San Francisco is My Home

29
Oct

Arsonist threatens Grace Cathedral

Author: kris, Category: News

There was some unexpected arson at this year’s Burning Man festival. As you’ve probably heard, this year’s giant man was set alight a few days prematurely by a fellow who claimed he wanted to restore spontaneity and anarchy to the festival. The giant man is created every year to be set alight on the last night of the festival. This is the event from which the festival takes its name.

I do think it’s a little funny that all these free-wheeling folks got so mad about the early burning. The festival was originally intended as a way for artists to have a colony of creation without a lot of rules and regulations attached, but over the years it’s grown an expensive, bureaucratic exoskeleton that seems to contradict the happy-go-lucky air of earlier years.

However, I don’t think it’s funny at all that the same guy was arrested yesterday on charges of intending to burn down SF’s Grace Cathedral. I love that cathedral. You can take a free weekly yoga class there. They exhibit the AIDS Memorial Quilt when it tours through the city. It also boasts an outdoor and an indoor labyrinth: despite what the movie Labyrinth implied, a labyrinth is not a maze but a repeating pattern. Walking the pattern is a meditative process, and so far as I know, the cathedral’s labyrinths do not feature singing Muppet goblins, talking Muppet worms, or David Bowie.

This Episcopalian cathedral is beautiful, and is an important venue for many community services, and I am baffled as to why anyone would want to harm it. However, this fellow has not had a trial yet, so I am reserving judgment.