Rebecca Jackson in conversation with The Very Rev. Dr. Alan Jones
The co-founder of Esalen an going where others cannot or will not go in exploring human potential.
Dr. Rani Jaeger is a research fellow, faculty member, and head of the recently formed Ritual Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He was one of the founders of the Institute’s Be’eri Program for Pluralistic Jewish-Israeli Identity Education. Rani received his doctorate from Bar-Ilan University on Jewish-Israeli culture as perceived by the poet Avraham Shlonsky. He was a participant in the first cohort of the Beit Midrash for Israeli Rabbis and received rabbinical ordination from the Shalom Hartman Institute and HaMidrasha at Oranim in September 2016. Rani is one of the founders of Beit Tefilah Israeli, a secular synagogue in the heart of Tel Aviv. He spent a year at Paideia, the European Institute of Jewish Studies in Stockholm, as scholar in residence.
Join us for a panel discussion moderated by Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of California, presented in partnership with The Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Foundation. Organized around the MLK2020 theme of The Time for Justice, the conversation is designed to create a space to critique, analyze and thoughtfully question assumptions about King and faith, King and community and King and society, and to ignite greater dialogue and programs of action that will infuse the positive force of justice.
On March 3, Rev. Peter Munson left Folly Beach, South Carolina for a cross-country walk to raise money for organizations that serve children – 6 million steps for kids. Hear stories from his journey, which ends in San Francisco on November 16.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker and Tony-nominated producer on his book Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen.
The justice advocate and New York Times bestselling author of God’s Politics and America’s Original Sin on his latest book, Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus.**
The internationally celebrated choreographer and Grace Cathedral’s 2019 Artist in Residence on how dance moves from idea to performance, as he joins us during rehearsals for the work he is creating for the cathedral’s “Year of the Body.” Performances take place during the cathedral’s winter mini-arts festival, Spacious Grace, on February 7 and 8, 2020.
The Managing Director of The Perkins Fund, founder of Broadway Angels and Project Glimmer, and one of the subjects of Julian Guthrie’s Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took On Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime on why it’s essential for women to take more control in Silicon Valley.
Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, discusses her new work Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil. As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Neiman asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the past.
The rebel entrepreneur hotelier, Airbnb mentor and bestselling author of Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder on age and ageism in the modern workplace.
About the guest
The iconic boutique hotelier who helped Airbnb’s founders turn their fast-growing tech start-up into a global hospitality brand, Chip Conley is a New York Times bestsellingauthor whose manifesto on ageism, Wisdom@Work: The Making of a Modern Elder, is inspired by his experience of being both a mentor and an intern in his 50s. After selling the company he started as a rebel entrepreneur at age 26, Joie de Vivre Hospitality, Chip wasn’t sure what was next. He could have retired at age 52. But the young founders of Airbnb came calling. He served as Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy for four years — while also being CEO Brian Chesky’s mentor — and continues today as a Strategic Advisor to the company’s leadership. While writing Wisdom@Work, Chip was inspired to build the world’s first “midlife wisdom school,” the Modern Elder Academy, with a 3-acre oceanfront campus in Baja California Sur, Mexico. Chip is an active mentor to six young CEO founders in the hospitality/tech world and serves on the boards of the Burning Man Project, Encore.org and the advisory board for the Stanford Center for Longevity. He believes curiosity is the elixir of life and has taken up learning Spanish and surfing at age 58.
The U.S. Representative and champion of women’s rights and gun violence prevention on her new book, Undaunted: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back.
Jackie Speier is the U.S. Representative for California’s Fourteenth Congressional District. She is a recognized champion of women’s rights, personal privacy and consumer safety—as well as an avowed opponent of government inefficiency and waste. In 2012, she was named to Newsweek’s list of 150 “Fearless Women” in the world. In November 2017, Congresswoman Speier coauthored the #MeTooCongress Act to overhaul how sexual harassment and assault are reported and mediated on Capitol Hill, and in 2018 she was named one of “Politico’s 50” for these efforts. She is co-author of This Is Not the Life I Ordered. Speier received a BA in political science from the University of California at Davis and a JD from UC Hastings College of the Law.
The interfaith activist and refugee from Yemen on his autobiography The Fox Hunt, which recounts his harrowing escape from a brutal civil war and his work to promote dialogue between Muslims, Jews and Christians.
In partnership with Congregation Emanu-El and San Francisco Interfaith Council.
The internationally celebrated choreographer and Grace Cathedral’s 2019 Artist in Residence on the spiritual elements of dance and the cathedral’s annual theme “Year of the Body.”
The American composer of the operas Dead Man Walking, Moby-Dick and It’s A Wonderful Life on his new work
The world-renowned environmental scientist on seeking substantive solutions to global warming, with the goal of reaching drawdown, in honor of Earth Day. Moderated by The Rt. Rev. Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of California.
The only Syrian-born Anglican priest in the world on his work with The Awareness Foundation, which through education empowers children and young people in Syria and Iraq to build peace in a region torn apart by war.
The chaplain for the San Francisco 49ers and the Golden State Warriors, and former chaplain for San Quentin, on sports and the spirit.
The best-selling author on Grace Cathedral’s Year of the Body, with her fascinating perspectives on death, sex, eating, spaceflight, and war.
The co-founder of one of the first digital social networks on effecting positive change.
The innovative choreographer on the beauty of the Hawai’ian hula and his transformative work with prisoners
A panel discussion moderated by Dr. Clayborne Carson and featuring the Rev. Dr. Andrea C. White, presented in partnership with The Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Foundation. Organized around the MLK2019 theme of Weâre In This Together, the conversation is designed to create a space to critique, analyze and thoughtfully question assumptions about King and faith, King and community and King and society, and to ignite greater dialogue and programs of action that will infuse where we go from here.
A panel discussion moderated by Dr. Clayborne Carson and featuring the Rev. Dr. Andrea C. White, presented in partnership with The Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Foundation. Organized around the MLK2019 theme of Weâre In This Together, the conversation is designed to create a space to critique, analyze and thoughtfully question assumptions about King and faith, King and community and King and society, and to ignite greater dialogue and programs of action that will infuse where we go from here.
Rebecca Solnit joins moderator Malcolm Young in a conversation about the war at home, a war “with so many casualties that we should call it by its true name, this war with so many dead by police, by violent ex-husbands and partners and lovers, by people pursuing power and profit at the point of a gun or just shooting first and figuring out who they hit later.” To get to the root of these American crises, she contends that “to acknowledge this state of war is to admit the need for peace,” countering the despair of our age with a dose of solidarity, creativity and hope.
Rev. Nontombi Naomi Tutu will talk with moderator Malcolm Young about the challenges of growing up black and female in apartheid South Africa–the foundation of her life as an activist for human rights, how those experiences taught her that our whole human family loses when we accept situations of oppression and how the teaching and preaching of hate and division injure us all.
Jeff Chang, with moderator Malcolm Young, will talk about cultural equity and justice in the arts sector, the rise and fall of the idea of “diversity,” the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness, and the unexamined condition of our time — resegregation.