What a rich week, leading to Labor Day and helping set the tone for a busy program year.
Colleagues and I spent an evening at All Saints’ Beverly Hills with their gifted priest in charge, the Rev. Canon Andrea McMillin, and her fellow parish leaders. On an after-dinner walk around Pasadena, Canon Kathy Hannigan O’Connor and I strolled through the grounds of another wonderful All Saints, which is preparing for its homecoming feast and a celebration of the 100th anniversary of its beautiful church building, all on Sept. 15. We’ll see you there!
We’re also getting to know our new neighbor at St. Paul’s Commons, Echo Park, the Very Rev. Paul Anthony Daniels, dean of Bloy House, The Episcopal Theological School at Los Angeles, who preached at our weekly Holy Eucharist service (all are welcome Thursdays at 11:30 a.m. in St. Athanasius) and met with us Bloy House board members, during our Saturday retreat, to introduce his vision of our theological school as a “hub for Christian innovation.”
On Sunday I was along to celebrate and preach at St. John’s Cathedral in Los Angeles paid tribute to our former archdeacon, the Rev. Canon Joanne Leslie (singled out by friends from the Daughters of the King whom she mentored while serving at St. John’s).
Kathy and I spent Labor Day afternoon exploring the Norton Simon Museum, one of many delights our temporary home town offers. Mr. Simon paid for his magnificent art collection with wealth he began to accumulate when he ran Hunt Foods in Fullerton, also in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.
According to the Los Angeles Times, art sleuths suspect some of the works in the South and Southeast Asia collection (which his spouse, actor Jennifer Jones Smith, inspired him to acquire) should probably find their way back to the people of Cambodia. Today I got a little lost myself in Luca Giordano’s late 17th century “Birth of the Virgin,” depicting her parents, Ann and Joachim, along with midwives and house pets as heavenly light and angel song fill the bedchamber. Speaking of provenance, we actually don’t know anything about Mary’s parents, including their names. The painting invited its beholders to suspend disbelief.
