As we weave through the complexities of faith and society, Reverend Randolph Hollerith, Dean of the Washington National Cathedral, joins us to share his profound insights. Experience the delicate interplay of spirituality within the political landscape as we explore the sacred space that stands as a beacon of prayer for all people, transcending partisan lines. We delve into the Cathedral's transformative journey, including the decision to replace Confederate windows with symbols (Now and Forever Windows) that better reflect our shared values of inclusivity and unity, a testament to the intersection of reverence and progress.
We share the joy of mentorship, the strength drawn from living the social gospel, and the anticipation for upcoming reunions that celebrate the festive season.
You can learn more about the Cathedral and the stories behind the new windows at Cathedral.org We encourage you to visit: virtually via online presence and services or in person when you are in Washington, DC.
As we weave through the complexities of faith and society, Reverend Randolph Hollerith, Dean of the Washington National Cathedral, joins us to share his profound insights. Experience the delicate interplay of spirituality within the political landscape as we explore the sacred space that stands as a beacon of prayer for all people, transcending partisan lines. We delve into the Cathedral's transformative journey, including the decision to replace Confederate windows with symbols (Now and Forever Windows) that better reflect our shared values of inclusivity and unity, a testament to the intersection of reverence and progress.
We share the joy of mentorship, the strength drawn from living the social gospel, and the anticipation for upcoming reunions that celebrate the festive season.
You can learn more about the Cathedral and the stories behind the new windows at Cathedral.org We encourage you to visit: virtually via online presence and services or in person when you are in Washington, DC.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Spiritual Gumbo, the podcast for those who choose not to lead by Western leadership theories, but through spiritual insight. Today's guest is the very Reverend Randolph Hollerith, dean of the Washington National Cathedral. Welcome, padre.
Dean Randy:Lynn, great to see you. Thanks for having me on.
Rev Lynne:It's great to have you and happy New Year and Merry Christmas, I believe. What is this? The ninth day of Christmas.
Dean Randy:I lost count. All I know is that it's been a relaxing week, so it's been great. Happy New Year to you.
Rev Lynne:I know it's hard to get back into it once you've had that kind of low period.
Dean Randy:Amen.
Rev Lynne:Well, what I want to say to us is that we are about three degrees of separation. Incarnation at one time in our life with one of our former rectors, was friends with the Dean of the Washington National Cathedral, and we were gifted with beautiful altered linens. Now they're pretty old now, they're about 50 years old now, but it seems to me that you and I, just as much as we may want to be disconnected from each other, we have this connection that tends to keep happening. I'm now on the Roslyn Managers Board and you are one of the trustees, so you can't run from me, padre.
Dean Randy:Well, lynn, it's always good, you know, especially in the church. The degrees of separation are not large and you and I are. I'm glad you and I are connected and always will be.
Rev Lynne:Thank you, Thank you. Now I do want to say I would love to invite you to incarnation at some point to come and visit us, Incarnation. We're not a large congregation but we are an old congregation. We are well old. In many ways we're the third oldest congregation in the diocese of Atlanta, in Southwest Atlanta, and we have an older population. But I would love for you to come because we have a burgeoning yam group that I hope to one day bring to the cathedral for the Acolyte Festival, because I love the Acolyte Festival.
Dean Randy:Oh, it's one of the best things every year. I missed it during COVID boy.
Rev Lynne:Yeah, yeah, will it be back this year?
Dean Randy:Yes, it was back. This fall was our first one back, okay, and it was great. We had a great turnout and you know, the best thing is that procession that takes about an hour with all those Acolytes from all over the country, and it's such a joy. I love, I love it, we love it every year. It's one of the best things we do at the cathedral.
Rev Lynne:Yes, yes, I do. I love it too. Well, let's get to us. As Dean of the National Cathedral, you are considered a house of prayer for the nation. How are you able to separate faith and politics, or do you feel you need to separate faith and politics?
Dean Randy:Well, we try to be a house of prayer for all people, which means we literally try to do that for all people and to be welcoming of everyone, regardless of their faith background or their political background for that matter. But you know, the gospel is political and there's just no way around that. Now I'd like to say I truly believe that while the gospel is political, it has political consequences. It doesn't need to be partisan. So we try to avoid being partisan in any way or picking one party over another. But when we feel we need to preach the gospel, that has political consequences, we don't shy away from doing that this Christmas was, in the Middle East, a very somber Christmas.
Dean Randy:Yes.
Rev Lynne:As you probably know, in Bethlehem the festivities were not partaken of the big festivals and parades and etc. Many of the churches one of the Methodist Church out of England requested that, as a sign of solidarity, we not light the candle of peace or advent. Were you aware of any of this advocacy for the Middle East that happened around some congregations around America?
Dean Randy:Yes, I had heard some about that. I certainly have been in touch with the folks in the diocese of Jerusalem. I know that the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem they were not holding their Christmas services that was the congregation that had that very powerful, crushed display of Jesus amidst the rubble. The whole situation is absolutely tragic from beginning to end. It's heartbreaking to watch what's going on over there. We worry about our brothers and sisters in the diocese of Jerusalem, which spreads all the way to Jordan and beyond. We did not participate directly in that way by not lighting a candle. We have had the Holy Land very much in the front and center in our prayers during Advent and the beginning of this Christmas season.
Rev Lynne:Has there been any response from your Palestinian or Arab parishioners at the cathedral?
Dean Randy:We certainly have seen some response from folks around the diocese who are deeply connected to the diocese of Washington, who are deeply connected to folks in the diocese of Jerusalem. There have been a number of protests and being witnessed to events around the city. I have not seen that directly in our congregation as far as any Palestinian members, that we may or may not have. The pain from our Jewish side, of our brothers and sisters who are Jewish in the city, is incredible. The pain from the Palestinian side is equally as incredible. It's just awful all the way around. I don't know a better way to say it. It's just an absolute, terrible tragedy. How we help to foster peace in that part of the world right now is beyond me other than prayer.
Rev Lynne:Recently, the cathedral replaced the Confederate windows. Why do you feel this was necessary? Isn't that a part of our American experience?
Dean Randy:Well, that's a great question. Of course, the Civil War is very much a part of our American experience. It's a part of our history and as Americans, we should learn as much about that conflict as possible. But the windows in the cathedral? There was one window dedicated to Robert E Lee and another window, or set of windows, dedicated to Stonewall Jackson. These windows were put in the 50s 1954. And while it's important for us to remember our history, because we consider ourselves a house of prayer for all people, we saw no reason why we should be extolling the two Confederate generals whose primary mission was to keep the institution of slavery alive in the south, and those windows were a definite barrier to people to feel comfortable in a part of the cathedral community. So we found it really important that they needed to come down.
Dean Randy:Now, what we did, rather than just the Dean previous to me, gary Hall, called for the windows to come down in 2015 or 2016. And the windows didn't come down until 2017. And in that time period, we did a lot of educational work around. What does it mean to have sacred imagery in a cathedral? What does it mean to have stained glass windows? What are we saying or not saying by having those windows? What is the history of the lost cause? What is the lost cause narrative? How did those windows play into that? We did a lot of education around the reality of those windows and racialized symbolism in general before we took the windows out and now we're so excited that we've got new windows that take their place and that's really the great news. And of course, we have kept those Confederate windows. We have not given them away or destroyed them. They are very much a part of the fabric of this cathedral. They just were not appropriate for sacred space.
Rev Lynne:That's interesting that the windows actually went in around 1954. And that was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.
Dean Randy:I don't think there's any coincidence there, although our archives show that there were conversations about a Confederate window going in as early as the 30s in the cathedral.
Dean Randy:And originally the Dean's point of view at that time was that here we were building a cathedral in the heart of the North, in the heart of the Union, in Washington DC, and they wanted to do something in the cathedral that would make Southerners feel a part of this national cathedral being built in the heart of the nation's capital.
Dean Randy:And so they saw having a Confederate window or some sort of a window honoring the South as an olive branch between North and South. You got to remember in the 20s and the 30s the Civil War was not all that long before, so the feelings were still quite high. Now, of course, they never should have been in that space, but we look with a modern eye back on times that were very different. I'm just glad that we have them out now and we lent the Robert E Lee window to the African American Museum of History and Culture here in Washington at the Smithsonian and they used it very powerfully in an exhibition on the legacy of Jim Crow in the United States and we were honored to be able to lend it to them, but we have them back now and they're in storage here in the cathedral.
Rev Lynne:That the erection of the Confederate windows reminds me of when I first moved to Richmond, and it was the time that the Arthur Ashe statue was being erected on Monument Avenue and the pushback about that statue being erected on Monument Avenue. And it seems like in our circles we're still having some of these same conversations about appropriateness, timing and what is the ultimate message that we are sending to our communities about race and reconciliation.
Dean Randy:Absolutely. And the irony in Richmond now is the only statue that survives is that statue?
Rev Lynne:Wow, that's that. I never thought that day would come. I really never thought that day would come. Where much of Richmond's identity is around, especially in terms of monuments, around those Confederate statues, and to know that they are now no longer a part of the tourist attraction as it had been in the past Amazing Can you don't you remember when we first got to Richmond?
Dean Randy:when I first got to Richmond, I remember so well they used to have Lee King Jackson day. Yes, jackson King day. Yes, yes, it was the weirdest thing I had ever experienced.
Rev Lynne:Yes, I do.
Dean Randy:The same holiday you had Confederate reenactors marching down Monument Avenue and across town. You had an MLK parade going on the exact same day.
Rev Lynne:You know it's funny you bring that up. We were talking about that. I remember being at St Peter's and there were African Americans who actually still remembered having to walk on the opposite side of the street when there were Caucasians on one side of the street due to that was a part of their lived experience being on the other. One had to be on the right side and one had to be on the left side, and how. Race was so embedded in the city but really not talked about. How, how, how is this? How does the cathedral engage conversations of race?
Dean Randy:Well, as I said, around these windows, we had I must have been eight or nine or 10 different forums Around issues of of race, and we have. That has been a passion of ours to work on this issue For quite a while and it continues to be sort of central to our work as we move forward. We'll be having a major program in the Virginia May Center coming up around around race and leadership, which will be fascinating. We did all of those, all of those forums together, talking about all the issues around those stained glass windows and the Civil War and Jim Crow and iconography, what should or shouldn't be in sacred space, and those were fabulous. And we also have a number of programs that exist within the congregation itself that are just great, really tackling the difficult issues, trying to ask the tough questions and see how we grow together as a community.
Rev Lynne:Can you say a little bit about the windows, the new windows?
Dean Randy:Oh, the new windows. Yeah, so the new windows are absolutely fabulous. So Kerry James Marshall, who was an absolutely unbelievable artist, I think one of the greatest living artists in the country, I think, he was beautiful.
Dean Randy:He agreed to do the replacement windows. We approached him about it and never thought he would say yes, he's so highly in demand. But he was fascinated by the project and really wanted to take part, so he designed all four of the new windows. There were two Lee windows and two Jackson windows, side by side. They're called Lancets and he replaced all four Lancets with his powerful imagery of of a civil rights march or a march for human rights. That is one of the only places where his art is permanently displayed now is in the cathedral and we had a massive celebration for it.
Dean Randy:Elizabeth Alexander, who was poet laureate and is now the head of the Mellon Foundation, she also did a beautiful poem which is going to be etched in stone below the new windows that speaks directly to, or stands in conversation with the windows done by Kerry James Marshall. They're hard to describe. You need to see them. They're clearly displayed on our website. We've got a big section about them on the website and if you haven't come to see them, I encourage people to do it because they are quite something.
Rev Lynne:Does the Cathedral bookstore have smaller versions of the of the windows for like cards and memorabilia and things of that nature?
Dean Randy:We are just now getting the bookstore back open again, following COVID, the company that we were using, who ran our gift shop, went out of business, and so we've been in the process of getting a new partner in there. So, as of yet, no, we haven't done that, but we did write, we did create a really wonderful book about the whole process of replacing the windows, which is available, and there's also a documentary that we put together that's on the website that's available. That'll tell the whole story of the windows the windows that came down and the new windows that are now in their place.
Rev Lynne:That is. That's great to hear listeners. Please go to the Cathedral website and maybe there's opportunity for you to listen to that story. That's something I want to do and I thank you for sharing that piece. Tell me a little bit about when your spiritual leadership has come into question or when you've been challenged in your spiritual leadership.
Dean Randy:There have been a number of occasions of when I've been challenged in my leadership and had to make a difficult stand or make a difficult choice one way or another. The very first one that comes to mind was very shortly after I was named the Dean of the Cathedral. I was named the Dean of the Cathedral, or my first day as Dean of the Cathedral, was in August of 2016. And, as we all know, later that year, trump was elected president. So the first major decision I had to make, along with the Bishop, was whether or not the Cathedral would hold the inaugural prayer service, which we've done for every elected president in recent memory. This is a worship service following the inauguration that celebrates, really, the amazing fact that we have a peaceful transition of power every four years here in this country, and we had to decide whether or not we would hold that service for the newly elected president Trump, and it was my decision that, yes, we would hold this service. It's not a coronation service where you're somehow coordinating a new president. It is a celebration of our political process.
Dean Randy:I took a huge amount of heat for doing that, for holding that service. There are many, many people who thought I shouldn't, but I thought that, once again, in order to be not to be partisan, but to honor the person who was elected by a majority of folks in our country and the majority of the electoral college, that it was important that we keep that tradition going. And it was a hard decision to make because I understood the concerns of folks on the other side who thought we shouldn't do it. But we thought it, I thought it was important, given what the Cathedral does, and so we held that service and all went, all went fine, but it was. It was quite tricky and quite painful at the time. There are lots of folks who are coming after me personally, which is unfortunate, but you know how social media is it can be rather vicious.
Rev Lynne:I do remember that and I do remember looking at some of the social media posts and I also remember speaking to Incarnation about it and saying to them listen, I know him and this is a part of his responsibility. This is this is not a partisan act. This is about unity, or at least that's the way I personally viewed it at that time that I agreed. This is a duly elected person and this is what the cathedral has been doing. The cathedral cannot stop doing that. So thank you for that. But I do remember it and I thought to myself wow, glad I'm not in that seat right now.
Dean Randy:I tell you, one of the most interesting things that happened at least, for one of the most wonderful things that happened to me in the midst of all of that was one day I came into the office and this is in early January and the social media stuff was flying around, hundreds of emails.
Dean Randy:I was getting a day and there was a letter sitting on the counter in my secretary's office, between her office and mine, and I was just flying back and forth just in a Twitter in the middle of doing so many different things. So I grabbed the letter and I ripped it open, didn't even look at where it came from and opened it up and started to read it. It was a handwritten letter and it said, among other things it said, dean, what you're trying to do in the cathedral is to be a bridge, a bridge between parties, a bridge between ideologies, and what you have to remember is that bridges get walked on. And it was signed. Justin, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sent me a handwritten letter trying to be supportive. He didn't know me from Adam, I hadn't even been in the role for six months, but he stopped and took the time just to write me a note, or to write the Dean a note, and that meant a great deal.
Rev Lynne:Wow, I guess it did. It did Amazing, absolutely amazing. You come in contact with so many people from so many walks of life just by the simple fact that it is the Washington National Cathedral. It is a wonderful and great place to visit. For those who have never been to the cathedral, it is a must stop if you want to really get a feel for Washington DC. What would you say has been some of your most intriguing spiritual individuals that you have personally met coming through the cathedral, and I'm including your females and weddings. And just I'm coming in to say hello.
Dean Randy:Wow, that's a tough question because there have been so many wonderful folks who have come through this cathedral.
Dean Randy:I can tell you, one of my most wonderful moments that definitely had a spiritual context for me was it was before the funeral for John McCain, or it was the day of the funeral that we held at the Cathedral for John McCain, and all of the former presidents and first ladies were coming to the funeral and, as is tradition, whenever a president comes to the cathedral, or a past president, the dean, and oftentimes the bishop, will greet that person coming in.
Dean Randy:So Bishop Mary Ann and I were waiting in Bethlehem Chapel, which is one of the beautiful chapels.
Dean Randy:Downstairs in the cathedral there was the holding space for all the previous presidents and it was wonderful, of course, for me to be able to meet all of them as they came in the door, every president, every living president, but Jimmy Carter he was not in that holding space with us, but what was really neat was to be a fly on the wall and to watch them interact.
Dean Randy:So you know, george W comes in and the Clintons come in and the Obamas come in, and what was just incredibly powerful was to watch them interact with each other and the joy and the real relationship, genuine relationship that exists between them, among them, and what I realized at this revelation that, oh my goodness, these are the only people in the whole world who understand what each other has gone through in these roles, either as president or as First Lady, and there was no partisanship, there was no animosity, there was no tension. There was just a joy of being together for these folks and that made me feel so good about our country, given how much polarity we have now and how mean we can be to each other. But to witness that was super powerful for me at the time.
Rev Lynne:The civility. Oftentimes, our media gives the impression that there is no civility and I think that's wonderful. Well, I can't wait to hear your memoir.
Dean Randy:When you write your memoir about being a Well, I wouldn't hold your breath, but I do think you know you talk about the media. I do think that one of the things all of us need to be much more aware of than we have been is that the media likes to talk in dualities and it only wants to talk in dualities. Left and right, conservative and liberal, right and wrong, black and white. They like dualities because they tell if you can make things into a duality, it tells a nice, neat story. But life is much more complicated than a duality and I think that's one of the things that has hurt us as a nation that we tend to buy into the fact that everything is a dualism or duality and it's not, and we need to be more. We need to be much more conscious about that.
Rev Lynne:I remember, as a young ordained person I used to come to the Washington National Cathedral for programmatic classes, I guess, or seminars at the College of Preachers. What's happened with the College of Preachers?
Dean Randy:Well, thanks for bringing that up. That's a great story. So, for those who don't know what the College of Preachers was, it's a beautiful building that was built in 1929 here at the Cathedral. It's not attached to the Cathedral directly, but it's adjacent to the Cathedral. I call it a Harry Potter building. It really is. It's a beautiful sort of English style tutor-like building with turret.
Dean Randy:You know big, beautiful spaces within the building, and it was created to be a place where clergy would come and study with other great preachers on preaching, and I used to come when I was a young priest and be there with people like Frederick Beetner and others and you know spend three or four days. The building would sleep about 30 people, and it was closed down in 2010, much to the chagrin of many, many people around the Episcopal Church. But because of the recession and the building had not had anything done to it since 1929, it was just impossible to keep it going, and so the dean at the time decided that they needed to shudder it. Well, when I got to the cathedral in 2016, I thought it was really important that we do what we could to get that building reopened, because it's too special a place and it's not good stewardship to have that lovely large property closed. We need to be better stewards of it. So we raise a significant amount of money and we just finished, in the past year, completely renovating that entire space and it's fabulous.
Dean Randy:It looks incredibly beautiful. Now it's no longer the College of Preachers, although there will be some preaching classes that will take place in the building. It's now called the Virginia May Center and it is one of the locations for the cathedral's ongoing programming, whether it's programming around race, or whether it's a spiritual retreat, or whether it's a parish that wants to rent the building to do a vestry retreat. All kinds of different things are happening within that space and we love it. It's fantastic and I encourage people to come up and see it and even spend the night there if you'd like to, and have some beautiful rooms where you can spend the night and literally live on the close at the foot of the cathedral, so close that you could hit it with a rock.
Rev Lynne:Now who was Virginia May?
Dean Randy:So one of the primary donor for the renovations of this building is a wonderful lady who very much loves that building, just like I do, and it's Virginia Mars, and I asked her we wanted to name it in honor of her and she liked to use her first name and her middle name, so it's the Virginia May Center.
Rev Lynne:Okay, wonderful, wonderful, one of the things I'm looking forward to personally coming up there and hopefully doing some kind of retreat on spiritual leadership.
Dean Randy:I'm excited about that possibility and hopefully you should bring your folks up with you.
Rev Lynne:Well, I got something I'm looking at recently. I just did a retreat on the Black Sacred Feminine, which was about spirituality. I don't think I've told you that I'm about to finish my PhD in leadership and change and spirituality.
Dean Randy:So that's fabulous, Lynn congratulations.
Rev Lynne:I'm from Maniak University, so I want to go to Ohio schools, so I'm looking forward to maybe doing something at the cathedral. I've told people I'm very excited that there's since there is a center for spirituality and leadership there that this is something I'd like to do a retreat there and I loved coming up to the building at the College of Preachers. It was something about the sacredness and the connectedness to the cathedral that just it felt. It always felt good. So now that I know that it's been restored and redecorated and all that good stuff, I think that will be a lot of fun to come up and spend some time there and hopefully have incarnation. People come and really take some time in the cathedral because it's a walking history museum in its own right and just beautiful sacred space, as well as the African American History Museum at the Smithsonian, so that would be.
Dean Randy:We would love to have you come up and lead a retreat. That would be awesome.
Rev Lynne:I would love to do that. So, as we get ready to close down and wind down, tell me how you feed yourself spiritually, randy.
Dean Randy:Oh, lynn, thank you. That's a good question. My spiritual life has never been a set practice. I'm not one of those folks who has discovered a certain prayer life or spiritual life that has suited me all along. I have always been one of those people that needs to adjust my spiritual life and how I live into it on a regular basis. Sometimes it's the daily office. Sometimes the daily office is dry and does nothing for me, so I'm always adapting what I'm doing to feed myself spiritually. One of the things that I always have loved to do and come back to over and over again is journaling. I've always been someone who's kept a journal, whether written journal or a type journal, digital or on paper. I have volumes of them and I find them a wonderful way to be in not only dialogue with myself, but in being conversation with God, and I find that holy work when I do that. I also enjoy meditation and love being in the outdoors. I find the holy in nature very easily. It always speaks to me very profoundly.
Rev Lynne:That might just be a wonderful opportunity for a workshop in echo womanism and black women's role in nature.
Dean Randy:There you go. Sounds good.
Rev Lynne:I'm thinking out loud. So what's the next step? Randy? First, after the cathedral.
Dean Randy:For me.
Rev Lynne:Yeah, 30 years of ministry, right Around 30 years.
Dean Randy:Oh, 33, I guess now 34. When I leave the cathedral it will be to put my feet up somewhere in retirement.
Rev Lynne:Have those signs said gone fishing.
Dean Randy:Gone exactly right. That is exactly right Gone fishing.
Rev Lynne:Well, if you could share with our readers I mean our listeners the website for the Washington National Cathedral, and I want to say to everyone who will be listening that we've had a lot of people want to go. We want to hear that interview with the Dean of the Washington National Cathedral. I really had hoped to be able to have had it on by Christmas season for, of course, end of the year gifts, but any time is a great time to give, and if you could share the website address and let people know why it's important to give to the Washington National Cathedral, which is everyone's cathedral, not just people in Washington DC.
Dean Randy:Absolutely. It is everyone's cathedral, and I want all your listeners to know, especially your faithful Episcopalians, that here at the cathedral we are always trying to make the church proud of what we do and how we do it, because we are such a visible sign of the Episcopal Church, and so please know that we're always out there trying to do the right thing and the best thing we can for the church and for the country. And while we are an Episcopal Church, we are a house of prayer for everyone, and I'd like to tell everybody who comes in there on Sunday morning, whether they're visiting from Iowa or whether they worship there every Sunday, that this cathedral is their cathedral and it's the cathedral of all your folks as well. Our website is cathedralorg Doesn't get much simpler than that wwwcathedralorg and you can find out all kinds of information about the daily services we offer online as well as giving to the cathedral, as well as all of our programming is up and you can watch any sort of program that we had. We had Bono with us last year, which was absolutely fantastic. That's a whole other thing we could have talked about, but you can see that up there as well, plus some of the programming we've done about white nationalism, that sort of thing. So I hope you'll visit the website and enjoy yourself. You can find endless amounts of things to watch or listen to or read or do.
Dean Randy:And supporting the cathedral is really important because so many folks think that we're supported by the National Church or that we're supported by the federal government because we're the National Cathedral and we aren't. There's a complete separation of church and state. We don't take a dime from the federal government, nor would we, and we are not supported by the National Church. God bless them. Rather, all the money that we raise for the cathedral comes from private donation, and it costs $70,000 a day to open the doors of the cathedral in order to keep this beautiful, big, complicated place going. So any and every gift means a huge amount, so thank you for raising that.
Rev Lynne:Well, thank you, and I also want to. I may have shared with you in the past that John, one of the twins, seek and Destroy, as Bishop Lee used to call them, or as Boyd Spencer used to call them, seek and Destroy, or Boyd Regard and Disregard, he's very faithful to morning prayer at the Washington.
Dean Randy:National.
Rev Lynne:Cathedral. He loves morning prayer at the Washington National Cathedral and he shared with me. He says, mom, I think some of that stuff we should we do morning prayer as we started that in COVID. And he said to me I think some of the way they do it at the National Cathedral we should try it at Incarnation. So I want to say you have, you are making an impression, at least on one 25 year old.
Dean Randy:Those boys are 25. That's right. I cannot believe it.
Rev Lynne:Yeah, I can't either. The boys are 25. Amanda has three children, you know, and she got married at St James's.
Dean Randy:Yeah, that's right. Yes, so three children now, that's fabulous.
Rev Lynne:Three children and living in the diocese of Indianapolis. So it is, time has gone on. Time has gone on. How are your children?
Dean Randy:And yet we are still young, aren't we, Lynn?
Rev Lynne:Yes, forever young, as the Lumbago and arthritis tells me.
Dean Randy:Amen, amen. How was the family? Oh great, my oldest, marshall, who's 29. He's here in Washington living down near Dupont Circle and has a great job working in real estate. And Eliza, my youngest, is 26. And she's out in Hollywood. Wow, graduated from UVA and probably moved to Los Angeles and she's working for an artist out there and just loves it. It's too far away for dad, but I'm happy that she's happy.
Rev Lynne:Me too. Well, please give Melissa my regards and Dana my regards as well. I miss you all very much, and when I'm from Annapolis, so when I hit Annapolis, I will definitely make sure that I make time to come to DC.
Dean Randy:If you're in this neck of the woods and you don't come by, you're going to be in trouble.
Rev Lynne:I know and I should be.
Dean Randy:I want to take you to lunch, at least.
Rev Lynne:Okay, I'll let you know. I look forward to it and, audrey, you'll always be my parish priest. So thank you very much and I love you and I love the family, and I hope to see you soon. And happy New Year and Merry Christmas.
Dean Randy:Thank you, lynn, and right back at you, you will always be a mentor for me, or someone who taught to me so much about what it means to live the social gospel. So God bless you and all your work.
Rev Lynne:Thank you, thank you, and I hope to see you soon. And I hope to see you soon.