TulaneLSU's Top 10 signs of San Francisco

Dear Friends,

Is there anything more beautiful in this world than pride collapsing under the feather of humility? Pride builds quite a fortress, but it is a temporal fortress, and all stone and mortar crack. Humility finds those fissures and, like a Lakeview pothole, makes an opening, small at first. Sooner or later, that fissure becomes a crack. Eventually the fortress craters and collapses. So subtle at first, humility, like a small seed, is among the most powerful forces in this world. Humility is a gift of grace.

Among the many topics that cause a certain subset of Southerners of a particular political bent to become roused are murders in Chicago, crime in New York, filth and flooding in New Orleans, homelessness in Seattle, ANTIFA in Portland, and feces in the streets of San Francisco. The intelligentsia of these cities are not without prejudice either, as they often spurn and belittle Southerners. Both sides exhibit a hardheadedness and pride.

Pride, like all the sins, is an ocean, tumultuous and deep, roaring and mercurial, often unbound and uncontrolled. The good hearted do their best to constrain it, holding it back with a barrier of virtue, prayer, and discipline. But once pride finds that first fissure, like all fluids, it will find your lowest point. Aristotle was the first to articulate the idea that “water seeks its own level.” Sins, like pride, do the same, and they make a beeline for the lowest level, the place where there is no resistance from virtue, prayer and discipline. It finds the lowest part in our being and drowns us.

Humility, like all the virtues, may seem absent, weightless, even childlike. It is often insulted as naive, harmful, even repressive in this world ruled by Darwinian law, a world that whispers to us, tricking us into paying obeisance to violence, unbridled sexual passion, foul language, and mind altering substances. Humility is seeing our rightful place in this world -- not as this world’s center, the ultimate individualism taken to the Nietzschean extreme, but as one of the billions of creations God has formed.

It was the great preacher Billy Graham who once said, “The Bay Area is so beautiful I hesitate to preach about heaven while I’m here.” I concur with the Reverend Graham. Of the cities in America, none compares to San Francisco in its natural setting. And more than that, man’s own ingenuity and enterprise here have created a city of structural beauty. Uncle has always said, “America has four noteworthy cities: New York, New Orleans, D.C., and San Francisco.” I agree completely.

San Francisco is the only notable city west of the Mississippi River. It is clean, hilly, and dazzling in both sun and clouds. Its inhabitants are generally friendly and genteel. Although many political conservatives, who are rarely religious conservatives these days, pigeonhole San Francisco as a bastion of wacky ideas and life, I found life in the city to be civilized, respectable.

There are notable exceptions, of course, as one would expect in any city. It was on a walk through the trampled Tenderloin, on our way to volunteer to give out food at Glide Church, a strange church that does not seem to smile upon overt discussions about Christianity. We dispensed with the food the Bibles we had left over from Halloween. The salvific Word sharing was done covertly, though, as though we were ancient Christians in Nero’s Rome.



The Tenderloin is a sad, post-apocalyptic setting I had not visited in a decade’s time. I did not see any Hondurans, but was offered “120 milligrams of the best stuff in the city.” He was a Black man. Forgive me if I tell you I was quite angry with this man. While I offered him liberation through repentance from his wicked ways, when he became hostile to my words, I rushed away, Mother’s arms locked in mine.

I was deeply hurt and visibly shaken when I saw one White man on the corner of Ellis and Jones Streets using a syringe to put something in his vein. I do not think it was insulin, as IV insulin could result in dangerous hypoglycemia in a non-hospital setting. I surmised later that it was likely a hypnotizing and soul destroying poison.

I wept for this neighborhood. I did notice more taco restaurants in the Tenderloin than there were ten years ago. Though muted, there were still signs of hope in this sad neighborhood, like the man making bubbles.



Our lodging for the trip was a mere four blocks from the Tenderloin in a neighborhood called Nob Hill, which is as graceful as any neighborhood in America. It is our custom in San Francisco to stay at the Fairmont, a most handsome hotel that has been updated, but unlike many updated hotels, such as The Grand in Clear Point, has maintained the stateliness and gravity of age. Rooms at this landmark are remarkably reasonable during this time. For good and bad, the hotel is closed to anyone who is not a paying customer, so do not be offended if you are turned away at the front door if you have not reserved a room.





Seated across the street from the Fairmont, beyond the lovely Pacific-Union Club, of which a second cousin is a member (a decade ago Mother attempted to move me to SF and insisted that our cousin nominate me for membership at PU, neither of which happened), is the beautiful Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal seat from which MLK Jr. famously said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Perhaps my fellow Anglicans should remember he actually first wrote that line while in that little Birmingham jail, which I failed to visit on my recent journey to Birmingham and Jasper. Although many compare Grace to Notre Dame, I think a fairer comparison is to Amiens Cathedral in Picardy. Grace, unlike that which is divine, is closed to the public right now, but one is still able to see its beautiful doors, reminiscent of Ghiberti's baptistry doors.







The premier shopping district of San Francisco is found at Union Square, over which Nike the god, not the store, reigns. Southerners say the left west is in favor of participation trophies, but this is a city of competition and win at all costs, highlighted by Nike’s prominent place here. I would prefer a monument of the Christ on a cross or the Ten Commandments, but people here seem to worship the god of victory over the true God of love and compassion.