Guest columnist
The unfinished symphony of St. James Cathedral

By Michael G. Ryan
Special to The Times

GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES St. James Cathedral is more than its impressive interior.

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Cathedrals can be splendid structures and nothing more: awe-inspiring but cold. Only the warmth and the faith of people make them what they are meant to be: holy places — meeting places with God — as well as safe refuges for the poor and the searching, bully pulpits for preaching the Gospel, centers for the sacred arts, crossroads for conversation and controversy, ecumenical gathering places.

As the people of St. James Cathedral gathered this weekend to celebrate their centennial as a parish, they are looking for ways to be all of those and more.

The cathedral had humble beginnings in a small wood-frame chapel on the corner of Terry Avenue and Columbia Street. Three years later, the grand building on Ninth Avenue was completed and dedicated. Some 85 years after that, in 1994, it underwent a major and highly acclaimed restoration and renovation. In the 10 years since then, the parish community has tripled in size and now draws nearly 2,500 families each weekend from some 100 Zip Codes around the Puget Sound region. But today's parishioners know they are only the latest in a long procession of people who have, for five generations, left their mark on St. James and on our city.

In the face of widespread poverty and homelessness, many people find it a scandal for a church, or any institution, to spend large sums of money on a building, no matter how important or beautiful. They have a point, but the human soul dies without beauty, and for some poor people, a place like St. James is one of the few beautiful places they can call their own.

And I do believe that a place like St. James does well to justify its bricks and mortar, its marble and bronze, its gold and glass, and this is something we definitely strive to do. We do it by strengthening — and making clear — the close bond between worship and service — the vital connection between what happens inside the cathedral's walls where God is worshiped in a glorious place, and what happens outside its walls where the poor, the homeless, the refugee, the immigrant, the mentally ill, are welcomed, championed, and cared for.

The Seattle City Council declared yesterday "St. James Cathedral Parish Day" — a wonderful honor for a large, devoted and highly diverse community of people who spend a large portion of their time and resources responding to the needs of the poor and homeless of our city. They serve dinner to hundreds of people every week in the Catholic Worker Family Kitchen; they volunteer in the highly respected English as a Second Language Program for immigrants and refugees; they sleep on mats with homeless men in our Overnight Winter Shelter; they contribute generously to The Hunthausen Fund, which makes outright grants and non-interest loans for rent assistance, moving hundreds of families out of shelters and into homes they can call their own. And there is more.

The parishioners of St. James work hard to make their cathedral a gathering place — the entire community's gathering place — whenever a place to gather is badly needed. Over the years, people from all the major religions (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu), as well as others who identify with no religion at all, have gathered in St. James Cathedral in great numbers when they have felt the need to pray together, to weep and to mourn, to listen, to ponder, to offer support, to gain resolve, wisdom and courage.

They joined St. James Cathedral's parishioners (and St. Mark's Cathedral's parishioners, too) by the thousands (the newspapers estimated 30,000) on the eve of the Gulf War in 1991. They came 10 years later in the wake of the terrible events of Sept. 11, and they came many times in between.

	The Very Rev. Michael G. Ryan

They came when the city was devastated by the tragic deaths of four firefighters, killed one night in an arson at a Seattle warehouse. They came when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated; when the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed; when a devastating earthquake shook Japan; when high-school kids were mowed down in Colorado; and when Mother Teresa died.

They still come. They come because they want to — and need to. They come, not so much for answers we can provide but for comfort and assurance, challenge and perspective and — I can find no other way to say it — they come for a transcendent experience, an experience of the divine. That is what has always been asked of cathedrals and it's what cathedrals must always try their best to give.

Though much has been accomplished in a century, I believe that St. James, like all cathedrals, is very much an unfinished symphony. From the top of its twin towers overlooking the city, the cathedral bells will ring out a call to prayer and a voice for justice for generations yet to come. This is the cathedral's work and I am confident that 100 years from now, it will still be going on.

As our parish community celebrates a century of worship and service, we pledge ourselves to keep the cathedral's doors — which are many and wide — open to everyone.

The Very Rev. Michael G. Ryan has served as pastor of St. James Cathedral since 1988.