Thursday, June 5, 2008

Regarding the May 31 front-page story "National Cathedral in Fiscal Squeeze":

Not everyone finds his or her spiritual fulfillment indoors. One of my earliest childhood memories, of a visit to Washington with my parents, was my delight in exploring the pathways of Bishop's Garden at the National Cathedral. Several decades later, as a local homeowner and gardener, my nostalgia for the cathedral has extended to its greenhouse. As such, it is heartbreaking to read that the cathedral's budget shortfall is so severe that the greenhouse can no longer be maintained.

Local residents are right to try to save the greenhouse.

Shouldn't the first purpose of a house of worship be to serve the needs of its immediate community?

ALLEGRA M. SENSENIG

Arlington

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As a longtime donor to and customer of the cathedral's greenhouse and as a parent of a child who attended school on Cathedral Close for 14 years, I was stunned to read of plans to close the greenhouse at the end of June.

Community outreach has not been the cathedral's strong suit over the past decade. It promised neighbors that a grandiose athletic center and parking garage would be used only by members of the cathedral community and then consistently broke that promise. It promised the parents of high school students that a second, grandiose parking garage would interfere for one year only with a lawn graduation ceremony dating back to the school's beginning, and then announced that the ceremony would be moved for a second year out of concern for freshly laid sod.

The cathedral apparently has no idea what the greenhouse means to the children, parents, faculty and administrators on the Close, as well as to the neighbors, city residents and visitors. It will find out.

JUDITH KENNEDY

Washington