Support "Remain Episcopal" of San Joaquin

The remaining faithful Episcopalians in the Diocese of San Joaquin need your prayers and support. Go here to their website "Remain Episcopal", to find out how you can help them endure this Advent season with more hope than sorrow, more joy than grief, at what happened at their diocesan convention where the secessionists led by Schofield [I no longer consider him a real bishop since he has left the Church that ordained and consecrated him] and others who have led delegates, other clergy and parishioners astray with their twisted non-gospel news.***

I could not sit idly by when our brothers and sisters need our prayers and support now so that they will not lose heart. Pray for the mission churches and their vicars who wish to remain faithful to the greater Church, and those parishes whose property is being carefully appraised by the overfed, purple-shirted man who would be king of his little fiefdom of the Southern Cone. Pray for the faithful prayer leaders who may be asked not to pray for the Presiding Bishop, as Iker has ordered the prayer leaders in his diocese of Dallas-Ft Worth. Pray for those who have been led astray from the Gospel of Christ to be hood-winked by the false gospel of John-David Schofield.

Pray without ceasing...

Catherine+

***Was that a run- on sentence or what? :-)

Leaves Still Green

Little red rose

You struggle so

Up through the flakes

Of white, bright snow,

Crystal weeping of

Clouds fighting over mountains high,

The resting place

Of Holy feet.

And down comes He

Who plucks away the

Laden snow, brushing

Ever so with Life's breath the

Burden of your leaves

Still green

From a summer long ago.

And away the burden of

Sorrow and dimness,

Light is coming to shine

Upon delicate petals,

Trembling cold stem,

And yet your leaves remain green,

From a summer long ago.

Star life moves over

The midnight, casting hope

Upon snow-covered earth

And in the frozen, forgotten

Places where life is abandoned,

A fire whose embers

Once blazed,

Glow once more

To bring life once shut

Closed to only become

Open again.

He will come ‘round to

Lifeless, cold places

And bring the heartbeat

Of life to His creation.

He will feed the fire,

Pour the water,

Shape the land,

Feed the flock.

The wind moves heavy

A resigned sigh...

He renews with breath of life

remaking in our seeing.

And the little rose

Shall bloom again, blood red,

To recall the Love

That has come to love us,

The Love that with holy exhalation

Puffs away snow from leaves

Still green, as in the Beginning,

From a summer long ago.

_______________________

Catherine+

He draws nigh...

We draw closer to the time when that earthbound Star arrived so long ago, that our breath sometimes catches in the awe of it, and the One who let it come to us. Luci Shaw wrote the poem you are about to read and I found it by way of British university chaplain Maggi Dawn. It is one of my especial favorites about this time of year, about this season and why it yields such shy majesty.

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest .
you who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly.
Quiet he lies whose vigor hurled a universe.
He sleeps whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world.
Charmed by doves' voices, the whisper of straw,
he dreams, hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,
all years. Older than eternity, now he is new.
Now native to earth as I am, nailed to my poor planet,
caught that I might be free, blind in my womb
to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.

_______________________________________________

Catherine+