Bright and Beautiful

On a bright and beautiful Sunday we gathered at the Foster City Dog Park to celebrate the Feast of St. Francis. In keeping with the Catholic and Anglican tradition of honoring the patron saint of animals, creatures great and small lined up to receive a blessing from priests.

Attendance was sparse because of an unusual confluence of events. An estimated one million tourists were expected to converge on San Francisco because of Giants playoff baseball, 49ers football, the Blue Angels exhibition, the America's Cup, and the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (that annually draws hundreds of thousands).

Though we live in its shadow, most of us count ourselves blessed to be living close to the City that was named after the great Saint himself, the saint who penned the second most-recognized prayer in Christendom:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury,pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen