Thursday, October 30th, 2025

"A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious….”
—Philip Larkin, “Church Going”

Dear faithful friends of the cathedral congregation,

Many of you will know that this past summer was a time of preparation for grand and glorious things at the cathedral. We did what we had to do—open up holes in the floor to pour new, strong foundations in eight specific spots in the crawl space below—in order to do what we hope to do. That is nothing short of receiving back our historic organ restored its original splendor, and renewing the cathedral that is its home in the way one always prepares for a celebration—by cleaning, preparing, turning on the lights, and planning a party.

All of that is very exciting—and, at the same time, a little frightening. The hard and heavy work of this preparation has revealed things about our 139-year-old building that demand our immediate and urgent attention—tasks that must be done before the delight of building the new organ can be realized.

You’ll remember that all of the spaces in the cathedral beneath the seating areas where the pews stand are wooden. Specifically, they are oak floor boards laid over a system of pine joists, laid crosswise from side-to-side in four sections—the two side aisles, and the two sides of the center nave. The engineers and contractors who opened up the floor of the nave this past summer discovered that this entire system is failing—simply the natural result of aging of these materials, and nearly a century-and-a-half of faithful use.

The upshot is simply this: the entire wooden flooring system, boards and joists together, must be replaced—and it must be replaced immediately.

We know that:

The authorities who oversee our status as monument historique expect us to do this work with materials and construction techniques identical to what was used before.
We must do this work in advance of both our own celebrations of Advent and Christmas and commitments we have made to clients to rent the space in January.
We must do this work in advance of receiving the first pipes of the restored organ this spring—because doing it after that moment would cause dust and dirt to foul the organ.

So we know when we must do this, and how we must do it. We must do this immediately, beginning in early November, and we must do it with the same sort of flooring system that the original architect designed for our space.

The Vestry leadership has worked urgently and diligently to identify qualified contractors to do this work, to solicit and carefully review a variety of proposals, and to make an award to a contractor able to locate the materials and finish the job in a month. The cost of this work will be nearly €150,000—work understandably not anticipated, and thus an expense not planned for, in the capital campaign.

Our “serious house on serious earth” has a serious problem. We must do this work, and we must do it now. We must do it not least because preserving basic systems in our treasure of a building must take precedence, in both time and priority, over the return of the restored organ.

The good news is that we’ve been assured by the contractors that our Sunday morning worship will not be greatly disrupted by this work. Each section of flooring will take a week to complete, and Sundays should see us largely back in order.

So much good is happening at the cathedral right now. Our Mission and Outreach work thrives; our youth are engaged; our 20s and 30s cohort is growing; our Sunday morning worship is crowded and joyous; our organ is nearing completion.

To make sure this continues, we need—well–a floor to stand on.
We are beginning our season of stewardship at just the moment this work is coming upon us, and I am deeply grateful to the many of you who have written to me offering to help in some way with this unexpected expense. But now I appeal to all of us who care about the work and witness of this singular Episcopal Church to stretch our giving just a little in order to help meet this need.

I wish I had some clever way of suggesting that a way of donating a floorboard or a joist. This has all come at us so fast that we haven’t had a moment to think in these terms. But you might consider the following:

As you think about your pledge for 2026, think about how you might respond to all the good that is happening here—and then extend it by ten percent to help us meet this cost.
There are 532 square meters of floor we need to replace. If fifty-three people gave ten square meters each—that’s a gift of €2,820—we would cover the cost.
Or you could simply give the cost of the square meter you stand on when you come to church—for €282!

Above all, you can support this project with your prayers. And, of course, if you have any questions, please feel welcome to write to me at bishop@americancathedral.org

See you in church,