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Gregory’s Episcopal Church
St.
De Haro Street
500
CELEBRATING THE LIFE &WORK OF DR.M.M.THOMAS
The Dancing Saints
Donald Schell
San Francisco, CA 94107
St Gregory's Saint Selection Committee offers these eighty saints (there are ten more not
yet listed here), to be painted as a grand icon in our church rotunda, a single statement of
God's remarkable and remarkably diverse work in human life.
Many, many more obviously belong to this group-Martin Luther King Jr., Mary and Martha
of Bethany, Raoul Wallenberg, Hildegard of Bingen, Erasmus, Emily Dickinson, Oscar
Romero, Helen Keller, Stephen Biko, and easily hundreds and thousands more we could
name and research, not to mention the legions of unknown and now forgotten holy ones
(represented for us by the Alexandrian Washerwoman).
In addition to our primary goal of showing an image of God's many and diverse ways of
working in people's lives, we aimed to achieve a reasonable representation of men and
women (and a few children) from different historical periods, life roles and kinds of work.
Whenever we heard or felt, "of course, we have to include…", we paused and gave that
person an extra skeptical scrutiny, trying to push our list beyond a self-evident "hall of
fame" and further, beyond mainstream church consensus, stretching our thinking and
enlarging our gratitude for grace overflowing in so many startling and different lives.
We were aware of our particular place and time and tried to honor its gift and see past its
limitation. Sometimes in a choice between two worthy people, we gave preference to the
local figure, emphasizing God's work here among us. We represented important events
of our historical moment, late 20th Century America - the U.S. Civil Rights movement and
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