A Cathedral People Profile: Bruce Bearden
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Bruce Bearden monitors the Cathedral network in
the switch room.
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Bruce Bearden has been helping to keep
Grace Cathedral moving forward for nearly a decade. First he worked
as a volunteer, then producing the printed materials for the
services, then attending to the growing data and technology needs of
the Cathedral offices. Now he is in a Chapter level position, with
the title of Canon for Administration. But he didn’t start out
wanting to keep his hand on the tiller of the country’s
third-largest Episcopal cathedral.
"It might surprise people
to know that I’m a pharmacy school graduate. My mother finds that
astonishing. When parents see you through school, they expect you to
stick with something. But I took another path."
That path led
him from the deep South to the technology boom that was underway in
California. "I was working in the Silicon Valley for a healthcare
start-up that I left after having trouble squaring my personal
values with the values of the Valley. I decided I’d take a year, and
work for non-profits for two weeks at a time until I found a place
that was a good fit. Grace Cathedral was the first one I came
to."
Very quickly, Bruce’s organizational skills were being
put to good use. Over time, he has become an integral part of the
Cathedral staff. "When the position of Canon for Administration was
created, the idea was to gather together a collection of
responsibilities that required tactical direction, which is where my
gifts are. I’m the guy who can express his life in an Excel
spreadsheet."
How does he describe the title he now has,
Canon for Administration? "I clear a path for my colleagues to do
their vital work, by taking care of the mundane details. Many of
those details are required because we have ‘Corporation’ at the end
of our legal entity name. People see us as a place with a steeple,
but in addition to that we are a corporation functioning in the
State of California."
One of Bruce’s public faces is
overseeing The Shop at Grace Cathedral. Shepherding the local retail
operation from an in-house store with a coffee machine to its
current incarnation as a third party-managed outlet with a Peet’s
coffee kiosk. "The Shop is half my life. Retail is hard," he
says.
Being in a workplace that is more aligned with his
personal values has given Bruce the opportunity to see some
remarkable moments of ordinary grace. "Once, in the first couple of
years I was here, during winter, it was an overcast day and we were
waiting for an important FedEx delivery. There was a truck at the
corner of Taylor and California with its flashers on and I thought
there was a confused delivery man somewhere at the Cathedral, and I
went to find him. I saw him in a pew, and as I got close to him, I
saw he was crying. So I sat a couple of rows behind him.
"When he got up I got up too. I saw he had no package to
deliver, and he saw my keys. He said, ‘Thanks for being here.’ And
he got in his truck and drove away."
"We see the Cathedral as
a gathering spot of the community, at large celebrations. But some
of the most powerful moments come when the space engulfs one
individual: a man in our society who needed a place to cry, who
found that safety here."
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Collecting the donations from the Cathedral with Ellen Marie McDermott.
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