The Forum with BJ Miller
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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:...
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The Forum with Bishop William Swing
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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...
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The Forum with Stephanie Sellers
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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...
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The Forum with Michael Mechanic
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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...
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The Forum with The Rt. Rev. Austin Rios
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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...
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The Forum with Debie Thomas
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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...
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The Forum with Debie Thomas
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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...
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The Forum with Michael Goldberg on Jukebox
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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.
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The Forum with Scott D. Sampson, Ph.D. - June 9, 2024
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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...
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The Forum with Michele Benedetto Neitz
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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...
info_outlineIn 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 Money and Other People’s Houses