Valerie Maxwell, for these five years the bishop’s warden of Grace Episcopal Church in Moreno Valley, and I stood bathed in Inland Empire sunshine after services today and vowed to do all we could to build affordable senior housing on the two and a half acres next to their pretty two-story church building. Valerie already envisions the church as a community center for its prospective neighbors.
These projects are never easy to pull off. A church’s available real estate is the first step, and a big one. But financing is up in the air thanks to the current administration. There also has to be enough of a gap between affordable and market rate rents. In Grace’s favor, shopping is close, and public transportation for seniors is said to be excellent. The city knows it needs more housing.
The project will take more than my remaining 323 days as bishop. In any event, if you meet Valerie, you will know that I was never going to be on the lead oar. A longtime Realtor at Maxwell & Associates, with friends at city hall, Valerie is cheerfully and absolutely determined. And it bears mentioning that with everything else she has going on, she also did the flower arrangements at lunch.
She will have plenty of support. This community is “small but mighty.” That description came from Helen, an Englishwoman who brought delicious sausages in a blanket to the potluck. Helen has lost her husband, son, and brother to illness and has had two serious operations herself. But she loves to read the epistle of a Sunday, and she can’t help bathe with you with hope, as Colossians did this morning.
I was along to preside and preach. While we were only about 25 in all, it is perhaps the right 25. One couple was off to see “Superman” with their elder son, who has just graduated with a degree in filmmaking and is bound to be a director. Maybe we can get him to make a documentary about our housing project. Grace stalwart Amy Clayton was my volunteer chaplain. She and her sister, Kate Parker, both educators, were 11 and eight in June 1967 when they were evacuated from Cairo on the brink of the Six–Day War. Their father was naval attaché at the U.S. embassy. He was putting on his dress whites to help introduce a new ambassador to President Nasser. When he heard the air raid sirens, he realized Nasser would be otherwise occupied and made plans to get his family to safety. As you might imagine, the sisters evince a certain resourcefulness.
Grace’s volunteer photographer, Stanton, is son and caregiver of the beloved former vicar, the Rev. Jo Ann Cole-Weeks. The current priest, the Rev. Stacey Forte-Dupre, helps oversee everything with cheerfulness and pastoral attentiveness. Rev. Stacey forgave me for telling the story in my sermon of her ordination at St. John’s Cathedral in January 2023. At the beginning of the ordination rite, she and four other candidates prostrated themselves before the altar, according to ancient practice. Before we could ask them to stand up, the presiding bishop, Michael B. Curry, went over and ordained Stacey where she lay. I texted Bishop Curry this morning and told him that I would be serving with Stacey, who was gospeler during the service. He wrote, “Thank you for telling Stacey’s folks they may be with the first ordained in Christian history in a real position of humility!”
I also had a long chat with Nina and Rhodes Williams, married these 45 years. As people’s warden, Rhodes greeted me warmly as I arrived. He said he was just up on his feet recently after surgery nearly a year ago. One often hears such stories in church. But he buried the lede. Nina, a bank executive turned teacher, now retired, told me that as Rhodes recuperated, he won a seat on the Moreno Valley school board with 67% of the vote. If you’re a beloved former principal and district administrator with a reputation for intelligence and decency, it turns out you don’t have to campaign. Perhaps one day this strategy will work on the national level.
Nina and Rhodes met in New Bedford, Massachusetts, at the western end of Cape Cod. A Roman Catholic from Cape Verde, she would take Rhodes to mass at our Lady of the Assumption in New Bedford, and he would take her to church at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Cambridge, where he lived. Nina said she finally became a convert as they drove across country during their move to Los Angeles. She said she realized that, wherever they went to an Episcopal church, everyone was pretty much the same — friendly and welcoming. Someone would always wander over and ask how they were doing. That’s exactly how you’ll experience Grace the next time you look in. Valerie and I can’t be sure we’ll be successful with the affordable housing. But in this excellent company, it will sure be fun trying.
