St. Mark's - Berkeley

The clouds descended from the upper hills of Berkeley this morning.  I stepped outside and it was eerily quiet and grey.  The streets around the dorm were empty and there was a coolness in the air.  I was a little surprised that at 8:00 on a Sunday morning would be so dead.  I mean I know it is a residential area and all but it was quiet.  This morning I decided to head to St. Mark's on the south side of the Cal campus.  This church is fairly close to CDSP so I grabbed Jay and we walked across Cal and arrived for the ten o'clock service.

St. Mark's is similar to All Soul's in that there are a lot of people associated with CDSP in the community.  Two professors are associate priests.  The organist is the music director at the chapel.  My adviser and OT professor, Donn Morgan, is a member of the congregation as well as another professor, Louis Weil.  However, the community is very different from what I have experienced thus far.  I expect it is due to the proximity of the church to Cal.  I couldn't necessarily identify who was affiliated with Cal but there was a rich diversity that was clear from the very beginning.  When we arrived a small group had gathered outside the church and a blessing of the animals had begun.  We arrived just in time to see Lizette, the dean of our chapel and my Intro to Worship professor, was going around blessing the dogs, cats, rats, and stuffed animals.  It was a short service and then it was time to head inside for the liturgy.

Approaching the church, St. Mark's on the left and Cal on the right

Outside of St. Mark's for the blessing of the animals

The church has some distinct domes

The front of the church, sort of

Lizette blessing a cat

When I walked inside I was amazed at the size of the church.  It was huge inside, with the organ and choir in the back, stained glass windows lining the walls, the altar and high altar.  it was quite impressive.  St. Mark's is known for their music program.  Their choir is huge, some thirty people deep.  They definitely added emphasis to the liturgy.  The problem with a choir that big is that you have to ask the question, is this choir and music for performance or for worship?  I know a lot of people who would have been completely turned off by the music who would see it as self serving and not worshiping God.  I have to disagree but that is my own personal opinion.  They started the service with an introit followed by the processional hymn.  For the offertory they sang Rejoice In The Lord, another anthem that I have sung before at St. John's.  Of course the epistle was from Philippians and the anthem takes its lyrics from that passage, so it was totally appropriate.  For the communion anthem they sang My Shepard Will Supply My Need.  It as familiar but I am not sure if I sang that before, or if I have heard it somewhere else.  One last thing that I have noticed at several churches that I have been to is the singing of the Our Father.  Not only have we been singing it but the churches are all using the same setting, Rimsky-Korsakov's version.  We have used it in the chapel several times.  Curious.

The organ and piano

Where the choir sits, couldn't fit all the seats in the picture

One of the things I noticed was the stained glass.  If you looked at them closely you could see that only a few windows were done by the same artist while others by another.  To me it looked like they spanned different decades and styles of stained glass.  Some were very intricate in color and detail, while others seemed more basic and of a simpler nature.  For what ever reason it looked like they were done in stages.  I know st St. John's most, if not all, of the windows in the church were done at the same time so there is continuity in detail and design.  That is not the case here.

A few of the windows

The last thing that really grabbed my attention was the sanctuary.  There were two altars and a division that separated the "normal" altar in the nave from the high altar against the wall.  The high altar was never used, though it was covered in hangings for the season, but I have not seen a set up like this in a long time and certainly not since I have been in California.

The two altars

Overall I thought it was a great parish with a lot of strengths, both in what they offer for styles of worship and for their outreach work.  I think that it would be a good church to do my second year of field ed at but I think that some place else might be better for my first year.  There are only a few more Episcopal churches in Berkeley so I will continue to visit them, but I have a feeling that I should head to Oakland and that I may find what I am looking for there.  We shall see.