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*LATEST REVISION JANUARY 16, 2007*

AUTUMN, 1932

An eminently successful year! Who knows? Who may measure the eddies of the pebbles cast in Epiphany Mission when they break on the shores of Eternity? The sincerest and most constant efforts have been made and the number of contacts have been large. Visible results are gratifying. Blessed be God for the mission's benefactors who alone have
made this possible.

What a cargo of treasures has been gathered as we sailed the summer seas. The daily offering of His one oblation of Himself once offered! Those moments of turning from the altar to bid a half-dozen worshiping children "Lift up your hearts." A score of times greeting another wrinkled pink and red infant so soon to be baptized. The hour in which 80 year old Papa John was baptized. Or when the unbaptized mother of children baptized and confirmed was at last persuaded and cried out "O baptize me today, I dare not wait until Sunday."

And the hours with the sick. Sherwood usually abounds in good health but this has been a summer of illness. Perhaps the best ministry has been at the bedsides. Surely the sacraments have meant a little more and brought greater comfort there. And the minion's friends have done no finer thing this summer than provide the means of such holy comforts for these sufferers.

There have been moments, even hours of discouragement. On
sweltering days there have been duties that were not priestly and God's
servant felt probably more like a Foreign Legioneer than a priest. The fold
at times seemed to refuse to understand and to grow cold and irresponsive
and interested in anything in the world rather than holy religion and the
priest at such times has felt the most superfluous of shepherds.

But what of Peter who loved the Lord and John whom the Lord
loved and James, Evangelist, Apostles, Martyrs who once could not watch
with Him one hour?

You remember St. Catherine of Siena wrote: "Care not to present a
finished work to God, who is infinite love, and demands from thee onlv
infinite desire." Infinite desire for Him, for souls, to go labor on. His to
finish. His to measure.

The priest in Sherwood is assortedly greeted as Father, Mister,
Brother, Preacher. What difference? Except this; when he is called Father
he is invariably made conscious of his office to

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father his children in Christ and of his unworthiness and failing and of a
resolve to strive the more to fulfill his trust of the so great treasure
committed to his charge.

Sturdy little Christian, preciously naive is Fred who persists in
"distinguishing" the candles. "My child it is e x ex-tinguish, to put out, not
dis-tinguish." "Yes, Father." How many times has the explanation been
made! But all the admonition availeth nothing. The very next occasion the
very same persistence; "Father, shall I distinguish the candles," And in
pathetic resignation the answer is "Yes, Fred" because after all Father
thinks perhaps he does.

And Ray who was discovered habitually saying most lustily "I believe
in one God . . And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only FORgotten Son of
God." There was a tragic element of truth in it after all.

Having had none we lately acquired a red altar cover which we know
is good and of which we are justly proud. Acolytes were instructed in its
use and their duty. The next morning Lawrence asked: "Father, do you
want me to take to puttin' that there red rag on the altar after Mass?"

There was the funeral of a kind man, crushed to death in the quarries
of the lime plant. The man was unbaptized but his children are confirmed
and the funeral therefore fell to the mission. The family asked that Brother Ben, a native preacher, be allowed to "say a few words" at the grave. Brother Ben can not read, but lie can talk (and howl). He preached. His text was. "Pure religion ... is this ... to visit the fatherless and widows in their
affliction . . . " His exposition was: Baptism did not really matter. "Joining
the church" was not necessary. The deceased belonged to the "big church,"
he had visited the fatherless and widows, he had had pure religion, he was
saved. It was a blazing afternoon. Brother Ben grew emotional. A son
fainted, the wife shrieked, the children and mourners wailed. Eventually the
primitive storm abated and the funeral terminated with a semblance of
Prayer Book dignity. To Brother Ben's "few words" there was no rebuttal.
Perhaps acquiescence might have been accorded to sweet catholicity, just
what ever it is.

Another adult funeral this year, with requiem Mass, was

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dignified, assuaging, comforting and marked with a "silent manliness of
grief."

Intercessions. Your greatest possible gift to the mission is your
earnest prayers. Pray that every obstacle to God's will be broken down in
every plan and achievement of the mission and in every soul that is
touched. Pray for God's servant that he may be a fit vessel of the Holy
Spirit. Pray for the opening of the way for a nursing home for the seriously
sick that adequate professional care may accord comfort to sufferers and
indefinitely postpone some of the mission's funerals. Pray also for the
opening of the way for a home and school for destitute mission boys that
their bodies may be nourished, their minds developed and their souls
nutured in holy religion.

CHRISTMAS, 1932

Beauty and the beast! Loveliness and filth. Righteousness and evil.
Mortal enemies, side by side, persevering through the countless ages.
Steadfastness of purpose to worship the Lord and labor in the harvest of
souls face to face with steadfastness of sin and poverty of body, mind and
soul. Sherwood children with all the convincing and convicting loveliness of
heaven in their eyes and the touch of the angels of heaven still shining in
then faces often opposed to parents who it seems have been marked by the
beast with ignorance and prejudice and dirt and denying the very existence
of heaven and the angel. There are hours when Epiphany's people appear
utterly impossible and thoroughly without hope against hours when they
seem worthy of all the promises of immortal life to come. O Lord, our God,
make our darkness to be light!

"Name this child." "Charles Lindberg." And so a few weeks ago
Charles Lindberg was baptized in Epiphany mission. Also we have with us
Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover while Franklin Delano
was born to us in November. He who might have been William Joseph was
baptized a few years ago as Billie Jo. Baptism of one of our infants has
been postponed much too long because its parents will have no name on
earth other than T. S. However, two weeks ago a boy baby was presented
as J. C. and the priest without hesitation baptized him as John Cyril and at
the same time Edna Jeldine was baptized Edna

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Geraldine. We have Ruthie Jane, Dee Lee, Dolas Nadine, Izola to say
nothing of Dorissa Malindy Tenpenny. After all where there is no luxury
why not a luxury of names, even a debauch? Incidentally we hope our
December baptisms to give the mission a total of fifty for the year.

The Children's Christmas Tree, so soon to be history will be on
Christmas Eve at 7 o'clock. As the church is not large enough to hold the
throng the tree will be in tile "Dixie Theater." Gifts for 250 must be
provided and fruit and candy for all. Those who have so thoughtfully sent
gifts for children have provided the means for blissful happiness and
lightened the burden of the provision of a well-nigh impossible number of
gifts.

The first Christmas Mass will be at Midnight at Epiphany. The
second Mass will be said at St. John's, Battle Creek at 7 o'clock preceded
by confessions from 6 o'clock. The Third Mass will be at St. Agnes,'
Cowan at 9:30. The priest covering the 60 miles separating the altars will
probably feel a little like Santa Claus with his indefatigable reindeers, if
they are still in use.

Beautiful Soup! Conceivably soup can be beautiful. Also it can be
actually hideous, witches' brew. Our Saturday Soup is both. There is about
five gallons of it, rich and thick, with an abundance of beef and tomatoes, a
liberal measure of onions, one quart of sauerkraut, a bit of sugar and a
handful of herbs, and at the very last thickened with quick oatmeal. Until
the present time it has had to be made in the kitchen of the priest's
diminutive house and cooked on Friday when savory smells are an
abomination and partake of a sinful nature. But the atmosphere reeks of
soup, letters go smelling of soup and on Friday nights the last conscious
realization is the bouquet of soup emitted from the pillows! Hideous? It is
terrific, ghastly, iniquitous. But on Saturday undernourished little children
come and are filled with hot soup and others take it home to hungry
families and one is constrained to surmise how lovely a thing is soup. Each
Friday evening says it can not be done again and each following Thursday
says it must.

For many weeks past a kitchen has been in process of creation
beneath the East end of the Church. It is small but almost ready. A check
for the range has been provided from Connecticut. Dishes as yet are
lacking. The kitchen is going to be a great place. Boys'

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and Girls' Clubs will have parties, The Saturday Soup will be so
happily transferred. And frankly we are going to be jesuitical
and have a children's breakfast after a children's mass on Saturdays, and a 
breakfast for those who hear Mass on Sundays. What
of it? In the first place the food is needed and in the second place
what if they do come to eat and eventually stay to pray?

Do you remember the little green folder about Epiphany Mission's
Children? Lawrence, faithful little Christian and acolyte who would bring
his parents to Confirmation and the altar whereat he served. Lawrence did.
To Lawrence with his babe's mouth and much greater strength of
persuasion than the priest in this case, into whose hands was given the
power, must be given the credit. Mr. and Mrs. Brown were confirmed
sometime ago and are numbered with Epiphany's faithful. And our little
church of a morning so dim and owl and clean. Ah! that was written in
summer. Now of a morning since winter has come the church is not dim
but dark, it is not cool but frigid as polar ice fields and alas! not clean for in
spite of daily sweeping and dusting and bi-weekly moppings dust and
ashes front the stove which is the heating plant settle down and
perpetually threaten enveloping all things. But neither darkness nor chill
nor dust have deterred worshipers. Through the six week days of tire past
week each morning of which the earth was covered with hoarfrost like
ashes there were 70 communions, 2 less than in average of 12 each day,
which is higher than our general average. Ambition and zeal must forego so
much. A year ago what changes in our little church were anticipated.
Adequate heat, adequate furnishings, a new loveliness, And today all is the
same as then. And yet, perhaps there are now glowing hearts that were
cold, or impoverished souls who have found loveliness in holy religion.
Somehow after all we are leagues ahead and beyond of last December.

We have striven to continue steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and
in breaking bread, and in prayers. Above all the breaking of bread with
prayers. Steadfastly, daily, we have sacrificed to the Divine Majesty the
memorial His dear Son hath commanded us to make, the Breaking of Bread
embodying Him and His perfect sacrifice and joining with the All Holy
Offering our prayers of thanksgiving and intercession. And you
geographically distant have been spiritually near. With the oblations your
gifts have

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been offered as alms. The Divine Majesty has been asked to receive our
prayers offered for you. Prayers of thanksgiving for your blessings or for
recovery of your health; for appeasement of your pain and sorrow; that
from you impending. trouble or disaster might be averted and for your
dead that they might rest in God peace and continue to grow in His love
and service. From or altar your Christian names have been pronounced in
biddin prayers for you as frequently as the Christian names of our flock
in Sherwood. Very actually have you been Epiphany Mission child in
Christ. Epiphany's altar has been your altar. The borders of the mission
have encircled you as within the arms of His love

Even so has the mission's priest, your priest, been conscious of your
prayers. Your material gifts have ever brought a great consciousness of
responsibility to the priest and a high resolve to us, your investment for
the greatest possible yield of revenue in the Kingdom of God. But your
prayers have been felt. Some time like a spiritual current of power they
have brought the needed strength and dispelled the sense of futility. If in
the end this priest is a good priest you will have been a vital means.

And now how truly do we possess the dear Lord much a: we desire
Him. The door of our heart is perhaps only partialliy open. -go, may
Almighty God, who has given us His only-begotten Son to take our nature
upon Him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin; grant you this
Christmas insatiable desire lot His rebirth into your heart in all His
immeasurable fullness.

EASTER, 1933

FORTITUDE! Life with its inevitable crucifixions. To hold on when
sometime there seems nothing to hold to. Sailing tempestuous seas amidst
heaven only knows what uncharted shoals, in financial peril, the Mission in
its entirety has felt the need of courage to endure, so has its individuals
even as you have. "Be thou strong and very courageous." Our all wise
heavenly Father knows our need of courage. Walpole says it tersely;
"Tisn't life that matters, 'Tis the courage you bring to it."

If only through grace we can lay possessive hands upon holy
fortitude then can be tolerable depression and even crucifixion, financial
crucifixion, physical crucifixion, crucifixion by one's friends or even one's
own blood. Blessed by God we can learn

6




endurance, courage, fortitude. There is discipline, restraint, contemplation
of the Ideal. "Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." Doubtless
the Son of Man achieved Calvary in the wilderness beyond Jericho. What a
blessed privilege of opportunity is Lent, Passiontide, Holy Week.

God grant before the end of Lent you cry with Him, "I thirst." For to
thirst with Him and for Him is to learn. To endure with Him and for Him
is to grow strong. God grant this [east of His glorious Resurrection may
bring to you and to us with heavenly joy courageous fortitude.

OCCASIONALLY some friend writes expressing a desire to visit the
Mission. Your visit would find us very pleased but a little fearful that you
might be disappointed. There is so little to see. A drab little town without
one spick and span building. If there is paint it is of the poorest quality
and most somber shade. Our church and churchyard are diminuitive. The
interior of the church at best, even with its improvements, is bare. Arid
yet if your conception of what is lovely accorded with ours you would
find, as you worshipped among a few children and an adult or two, the
daily offering of Our Bounden Duty and Service exquis. itely beautiful.

Among our people ignorance, poverty and filth could not be hidden
from You. And, alas, that there would be found parasites clinging to the
Mission like barnacles for material gain. And you would perhaps need to
be clairvoyant if in a short visit you were able to discern among the whole
flock the really great number of hearts of gold.

You would in time find a varied churchmanship,. Communicants we
have partaking of the sacramental food of Christ's Body and Blood several
times through a year but such moderate Churchmen as not only to reject
the Real Presence, or prayers for the dead, but also belief in the immortal
life of the soul. Paradoxical Protestant Episcopalians practicing religion for
the duration of life that ends utterly with the grave. Doubtless courageous
souls. Say a prayer that Light may lighten their darkness. And then there
are Sunday school Churchmen whose idea of the beginning and end of
worship seems to be attendance at Sunday School. Arid yet others broad
enough to cover all classifications, though thinly. And Catholics, weak and
strong. Daily Mass. Requiem and Votive

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Masses. Fasting communions. Sick communions with reserved sacrament.
The sacrament of penance. Holy Oils for unction, baptism and
confirmation. Little that is High-Church would be discernible, thanks be to
God. And you would find a priceless jewel, an unusual amount of
tolerance and forbearance and love.

CHILDREN are a "heritage of the Lord". How wise the Bishop who
said, "It is my profound conviction that we devoted ourselves to the
children." It is Epiphany's children on the whole who are Epiphany's
staunchest Churchmen, the most discerning Catholics, revering the
sacraments, regular in prayers, keeping the fasts and paying faithfully their
pledges. It was Floyd, 15, who asked, "Father, can't we soon have
perpetual reservation?" And Lodema before the altar in festival loveliness
who said, "See what God has done for us!"

"Feed my Lambs."

TO some of us, penitents quietly on their knees in the church awaiting
their turn with the priest make a touching scene that through the years
always leaves us with a little catch in the threat, or for the moment with a
little tear blur in the eyes and a hushed spirit as after benediction. There is
something immeasurably sweet in the confessions of children and
something admirably fine in first confessions. In the Mission in past years
there has been an occasional confession at Easter or Christmas. The past
Christmas saw the sacrament as a matter of course with a few. Late
afternoon of Shrove Tuesday saw sixteen confessions. Precious hours
when the Presence was potently dominant. Thus the Leaven works.

WE have suffered a misfortune extraordinary. The sanctuary and choir
of our little church caved into the unfinished kitchen beneath. The church
was built in the relatively opulent days of 1928 at a cost of $5,000.00
supplied through wide generosity. Although in the shadow of a mountain
the church is beside a stream usually placid but occasionally flooding its
valley. Once the church was flooded and even three times this year has
water been two feet deep in the kitchen which has prevented its
completion. The concrete foundation of the church was mistakenly built
tight and without ventilation with the idea of rejecting flood-water. It was
a mistake. In making openings in the walls it was found that dampness had
worked havoc in the wood foundations. With ventilation there was drying
and shrinking of rotted timbers and their

 8




giving away was swift and- complete. Replacement was an utter necessity.
The work will be completed by Holy Week. The cost, approximately
$200.00, a well-nigh impossible sum for us, seems largely provided by
God through His faithful stewards. Saturday Soup and ' other kitchen
activities are temporarily suspended.

There are two very joyful aspects of the misfortune. First, not a
mass, not a single service of worship has been omitted. Mass has been said
in an extemporized chapel and regularly heard by the faithful. Well
attended services have been conducted in the nave of the church with
lumber stacked to right and left and a gaping hole where was the altar. And
the second cause for joy is that in reconstruction we have gained sonic of
the improvements we have so longed for. A new altar which is large enough.
The old "high altar" which was so very small will make permanent the
chapel improvised when the sanctuary caved in.

And although employment for those who simply had to be led and
clothed was the first consideration we have improved our little churchyard.
Walls and walks and terraces of stone. Surfaces leveled and sodded.
Evergreens planted. Beds ready for flowers. Eight hundred hours of labor
since Christmas paid for in food and clothing and every hour balm to the
self-respect of the unfortunate.

SUMMER, 1933

SUPPOSE you were the priest in charge of Epiphany Mission and
early in the morning having said Mass were upon your knees saying your
thanksgiving and a boy touched you on the shoulder saying "Father, there
is a man dying on the church steps." If you found the indigent man
writhing in what turned out to be renal colic from a stone, that he must be
sent 15 miles to the hospital at once, and you did not have a dime and but
very little gasoline, what would you do?

AND having sent the man to the hospital you be-thought for yourself
"now a cup of coffee" when upon the doorsill was a girl child you had
baptized a few Sundays before. Her angel eyes wet from sobbing and her
face streaked with tear mud. "Please, Father, mama says we couldn't sleep
and cried all night because we were so hungry." If you the priest did not
have a dime what

9




would you do? At least if you did not do something your coffee would
choke you now.

LATER in the morning comes Johnnie who all of his life has been and
will be near perishing of poverty. The father at four children and while
they breathe all will be an economic problem and their prolific families after
them. With a cool head one knows the whole family is not worth a meal of
food and were much better exterminated. But the priest has baptized them
into the Body of Christ, they are immortal souls. Johnnie says he has had
no work in a week the children are hungry. The priest knows it is true. And
a little bewildered about it all he says a prayer and puts Johnnie at some
superfluous work knowing that although there is not left a dime in a few
hours Johnnie must be paid in food that he and his children may eat and be
satisfied. If you were the priest what would you do?

AND then comes a blow at the earthly hope we set our hearts upon.
A blow at one of the souls we guard and treasure as the Glory of the Lord.
A single soul that makes all that has been striven for in the mission worth
while. A fifteen year old lad, a near perfect acolyte for two years, faithful,
perspicacious, discerning and steadfastly declaring a priest's vocation. His
father through the years has entered the church but a few times. His father
really has a brain but is a formidable boor. And like a bolt from the blue the
edict; enough of religious foolishness, the son is big enough to spend the
time he wastes in church and church activities in work. What would you
do? Maybe you think you know bigotry and stubborn opposition. It was
not settled that day but at any rate the boy and the Church and the Lord
won.

SUPPOSE in the afternoon crammed full of well laid plans comes a
message from Ida. She is sitting on the roadside up at the Saddle 7 miles
away. She has climbed up the mountain 2 miles out of Lost Cove with her
little son Allen, 2 years old, and weighing 28 pounds. She is bringing Allen,
named for Dr. Allen Lear of the Emeral-Hodgson Hospital, to be baptized.
She is exhausted by the climb with the heavy child and cannot "catch" a
ride. So joyfully the last precious gasoline is spent and Ida and Allen are
brought to the church and when Allen is baptized they are taken back
again. Of course had you been the priest you would have done likewise.

10




JUST average interruptions in the routine day. There may be the sick,
there generally is. A bit of holy religion may have been explained here and
there, a prayer said. The priest has had time to be deeply serious and he
has had time for an abundance of levity. And before bed time when he
says Compline often the morning office and the afternoon office are said
too, of necessity deferred by the press of circumstance.

AND on any day may be seen the priest's Ford with its trailer hooked
on behind. The Ford with trailer carries 15 boys. Made up of acolytes and
other faithful mission boys is a base-ball team. The priest has carried the
team to neighboring towns for 12 games this summer most of which have
been won. The team comes to Mass and prays for victory. Only those
faithful in church duties belong to. the team. Recently 18 boys "camped
out." Games, swimming, cooking went on happily. First of all an altar was
set up and all commenced each day in offering the Mass. Were you the
priest would you burn gasoline for such activities? Had you none what
would you do?

THE walls and floors of our sanctuary are pine varnished and waxed
and show glints of maize and amber and gold. In some lights the prie-dieux
of rubbed green are jadee. The altar without a distracting line is restful
moss green rubbed with wax. The wood altar cross above the tabernacle is
gold with corpus of bronze. The straight candle sticks are correct and of
good brass. The reredos rises in three panels of myrtle green "brocade"
bought from Sears Roebuck and Co., 79 cents a yard. Each panel is framed
in six inch moulding of a tone with the altar and the two tones of green are
divided with half an inch of gold. Exquisite loveliness and regal dignity at
the cost of a few dollars. The Bishop stood before the altar for the first
time and said it was the loveliest in the Diocese, A woman of
discriminating taste said there was an atmosphere of holy peace and
dignity which impelled her to worship. At that altar there is an increased
number in attendance at the daily Mass and an increased number of fasting
communions. If you were the priest and the daily Sacrifice at that altar was
imperiled by lack of funds what would you do?

GLIMPSES between the elating spiritual progress of the mission and
the heart-breaking spiritual disappointments. Blessed be God there is
definitely a settling down to higher values of holy

 11




religion. Even so the work of the mission has become so precious and so
necessary that it would seem an utter and iniquitous catastrophe for it to
end and yet the financial situation has grown impossibly difficult. What
would you do?

AUTUMN, 1933

Imagine walls and floor maize and amber. Touch the priedieus with
jade. Color the reredos the green of myrtle and the altar the green of moss.
Catch the rays from butter and honey colored glow from candles gleaming
on clean brass. Such is God's Altar Throne in Epiphany Mission.

Uncle Henry is one of the Mission's very most faithful. He comes to
Mass and always hangs his hat over a banner on the wall near his seat.
Then he says his prayers. However, should he see the priest, who might
even be in the sanctuary at his own prayers, Uncle Henry, in a bass quite
in character, says, "Good morning, Father." And fat bulls of Bashan are as
canaries. Uncle Henry is privileged!

One of the faithful for whose sincerity the priest has great respect; a
man without guile and without humor; was heard to say to his friend, "You
be sure to come to church tomorrow, 'caus they am going to have high
mask and burn insect powder."

The Mission Christmas Tree already looms. Already across the
weeks the Mission children are conjuring the unspeakable joy. On the
other hand with what trepidation do those who must collect a well nigh
impossible number of gifts realize the swift approach of the Nativity of
the little Lord Jesus.

The annual picnic was a happy success on August 9th. The picnic
commenced with Mass at 9 o'clock. Immediately after Mass trucks and
cars conveyed more than a hundred to Sewaneee where all enjoyed
"Moonlight and Pretzels" at the Sewanee Union which is the picture
theater of the University of the South. Half the number of the picnickers
had never witnessed a sound picture. At noun basket picnic dinner was
served in a cool wooded glade with mountain spying water plentifully at
hand. Early in the afternoon the Mission baseball team had a game with
Sewanee youth. At 3 o'clock Sewanee Military Academy's swimming pool
was turned over to the crowd. Oh, picnic "were paradise enowl"

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CHRISTMAS, 1933

Our King and Saviour draweth nigh; O come, let us adore him.

 The ever-circling years bring again Christ Mass in orderly sequence.
 The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The only-begotten Son of
 the Father took our nature upon Him and as at this time was born of a
 pure Virgin. Constantly is He born among men. Each morn on myriad
 altars. Constantly is He born and reborn in human hearts. How silently,
 how silently, the wondrous Gift is given. Lift up your heart. Lift up your
 heart in meekness and ahungered with desire for Him that He may be
 reborn in your soul in all His immeasurable fullness. May the Holy Child
 of Bethlehem this Nativity make you His Bethlehem, may He purify and
 glorify your heart for His manger. 'May the little Lord Jesus be reborn in
 your heart! May the Lord Emmanuel abide in your heart!

 Four and a half years ago the priest now in charge of the Mission saw
 the Mission for the first time. In that first visit of an hour's duration then
 was accomplished in the priest a positive antipathy for the town, for the
 mission, and for the people. Rarely in his experience was anything so
 positively accomplished in him in so short a time. All he saw in Sherwood
 in that first hour was sordidness and ignorance. Sordidness is used
 advisedly as meaning filthy, base, mean, ignoble, despicable. And today
 the priest knows that he saw clearly. In that first hour he saw what he
 saw.

 Beneath the soot and ashes; behind the filth, beside the ignorance were
 priceless realities. Beautiful little children with angel faces, hungry for
 sustenance, hungry for God; father and mother children, pinched, helpless;
 aged children whose stars are low in the west desiring but food, and
 warmth and hope beyond their soon going; Christ's children all,
 bewildered, distraught. And long since the priest saw the whole in its
 height and depth and fullness and loved deeply these children he
 passionately cares to serve faithfully.

 Nevertheless, often a rebellious spirit groans, "Must I go on? Can I go
 on?" Meager living on a wage begged of charity. Each appeal goes with,
 "Surely this will not be required again, surely something will happen to
 spare the begging." The priest's physician tells him to leave Sherwood. His
 friends tell him to go. What do you tell him? At any rate God says stay.
 With his right hand He

13




seems to hold his servant. God driveth on, and like Jehu the Son of
Nimshi, He driveth furiously, albeit tenderly too.

And so here the priest abides and God willing will until another and a
better takes up the torch when he passes to unearned reward. And His
blessing be upon you because when the priest bears the begging you bear it
so graciously too.

Well, how gloriously true it is that low hours are incidental to
generally blue skies and sunny days. And it is remarkable too how light
ever returns to lighten the deepest darkness. As, for instance, came Fred
when fortitude had ebbed far, far out and a poor priest lost in fog wore a
face as dark as the darkest spots on his Sherwood. Came Fred, the same
naive, precious child saying "Father." In that word is made plain his
surprising and surpassing depth of understanding and sympathy. Then his
smile, a smile that enhanced his tenderness but foredoomed any
demonstration of sentiment or affection when lie continued, "A priest must
suffer, Father." And Father replied, "One does." And somehow Fred had
tapped a somewhere of sunshine that had dispelled the gloom.

Or sometimes at night, perhaps at bedtime, when the priest can step
out of his cottage door and lift his eyes to the encircling hills and meditate
in the night watches upon whose agent and priest he is; conscious of little
J. D. up the road suffering late in pain; conscious that up another street
perhaps asleep is Floyd who will be a priest; conscious of our destitute,
homeless Mary, young mother with nothing on earth but her child;
conscious of you out there far beyond our hills. And then the incomparable
privilege of the priest to sign you all and to bestow God’s blessing upon
you. Even so are you blessed.

They might well compose an Altar Guild but as they do not
function exactly as an Altar Guild they are called the Keepers of God's
House. The Keepers of God's House then is the company of women and
girls who keep the Mission church fit and clean. A little while ago one of
these women moved a green kneeling cushion in the sanctuary arid
uncovered a green snake perhaps seeking sanctuary from the frost. If not
actually lovely certainly the snake was lovely in color. They said with
some indignation that they thought it quite all right for Father (who really
dislikes snakes) to paint the church green and to have a green altar and
green furnishings but a green snake was going a bit too far.

 14




From Maggie: "Sometimes we sleep in the corner in the straw.
sometimes we cry in the night because we are so hungry, but O Father, the
cruelest is the cold!"

Things wax, things wane, even in Epiphany Mission. Enthusiasm for
our "Questions and Answers" after Evensong or the Office of the Dead
each Friday evening will of course in time abate but certainly thus far
popularity has waxed stronger and stronger. After the office the meeting is
informal. Any question on any phase of holy religion asked is answered as
well as the priest has the ability to answer. Strangers to the Church are
attracted to the questionings and give considerable variety to the questions.
The old idea, newly used in the Mission, has been valuable and has
stimulated interest considerably. Many is the line upon line and precept
upon precept hammered home.

Even as the Mission has had opportunity to influence and drive
in the wedge of the faith of Holy Church it has been hurt by
exterior influence. There is in Sherwood influence of Baptist sects
which thus far prevented the baptism of some of the children in
the Mission's care.

On the past two Sundays more than 30 new children have en-
rolled themselves in the Church School obviously for the benefit
of Christmas. Of course in a way it is not fair and the children
deserve nothing. But knowing the only touch of Christmas joy
that will be theirs must come to them in the Mission church it
is simply not a question of deserves. Which predicament a good
friend writes us reminds her of a story of Father Staunton who
was begging for his pact. "Are these deserving poor?" he was
asked. Father Staunton is said to have replied, "Oh, no indeed,
everyone looks out for the deserving poor. These poor people are
not at all deserving." No indeed, even we who calls ourselves
Faithful in Epiphany Mission are not very faithful and not at
all deserving, but-.

Truly Christmas anticipations among the children are becoming white
hot. Apprehension among the responsible elders that there may be
unavoidable disappointments brings recurring icy quavers into the region of
the spine. Christmas Day following Sunday makes difficult a definite
schedule of "Programs," Christmas Tree, Confessions, Masses and has
been left in abeyance until needed.

 15




Doubtless there are those who really do not like incense. On a cold
day when the Mission church is quite full and hot and close, one even
knowing how rare a thing is a bath in Sherwood, might go so far as to
suppose that even none of Sherwood's ten bath rooms were ever used.
How kindly is the incense! But then under the circumstances perhaps even
a little brimstone would be kindly.

Writing copy for this folder is somehow difficult. There has seemed
to be neither time nor place for it. The copy for the most successful leaflet
the Mission has sent out was written by the priest while upon his knees
before the altar. Leaflets am taken to the altar and God's blessing asked
upon them before distribution. All gifts of money are offered as alms upon
the altar. However a short time ago when there was not any money on
hand a gift of two one dollar notes was received and one of necessity was
used to send the doctor to a sick woman when moments counted. One
dollar went to the altar alone, the other was presented and sanctified by its
service. It has been thought to call this leaflet, The Epiphanian and to
publish it with quarterly regularity.

Many are the personal questions in letters to the priest manifesting a
friendly interest which he highly values. The priest is 45 years old. Is not a
scholar, has no degree, and would walk a mile to avoid being called doctor.
Before coming to Sherwood played terrible golf and loved it. Has a radio.
Smokes cigarettes in the evenings. Never married. Has had a few good
books lately which is unusual. Almost bought Hasting's Dictionary of the
Bible from Scribner's recently on terms of $3.0O a month. Lacked courage.
Has paid nothing on his Pension Premiums in two years residence in
Sherwood.

THE CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION IN THE MISSION, 1933

The mission kept a good Advent. For the Mass of St. Andrew's the
church was full and more than 40 communions were made. As the Sundays
in Advent advanced attendance mounted. On the fourth Sunday, the Eve of
Christmas, the congregation would have done justice to Christmas or
Easter. Most week-day masses, before the day had brightened enough to
celebrate without artificial light, were heard as the summer Sunday
masses and com

 16




rnunions; were so numerous that an extra supply of wafers had to be
obtained.

Even before Advent gifts for the Christmas tree were being assembled,
some few having arrived in early summer. From mid-Advent almost every
day added to the store. Dear mission friends who love little children and
elder children and old folk had remembered and were remembering.

Through the last weeks the children practiced a holy pageant to
present as a part of the Christmas tree program.

The afternoon of Thursday before Christmas was spent by teachers
of the Sunday School in making into packages, tantalizingly attractive with
some magic they wield, Christmas gifts for 180 enrolled members of the
School.

On Friday the Christmas tree and greens for the church were brought
in. Cedar and holly thick set with berries as bunches of grapes.

On Saturday women of the mission filled and distributed Christmas
baskets filled with cornmeal, potatoes, sausages, canned foods, fruits
supplied the mission by the Men's Service League of St. Paul's,
Chattanooga. Not only were the mission people remembered but also the
suffering individuals and families of the town.

The nave of the church was decorated on Saturday and the Christmas
tree reaching into the rafters set up in the back of the church.

From before 4 until 6 on Saturday afternoon 25 confessions were
made. Two hours when the priest forgot whether he was in earth or
heaven. Good confessions, matter-of-fact and brave. One such from a 16
year-old bay. The usual "Go in peace now ... and pray for me, my son ...
.. Yes, Father, thank you Father." A little pause as if there must be
something further. And then the lovely simplicity-the blessed naturalness-
"Father, have you got a match?"

Sunday morning at 8:0O Mass. Morning Prayer at 9:30 followed by
Sunday School too congested for work. Before noon the tree was decorated
and the church cleaned. In the afternoon a curtain entirely screened the
altar and the choir was stripped to stage the pageant. At 5:0O o'clock the
church was filled to capacity. By 6:0O fifty little children were on the floor
between the front

 17




pews and the choir. All the aisles were jammed. The crowd could not get
in and some went away. The air was nauseously stifling.

In the mission things are on the minute. At exactly 6:0O was the
pageant, the best the mission ever had. At any rate the throng was hushed
and frequently there were tear-wet eyes. Santa Claus, dynamic, witty with
a torrent of right words followed swiftly and in perfect order real gifts were
distributed to 200, and fruit, candy and nuts to many more. Each acolyte
received a sweater knit by loving hands of dear mission friends and also a
pair of boots in addition to their other gifts. Maggie had warm blankets, the
mad extravagance of a perfectly human saint. By 7:30 pageant and tree
were accomplished and happiness was complete in Lite mission.

The church was cleaned. Almost everything in the mission is
punctuated with a church cleaning. How lovely the altar with lace frontal,
spotless linen, brass like gold, the new missal. Twelve candles tall and
valiant and six vigil lights in dear glass. Holly more graceful than holly is
wont to be and two dozen white carnations with splendid stems from a
Chattanooga florist friend, The Holy Mother's shrine was exquisite with
fern and white carnations. Two candles reached to our Lady's eyes, Two
others reached our Lord's baby toes. A vigil light in blue glass was at our
Lady's feet. The creche was on a low base draped in green brocade (Sears
Roebuck). The stable and the cattle, St. Mary and St. Joseph were ready to
receive the Bambino at midnight. On a field of real living clover before the
stable shepherds with their flocks were expectant and Magi and camel
approached across the green clover. An angel hovered over the Blessed
Mother and St. Joseph and a blue light was ready for the taper.

At ten o'clock on most of the pews were boys and girls stretched out
and asleep. The church was rather full. At 10:30 the priest had half an hour
alone before the chapel altar which was lovely too. It was his half hour
with you. Beyond our hills. Your names were pronounced even as you
remembered him. And a little space for the others beyond our stars, safe,
their prayers for us. All were so near.

The Mass at midnight. Never sang they so before. But of course the
angels were singing too. Floyd 15 with the incense and Vernon 14 as
something like master of ceremonies were so keen. Lawrence and John Franklin, younger, serving, were too much

 18




asleep and should have been in bed, but who would have sent them? The
only noise their new boors, like Cossacks' serving, but surely God loved it.
How close is ecstasy of joy to exquisite suffering! How there was a
holiness, a sweetness, heart stabbing keen as a poignant pain!

The dawn mass was not until 8:00. A simple low mass well attended.

At 9:0O the mass was as at midnight and the church was full. just how
many heard the masses is not known. There we" 75 Christmas
communions.

For the rest of the day the church doors stood open and the eyes of
all who passed were impelled to look through the glass storm doors to the
dim sanctuary and the lovely altar lit with the eager light of the vigil
candles.

Late in the evening when Sherwood goes to bed, within the church
fragrant with incense, was the creche; blue light flickering over the baby
Lord, the holy Mother, saint and shepherds, flock and wise men and field
of green clover. At our Lady's shrine blue light trembling to touch enfolded
the holy Mother and divine infant tenderly, lovingly. At the altar five lights
burned on. One had burned out in service and adoration. Another dying
might have been a million miles away. Four burned bravely. Rays flickered
into the rafters. Flickered in streams and pools of molten gold upon the
waxed floor of the sanctuary. Flickered with tender love upon the altar
crucifix--foretelling as we have known the incarnation by an angel-as we
kept the Nativity-so by His cross and passion to the glory of His
resurrection!

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

EASTER, 1934

Heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning!

Soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of songl

Lend Into the wilderness of repentance. Drawing mauve shadows
about us as a mantle to shut out the mundane in order that we may more
freely contemplate and embrace the eternal. Keeping in remembrance His
blessed passion and precious death. Grant us this Holy Week through
consecrated earnestness, through

 19




nearness to Him in Gethsemane, to become so sensitive, please God, that
we may feet the nails and the thorns and thirst with Him on Calvary and in
the end to be crushed with all the sorrows that were our blessed Mother's.
Then surely shall we know samething of the infinitude of the great three
words, They Crucified Him. O heavy night of weeping! Then surely shall
we know the joy of the third day when He rose again from the dead.O
joyous morn of song!

Soon we die. Soon, even if death is four-score years ahead. We die
young or we grow old and die. And few indeed achieve such spiritual
perfection that this earthly life in spite of its bitterness is not sweet. So
sweet that sometimes we fear that before the end we may be afraid.
Heaviness of the night.

But Resurrection! Sweet anodyne. O joyous morning! "Christ is risen
from the dead . . . all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." To die
is to live! Death is the gate of everlasting life.

This consciousness, this knowledge, this capacity to love and serve, this
life, this soul in its integrity shall one day be with Him in Paradise. In
Paradise with those precious souls He lets this soul love. Paradise, fringe
of the Throne of Glory.

Among children there might be some incentive to confession on the
Eve of Christmas that would be wanting on Shrove Tuesday. In the
Mission at the commencement of the Lent nothing

more was said about confession than announcement of the hours for
confession on Tuesday afternoon. A few children lapsed there were 5 first
confessions, and the total was 27 against 25 at Christmas.

Faithful Mission Children made their rule for Lent to include an
increase of prayer, fastings, alms, penitence, worship.

There are two greater aspects of Epiphany Mission. There are its
insuperable difficulties and its incomparable opportunities. Either is an
irresistible challenge.

The Reverend Ben McBee is a free lance preacher in Sherwood. Here
born and reared. He like the Mission priest is not a scholar. He is an honest
nian and ministers sincerely for Chnst and has many more funerals than the
Mission because he preaches an emotional funeral oration. Today, as
Protestant and Catholic should, Ben and the Mission priest knelt side by
side at the bed of a dying man who did not belong to the Mission. Ben's
extempor

20




aneous prayer throbbed with the love of God and beyond doubt was heard
at the throne of Grace and Mercy. The priest read the Litany for the dying
and the commendatory prayers. Outside the house of sadness Ben
addressed the priest, "Brother, you believe all the Bible is true?" "Yes, Ben
... .. And do you believe the world is round?" There was honest perplexity
in his face. "The seventh chapter of Revelations says there are four corners
of the earth. How can a round earth have four corners?" The priest
happened to remember the 93rd Psalm, "He hath made the round world so
sure that it cannot be moved," and tried to reconcile the four corners but it
is feared blessed Ben is still perplexed.

This morning Frank semi-delirious with pneumonia had to be held in
bed bemuse it was his morning to serve and Father would be saying Mass
without a server.

Fourteen children at Mass this week dav morn. Sometimes but very
rarely only the server is present.

"Away down the river

A hundred miles or more

 Other little children

Shall bring my boats ashore."

It is a season of much illness. Tuberculosis, cancer, an epidemic of
pneumonia and various fell diseases. Today the sick will be visited. There
are a number of postponed letters to be written to those compassionate
ones who send the priest into the homes of the sick in the Mission. Today
the letters should be written. Now there is nothing pressing about those
visits, they 'will do just as well in the afternoon. On the other hand if the
letters wait they will be poorly done, perhaps not done at all. But if the
visits are postponed through all of the letter-writing will be the distracting
thought of the sick, that they are waiting, that they are expecting the priest.
After all the letters must wait. Try to understand when your letters from
the Mission are overdue.

The past months of mid-winter have been the coldest in three years.
For three winters the need of our poor has grown graver. Day by day the
Mission in some small way meets the cruel situation with food, clothing,
bedding, medical attention as it is empowered by its patrons.

21




"Soon younger hands will do what I cannot do. One by one our duties
end, one by one the lights go out."

Perhaps irrelevant is this bit from an old diary. "Riding with R before
breakfast and the dewy morning and the horses were prime. Breakfast was
marvelous but poorly attended. The late morning spent by all in going to
the pond for Lotus and water lilies. Lunch was a riot with much song.
Some sets of good tennis in the afternoon then all away to W and rather
festive tea at Lillian's. Dancing at the Armory. Spent the night with S." At
this time the hand that wrote of that rather long ago day might write of a
present-day ended; Mass; breakfast; a sick communion; letters with
interruptions for clothing, for food, for tales of woe; to the Clinic with a
car full; lunch gulped; visitors, what to do with or for?; ice to get for sick
boy; a little visiting and perhaps a bedside confession and anointing;
clothing for some half-naked again; no beloved tea; a service in the church;
orange juice for supper; an office; somehow the evening as the day is gone.

The priest in the Mission is very pleased to be thought of as zealous
and earnest. He is pained to be thought of as a holy saint bemuse such
conception is false. The dear Lord knows he desires to be a good priest,
but desire and achievement are far apart and he (the priest) knows he is
not the better priest he should be. Failing in perfect surrender to God
therefore failing to be God's perfect servant and falling short in service and
counsel and comfort. Please do not in your imagination put the priest in a
false position. Think of him as he is, a penitent sinner, a blundering priest,
striving, hoping to be a saint at last.

SUMMER, 1934

In spite of racial or individual characteristics human beings are much
the same the world over. God's priest and God's children to whom the
priests minister are as yet human beings. The shepherd and the flock in
Epiphany Mission must be astonishingly like shepherds and flocks
throughout the world. Surely everywhere priests meet with much the same
difficulties that are faced in Epiphany Mission and reaction to priestly
efforts is probably quite the same in Sherwood or Seattle or Shanghai.

Perhaps the priest in Epiphany Mission, in his arrogance, would
like to hang out a sign,

 22




 AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY
FROM

 CHRIST THE KING OF ETERNAL
GLORY
 TO

 SHERWOOD, TENNESSEE

Surely the ambassador would like the embassy flooded with action.
Eager subjects of the Kingdom, sojourners in this alien land, crowding
before the altar throne of their Sovereign Lord to offer homage and
thanksgiving and intercession. Many subjects, deeply concerned, pressing
the ambassador for audiences to determine the means of a deeper loyalty
to their Lord and King, to open their griefs, to bring offerings, to seek the
priceless gifts entrusted to the ambassador for distribution.

How different from such ideal is the reality. The doctor of sick bodies
in Sherwood has no peace from unsought patients. The attorney-at-law up
the street sits in his office and clients come in all the day long. But the
Mission priest, physician of souls and attorney at divine law, would
Surely perish of ennui with only unsought spiritual business to transact.
Like it or not the Mission priest must continually "sell" religion. He must
tramp the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. Two or three
years may come to an end in accomplishing an adult's baptism or
confirmation. Continual vigilance with the faithful is requisite. "Lillie, this
baby, should have already been baptized." "I know, Father-I'll bring him on
Sunday." "I'm sorry, Father, I'll be there in the morning ... .. Be sure and
come for your confession Saturday, Tom." "Yes, Father, I'll be there."

There is precious consolation in that the Mission people like to be
"sold" religion. They desire the priest's interest in their souls. And whereas
imperious commands from the priest would draw antagonism, the people
recognize priestly authority, and like, respect and obey quiet orders. They
like being compelled. Some of course maintain that they do not care for
"catholic" religion. But it is a rare one indeed who does not value the
tangible character of the sacraments. They like something done to them.
They desire the priest's prayers at their sick beds. They like the Blessed
Sacrament brought to them. Some who would never make a confession" are
very willing in sickness with the aid of the priest

 23




To enumerate their sins to God and ask forgiveness. They like the
pronouncement of absolution. They like to be blessed. And there have
been cases of anti-catholic type where hands were eagerly outstretched for
anointing. Often they do not understand very clearly but then neither does
the priest understand the greatness and goodness of God.

The point is ambassadors of Christ the King have to remember that
His ministry upon earth was not in elegance of royal purple but rather
smacked of the highways and hedges, that His subjects, now as then, like
to be "sold" religion, like to be compelled, and that these subjects deep
within them crave the tangible characteristics of Holy Catholic Religion He
in His infinite mercy has vouchsafed.

Weddings in Sherwood are by the justice of the Peace. Recently the
Mission had its first, a Mission girl to one of the towns finest young men
and it will follow naturally that the young man will now be won for
confirmation. It is remarkable that the priest received a fee, his first. The
Five Dollar note will go toward a bit of church furniture as a thank offering
from Lola and Curtis, the bride and groom. Apropos of marriage the priest
sometimes even in the middle of a sermon pauses to ask his children,
"Floyd, Amogene, Nancy, when you marry, where will you be married?" 

"Just about where you are standing, Father, before the Altar." "How will
you wish your wedding?" "A nuptial mass in the morning and the wedding
later in the day." "And for how long will you be married, my child?" "For
as long as I live, Father."

Ollie Martin, acolyte for two years, whose father and mother were
divorced and each again married this year, was heard to say, "Now I have
two fathers and two mothers but still no place to lay my head."

May third, Holy Cross Day, was the anniversary of the Mission
priest's ordination. The mass that morning was at the chapel altar, or as the
children say to distinguish the chapel from the church, in the "little
church." The chapel was quite full of boys and girls, not because of the
priest's anniversary but because the priest was entering the hospital that
day to undergo an appendectomy. The priest had been thinking of other
things and was quite surprised and happy to see so many of his children.
He is not emotional but those children offering their prayers with the mass

 24




for him somehow kept bringing tears, and whenever he turned to face them
the sight of them robbed him of all voice.

There was nothing dreadful about the operation. In the priest's
absence the Mission did not suffer. Good priests supplied. Those
dependent upon the Mission had their usual help. 'the Mission work went
on much as usual. The priest eagerly desired the operation after a winter of
illness. Many prayers were offered constantly both far and near. Fear and
pain were almost wholly absent. Many letters, lovely flowers, visiting
friends made fourteen days in the hospital much like a delightful rest. In
sixteen days the priest was back at the Mission altar. However, the priest
was constantly told that it takes several months to recover from an
operation and he did not believe it. Now, after three months with body,
mind and spirit still limp, he knows it is true.

Always there is so much to be done. Vital things. Lives and souls are
at stake each hour. The spirit of the priest verity burns at times to drive
the body. In additional unwisdom the priest feels he must burn the candle
at both ends to merit in some small measure the support of the Mission's
blessed benefactors. Much gratification has been derived from messages
urging conservation of strength. The priest will be careful until he is strong.

 The Offertory often used for Sunday is "Thine, O Lord, is the
 greatness, and the power, and the glory...." A new acolyte was being 
instructed by an old one aged twelve. The new was heard
to ask, "And when do I first take up the cruets?" The old hand, a
good server and proud of it, "You know, when Father says, 'Thine
of Lord is the grapes and the flowers."' God's precious bratsl

Should this booklet lack character of pathos and poverty and pain it is
not because such things are expelled from the Mission. just now a strange
family sent for the priest to pray for their sick baby. Three unbaptized
little children were found in the shack in which the family lives. Poverty
was such that there was no vessel in the house to bold water with which to
baptize the children. There was a bed. One bed for five. There was no
clothing except the scanty garments being worn. Much has been done to
mend matters but as this is written the little child is slowly dying because
there is a limit to what can be given by Christian clinics and hospitals, by
God's faithful, by God's priests.

 25




AUTUMN, 1934

Very often through November the Mission altar will be flowerless and
lit with brown unbleached candles. And the vestments black. Your dear
ones whose names you have supplied the Mission will be remembered.
Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, And let light perpetual shine upon
them.

There is almost always something despicable about a beggar. A beggar
generally represents failure and failure is rarely admirable. So often beggars
are weak, obsequious, cringing and often importunate. We despise them
and in pity often suffer more at their plight than they suffer. Often when a
beggar is at one's door, particularly if he is a frequent visitor, one has to use
a firm grip to be kind and helpful.

How extremely distasteful to be ever asking alms!

Often a child on the Mission's door step is crying for food, or an old
man. Defenseless children and old people actually all but naked. Mothers
and children held together through the Mission's efforts. Suffering sick
bodies that can be healed. Souls in families without God that can be
harvested. "in as much as you have done it ... to Me."

Yes, it is bitterness to beg. But would you look the dear Lord in the
face and let them suffer, let their souls perish, or would you beg?

The little child who was slowly dying is dead. Dead because there was
a limit to what could be given by Christian hospitals, ("there was no room
in the inn"), by our Lord's generous children, by the Mission. Dead for the
lack of a hundred dollars, for that sum invested in the hospital treatment
and care in time would have given the child a large chance of growing into
maturity. The Mission Ford could have been sold and that life saved, but it
is probable that the Mission Ford has been and will be the means of saving
several lives. Of course our Lord suffered the little soul to go to the shelter
and safety of His eternal arms and it is far better so. But at the burial office
by the bedside of the sick mother in the l0xl4 feet, one-room shack, one
thoughit of others who could and would pay a thousand, a hundred
thousand, even a million for health and life.

The Mission is making coffins. Two to commence with. Little coffins
for His lambs that must inevitably die. So often there is

 26



nothing with which to buy one costing as little as ten or fifteen dollars. The
simple but well shaped caskets of plain wood are covered with white
material salvaged from garments sent in your boxes. On the cover of one a
medallion of our Lord holding a lamb in His bosom, on the other a simple
crucifix. The linings of white and more or less matched odds and ends of
lace also came from your boxes. Finished the little coffins will serve amply
and comfort grief-stricken mothers.

Behind the priest's house is a vegetable garden. This summer the
garden was put in flowers for the altar and our Lady's shrine. The flowers
have been so luxuriant and in such great abundance that when stems were
wanted enough plants could be pruned to get stems. Gladioli came into
bloom at right intervals. One full row each of gold and rose zinnias and less
of other shades. They are even now exquisite. Once our Lady with the little
Lord in her arms had an arm full of tuberoses. There were snapdragons and
sunflowers among others. just now with surely but a few day's respite
from frost the dahlias are in their glory. What fresh loveliness has
constantly been offered upon our altars!

The high altar in the white glare of ordinary lamps was cold and little
defects were noticeable. With smaller light bulbs it was too dark. An orange
flood light has been the solution and now His altar throne and its reredos
are suffused in limpid gold. "Praise Him all ye stars and light."

In the Preparation at mass little David will have the Archangel St.
Michael in no other way than Blessed Michael the Arch. Correction has so
far availed nothing. But after all the dignity and pomp with which naive
David invests his diminutive must amuse and please the holy Archangel
and no doubt David is forgiven his persistent mistake.

Came recently to Sherwood the Church of God, also called the
Holiness Church and the Holy Rollers, to convert the town. The sect that
suffers rattlesnakes and rejects medical science; many of whose adherents
believe the earth flat. Some in blindness, ignorance, bigotry utterly sincere
and doubtlessly loved and blessed by our Lord.

Their meeting was held in a vacant building within a hundred yards of
the Mission church. It was very hard to endure. Sermons

 27



went on for 3 or 4 hours with constantly increasing frenzy among the
shrieking shouters, rollers, frothy-mouthed demoniacs like a debauch of
devotees of madness. Fancy trying to go to sleep at night with such a
travesty of holy religion crashing through your windows and saddening
your soul with its grief. And it went on for three weeks, very largely
attended with most attracted as to a circus. There were some baptisms in
the creek and some were baptized for the fourth time in recent years.
Many of the Mission family attended. The Mission looked on in sadness
but knowing the tempest would abate; knowing it will be the Mission
ministering to most of them when they come to die, shriving them,
comforting them, fixing their failing eyes, for their last earthly vision, upon
the Crucified.

A regular benefactor of the Mission for two years recently wrote: "I
would like to know, not that it makes much difference, whether the
Mission is Roman Catholic or the Episcopal Church. I had a relative, a
saint and a Roman Catholic, so I offer my gift to either on your altar."
Truly the sweet spirit of our Lord. The answer is of course that the
Mission certainly is not Roman. Rarely if ever does it think or say
Anglican. It seems the heritage of something beyond either, perhaps
simply Catholic Christians in the Body of Christ, id est, Holy Church. As
a matter of fact the Mission is proudly a mission of The Protestant
Episcopal Church.

The Mission is always very pleased with the privilege of your
expressed intercessions. They are faithfully offered. Some of you are
isolated. How the Mission yearns that you might lift up your hearts at its
altar. Some of you have griefs, some are ill. Could the Mission but reach
you to offer its poor ministry to guide your feet into the way of peace, to
offer you the holy Sacraments,

WINTER MASS

"AND they rose up in the morning early, and worshiped before the
Lord,"

It is Wednesday. The summer green of verdure is quite gone. The
Mission church stands in chill winter drabs. The stormy autumn morn is as
yet but light enough to give substance to wraiths of fog that make for
gloom.

 28



But within the chapel the stove bums cheerily and a warmth full of
peace pervades. Flames of the altar candies stand out like two stars
through gray dimness and their honeyed rays dance on the white gleam of
linen and brighten the austere visages of the six dark saints silhouetted
against the dossal. In candle shine St. John looks like the beloved rather
than the son of thunder as he is shaped in plaster.

At the back of the chapel a boy of sixteen is doing school work.
Standing with his back to the stove ail old, old man with gnarled hands has
his burled face turned toward the image of his crucified Redeemer upon the
altar; a face named to its Lord in simple prayer, eyes upon the cross, heart
in heaven. Two small boys are sitting quietly. A woman on her knees at a
prie-dieu. The peace of utter silence blends with the peaceful warmth.

Tinkles the sacristy bell and upon its knees is the little congregation.
Enter the priest and server. The priest solemnly intends to offer what our
Lord did institute and command us to continue; to offer It according to the
rites of Holy Church, to the praise of God and His Church triumphant, for
the benefit of every soul and for the good estate of the whole Church.

There is something indescribably precious in the intimacy of the little
congregation in the little chapel. The server almost touches the priest. The
people almost touch the server. The vocal tones of the celebrant are
hushed but quite audible, the responses whispers clear. The awe of the
Holy Mysteries. The awe of worship!

The prayer for the whole Church, an intention for all souls in all time
living and departed. Then to cry with the poor children of the streets of
Jerusalem and the poor Mission children of the streets of Jerusalem and
the poor Mission children, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the
Lord, Hosanna in the highest!"

Holy Communion! Had we all the simple, the unswerving, the
undebatable faith of one little Charles, "Our Lord is in the bread and in the
cup Father, and we receive His Body and Blood as food into our souls."
Holy Communion. God, frankincense and myrrh, "A fountain of gardens, a
well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon." Fountain of faith and
grace, of courage and love, of holy peace.

Thus a day, a thousand days, commence in Epiphany Mission.

 29



FINANCES IN 1934

FOR the year 1934 Epiphany Mission received from all sources,
deposited in the Bank of Sewanee and disbursed by voucher, $2,979.27.
Contributed in the Mission was $623.73. Sales of clothing brought
$225.00. Funds for memorial printing totaled $123.00. Contributed by
friends; For car expenses, gasoline, $133.00; for food for poor $87.35; for
support of J. D. Fergerson and family $156.63; for purchase of priest's
house $200.00; a discretionary fund of $1,430.56.

From the above funds the Mission priest received a salary of
$1,100.00. Paid to the support of the Diocese was $105.19. Relief of poor-
food, medicine, doctor $252.04. Funds for memorial printing, J. D.
Fergerson, car expenses as contributed $412.63. Additional car expenses,
truck hire, bus hire $155.34. Repairs and improvements $167.55, Spent for
several score items as freight, express, telephone, postage, printing, coffins,
loans, wood, coal, light, literature, stoves, stove pipe, dishes, food for
Mission meals, rfreshments for parties and picnics, etc., etc., $585.71. The
fund of $200.0O for the priest's house is in the bank.

By far the greater part of the above funds were contributed by the
Mission priest's generous friends. The largest contributor gave $205.00, the
next $120.00, with the next but slightly behind. One priest gave $90.00.
Several gave $25.00, some $20.00, many $10.00, most $5.00, $3.00, $2.00,
$1.00, and many less. Three hundred contributed to the funds.

The priest's salary was supplemented by special gifts to pay his
hospital bill in May and for a trip for rest and recreation in June and
another in January.

CHRISTMAS, 1934

Their faithfulness and earnestness is one of the greatest joys of the
Mission. For provoking smiles they are incorrigible. Lawrence always says
"Blessed Mary Eva Virgin," and Ollie will have the preparation psalm,
"Send out thy light and thy truth and postle me." He does not know what
he means and of course no one else does. Certainly they are corrected but
correction is as futile as telling them they must not say "I would rather
serve Mass as to stay in bed."

30



Christmas Day is so near. Trepidation is so piercing lest there be
disappointment in a single little heart. Many of our patrons have been
thoughtful and generous but as yet only half enough gifts are in hand. Again
it is utterly impossible to realize how the little that is done for each
Mission child, aged six or sixty, stands out in their barren lives through all
the year. One half the year they look forward, the other half they look
back.

Whom saw ye, shepherds, say, tell us, who hath appeared in the
earth? We saw the new-born Child, and choirs of Angels praising the Lord
together, alleluia, alleluia.

"Over his keys the musing organist,

 Beginning doubtfully and far away,

 First lets his fingers wander as they list,

 And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay."

After long and reluctant dallying before mute typewriter keys the
Mission priest, musing upon a Christmas message, begins very doubtfully
and quite far away. The idea shapes a little and "Along the wavering vista
of his dreams" clearly you stand out with your loving generous hearts. And
the Mission children upon their mattresses of straw. And Bethlehem,
angels, shepherds, the gentle virgin Mother, and the little Lord Jesus upon
the kindly hay. To write is a privilege of deepest import and difficult. You
must be shown His Mission children as they are but on His glad Nativity
you should be made glad with their poor joys and not made to cringe at
their importunity. It is a weighty matter that has been offered at the altar
throne of God with a Red Mass when the priest has besought the Holy
Spirit to build a bridge from Heaven for his lay.

'Tis a Mission of interminable boundaries that reach out and on
beyond our encircling mountains embracing you within the borders that
stop, it is prayed, not short of the very feet of God, You belong to the
Mission. You can not be counted in the register but you are counted in
prayer and love. It is counted as a blessing to know your joys and griefs
and problems. It is a blessed privilege to be asked for counsel and to lay
your problems upon the altar with prayers. Your prayers are valued as
your most precious gifts, Could the Mission but have you often kneeling
among the Mission children at the Mission masses. Sometime when it has
seemed that the Mission could not go on it was the fact of its interminable

 31



boundaries thrown into the balance that made it impossible other than to
go on. Like the Mission children in Sherwood you, dear other children,
could not be given up.

"The poor shall eat, and be satisfied; they that seek after the Lord
shall praise Him; your heart shall live forever."

Enshrined in the Liturgy is much of hearts. Cleanse our hearts. Incline
our hearts. With all your heart. Lift up your hearts. Feed on Him in the
heart. Peace . . . keep your hearts. It is well indeed we ci y Come to my
heart Lord Jesus. This Nativity lift up to Him your hearts, (by Him
cleansed, inclined, nourished, kept), for His manger throne and pray, "even
so come quickly Lord Jesus."

Old John was on the street. Old John, wasted and thin, nose red and
eyes watery, needing washing and a haircut, with his thin buttanless coat
pinned over his thin chest. He had been in mind for some time and was
given a warm overcoat that will comfort him through the winter and other
winters if he lives. There is something fine about the old fellow, he is not
obsequious but mannerly expresses his gratitude. Then the more touching
his appeal, "Father, you are so kind I hate to ask, but can you spare me
just a little lard and meal? I'm hungry."

Utterly impossible is the realization of the difference in feeling
between the person having an old worn coat to give away, a coat to spare,
a garment over and above one's immediate need and the person who has no
coat at all, needs one desperately and is wholly unable to obtain one.
Surely less clothing and fewer shoes are being worn in Sherwood than at
any time since the Indians quitted these mountains. Be assured that great
comfort and gladness has been the conclusion of your gifts of garments and
shoes.

The Mission Church has no organ. It has a piano 40 years old and
giving good service. Elizabeth is the Mission pianist 11 years old and
splendid. Better rendered accompaniments for the hymns could not be
asked. Elizabeth has lately learned to play the Missa Marialis as well as
the hymns and it is hoped to sing that lovely mass for Christmas, but alas,
there is no competent teacher. The priest who loves music does not have a
musical voice, has no musical training and finds it rather uphill work
teaching what he does not know.

At each issue of the booklet some one is offended and wishes his
subscription discontinued. In the autumn one found the Mis

 32



sion too ritualistic. Actually there is a minimum of ritual in Mission
worship. Sound ritual, holy etiquette, whatever one calls punctilious
conduct in worship is of course loved in the Mission but until more make
more and better confession, more and better communions, learn to pray the
holy mass, and more love God so truly that love impels to enrich worship
a minimum will do. Such ritual as is practiced is right, there is not one joy
of innovation. The Church's age old rules for rites and ceremonies are
meticulously observed.

The old two storied "show house" and lodge hall across the street
from the Mission church, the building mis-used by the holy rollers in the
summer causing the priest and some of the faithful to feel that their souls
were among lions, has been acquired for a small rental for the Mission's
use. A stage for programs, nine Church school class rooms, space for the
boxes, clothing and supplies, a meeting and work room for the Auxiliary, a
kitchen, ample space for breakfasts and parties and many things, holy
rollers rigorously excluded. Truly it is a mission house in a dilapidated
barr~ of a building but with what grateful hearts it is used to further efforts
for our Lord.

Thomas Mabra Fergerson is a brother of Jefferson Davis Fergerson
invalid for several years. Many mornings Thomas Mabra comes to tell
Father that J. D. is better or worse. Better does not mean improved but
simply means free from pain while worse means suffering. J. D. always
sends a message. A typical one, is "Please send me some Bologna sausage
and come and pray for me." Which taken as a whole seems a quite logical
request.

Doubtless all have hours of faith dim and prayers languid. Why to a
great number does a sweet statue of the holy Mother and Child in a dark
church, with vigil light in sapphire glass at their feet, lighting their
precious faces and enfolding their holy forms in a halo of dim flickering
glow, bring rushing back fervid faith piercing heart and soul and mind and
an irresistible desire to pray?

EASTER, 1935

"Mary stood without the sepulchre weeping

. . . And Mary turned back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it
was Jesus. He saith unto her, 'Woman, why weepest

 33



thou? Whom seekest thou?' She, supposing him to be the gardener

'Mary' . , . 'Master'."

Upon the highroad an ill-kept man, supposedly a tramp waved
frantically for a ride. The rather full Mission car passed him by. Could he
have been the Master? The woman who came in to talk of her troubles was
supposedly to be a bore; the child that cried for bread upon the doorstep
was supposedly to be a nuisance; the old man upon his bed in his
mountain cabin wanting help to live and help to die was supposed to be
just another spent wanton. Could either conceivably have been the
Master? At any rate, "In as much ... to the least of these . . . to me." With
greater faith and deeper love the holy opportunity might have been
discerned and the reward to cry with St. Mary, "Master," or with St.
Thomas, "My Lord and my God."

There is true nobility in Sherwood which would be difficult to
catalogue. The socialites have no more monoply than the tatterdemalions.
Be that as it may. The Sherwood Social Register would contain most of
those who live west of the Creek, some of those living between the Creek
and the Railroad, few of 75% of the population living east of the Railroad.
Even in Sherwood there are big frogs in the little puddle, pots call kettles
black, and cats look at kings. Surely it was like that at Nazareth. The Son
of Man was so gentle. Regardless of His infinite fineness, His inexhaustible
understanding, His passionate love for every soul perhaps He wearied of
pettiness, or circumscribed mines, the smell of dirty bodies and dirty
homes, and sometime yearned not for richer but nobler company.

God grant its to imitate His simplicity at Nazareth, His love as
shown forth at Calvary, and so to gain in the end eternal life as manifested
in His glorious resurrection.

Who can measure the dividends of a good gift? Countless, of course,
are lost, smashed, forgotten. But some fall on good ground. Once an
Auxiliary sent a young lay reader a cassock. The young man had then no
thought of Holy Orders. The Auxiliary forgot the gift and the man. Ten
years later the man wag ordained a priest in the cassock. Forty years ago
Daisy, an old Irish servant, gave a little Protestant boy of seven, whose
will was the winds, an old battered, brass crucifix. The boy grew into
manhood, keeping always by him the poor crucifix. Today the crucifix
hangs

 34



on a priest's desk lamp, and before the altar the priest often prays for the
repose of Daisy's Irish Catholic soul. Who knows what seek thoughts the
luminous crosses hanging over the beds of Mission children and glowing in
the awesome dark, the crucifixes about dirty. but washable necks or those
carried in the heterogeneous store of pockets have planted? May the
blessing of God emanate from those holy symbols.

Looking upon a wan, disheveled and bedraggled young mother and her
indigent family a Mission boy touched with the pathos and with
sympathy asked, "Isn't the old mama pitful?" The mother was certainly
not more than twice the boy's age.

The Mission priest has an aquarium holding some 8 gallons. The
gravel on the floor is like jewels. The feathery fronds of the green plants so
full of grace suggest the crest of the Prince of Wales oft repeated. The
loveliest black snails with green velvet mats move ever so casually. Golden
Japanese Fantails, Shuunkins (Autumn grocade) and Telescope Moors that
are very Negroid swim urperturbedly or perhaps they dart and dash about
their small domain. How marvelously the hand of God has wrought in the
gold fish bowl. How truly each fish might exclaim, "I am fearfully and
wonderfully made." Mission children, young and old, never tire of
watching. The priest often has to tear himself away.

Can you realize that in the Mission it is rather commonplace for
seven to sleep in one room or in two beds? That it is not uncommon for
people to sleep through the night in their day clothes or to sleep on the
bare floor with neither mattress nor straw?

"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive."

"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil
speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to
another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake
hath forgiven you."

How iniquitous and nefarious unnecessarily to wound, to cause one
pang of unhappiness. O before wounding to search one's soul with the
threefold question, "Is it kind, is it true, is it necessary?" Our gentle Lord
was joyous. Far better to be a sainted Magdalen than possess a cruel
virtue. Far better a repentant, kindly thief than a just and supercilious
Simon judging all but one's self. Far better a kindly and humble publican
than an arrogant, gentleman

 35




ly Pharisee. God grant this Lent has enabled us to witness His glorious
resurrection with kindness overflowing our tender hearts.

SUMMER, 1935

The Mission as a whole is not conscious of its poverty. Little Rose
who is ill has never experienced being perfcctly clean, nor slept in a good
bed in the simplest lovely room. She does not measure comfort or
deprivation as you measure. Perhaps none in the Mission congregation
notice that the chapel floor sags woefully as does the floor in the church
and that both tremble to bear the weight of worshipers. Three years ago
support of the floors rotted away and there always are more vital things to
do with Mission funds than mend the floor. The small iron church bell cost
about $3.0O many, many years ago. Long hopelessly out of plumb it clangs
miserably. Yet perhaps none ever say, "How poor the bell" or "What an
unpleasant sound." Daily at 6:50 it rings for Mass. There are those who get
out of bed each morning at its ringing, others who breakfast, and still others
who do this or that and many who come to Mass. One morning the bell did
not ring and a housewife did not get up and the family commenced the day
in consternation. There should be an adequate bell, a large bell with a deep
voice of lovely tone. It is a desire near the priest's heart and he has wished
for it and prayed for it these years.

Lord, I am not worthy.

 "How hast thou merited-

 Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?

 Alack, thou knowest not

 How little worthy of any love thou art!

 Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee

 Save Me, save only Me?"

"Hark, hark, the dogs do bark, The
 beggars come to town. Some clad in
 rags, some in tags, And some in velvet
 gowns."

Before God beggars all. Beggars on golden thrones or beggars in the
gutter and in all stations of life between. Beggars chained to some
consuming poverty of the innumerable poverties that be, victims of
circumstance, victims of God's laws transgressed in blindness. Begging for
bread. Begging for life or health. In lone-

 36



liness for love. For something priceless lost. For courage. Absolution.
Peace. Beggars crying aloud or smothering poignant voice of supplication
within the depths of destitution. Beggars for self alone and beggars utterly
selfless. But before God beggars all.

"How hast thou merited-of all man's clay the dingiest cloth? . . . How
little worthy? Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee ... save only
Me?"

The Mission Folk. Unworthy beggars. Undeserving poor. The
unworthy fathers who have begotten too many children for whom they
never could provide. Their unworthy wives worn out with child-bearing
and toil and poverty. The children, who, in spite of prayers and efforts and
the love of God will probably repeat all the mistakes and offences of the
parents. Here a man, old, always poor, his solace in times past too much
poor whiskey which has ruined his health. Or there another man, past
earning now, who once earned well and spent all. Or yonder the mother
who bore and reared her child out of wedlock. And many others,
unworthy, stranded in a slough of despond, repentant, sincere in their love
for God. For them, unworthy of your charity, even as all are before God
unworthy, are your offerings to the Mission. A little to each here and
there in their necessity and a little to support the Mission priest, the
unworthy shepherd of their souls.

Typhoid for five weeks has gripped Rose who for years has been as
regular in the Mission church as the Sundays have been regular. A wisp of
a child of eleven years at her best she is but the ghost of a child now. Wan,
listless, she has through her illness shown little interest in life. Once she
asked a doll and the Mission could supply it. But in spite of her apathy
she has been obviously eager each time for the prayers of the priest by her
bed. The poor little home is terribly hot. The flies are in swarms
innumerable. There simply has not been enough money for screens, but
perhaps six other thoughtless, undisciplined children and constant visitors
would render screen doors useless. The frail mother who looks ill enough
for bed keeps the floor washed for coolness and sits by the bed fanning
Rose who is sheltered from the flies by a measure of mosquito netting. The
doctor and Red Cross nurse attend and the Mission because you have made
it possible is able to furnish gowns, sheets, ice. Could you visit that
bedside with the

37



priest you would either frankly mop away your tears or else as other do
swallow them and cough a little.

The birth of a child in Sherwood is usually a well attended
event and death is witnessed by a multitude. At a death bed chil-
dren pry an opening between adults and infants in arms are held
aloft in order that they too may observe the passing of a soul. The
doctor shoulders his way to and from the bed and the priest per
chance upon his knees is quite hemmed in arid sometime stepped upon. 
Admittedly it is inconceivable that a physician or priest could expel the 
people from the bedside at least but actually is doubtful whether a regiment 
could move the throng. There seems no conception of dying in privacy and 
peace. The gathering is a token of kindly well meaning, just an old 
community custom.

One gathers perhaps that privacy in Sherwood is little esteemed or
respected. Into one's house or even one's bed room callers enter at any or
all times without warning. For a while the Mission priest suffered keenly
whereas he is only uncomfortable now and can quite nonchalantly shave
while conversing with Mrs. Smith about the little Smiths and the family
needs in general.

Jefferson Davis Fergerson, child whom you have loved through his
years of illness and whose death was expected daily a year ago, has been
for six weeks in Vanderbilt University Hospital where he is daily gaining in
health. With his own hands he now propels his wheel chair about the
wards. To finance the destitute Fergerson family and the child's illness has
been a long and bard struggle for the Mission who is at this time trying to
pay the hospital charge of $1.50 a day. Every effort is being made to place
J. D. in a hospital for cripple children where he can be cured while doing
school work for the first time. Once in the institution the Mission's
expense will be at an end. Your prayers and your gifts have saved this little
life and are mending the little body.

Lovely things. The Crucifix on the high-altar by some means of light
and reflection mirrored on the surface of the wine in the chalice. A young
man's strong hands, unthoughtedly on his part, clasped at prayer as the
Sisters trained them as the hands of a little child. The tears in the eyes of a
penitent. The mountain with its rich mantle of summer verdure that rises
westward from the church. Bud, 11 years old, making his first
communion and rad

 38



iating from his facial expression and bodily attitude a fullness of the
knowledge of the Presence. An old man who shuffled to the altar to make
his communion a full minute after the last communion had been made and
in a voice half prayerful, half exclamatory said when the Sacred Wafer was
placed upon his palm, "Jesus-God."

What would you do in cases like this? She is the utterly destitute
widowed mother of little children. She certainly cannot support the family.
There is no work for her to do. Red Cross relief supplies about one-third
of the barest living. With all that she at present is assured the family would
slowly starve. It is a Mission family, all baptized, some confirmed. There
is nothing about them of extraordinary worthiness. The Mission has
helped them but as things are at present cannot now help them sufficiently
to relieve starvation. As she pleads for the impossible the tears course
down her checks and she says she cannot bear the hunger of her children.
And the Mission priest being rather tender-hearted quite feels that he
cannot bear it either. Nor can he bear the un-consoling thought that no one
in Sherwood has starved to death when he knows some in illness have died
because they were half starved. It is just one actual case among many.
Suppose you had to tell her, as the priest did, that there simply was not a
dime for her? Perhaps you have had to do just that- Then you too know
the tragedy and the pain.

Courage beloved, Our stars in God's time must be setting. And as we
move toward the Western Gate we are prone to think of our failures and
our losses. Most of fortune or savings or income may be lost indeed. But
we are prone to recall the purposes and ambitions to which we dedicated
the intention of our lives and to count as loss the points of failure and
unfulfillment. Those purposes and ambitions and dedications have not
failed nor are they lost. Such, with most of earthly life, most of loved ones,
are withdrawn, but lost?

"All which I took from thee I did but take, Not for thy harms,

 But just that thou mightest seek it in my arms,
All which thy child's mistake

 Fancies m lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"

39



AUTUMN, 1935

If you might stand facing even a hundred Mission children, young and
old, assembled in Church School at this season and say "Christmas!" Can
you visualize their faces? Some as lovely as angels from heaven; here and
there the features of thoroughbreds; or a face or two with only one eye; a
few hard, unlovely; and sadly, a few utterly repulsive. But say that magic
word "Christmas" three months before the eventful season. There is at
once a tense eagerness, a trembling, even, of anticipation. Faces glow
rapturously and eyes burn as candies touched with flame. In colorless
lives, so empty, so void, the unspeakable joy! just once in God's year may
they every one realize that joy. That none of 30O be cheated of that joy is
a heartbreaking responsibility. You relieve it so joyfully. In past years each
small thing sent has been used well. Smaller children have been well
remembered, as is meet. But remember the children of 15, 20, 40 and 80.
One better gift seems better than two poorer gifts. Mission girls of 14
having had so little still yearn for dolls. Pocket-knives, flash lights,
harmonicas, delight boys. Cooking utensils, dishes, blankets bring joy to
housewives. Warm socks, gloves, belts gratify men. Sweaters, shoes,
clothing are most pleasing to all from the oldest to the youngest. Surely the
love of our Lord and His children will guide you to make supremely joyous
His Nativity in the Mission.

At a funeral a woman came to the priest in consternation. "Are there
scissors in the church, Father? See how shocking!" From one of your boxes
a pretentious ribbon once adorned flowers for your sailing had come to tic
flowers for a Mission funeral and still bravely bore its "Bon Voyage!" The
priest smiled and said, "Let be. It is appropriate and very lovely."

Requiem aeternam.

Requiem. Rest. If the phrase, "Neither shall the sun light on them nor
any heat", from the Scripture appointed for the Epistle of All Saints, with
reference to those who have come out of great tribulation before the throne
of God, had to be taken literally, the Mission priest who loves God's
sunshine and its warmth would be confounded.

There are Christians in the Mission, and elsewhere, who are
confounded about the rest of holy souls. Their conception of that rest is
the rest of death, not life. That the soul rests in the

 40



grave, asleep, negative, unconscious, until the blast from Holy Gabriel's
trumpet calls it to the General judgment.

For its beloved the Mission prays for a conscious rest. Not sleep.
Prays for souls conscious of themselves and of us still within the veil.
Prays for the rest for them that comes from peace of mind and soul. The
rest of knowing now whereas in earthly life they believed. The rest of
having gained knowledge to replace faith. The rest of renewed vigor for
growth. Growth in His love and service. Prays, knowing that sunshine is
but shadow in relation to the perpetual light of perhaps the first beams of
the Beatific Vision shining upon them; prays knowing that the glow of the
Love of God makes utterly Aain the earthly warmth they knew.

The total boundaries of the Mission church on the south and west are
marked by a field of corn. A lovely field of good corn with a goodly
portion of pumpkins of the whole lashed together with bindweed called
morning-glory. First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the car.
Through the summer the church was half surrounded with a dark green sea
of undulating, waving blades of corn. Now with the full corn in the ear and
the pumpkins gold with the first frost upon them the held is yellowish and
reddish brown and bronze while the lacing of the bindweed is still green and
spreads a glory of blues and purples through the whole. There is something
passing sweet in the simple thought that the Mission's altar of the Living
Bread are set up in the field of corn. There is something reminiscent too of
One who walked through the corn fields in Galilee on a sabbath day.
Perchance if He walked through the corn fields of Sherwood, as surely He
does, He Would point out the glory of the bindweed and remind us bow
beautiful are the cords of love that bind us to God.

Church school Literature is always needed in the Mission. A
minimum quantity must be enough for one class for a definite period. The
literature will serve far better if it is of a simple nature. When giving the
Mission the privilege of praying for your dear ones please use Christian
names. The Rosary on Friday evenings is one of the best attended services
in the Mission. The Mass commencing the Church School's annual picnic
was heard by 150. So far in this Church year baptisms have equalled
Sundays

 41



in number. Mission flowers have been splendid all summer long with the
roses perhaps fairest and sweetest. White and gold and rose zinnias are still
in profusion with a wealth of gorgeous dahlias largely white and yellow as
these colors show best upon the altars. And with swelling buds a row of
white chrysanthemums nurtured since spring for the altar on All Saints.
Father has pruned and pothered. Will and David have dug. George has
watered and once in drought when the water supply was so low use of
hose was denied George said, "I shall keep on watering each day if I have to
tote the water from the creek in buckets." Some blooms have gone to the
sick. Many more Florence and Martha have placed upon the altars beside
our Lord's mother with her Babe, all for the glory of God.

Wealth, even as poverty, is of course a relative condition. A pile of
coal is enormous or a trifle depending upon tire point of view. The Mission
has just put in 6 tons of coal, the winter's supply for 7 stoves, (2 in the
church, 2 in the priest's house, 3 in the mission house). What a mountain of
coal it is! Doubtless some of the Mission's distant friends would likewise
regard it as a large pile of fuel. At the same time the Mission has other
friends whose winter's warmth never so much as suggest a thought of coal.
Having lived rather confined to the Mission for four years the priest on a
trip this summer thoughtfully regarded many of the innumerable
throughout the land who pay a dollar for their dinner. The priest has come
to think of a dollar a day a luxurious outlay for food for two persons. The
Mission widow and family of four who pay rent, buy fuel, food, all on
$18.0O a month largely furnished by the Mission regard the priest's budget
as bountiful as heaven, and if those even poorer in Sherwood, with less
than half of the poor widow's abundance, think at all, they must regard the
widow as a little affluent. After all a dollar in Sherwood is right large.

May she rest in peace ... with her husband ... And do Thou inspire 0
Lord my God ... Thy servants, my brethren ... that whoso reads these
pages may remember before Thy altar Monica, Thy handmaid, and
Patricius, once her husband . . . So shall her dying request be granted to her
in richer abundance by the prayers of many."

 St. Augustine of his mother.
 r.
 

42



Very often one or another writes the Mission for the full name of,
say, John or Rose or Mary. Far better were full names left alone. The
Mission will joyfully send any other information and kodak pictures when
possible to encourage interest in Mission individuals ' . As desirable as
blessings from heaven are cards, letters, gifts to brighten Mission lives or
to relieve distress. But let such gifts pass through the Mission who will
always discourage any direct communication between its benefactors and
its poor. Its poor are frail humans, often in great need, and knowing the
source of help sometimes beg and beg persistently. It has often happened
and in the end the poor are poorer, the Mission embarassed, and the
benefactors wiser and sadder.

Bud and Paul have been serving at the altar barefoot. There seems
something fitting about it, or perhaps the Mission priest has an irrational
point of view. The priest as a child went barefoot (not from necessity
which does make a difference) through two winters with occasional
southern snows. There was simply nothing to it and the priest, who heart
bleeds at a child's lack of clothing, is not greatly perturbed at the child's
lack of shoes. At any rate the soft padding of Bud's or Paul's bare feet
about the altar causes one to think of the soft footfalls of another Lad's
bare feet about a carpenter's shop in Nazareth once upon a time,

St. Gabriel has come to the Mission. A kind and generous woman,
may God bless her, read of the Mission's desire for an adequate church bell
as expressed in the Summer Booklet and straightway gave the Mission a
bell. A splendid bell named and inscribed St. Gabriel. When the bell reached
the Mission in this month of angels it was heavily muffled so it could make
no sound and was placed in the belfry. Still muffled it was on one recent
morning blessed before a Mass of the Holy Angels. The muffling was then
silently removed and in the Mass at and throughout the Gloria in excelsis
our St. Gabriel for the first time in the Mission lifted his deep and lovely
voice in the angel's hymn, "Glory be to God on high!" And now the tongue
of our St. Gabriel cries out daily to Mission people God's message to
come and worship.

You often write, that the plight of perhaps J. D. or the little child
who had typhoid, or the family who was not actually starving but only
half starving, is so touching that you are not sure which case draws your
deepest sympathy. Remember Beloved,

 43



that in the Mission the tragedy of today is simply replaced by the tragedy
of tomorow. The Mission's need varies little. As the child with typhoid
grows better there comes the pressing need of a surgeon for another. When
hungry little children in one family have been given bread other children
ahungered may be found the next day. When you are told of sad cases in
June just remember the same sad cases will string along through September
and November and January. There is always a J. D., a Rose, an
importunate widowed mother; always sadness and pathos, failure,
sickness, poverty and even crime.

The Reverend Deacon Miller has been in residence in the Mission
nearly 2 months and is a great blessing where there are always so many to
win and teach, so many to help. Rose, the little girl with typhoid, is well
although not very strong. Jefferson Davis Fergerson, still in Vanderbilt
University Hospital until quite well. As his core is most obviously the
miraculous result of prayer please say a thanksgiving for God's mercy.
Small provision has been made to relieve the poor woman mentioned in the
Summer Booklet and she is not suffering. The Mission has an abundance of
altar servers who are efficient and never absent, never late for their
assignments. As there are only seven days in the week, and each server
likes to have regularly his own day, a problem of over-supply exists. How
joyfully the Mission would like solving that problem by lending its boys
for those altars where the servers seem so often absent.

CHRISTMAS, 1935

 Still through the cloven skies they come, With peaceful wings
 unfurled;

 And still their heavenly music floats O'er all the weary world.

THE LOVELIEST THING, They come. They still come. They
always come. Down the flowered roads in May and tip the frozen streets
in December. Through drought or flood, like the Christmas angels through
the cloven skies, year in and year out they come. Only one yesterday but
six today. The Mission children to meet their Lord in the holy Mass. To
turn from the altar and see them kneeling, their angel faces rapt, eager!
Some are always beautiful, all are beautiful, then. They have not yet left

 44



the angels so far as their lives will lead them perhaps, but here they have
met their Lord week in, week out, year in, year out, and even though in
time they stray away having been here will matter through all eternity. It
is tire loveliest thing the Mission sees or knows.

DOROTHY, little daughter of a Sherwood socialite family devoted to
the Church of Christ (Campbellite) shook her finger at her mother and said,
'You can keep me way while I am little, mother, but just as soon as I grow
up I am going to be an Episcopal." And Annie Laurie went so far as to
wish her church would burn so she might attend the Episcopal Church.

THE MISSION PRIEST loves a precious old lady now of the Church
Expectant. God rest her soul. Toward the end her once brilliant mind had
softened. She would hold the priest's hand in her clasp, and look into his
face, which of late begins to resemble nothing so much as a mummy, and
say with ardor, "You are so beautiful!"

GLORY BE TO GOD in the highest, and on earth peace, good will
toward men."

"For unto you is born this day.... Christ the Lord."

CHRIST MASS. At this one season of the year the term mass is on every
tongue. The Mission prefers that name through all the year bemuse mass is
an enigmatic term for an inexplicable mystery; the great X in the eternal
equation that links sinful mortals with the Lamb of God's blessed passion
and precious death, His mighty resurrection and glorious ascension and
results in immortal life. That Mystery, wherein is a perpetual Nativity;
wherein we may unite our poor selves with the wound-scarred body of the
Crucified which He offers forever at the right hand of the throne of the
Father. The Mass, that links to Him the offering of ourselves; our prayers;
our best beloved whom we may in spirit lead by the hand to Him; wherein
we know all that is offered is gathered safely into His arms and sacred
heart as he gathered our humanity into His being and died, "Yea rather ... is
risen again. . . . is even at the right band of God. . . . making intercession for
us."

In the Christ Mass may you keep His Nativity. For you may Christ
Mass be very holy. Through the Christ Man may He be reborn in your
heart.

 45



THEY SHALL. When a tack or nail has to be driven in the Mission's
present mission house it is difficult to find a spot substantial enough to
hold either. Built from poor materials to begin with time and exposure have
reduced the fabric of the building to the stability of a sponge. The fabric
upon which Christian character is built in the Mission is much the same.
The human fabric must have some sustaining quality forced into it under
great pressure before lines and precepts can be driven in. How tenacious
the Mission must be; how stubbornly determined that the Mission folk
shall be Catholic Christians, Does Holy Church mean anything to them?
They shall learn, and shall comprehend, and shall desire the Church with an
insatiable desire. What a store of courage and fortitude the Mission must
expend. Yearning for its people, asking of them nothing, yet asking of them
all. They shall sing. They shall pray, They shall love the Lord. Are they
weak? They shall be strongl! Are they slipping? They shall not faill
Likewise the Mission loving you, asks of you nothing, yet asks of you all,
determined that you shall hold up its hands in its determination to advance
the Mission congregation up the King's Highway.

LOUISE, confirmed, was regularly at Mass and her duties throughout
the past two years. What a lovely child she is at 13 with brown eyes,
flawless complexion, curly chestnut hair and priceless teeth, behind her
smiling lips. What a shock it was to learn one Sunday morning this fall that
Louise was married. The child's mother has a habit of marrying her babies
off which is quite legal in Tennessee. A few years ago she married Louise's
sister then 12 to a man of 45. The marriage was a failure and the girl's life is
wrecked. Little Louise, the wife, now lives in another town, but she came
to see her priest soon after her wedding. The same sweet little child. Poor
victim. The tragedy of it! Nothing to do. Only to say, "My child, if you
become unhappy, if you have trouble, will you come back to Father?
Maybe we can do something." And she promised, "I'll come, Father." It
may be that the time will come when the Mission can save her life from
utter ruin.

OLD JOHN did not die last May as scheduled. In late spring he
rallied for another summer of fitful life and came down the mountain and
forgot he had made his peace and been shriven

46



at his urgent beseeching for a good death. He came down for the summer to
play fast and loose with the confidence of the Mission priest, Tennessee
corn whiskey and the devil. Perhaps there was the insatiable urge for a few
more weeks of life as it had been lived for near 3 score and 10 years. In any
light it was all a tragic rallying but pellagra is a treacherous as well as
torturing disease that destroys mind as well as body wherein the devil
grasped his advantage and whereof the great just judge will consider in the
end. John, now so spent that incredulous children asked of him, "Can you
walk on those feet, John?" or "see out of those eyes?", forsook his Church
and evaded his priest and went begging up and down the country side.
Alms gleaned were sadly spent for whiskey and the old soul was often
authentically reported rescued from the ditches. But John's last earthly
fling has ended. Shortly, of an evening, he passed out of Sherwood astride
an unsaddled, scrawny, long-maned mule led by one of his scrawny,
longhaired sons. John's claw-like hands clutched the long mane as he has
clutched ebbing earthly life and his body was awry as if he would slip from
the beast and earth. Up the mountain to the westward, into the sunset,
onto the last chill trail, to his cabin bed for a while and thence to his long
home from whence he will not return to cheat and carouse. And soon he
will send urgently for the priest for a last, last preparation and the priest
will wearily and gladly climb up to him because if he truly repent the
angels of heaven will rejoice and the Crucified will be waiting at the end of
the trail to receive him into His everlasting arms.

AND J. D., whom ere now you know quite well. For 5 years
pronounced incurable. When this year commenced there was nothing left,
every organ in the little body in a state of collapse. The little arms and legs
like broom handles were powerless to move. Morphine was given to make
death less painful and at night the doctor would say, "He cannot last until
morning." Nothing left but prayer. As the year ends the child is not dead
but walking for the first time in 5 years with sound flesh free of pain and
normal health only a few months ahead. This is indeed a miracle, a miracle
without "wind or earthquake" but through the most natural causes in the
world a Red Cross nurse, a priest, a splendid hospital. And, in passing, the
Mission's unpaid account for the child at the hospital is almost $200.00.

 47



WHILE THE MISSION PRIEST has no superior patience and
perhaps has far less need of it than some he has at least learned that its
price is above rubies. This booklet has been written in a babble of sound
about nothing. Perchance just as an agony of effort has captured a thought
the priest's best friend or helper dashes in and at the interruption the
thought has burst like a bubble and is clean gone forever. "O, Father, don't
you think a man should have three meals a day? Do you think pink or blue
prettier for Ruth? Does Main Street run north and south or south and
north?" And such questions are always interspersed with such other
questions as this: "Father, have you a dime for snuff, or coal oil, or
aspirin?" The most considerate ask the priest to do errands any little child
might do. And they all say, and those who cannot speak write, "Poor
Father, people worry him to death, he should refuse them and spare
himself." And what each one really means is, "Dear Father should spare
himself for every one but me." It is proof of their love, God bless them.
And so you just be patient when the paragraph is poor or the notes to you
are full of mistakes and long overdue.

WITH DEACON MILLER'S assistance a desire near the Mission's
heart has become possible. In a small unshepherded Negro church above
the Lime Plant a Negro congregation has been taught of late on Sunday
afternoons. Three Negro children have been baptized. It is prayed (and the
congregation is agreeable) that these souls may be instructed and confirmed
in the Faith and a fourth altar and a mission for the colored folk be set up
within the Mission. The Mission had 58 baptisms for the year ended.
Sixty-five souls heard Mass at 7 o'clock on the First Sunday in Advent.

FEATS WORTHY OF A MAGICIAN must be constantly
accomplished in the Mission. Producing hares or even horses from silk hats
is nothing. A good round stream of cash has to be produced very largely
from those who often can ill spare it and upon whom the Mission has no
claim but love. A hundred dollars a month with no other allowances is but
little for a priest's salary and $45.0O a month including all allowances is
small for a deacon. Add to these sums each month $50.0O for the care of
the sick, $50.0O for the care of the poor, and mission house rent, fuel,
printing and postage, and the cost of a host of other things you know with

 48



out enumeration and the total is fully $250.0O a month equaling
$3,000.0O a year that must be produced. One month would be simple but
the demand is steady. If the total sum needed is not produced the priest's
salary as the largest item is cut first. However, an average of 90% of the
total sum needed is produced leaving the priest's salary cut only $200.00
or so a year. St. Paul writes that he planted, Apollos watered, but God
gave the increase. So with the Mission it is God the great Magician who
produces what is necessary from your generosity.

AND NOW BELOVED, will you be mindful of the heart-
breaking happiness of anticipation abounding in the Mission at
this time? Of the Advent Masses and confessions? Of the pageant
and of the Christmas tree at 6:30 Central Standard Time on
Christmas Eve when will prevail a joy so ecstatic that surfeited
hearts could never comprehend. The Mission will well remember
that you are responsible. And be mindful of the Christmas Masses,
at Midnight and 8:00 and 9:00 A.M., when holiness and God's
love will stab like poignant pain and the priest in blessing will
make the horizontal of the sign a circle across the miles to enfold
you in His love.

EASTER, 1936

"Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto Him,
Master["

ON THE RESURRECT10N MORN there is rational communion
between Mary living and the Master dead. At the feet of the Master who
has died, (yet is alive for evermore), Mary sees Him clearly and hears Him
plainly but unquestionably across the great chasm between life mortal and
life eternal. Although actually beside her He speaks to her through the
immemorial and unbreakable silence of the grave. He has come to stand
over her from beyond the inflexible finality of death.

The Master's intelligence is intact, personality entire, life acute; the
difference that the corruptible has become incorruptible, that death has
immortalized, spiritualized, glorified.

 "I am the Resurrection and the Life!"

 As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."

Thus then is our death and the death of our loved ones. Alleluia!

 49



SEMPER FIDELIS. Soon after the priest came to live in the Mission
more than four years ago Little David attached himself. A thin, anaemic lad
of 14 dubbed by some "Punkin Seed" though just why can not be
explained. He was soon confirmed and an altar server. It is noteworthy that
his first attempt at serving a low celebration was a matter of perfection. It
was found that the boy was imbued with the rare quality of faithfulness
and the priest commissioned him at a small remuneration to build fires each
morning through the winter in the priest's house and the church. Although
he lives a mile away, for three winters, sometimes when really too ill to
come, through snow or flood, except one single morning when flood waters
were too high to breast, David has not failed to build his fires. Nor once in
four years has he failed his weekly appointment as altar server. In various
other ways his faithfulness has been indispensable to the Mission. He is 18
now, 6 feet tall, thin as a rail but the sort that will be faithful through all
eternity. In a world where fidelity is none too common and in a community
where it is very rare David's faithfulness is worthy of acclamation with a
solemn Te Deum.

THIS STORY worthy of book length must be sketched briefly. It was
nearly three years ago in early summer when one afternoon Mary, 16 years
old, all but bare-foot, scarcely clad at all, with not so much as a bundle, but
great with child walked into the priest's sitting room. Mary was an utter
stranger to the Mission and the Church. She, an innocent, ignorant girl,
whole-heartedly believed she was married but subsequent investigation
proved it highly improbable. He, older, whom she considered her husband
was in the penitentiary for a term of years.

Mary was at once an insolvable problem. She was instructed and
baptized, her son was born in a Church hospital, the child baptized, the
mother confirmed and pensioned by the Mission in a Mission family. For
two years Mary deported herself admirably in spite of venomous tongues.
She loved the Church and was faithful in her duties. Her baby was
precious. A sturdy farmer more than twice Mary's age, living some miles
away, belonging to a fanatical religious sect opposed to the Church, came
to desire her. Her former supposed marriage had been annulled. Her
pension the Mission found all but impossible, and to find regular
work for her was utterly impossible. "The man is kind and good.

50




I do not love him but I will do anything rather than give up my little boy,"
was Mary's attitude.

The Mission allowed Mary to marry the farmer last spring. She came
for her Easter duties and made her communion but the husband objected
and she has not been since. She and her child have a home and are not
unhappy but the Church has lost them. The Mission did all that you so
graciously provided could be done in the Name of God. Mary, only a chil~,
was saved from shame and lifted a hundred percent in the social scale. 'I he
end is not all desired but without sufficient means it was the best the
Mission could do.

"All day there is the busy world to face, The sound of
 tears and laughter fill the air, For thought there is but
 little space Nor time for any transports of despair.
 But Oh, the pulse beat slow, the lips go white,
 Sometime at night."

THE MISSION PRIEST, as he approaches 50 years of age, does not
condone and is not in sympathy with the madness of living certain
tempermental souls adopt to frustrate the devastating realities of life but
he at least can understand. When one faces all day and every day poverty
and misery and pain; the aged with physique and intelligence fast failing
and death but a matter of so little Lime; or some in the Hower of life with
the whole picture distorted by suffering and weeping feebly because they
must die; or when one hears a thousand whines and complaints that stab
because they are prompted by true enough anguish and pain; when one is
surrounded by children with angel faces who are foredoomed to all the
tragedy one simply does understand why souls who have not been well
taught of God and who perhaps do not actually know Him at all turn to
hardness and cocktails and swiftness and madness to escape and forget.
Lord Jesus, for Thy great pain have mercy!

BEN, THE FARMER PREACHER of Sherwood has often been
mentioned in the Booklet. A robust man of 50 who can not read, is sincere
and kind and has spent his life farming, rearing a goodly family and
preaching the Word as he has understood. Charlie, another power of
physical strength of about Ben's age, is the minister of the United Church
of God in Sherwood and is

 51




this year also farming in order that he may live. And so it is that the
Mission clergy's contemporaries through the week follow the furrow in all
weather and think long of God. Then on Sunday in the physical vigor of
their rugged lives and from the meditations made so close to the soil which
smacks of God they preach. Both men are the Mission's staunch friends.
There is a third minister of another church who is a youngish man and has
not been friendly but has fought the Mission constantly. Now
paradoxically enough this unfriendly young man has been a boon to the
Mission in making its flock defend their faith whereas the two friendly
ministers; have done much harm in confounding many of the Mission
congregation because their confusing teaching has not been done in an
antagonistic attitude.

DEACON MILLER'S Church School for the Negro children on
Sunday afternoons is most satisfactory and while there is attendance of
only 12 or 14 it includes all the Negro children of Sherwood. Mabra, in the
prime of life, head of a large Mission family, is dying of tuberculosis. At
prayers by his bed he joins in the hitherto little used Our Father, lisping
imperfectly as a small child. Your prayers are asked for his comfort and a
good death. As a prelude to spring the mountains that cup the Mission are
rose and amethyst. Soon the dog-wood and Judas trees will be masses of
bloom and sweet williams will carpet the ground. This year the Mission's
chief effort is teaching its children to pray upon entering church, in the
church, about their duties, at their bedsides, and teaching the prayers to
pray. This Lent 70 or more are present at Holy Communion on Sundays
and an average of 12 each morning. Through Holy Week some 70 will be
present each morning. An interested visitor from New York state asked, "Is
there any thing else like the Mission in the Diocese?" Another visitor
belonging to the Diocese answered very positively "There is not." This
Friday morn Nora fainted at Mass which was offered for the comfort and
healing of the sick and at which 9 were present. Vernon writes his friend is
ill with "yellow jonquils," meaning. jaundice. Cy and Sput, 11 and 13, are
walking 10 miles to the Mission church each Sunday.

"POOR, yet making many rich."

 SUMMER, 1936

CAME A LETTER "father dear, your spelling is always de

 52



lightfully unique, but when your recent letter reached me and you had so
far surpassed yourself as to misspell two words to the line I knew you
were ill."

SUPEREROGATION. "Voluntary Works besides, over and above,
God's Commandments, which they call Works of Supererogation, cannot
be taught without arrogancy and impiety," says Article XIV. The Mission
certainly is not a work of supererogation although viewed from any angle it
is a voluntary work. It is in no sense a work of obligation. It is a
manifestation of love eagerly accepting rare privilege and opportunity.
Without the Mission's present scheme of life the Diocese of Tennessee
would do its full duty and send a priest to the little church for a celebration
of Holy Communion perhaps every other Sunday and missionaries for
some service of worship every Sunday just as it provides for the large
number of its missions.

But the ministers serving in Epiphany Mission, who could fulfill mere
duty elsewhere with more or less ease, burn with the vision of the
incomparable opportunities and deliberately choose, as the most desirable
situation possible, the miserable little town with its priceless potentialities.
They do not ask adequate salaries or even reasonable comforts of living,
they do not ask perfect working equipment, they have no concept of labor
"over and above God's commandments." They ask merely to be sustained.
They ask that the constant use of the Mission altars be unabated, that
Mission souls may continue to be shepherded 24 hours of each day, for
continuance of small relief for the sick and poor.

And you who support the Mission can fulfill all your duty and
obligation to God and in the Harvest of Souls in your own parishes and at
your own doorsteps. But the Mission's glorious triumph is an actuality
through the means of your offerings, made not because of your duty, nor
because you conceive of gifts "over and above God's commandments," but
because the love of God in your hearts makes you choose to further even
at the price of personal sacrifice what the Mission stands for and is.

OLD JOHN who has been often chronicled in the Booklets is dead.
Earthly life waned through all the devastating winter and went out just as
the first summer days were real. Truly penitent again after his last faithless
summer of feverish life he was shriven

 53



and ready although reluctant to go. When the soul at last passed on a
coffin was carried by hand, where no team could go, up the steep and
torturing miles of wild trail to the cabin on the mountain top for the poor
wasted body and thence back down for burial. A married daughter living in
a nearby state came home for the funeral and although belonging to a
protestant sect brought two awful ten cent plaster statuettes in lieu of
floral offering. In the new summer's heat as the grave was being filled a
Mission child of five years placed a chubby, dirty, sweaty finger on first
one plaster figure and then the other and said, "This is the picture of Jesus
our Lord, and this is of His blessed Mother." When the Christian burial
was done; when the tired widow was ready to return to the lonely one
room cabin, which has not one single window, for the first unbroken rest in
weary months; when the grave was neatly mounded and the plaster Lord
and Mother stood side by side thereon to keep vigil in the solitude, surely
John, who in his hectic life of weakness loved the Lord and His Mother,
wiser, assured by the consolation of angels, looked back and was pleased.
Jesus Lord have mercy! Mary and all the saints of God pray!

THE EASTER EGG HUNT in the Mission in the past has been for
the participation of many adults as well as children. This Easter it was
decided that only children would hunt eggs. The decision was most unkind.
Men and women of thirty and fifty were cruelly disappointed and most of
all was hurt Uncle Henry whose age is seventy-five. Never will this
particular mistake be made again. Next Easter Uncle Henry may hunt eggs
to his heart's content even if the Mission priest must go without a
breakfast egg for months.

LAST YEAR 57 souls were baptized in the Mission. For the first
half of the present year there have been 50 baptisms. Bishop Maxon
confirmed a class of 28 on Trinity Sunday. Deacon Miller now has a small
class of Negro folk ready for Right Reverend Father Demby the Negro
Bishop. Deacon Miller will be priested before long and will remain in the
Mission where a bare living is his stipend but where he is sorely needed.
Mass is at 7 o'clock on week days and 8 o'clock on Sundays and
attendance is larger than at any other service in the church at any hour. As
this is written a flood swiftly rises higher on the church walls. For some

 54



80 days there was no rain and now for two days since it commenced it
has hardly stopped at all and what was a little brook near the church
sweeps and roars like a mighty river and the church yard so shortly like a
desert is now like the sea. Outings have been in order. . Trips. Camps.
Soon the Church School picnic when excitement will remind one of
Christmas. All important things in the Mission commence with the Mass.
The writing of a Booklet, a birthday, a funeral or fiesta. in memory of Him,
the breaking of Bread and prayers.

THE MOTHER of one of the little girls who through the past year
attended school in the Mission's "House of a hundred uses" was
apprehensive over an approaching storm and thought best for her little
daughter to stay at home until the storm was past, Not so the child who
said, "Why, mother, the school room is the safest place I could possibly
be, it is right over the altar."

"I HAD a guinea golden and I lost it in the sand

And although the sum was simple and
pounds were in the land

 Yet when I could not find it I sat me down to cry."

HOW FAR too often there passes into life eternal the friend of
twenty or ten or five years separation with whom one has all along
expected to have sweet converse again, by whose side one has always
hoped again to kneel at the Holy Sacrifice! And too numerous are the
Mission's silent friends of yesteryear! You who once wrote so
enthusiastically of the Mission's weal and woe. Or sent such a rich gift. Or
invited the priest to be your friend and to span the miles and be a guest in
your home. The Mission beseeches You to again express Your love and
assures you that Your word, of encouragement, your gifts, your prayers
are needed to the last letter, the last penny, the last amen.

AUTUMN, 1936

THE COVER PICTURE is of a memorial shrine, a gift placed in the
Mission church-yard last winter. Aged Uncle Henry comes every few days
and stands looking up at the shrine while he says, "He did that for me."
Marjory, 2 years old, of her own volition, exclaimed, "Our Lord is sick,"
meaning suffering. A few have said they could not look upon the crucifix,
and one said mistakenly, "It is His shame." Actually it is one more copy of
the

 55



loveliest picture in the whole world. One true picture of His greatness and
power and glory and victory and majesty. The picture of the event that
most affects each individual soul in all time and eternity. The picture that
to look upon should wring one's heart with the love of God.

ALL SOULS. When David the King mastered the grief resulting from
the illness and death of his beloved child, (which grief probably pained him
until his own life's end), he summed up the matter simply, "I shall go to
him, but he shall not return to me." So of you and your beloved. Your
beloved, safe in eternal life as Lazarus was safe in Abraham's bosom; as
another soul was one night safe with Him in Paradise. Our Lord's promise
to that soul was "Thou shalt be with me in Paradise." With Him. Safe in
His everlasting arms, waiting for you at home, from whence there is no
return, but where you in time will go for reunion.

Meantime if you can not reach your beloved, or if you can not be
reached, there is a blessed Intermediary. Particularly in the Presence of the
Blessed Sacrament can you draw near to the hem of the garment which
your beloved has touched; you can put yourself into His arms wherein
your beloved Tests.

Perhaps you have never fully caught the comfort and solace and
sweetness of All Souls' Day. Perhaps you can not yet pray for your dead
or give them all your love through Christ, or feel them side by your side at
His feet. To know these comforts is a sweet anodyne for grief, a balm
when the years of separation grow long. Accept these comforts too, as a
part of your Lord's great gifts to you. Meet Him in Holy Communion as
the Contact between you and your beloved and pray Him no less than to
watch between you Until YOU too go home.

THIEF cried ready tongues when a small Mission lad was caught
stealing Bugger Mose's corn. Eleven years old, a handsome child, nurtured
in the Mission through several years, visiting his priest friend once, twice,
even thrice each day. Wherefore a thief? His utterly destitute family
numbers five. Widow, daughter 15, one boy 9, one younger, babyish and
sickish. The girl is out of school to help the mother wash, the only means
of livelihood. Earnings plus relief plus Mission pension equals $18 a
month? The lad says he stole the corn because he was hungry. Who can
doubt he was hungry? And just who was the thief? The more

 56



able priest had not managed to prevent hunger in the family, nor
had the neighbors in the Mission or 1,00O miles away, all of whom
had been informed of existing conditions in Mission families.
Thiefl Surely it was the priest, the neighbors, rather than the
child who ' stole Bugger Mose's corn.

CALL NO MAN FATHER. A good and gracious woman in New
England wishes no more Mission literature because the priest is called
Father. Of a truth the title of address used for the priest is a small reason
for giving or withholding Mission support. If the priest is what he should
be and is respected and loved by his people what greater matter if he is
addressed as little brother or Great Grand Father? The Mission priest is
generally addressed as Father, but he is also Mister, Brother, Preacher and
sometimes Doctor, the only title he utterly disavows and abhors bemuse in
his case it is absolutely false. Here is the solid truth of the whole matter: The
 priest knows that when he serves the individuals of his flock to the best
of his ability he must be something more than friend, more than brother,
more than scholar or physician. All these he must be and yet fail to be the
best he may he until he is as a loving parent blessed of God. Nothing less
than a friendly, brotherly, teaching, healing father with God's authority to
be His priest, and nothing more.

SAM, a big strong man, sometime ago while drinking was shot. He
escaped with a flesh wound but had to remain in the hospital for a few
days. The priest went to see him and pleased Sam with the directness of
his ministration of prayers. When the priest was leaving Sam said to him,
"Father, I like your visit. You came in and straight off thanked God for my
escape and prayed Him for my recovery; and then you told me I did not
descr~ve to recover, wanted to know what you could do for me, and last of
all spoke of the weather. That is straight business. Now I ant ashamed of it
but I like my whiskey and I like it straight. And I like my religion straight
and I like it strong." The point being that perhaps priests are sometime
mistaken in thinking that most people do not like religion straight and
strong.

THE MORNING GLORIES are all worthy of mention again this
summer's end. They have defied flood and drought. Most other flowers
are dead, most verdure is prematurely rust, and yet each mom the
bindweeds lift up their myriad blooms in veritable

 57




glory and they smack of fortitude. They have taken possession of the
climbing roses, done their utmost to capture the hedges and planting in the
little churchyard, and in triumph wave their still green tendrils above the
highest brown corn tassel in the field beside the church. Like the dew drops
their blooms seem loveliest just at Mass time. Flowers tiny and large, each
flower bearing the Epiphany star, and beside the star five small rents as if
for a memento of the stigmata. White flowers and flowers deep blue as
night skies of Galilee, others our Lord's Mother's heavenly blue, purple of
His passion and wine of His precious Blood. Last Saturday for the Mass
of our Lord's Mother Florence had heavenly blue ones on the altar.

Ellen loved morning glories above most flowers and often put them
into vases where new blooms lovingly opened for her each day. Before her
requiem, as she lay before the altar, a rich spray of the purple blooms
sparkling with dew was placed across her pall draped casket just beneath
the crucifix above her heart. It was an irregular but irresistible thing to do.

MURDER is no Sherwood trouble, but sudden and violent death is a
common woe. Sometime it strikes in the Quarries, sometime in the Lime
Plant, this summer a young farmer was killed by his runaway team and
each year the railroad exacts its toll of youths riding freight trains through
the town. The last tragedy not many days past was the death of a young
man run over by a locomotive. The Mission has its share of the funerals,
sometime furnishes suitable clothes in which to bury the victim and often
dresses the family to attend the burial. So is seen another of the numerous
good ends of the clothing sent the Mission.

POORER THE MISSION because of the most faithful, 5 girls and 5
boys have left to spend the school year in Church schools so splendidly
provided for such children. These 10 beloved Mission children represent
10% of the faithful Mission congregation. Among them Nancy the best
sacristan the Mission has had who topped her school last year. The 5 boys
are veteran servers. One goes as far as St. Andrew's in Delaware through
the help of a Mission friend. Another, the youngest, has written, "Father I
love you and miss you and rather be there than here, but I guess I shall do
better than in Sherwood. The hardest thing is to miss serving on Mondays.
Surely equaling the number of day

 58



time hours are the children and adults who beg, "Father please spare me a
dime," and need it desperately, and equaling the days are request to be
taken to doctor, hospital, or wherever necessity urges. In St. Anne's, the
Mission's Negro mission, 6 were confirmed by Bishop Demby in August.
Mass is said and communion made at St. Anne's altar regularly but there
will be more frequently celebrated after Deacon Miller is priested. St.
Anne's will of course have a Christmas tree this year. Shortly, under
auspices of the Mission, Nancy, Elizabeth, Dorothy and Vernon, Mission
children who take piano, (3 through the aid of Mission benefactors), gave a
piano recital in the church house. Serious compositions had first place but
were interspersed with lighter and even popular music and one high point
was the joining of all present in singing gleefully if not well, "On the Beach
at Bali Bali." Oldsters and youngsters agreed it was a delightful recital. And
so in these various ways goes the Mission on with God.

CHRISTMAS, 1936

A SINGLE GIRL except the server heard the fourth and last Mass on
All Soul's Day. 'Twas thought all had been accounted for and all children
by then at school, so asked the priest, "Why at this late Mass child?" and
the child answered, "Because mama would not let me come and I could not
slip off earlier."

A BELOVED MEMBER of the Mission's greater congregation who
lives in Connecticut lost her sister in September. A few mornings after the
funeral through the half hour in which a Requiem Mass was offered at the
Chapel altar in the Mission church in Tennessee the bereaved sister and
her cousin knelt in their home some 20O miles distant from the altar.

GOD has given us His only begotten Son to take our nature upon
Him and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin.

CHRISTMAS. This Nativity the creche is in the churchyard beneath
a tall cedar Christmas tree festooned with lights and topped with a burning
star. Very artistically housed is the replica of that blessed tourist camp of
long ago sheltering its mangers and fodder, cattle and lambs, shepherds and
Holy Family. Well flooded with soft light in daytime and nighttime the
details of the Nativity scene must hold and bless the eyes of all who pass
in the street -before the church. The creche is no small part of Christmas in
the Mission.

 59



In the mission house on the eve of Christmas will be the Christmas
tree. Doubtless no Christmas tree in the whole world will give greater joy
to 500 souls. It seems impossible. Thrilling happiness will fill all hearts but
to some hundred and a half hearts of little children the tree will bring sheer
ecstasy. Colossal is the tree as a part of Christmas in the Mission but there
is something larger.

Confessions will have been made in preparation. Wild smilax from
South Georgia will have been hung for greens in the church. A wealth of
candles and lovely flowers for the altar and our Lord's Mother's shrine will
have been given by loving friends not exactly to the Mission but to God in
the Mission. At midnight on Christmas eve cars from miles around will
stand before the church but by far the greater number of the congregation
will have climbed down the mountain on foot. The church will be thronged
and many will be without seat. A reverent hush will be over all, the faithful
worshipful, the stranger owed. With offerings of happy and contrite hearts
for myrrh, such gold as means permit, and the same frankincense of the
Magi the midnight Mass will be offered.

At the elevation of the Host after the consecration some will look
upon a Wafer of finest wheaten flour, a Wafer invested with some
Spirituality they can not ken, but only a Wafer. Some will look upon a
Wafer which in some symbolic and spiritual way will somehow convey the
Son of God into their souls. And some, bowed low, lifting up their hearts
not daring to lift up their eyes, will see in the Host the Son of Mary; the
Son of God; Almighty God the Son inseparable and indivisible. It is meet.
Probably blessed Mary bore and reared her Son and blessed John Baptist
and the Holy Apostles walked with Him first as the Son of Man, not
discerning Almighty God the Son until after the resurrection. Probably
the Holy Family nor His disciples could have borne the full knowledge of
His Divinity and learned the manifestation of His Divinity through His
Humanity.

So in the Mission at Christmas some souls will feel an awe they can
in no way understand as they look upon the Holy Table at midnight.
Others will see and receive the Son of Man. And others will see and
receive God even as God lay in the straw at

 60



Bethlehem. But to all in the Mission the high point, the focal, point, the
holy point of Nativity is the Christ Mass.

CIRCUMSTANCE explains so much. Often a good woman, shocked,
even a bit indignant, having in mind the carefully nurtured children she
knows, asks the priest, "Do you really mean you countenance the use of
tobacco by the Mission boys of 10 and 12 years?" The priest will
countenance just that if he hopes to reach the lads to save them from worse
things; if he hopes to accomplish aught for their souls' welfare. It is not
unusual for mountain children to have tobacco from the time they can walk
and corn liquor as well. So had their parents, and grandparents probably ad
infinitum.

The Mission has a great problem in Marriage. Many of the people
marry young and stay married. There is little separation or divorce. And
there are few children born out of wedlock. But the number of marriages
blessed by Holy Church is scarcely more than zero. People have been
married largely by magistrates for generations. For 5 years the Mission has
prepared its faithful girls for marriage and is deeply disappointed that
within the last year or two a number of these very girls have married
without the Church. The trouble is the girls have not married Church boys
and the boys are a little wild, a little uncouth to do such a strange thing as
be wed in a church. The Mission is weakening in neither effort nor
purpose. It will continue to expect its girls to bring their grooms to the
altar and it is very sure its boys who marry older will bring their brides to
the church and that their families will be reared in the Church.

FATHER MILLER was ordained priest in the Mission Church on the
feast of St. Simon's and Jude's at 8:30 o'clock. The early hour was chosen
in order that the Mission children and the Mission girls from St. Mary's
School might lose as little time from school as necessary. Fr. Miller belongs
to the Diocese of Springfield and was ordained by his own Bishop the
Right Reverend Fr. White. Presentation was made by Fr. Jones, Fr. Luke
read the Litany and Fr. Fly preached the sermon. The Bishop celebrated
the rather simple Mass with hymns and incense, Fr. Adamz in charge of
neighboring missions read the Epistle and Mr. Widney, rector of Otey
Parish to which the Mission belongs read the Gospel. Fr. Woodward,
chaplain of St. Mary's School, played the

 61



hymns. Paul Bunn was thurifer, Floyd Garner and Paul Garner servers.

Enhanced by simplicity befitting the Mission Church the nevertheless
thoroughly Catholic ordination was most impressive. Without a discordant
note an atmosphere emanated from clergy and congregation of undivided
purpose and sweet accord. How simple then in such congeniality to have
felt so close the presence of God the Holy Spirit. Fr. Miller gave his first
blessing to clergy and congregation before leaving the sanctuary and many
sought and had his blessing before he left the sacristy. May the Great
Shepherd abundantly bless the labors of Fr. Miller among his children.

AT THIS SEASON the sun goes over the western mountains soon
after three and commences the drear twilight so interminably long that
makes definite night time so welcome. On this cold, clear, blue night in
Advent to lift one's eyes to the blackish everlasting hills and higher yet to
the sharp chiseled cold gold stars in the sapphire heaven. "From whence
cometh my help?" The hills and stars. "What is man that Thou are mindful
of him?" In the Mission and in the world? All is not wrong with the world
and all is quite right with God. But what ails priests and people that God's
will is not done in the world and in the Mission? Why is the Mission
priest's heart heavy with failure and defeat when he lifts up his eyes to the
hills and heavens and golden stars? Why are some of his best beloved
utterly heedless of his heartbreakingly earnest teachings? Why
predominant filthy bodies, minds, homes? Why do Mission girls marry
really as little children outside the Church and become mothers still so
young? Why must Mary half way up the hills sleep always on the floor
without straw or mattress? Or Mission sons, fathers or families, doomed
to die so soon? Or inadequate funds to combat all the ills of the Mission?

Futility! One feels as though one labored to build with poor tools,
looking forward, pressing onward, and then for a moment looked back to
find the structure collapsed, to be built from the beginning again. But glory
to God on high! For is born a Saviour! Apart from Him are failures and
defeats. Really there is unspeakable joy in the priest's heart, for the
Saviour's love; for such measure of His love as in your hearts, distant
children of the Mission's greater congregation. Amidst Tennessee hills
beneath

 62





the night stars the Mission priest lifts his hand and signs all and bids you
go with God through the night.

LAZARUS desired to be fed with crumbs which fell from
the table of a rich man who fared sumptuously. Two brothers,
Desponds, the latest proteges of the Mission are fed sufficiently to
keep their old skeletons hall alive with crumbs from the tables of
the poor. They are nothing new under the sun but have been
growing into their present heaviness ever since they were born.
Their hands, the hands of calamity, have brought adversity at
every touch. They have existed on charity, particularly that of one
Mission family, for years. Because they have been antagonistic to
the Church and called atheists the Mission has not helped them as
much even as has been possible but the Mission's patience and
gentle kindness whenever in contact with them has reached their
hearts and they are not now antagonistic to religion or Church.

The brothers Despond! Thin as the sticks they lean on. So bushy
with graying hair that one thinks if they were shaven and shorn they
would have vanished. Tattered clothing reefed and pinned. Some sunny
days one sees them both tottering about town, sometime one alone.
Weakness or illness often keeps one or both in bed. Forlorn, cold, hungry.
From whence a few more dollars month after month to alleviate their lack,
to assuage their misery.

IN THE MISSION CHURCH, among the Confirmed, hearing the
Midnight Mass without the slightest deviation from the Catholic tradition
of the Protestant Episcopal Church were Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans,
members of the Church of God, members of the Church of Christ,
Presbyterians, Roman Catholics. Those not of this fold kneeling at peace
with us, awaiting the time of one fold, worshiping the one Shepherd.

CHRISTMAS in the Mission was rather large and for the most part
very lovely. In the conception of scores of Mission children of all ages the
Mission Christmas Trees were events as large and as important as the
inauguration of our President or as will be the coronation of Great Britain's
King and Queen. To the Mission Priest it is inconceivable how weeks of
anticipation and at last the reception of a frail toy or a tawdry gewgaw can
thrill beings into delirium, but they do.

Passing lovely is your provision of Christmas gifts. How many kind
hands work through the months to produce the joy of the

 63




Mission's trees. How thoughtfully you select gifts and send them. How
cheerfully you all provide the baubles as well as the substantial gifts which
give the Mission folk such tremulous emotions! The Trees are utterly
yours.

At the Mission tree 325 persons received gifts. At St. Anne's tree 32
received gifts. Another 50 children who do not belong to the Mission
received gifts on their own tree. A layman of the Mission who has a
Church School in Sinking Cove was provided with gifts for 25 children and
two other missions of the Parish were helped with gifts for their poor. So
were your Christmas Trees in Epiphany Mission.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Generally at Mission Christmas Trees
a great deal of eagerness is shown but not a great deal of selfishness. All in
all prevails a spirit that is joyous and beautiful to see. But the Devil does
not forsake us, in the preparation he hangs around and he is always on
hand for the distribution of gifts. So it always has been everywhere.
Sometime selfishness is manifest, sometimes the helpers have little
consideration for others, sometime things are stolen. Sometimes a
Christmas Tree will discover the beast in a child, hands become avaricious
claws, teeth are bared in rapacious snarls and eyes bum with covetous
greed.

THE MIDNIGHT MASS was the high point of the Christmas
celebration. Similar were decorations and flowers and candles to those of
the yesteryears. The celebrant wore in procession a new cloth of gold cope
that would grace the richest sanctuary. The cope is a gift from a dear old
lady who wishes it emphatically stated that her gift was the cope or
nothing. The Mission priest is never disturbed over using expensive
flowers or a wealth of candles or a gold cope. Such things are for the glory
of the Highest. Then too they bring a glory of holy color to lives as
colorless as fog. True the poor are hungry and the price of such richness
would feed their bodies for a little space but so too would have fed the
poor the price of the gold and frankincense and myrrh and an alabaster box
of precious ointment. And Strange as it may seem a gold cope is in perfect
harmony with the Mission altar; it simply belongs.

The Christmas music supplied by friends from a not far distant town
was exquisite. Piano, violin, saxophone, cornet, vibraphone and xylophone
were for the Mass at least in the hands of

 64



masters. The Mission priest never knew what liquid notes were
until then and he cannot tell you now but at least they are some-
thing a great deal more lovely than water flowing freely or smooth
sounding or clear and transparent. Each note was as if produced by
the fall of ' a drop of water into water contained in rock crystal
vessels. The hymns were, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Away
in a Manger, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night, Jesus the
Very Thought of Thee.

The priest remarked several days after Christmas that it seemed
strange that so few had spoken of the Mass. A Mission school girl
replied, "That Mass, Father, I shall carry in my heart forever, but
I can never speak of it because nothing on earth would be the
right thing to say."

FATHER MILLER is no longer in the Mission. He left just
after Epiphany to take Christ Church, Collinsville, Illinois. Fr.
Miller had no wish to leave the Mission but rather set his heart
on continuing his labors here with a pittance for a living. But
the Mission's aim in bringing him to Sherwood was as much to
see him become a good priest as to have his help and now that he
is a priest, Bishop White has great need of him and the cure offers
a hard and splendid opportunity.

There was something splendid about having two priests work-
ing in the Mission and the Holy Sacrifice twice offered each day.
Fr. Miller's best work in the Mission was in St. Anne's and the
colored folk will long miss his care. He has left a great deal more
work for one priest to do than there was to do when he came 18
months ago and the Mission hardly hopes for any help for a long
time. But then finding $60O a year for Fr. Miller's living was a
great burden too, one that is put down with relief. Fr. Miller's
present task is hard. Continuance of your prayers for him is
asked.

MIDNIGHT MASS, MOONLIGHT, MISERY. In the Mis-
sion Church just past midnight at the Christ Mass nothing seemed
real but beauty and joy and the greatness of God. Ugliness, pain,
abject despair even if remembered would have seemed utterly
unreal. Above the church the moon two nights till full brilliantly
silvered the world. One wondered if there was a moon over Bethle-
hem when the glory of the Lord shone round about the shepherds
abiding in the fields.

 65



In the church as the Mission came actually to Christmas the night
seemed so holy and lull of peace. And yet within distance from the very
altar of the sound of a loud cry of pain, agony and despair and death
lurked.

Old Ray lived in a cabin 8 feet by 8 feet square. His furniture a cot. a
stove and a table. He was quite old and the Mission helped him. He was
appreciative and the priest still has onions brought as gifts from his garden
last summer. Old Ray was confined to his bed a few days before
Christmas. Alone, about the time of the Midnight Mass, the old man tried
to mend the fire in his stove, fell and lay wedged between the stove and
wall until found after daylight. Alone. Cold. Pneumonia. He died a good
death arid Fr. Miller buried him on Holy Innocents' Day.

Christmas a year ago a Mission woman made her confession and
communion. This Christmas, unmarried, she lay ill with a loathsome
disease, her infant blind. She is denied the Blessed Sacrament but she is
accorded the same kindness extended to any sick soul. Her suffering just at
Christmas was very great. The Mission is spending your money for
expensive treatment to make her well and when all is well the unfortunate
woman will marry the father of her child.

TO RETRENCH or not to retrench, that is the question. And from
almost all angles it seems that the answer must be that the Mission must
retrench. In the beginning of this new year demands upon the Mission for
food from the old and infirm, the sick and children have been greater than
ever before. The Mission cannot give more but must give less than last
year if other inevitable demands are to be met. Two priests worked full
time in the Mission for a part of last year and this year the work must be
cut down within the reach of a single priest. The Mission has 20 splendid
altar servers and other lads keenly pressing to be trained and there is not
room for more, the present ones cannot be used often enough. The Mission
cannot properly assimilate an increase at the rate of 74 persons baptized
and 34 persons confirmed in a year. A cut on baptisms and confirmation is
needed howbeit great effort will be made to gain a single baptism. The
Church School is too large. We need fewer and smaller Christmas trees.

To retrench or not to retrench! The truth is, here is incom-

 66



parable opportunity and the problem and need is help. Means to
do with and a worker or two, not old, not broken down (because
they have borne the burden and the heat of the day, God bless
them), not workers that will add additional cares, bill efficient,
capable, lovable and in whole hearted agreement with the religious
faith of the Mission.

BY THE PRIEST, all through the day before or after anything a bit of
carpentry may be done, a remedy prescribed for some ailment or a bit of
adhesive applied to some sick thumb, somebody's laughter listened to or
somebody's sobs, a word and a smile for every child that passes through
the day, maybe a prayer, maybe a confession, and sad but true, maybe a
curse flung silently in impatient and unkind perversity.

EASTER, 1937

THE USED, EMPTY, GLORIFIED CROSS. It is a perilous fault to
lose sight of the Crucifix; to forget for one moment that You made tire
reality of the effigy necessary, that you drove into the quivering flesh the
nails and thorns. Perilous to forget the import of the one immortal sacrifice
of the Lamb of God; to forget that divine expression of love of you. It
matters not so much to you whether the Holy Sacrifice was finished the
first Good Friday or is offered in perpetuity. To you it matters more that
your sins of tomorrow, and of all your tomorrows crucify Him and that
His death upon the cross is a perpetually efficacious atonement for your
deed.

But surely Easter is the feast of the Cross used and glorified and left
empty. The feast of resurrection and life. It is the crowning of the
Incarnation, His blessed Passion and precious Death, parts of an
inseparable and indivisible whole. As the Son of Mary, the Son of God,
Almighty God the Son are inseparable and indivisible so it is impossible to
separate or divide His Incarnation, Passion, Death, mighty Resurrection
and glorious Ascension. At Christmas who dares utterly to forget Good
Friday or Easter? And when the glory of Resurrection and Life is upon us
who dares utterly to forget the Babe in the acres of His Mother or the
Lamb of Gad dying at Golgotha? Inseparable and indivisible! In what
simplicity and roundness and fullness Holy Church keeps this fact before
her children in the collect for the Annunciation of the

 67



Blessed Virgin; As we have known the incarnation of Thy Son Jesus
Christ by the message of an angel, so by His cross and passion we may be
brought unto the glory of His resurrection.

 Mary. Master. Alleluia!

IF THE ABLE were inclined, if the impotent could! To know well the
remedy and be powerless to obtain or apply the balm brings. the gall of
anguish. Paul, fifteen, perfectly faithful to the Mission, is rather anaemic
and it has been a winter of colds and influenza for him. Cod Liver Oil
capsules would have wrought wonders. The Mission might have managed
$3.68 in his case but manage 10 or 20 similar cases has been impossible.

With their permanent teeth scarcely grown the young of the Mission
come with them aching. One shudders to think that for the lack of a dentist
not only will they won lose their teeth but undergo great suffering in the
process.

Let us say that Nicholas or Mary has spiritual difficulties or religious
uncertainties which corporate worship or sermons do not settle. Each needs
a course of a dozen or so quiet, personal instructions from the priest to
make a tremendous difference in their religious lives. What are 12 or 24
hours? Merely one or two days out of a year. But multiply the need of
one by 10O or 20O souls!

Surely God does not expect the Mission to do all things, but there is so much to do that is not done that obviously the Mission should do. 

 Christ is risen! Alleluia!

GOD'S THOROUGHBREDS. Are thoroughbreds, men or beasts,
products of inherent potentialities plus training in gentleness in congenial
environment? Those positive characters who fight hard, win well, lose
better; who are understanding, thoughtful, considerate; restrained in
emotion, silent in trouble, quiet in grief. Our Lord is the great example of
the perfect thoroughbred. Consider that however congenial the
environment that nurtured Him it was not luxurious. God's thoroughbreds
are as apt to be found in mountain cabins as in kings' palaces. They are
marked with a gentleness akin to our Lord's. Positive in character and
positively blessed with a holy humility, yet never obsequious; somehow
understanding and practicing without fuss "Turning the other cheek" and
"Giving their cloak also." Perhaps

 68



they are at the answer to whether there be miracles today. Does God's
grace make a Christian thoroughbred? What else? And yet we know
sometime His servants whom in relation to horses we must call plugs,
whom if rated as gentlefolk we must protest that we have never known the
breed. God's thoroughbreds are interesting and worthy of long thought. In
the Mission there are those who have inherent potentialities. Pray that
God may bless their training in gentleness and bless the environment of the
Mission with godly congeniality.

 We have seen the Lord! Alleluria!

TIME STRUGGLES ON! says one of the altar servers who always
seems surprised that his morning to serve has come again. And indeed it
does. Five years have passed of the Mission's present regime. From a
celebration of Holy Communion twice a month to a daily celebration for 5
years. From no sacramental confessions to 70 in one day. From no
equipment to a splendidly equipped church. A great deal of comfort given,
a number of sick grown well. Nearly two years have passed since J. D. was
ill and all were so interested. And now he is quite well. And two years
have passed since Mary, so young, once so faithful, of whom much was
written, has been in the church. And a year has passed since old John rode
his scrawny mule to westward into the sunset to pass beyond the blue
when spring came. St. Anne's is a year old. Pray for the growth of the
infant mission. Fr. Miller has gone many weeks. Pray for him and for his
parish in Illinois. Through the passing of the time you have been so
faithful, so zealous, so generous. Sometimes it seems so much has been
accomplished with your aid, sometime it seems so little! Only God must
judge. "My time is in Thy hand, O Lord."

 And they knew Him! Alleluia!

PIGS. The floor of the Mission church through the past few years
has been sinking because of decay. The condition renders the church
uncomfortable and there is danger of collapse of the floor. However, the
repair of the floor is one of those things the Mission is going to do for
itself. The members of the greater congregation may not furnish so much as
one nail. Representing several efforts the sum of $65 has now been put
aside for the new floor. To this end two members of the church have each
given a pig. Several families tempt the pigs to grow fat and succulent

 69



with scraps from their tables. Should no ill late betide when the pigs which
will have become hogs are sold a substantial amount will be realized to add
to the fund for the new floor.

 Alleluia! Alleluia!

RELATIVITY. A beloved friend of the Mission's, a priestheadmaster
of a top Church School which continues a splendid building program
involving thousands and thousands, pointed out to the Mission priest one
of the school's garages and remarked that its cost had been only $5,000.
The Mission wholeheartedly believes in that school and further believes
that if twice the sum being spent were spent in building it would in no way
be too much. But the thought remains of one of the garages for a mere
$5,000! The Mission church finished in 1928 cost $5,00O and represents
the Mission's total real investment. Yet the Mission church through the
past year, wholly by your aid, saw to it that 40O baptized souls were
ministered to; the old, sick, hungry and naked provided for; the gospel
preached to the poor; blessed wedlock and buried the dead; baptized 74
and confirmed 28; saw a priest made; offered the Holy Sacrifice 388 times;
in its poverty making many rich; was a light to them that sat in darkness
and the shadow of death; and sometimes guided tired, wayward feet into
the way of peace.

 Did not our hearts burn! Alleluia!

REMEMBER O MAN Thou are but dust and unto dust then shalt
return. In point of ashes it has been a long Lent in the Mission, All year
long soot from much soft coal burned in the lime kilns together with lime
dust that lades the air is wafted downward begriming all outdoors, fogging
windowpanes and seeping through infinitesimal crevices to cling to
furniture, drapes, clothing. Down the mountain sides and up the wet
valleys many feet collect mud which turns to dust upon the church floor.
And the soft coal stoves! The stoves which ever impregnate the inside air
with ashes. A clean fair linen is bound to be flecked with soot in the first
half hour's use and at even-time one can actually write names in the dust
upon an altar that was clean at mom. One understands why the poor are
dirty. Their battle was lost before it was begun, if it was begun. One having
had a clean start battles on. One cannot forget but has to ignore the
inevitable ashes sifting down and look up at flowers or candle flame or blue
heaven. One cannot ignore but one comes to overlook dirty ears and necks
and

 70



search clearer eyes for cleaner minds and less soiled souls. Down at
mud, up at stars!

 Behold my hands and my feet Alleluia!

SUMMER, 1937

HAPPY DAYS of the swimming holes have come to the Mission
again and again one is moved with high joy mingled with sharp pity when
watching from the banks the Mission girls and boys. Many necks and cars
as well as bodies through the winter uncleansed now by the daily laving
have become sweetly clean and bodies that a few weeks ago were a soiled
and deathly white are now beautifully tanned. And the joy of the
swimming hour. Sometimes it is filled with shrieks of pleasure and yet on
another day the same group for no apparent reason is much quieter and one
listening thinks the congregate sound of voices a low hum of contentment.
And then the sad side. There are among the children playing in the water
bodies well developed and quite strong, but for the larger part the bodies
are underweight, a year or two or three behind in normal development,
some emaciated, (arms and legs so thin and ribs so prominent), by far most
showing the effects of malnutrition. And another thing is remarkable, the
scars! Small and large rosettes left from sores. And scars from burns. One
wonders how on earth so many children came to accidents of burning. But
after all one can not bow down and weep for the tragedies of yesterday
while the victims are so manifestly happy in our rather pleasant and
wholesome swimming holes.

GREAT HEART. Five years ago she commenced supporting the
Mission. At first she was just a name snatched out of the blue. For five
years the Mission Booklets flaunting the Mission's catholicism reached her
desk. Always faithful to her interest in the Mission which she sometimes
expressed in notes she was unfailing with her offerings. Long since she was
regarded as a dear friend and because no person of the Mission ever saw her
she was thought of as just another Catholic-Protestant Episcopalian. Early
in this year this noble woman's husband wrote of his wife's death and
explained that as they were Baptists, supporting their own church, their
offerings to the Mission had never been large. No, the offerings were never
large-large is not the right word. Their gifts were enormous. While some of
our own Protestant Episcopalians

 71



were constantly assuring the Mission's most Catholic priest that he
would stew in hell for being that way this noble Baptist woman after
supporting her own faith found something left for suffering children of
God whose approach to Him differed widely from her approach. How
great a heard May she rest in peace. And God grant the Mission folk as
true catholicity as hers.

IN MEDITATION. "Dear Lord, is there not some way, some
possible other way, to support the Mission without taxing Your children
here, there and everywhere with offerings?" "That is My way, My son ...
.. But, Lord, I am so weary of it; and then, too, suppose Your children are
weary and do not respond?" "If, My son, you are too weary to inspire
My children with their privilege, if they fail to respond, the Mission must
wane and you must leave it. There is no other way than the present way."
And then those loveliest lines spoken by "Gabriel" in his soft Southern
Negro voice in "Green Pastures" which have rung in the priest's mind and
been on the priest's lips for years, "Thank you, Lord,"

ARABELLA when Father visited her was in the kitchen peeling
potatoes to cook for dinner to be eaten at 11 o'clock in the morning.
Arabella's hands were dirty and so were the potatoes although her nails
were vermilion and her lips very unevenly and brilliantly colored. Her dirty
hair was finely "set." Her dress anew, very cheap imitation of a too grand
dinner gown and her stockings a film of cheapest rayon while her shoes
with very high heels probably cost $1.98 at a mail order house. Arabella,
17, is a daughter of a Lime Plant worker who earns about $12 a week. The
value of all the furniture in their home, (including a radio that urges the
purchase of cosmetics and silks and furs), to the last stick would not
represent the value of one good and substantial piece. Neither closets nor
furniture for the putting away of clothes are needed because Arabella wears
the best and most of the clothing she owns. 

Arabella is a good but ignorant girl. She was baptized and confirmed in
the Mission in opposition to every member of her family. For two years
she did not miss a day of obligation nor fail in any of her duties and she
became a real help in the Church School. But some months ago her family
gained the victory and she simply "quit" the Mission. No a-mount of
visiting, reasoning, praying has brought her back.

 72



You, Beloved, being a good Christian, will never be numbered
among those numerous unchristian bodies that seem to be possessing the
world for a whirl of destruction. But what of the Arabellas, their families,
their children who will arrive inevitably? Ignorant, ' limited by force of
circumstance to their portion of dirt and poverty, but unlimited in their
stock of awry desires and unlimited in perverted knowledge of the luxuries
the world offers. There are millions of Arabellas. Ours had 3 years of the
Mission; the most uplifting influence that has come into her life. Come
revolution tomorrow Arabella will listen to her priest but as for heeding she
would probably instead carry the torch that destroys, lift the arm that
slays. What a pity she gave up the Church too soon. What a pity a
complete victory could not have been the Mission's and the whole family
have learned to know our Lord and to desire His will above all. And so you
see a Mission failure.

But, beloved, the missions of Holy Church are winning complete
victories with some of their Arabellas and these Arabellas and their families
imbued with grace may sometime turn a tidal wave of destruction. God
bless the Arabellas who are being completely assimilated into the Body of
Christ; God save the Missions; God save the State.

UNCLE BILLIE GARNER, God rest his soul, once told that until he
was a youth of 15 he had never left Lost Cove where he was born except
for the half mile wide valleys (such as is the valley which nestles
Sherwood) immediately beyond the mountains becoming in the (love. From
the mountain tops he frequented he could look down into the valleys at
largest less than a mile wide and a few miles long. But at 15 came the great
opportunity to travel 12 miles by wagon to the present site of St. Mary's
School near Sewanee. From the bluff where the school now stands Uncle
Billie looked down over endless miles of rich flat farming country
stretching on beyond Winchester toward the Mississippi. The vastness,
the expanse of the earth surpassed the boy's largest dream and he exclaimed
in crude reverence at the majesty he beheld, "So that's the world. God
Almighty ain't she a whopper!"

THE MISSION PRIEST knows he took charge of the Mission some
years ago with the spirit of to have and to hold, for better for worse, for
richer for poorer, in sickness and in health,

 73



to love and to cherish until the parting in death and he feels that there has
been no time within the past six years when he did not carry the Mission
on his shoulders. Through these years the Mission holds an above average
record in the practice of religion. Until this year Mission figures went
higher and higher but there was always a grim determination on the part of
the priest that his children should not fail. He fought constantly, many he
carried as it were bodily, he led, he drove, he cajoled, he coerced. But
somehow now the leader seems deathly tired. This year a few more or less
failures in duties, some falling off in attendance at worship, a little smaller
Church school, a little more dirt in the corners have called forth less
struggle than heretofore. The priest would under no conditions lay down
the precious but weary load. But it would be wholly delightful to walk
down one short road utterly free of the priceless treasure.

WHEN MASS had been said and breakfast eaten not so long agone an
acolyte with a bag containing candles, stoles and other appointments and
the priest with the Holy Oil and with the Blessed Sacrament upon his
breast started out in the Ford for the bedside of a husband and father dying
with a severe heart ailment. In the Presence of God in the Blessed
Sacrament the priest and server rode silently for 80 miles. The ill man made
his confession, was given absolution, was anointed and made his last
communion. He has since been buried from the Mission church the office
being said in the afternoon after a requiem mass in the morning.

ANOTHER GOOD DEATH recently was that of another husband
and father who was ill for two years. He did, and there was done for him
everything a Catholic can do or have done in preparation for death. He
yearned for and welcomed each sacrament to the last; Absolution regularly
as well as frequent Communions and Unction before the end. He always
made the responses until his voice was gone and after that his lips shaped
them silently until almost the very end when he was not conscious but
prayed his own prayers somehow audible again while the priest prayed. It
is a holy privilege to see a saint die.

HE THAT LOVETH NOT his brothers whom he hath seen, how can
he love God whom he hath not seen?" Once, 20 years ago, alone at night in
a strange city where literally thousands of war

 74



time posters proclaimed that most splendid and indispensable or-
ganization called the Red Cross the greatest mother in the world,
the Mission priest (who was then no priest) stood regretting the
twist in the truth of that far-flung proclamation because the Holy
Mother is the greatest Mother in all time. And it was at that time
that the conviction came to the priest (then no priest) that he was
one of the greatest lovers of mankind. He just could not see how
it could be otherwise.

And today the priest loves his Mission children enough to be gentle
with them without difficulty even when they sometime try and repel him.
He knows the glory of life is to love, not to be loved, but he yearns for his
people's love and he desires much their patience when he often tries and
repels them. Whether or not he has their love matters terrible. As for
mutual faults one Henry Ward Beecher wisely wrote: "Every man should
have a fair sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends." Had
all men such a cemetery how immeasurable the graves the priest must
claim. But Beecher expressed a holy and good thought. And while we are
about it let us praise God that He, our heavenly Father, is not as avenging
as some of His clear children would be since if he were the priest perhaps
might long ago have been sent to torment, perhaps the Mission left with
scarcely a soul to tell the tale, and the whole Church Militant but a meager
band.

GROWTH INTO A PARISH, self supporting, was five or six years
ago looked forward to for the Mission. This is not yet or perhaps not to be
at all. The largest function of the Mission seems to be teaching a course in
Applied Churchmanship over a period of a few years for most of its
children. Of course there is slow growth in the permanent faithful. But for
the most put those baptized in the Mission, learn to make their
confessions, are confirmed and practice the life of a Catholic Christian
faithfully for a few years and pass on. It is true that whether they leave the
Church or are passed on to some parish they take an ineradicable
something learned in the Mission that changes them, some more, some less,
for all time. Some who remain in Sherwood after having been very faithful
for two or three years change their religion like a garment because they
grow weary of standing out against a whole family wedded to some
sectarian religion or because they marry outside the Church. But they leave
marked indelibly.

 75




Often the Mission has won a child then through the child the
whole family which will be faithful until death. Great hope has
been placed in the Mission's best, the young who finish their high
school education in Church Schools, that they would come home
and rear Church families. A splendid young man who graduated
a year ago came home and was invaluable in Church school but
who is now employed in a city some distance away. Of four such
graduates this year one enters a Catholic hospital for training,
one goes to try her vocation as a religious, two continue their edu-
cation in higher institutions and because all are our best and
all will succeed, thank God, none will return permanently to Sher-
wood bemuse it offers them nothing. One great consolation at
this time is a young man who enters his school this fall utterly
certain he will become a priest and be priested in the Mission
church although of course he will not then remain in Sherwood.
And so the Mission is making Catholic Christians not for itself,
but as it should be, for God.

AUTUMN, 1937

ALL ANGELS. After Michaelmas comes October, the month
of holy angels, who are ordained for service in heaven and to
succour and defend mankind upon earth. October 2nd is the feast
of Holy Guardian Angels, and October 24th is St. Raphael's. Per-
haps all are prone to forget too often and too long their co-
partners in the Kingdom of Heaven. Too seldom are they con-
scious of the angel who kneels with them at prayer or worship, or
walks beside them. The holy angels are very busy in Sherwood.
Beside all the adults, who must seem to the angels hent upon self-
destruction, there are such vast numbers of children climbing
rough mountain ways, playing in deep waters, a few even riding
freight trains through the town. Their guardians must be very
patient. Sometime little children are so precious that their angels
are with them is quite certain. Sometime when a curly whisk
quivers on some infant's head it is quite likely the air has been
fanned by an angel's wing. When the Holy Sacrifice is offered in
the Mission each morning angels are always present. The church
bell bears St. Gabriel's name. The annual Churcl~ School picnic
each year commences with a Votive Mass of the Holy Angels offered

 76




in praise to God because the angels will be the merrymakers to succour and
defend them through the day.

 FOR all the saints, who from their labours rest,
 Who thee by faith before the world confessed,
 Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed,
Alleluia!

THE MAJESTY of that hymn! And why are they saints? Because
they were sinners who fell but rose and marched forward to the next fall
and always rose again and pressed on. Because they looked up to Him
when they were down, and looking up to Him could be brave when their
courage was gone; could be patient when impatient; cheerful when they felt
no cheer; agreeable when they wanted to be disagreeable.

Perhaps the greatest and simplest reason of all because they kept
their faces turned forward toward Him and never turned to look back, for
he who stands looking back indeed turns to a pillar of salt.

Have you one more day to live beloved? Then look forward to Him
and press on. Has your life been something of a failure, beloved? Press on.
Is sight uncertain and faith dim? Then grope on, grope forward toward
Him, for in His arms is stored for you all the best and dearest you have had
and given Him or lost or left behind. In Him the best of all is yet to be;
eternal fellowship of saints, haven, heaven, home.

ALL SOULS' All Saints' is inclined toward the memory and honor of
those departed who have reached perfection in santificationn or holy
consummation. All Souls' rather remembers those departed in faith and fear
but in a state of imperfect sainthood. The following paragraph from a letter
written by a saintly woman of ripe age last November seems to distinguish
clearly the difference between All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. A few
months after the date of her letter our dear friend died. May she rest in
peace.

The letter ran: "I shall probably go before next All Souls'. Pray for my
soul. (As St, Monica says, it matters not what is done with my body.) Pray for the pardon I always desire. Pray our Lord
remembering Martha's words to Him with regard to her

 77




dead brother, I know, that even now, whatsoever thou will ask of God, God
will give it thee.' Of course in your mind there will be no confusion, no
remembering me as a saint but as a sinner. I shall not be pleased to be
remembered as a saint. I know my faith too well to presume the slightest
sainthood. Wherever I am next All Saints' I am sure I shall be praising His
perfect saints. But remember me on All Souls', praying for my peace, and
that I may be vouchsafed continual growth in His love and service and
continual growth toward sainthood with which our Lord may crown me in
His good time."

THE MISSION CHURCH was built nine years ago. Because floods
two or three times each year cover that part of the town where the church
stands an attempt was made in building to build a waterproof foundation.
The foundation turned out to be ventilation proof and within a few years
time the floor and the timbers supporting it rotted out from beneath. The
foundation walls were corrected in 1933 and the sanctuary replaced. But
until July of this summer the main floor of the church remained in a
condition making its use all but impossible.

It was long desired that Sherwood might furnish funds for the repairs
rather than the Mission's congregation of benefacton. To this end $40 from
the sale of a quilt made by Mission women was saved. A collection toward
the purpose last Christmas resulted in $25. Two pigs were given to swell
the fund. Money from the Mission's offerings and collections, which
include many pennies, was used. In July the timbers supporting the floor
were replaced and a new hardwood floor was put down. A new cover for
the roof had become necessary and it was put on. Frank Smith, David Epperson, Paul Garner, Howard Prince, young men of the Mission,
varnished the floor and painted the exterior woodwork of the church. The
repairs cost $60O and while not yet fully paid for have been largely paid
from Sherwood money. True a few outside gifts have been accepted but it
is hoped that by the end of the year the unpaid balance will have been fully
paid by the Mission people.

BEGGARS in the Mission often are insistent and knock on the
priest's door as if they would hammer it in. But often, too, men will stand
for an hour leaning against the garden wall before

 78



coming in to state their need, or a little girl will hesitate by the
gate and sob long before delivering her mother's message. And
there is a very small boy who brings a note and stands until he
looks very tired and lifts one dirty have foot to rest it on top of
the other, ' waiting and waiting for courage. Their need is grave
but the agony of stating it seems insufferable.

Well meaning human stewards of the little portion it is their privilege
to disburse are so apt to exclaim with impatience to His children asking aid,
"You are a perfect nuisance, what of the dole given you yesterday, are you
never satisfied?" Perhaps if those who must grow weary of giving could
look upon the reluctant needy as they stand suffering and hesitating by the
garden wall of the Mission's vicarage they would be moved with
compassion and could still give cheerfully in their weariness.

THREE FUNERALS within six days have just fallen to the Mission.
A man killed by crashing timber whose family favors the Church of God.
An infant whose parents favor the Mission but never attend its services. A
young married man, son of a Church of God minister, killed in an
automobile accident. The followers of the Church of God in Sherwood
greatly prefer the sensational preaching of their leaders and their emotional
orgies of worship but they often turn to the Church for ministrations in
serious illness and death. And in passing - The Protestant Episcopal
Church. The Church of God. How extraordinary!

 If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves
alone to thee are left,
 Sell one, and with the dole
 Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

OF THOSE WHO WORSHIP in the Mission church it is all too true
that sometime worship hungry and many inadequately nourished. A large
part of all the money coming to the Mission from any source goes into
food that the poor may eat and be satisfied. But souls starve for beauty
even as bodies for food. A gracious lady took each morning to the hungry
children of the slums a basket of fruit and a basket of flowers and by
demand the supply of flowers was ever first exhausted.

Our Elizabeth plays the church piano well for a gay child of

 79



14 and is accorded the Mission's heartiest gratitude but leaves much to be
desired. For years the priest has prayed, longed, schemed for a small pipe
organ and an organist choirmaster who loves God and His children. In the
church most of the people are timid singers. As a whole men and boys
scarcely lift up their voices at all although they like singing and sing well
when persuaded.

Under a choirmaster the people would so very heartily enjoy
congregational singing. In Sherwood where there is literally nothing to do
boys in a boys' choir would regard choir practice as a delightful recreation.
Good singing supported by organ would strengthen the weakest point in
Mission services. The gladness of making and hearing music and the joy of
offering it in worship would be as hyacinths in Sherwood's barren field and
weld with new bonds the people to the Church and God.

To such and how gladly the priest would sell one of his two loaves!
To think that somewhere someone who is able would be so happy to
supply so great a blessing if that someone only knew as the priest knows
the opportunity and its worth.

CREOSOTE to discourage termites was liberally used to treat new
timbers of the new floor of the church. For a few weeks after the floor was
finished along in midafternoon when the summer sun bore down and the
temperature within the church rose to about 10O degrees the atmosphere
smelled of anything but holiness. The savor was hellish, smacking of
sulphur and brimstone, and brought tears to the eves and discomfort to the
stomach. It was on an afternoon when this condition was at its worst that
visitors unaccustomed to Catholic worship entered the church. A few
minutes later the priest approaching to give welcome met leaving the
church a young woman of the party obviously distressed but concerned to
be punctilious. She exclaimed, "O, I am so sorry to leave the church but the
scent of the incense makes me deathly sick!"

HOW BEAUTIFUL IS THE WORLD these late September nights
and days. The mornings before Mass so fresh and clean and heavenly
scented sing Solemn Te Deums that lift up hearts and souls to Him. The
blue skies, the prime verdure, the autumn flowers in crystal sunlight sing
Glorias all the day long. And the moon and stars and dank perfumes of
cooler evenings together

 80



with ripening harvests sing a Nunc Dimittis and Blessing. How right and
lovely is the work of God's hands upon His earth. Only the arrogance and
avarice and sin of His children becloud us with pain, misery, strikes,
hatred, wars and rumors of wars.

THE MISSION PRIEST is so constituted that he might find it
impossible other than to fight tenaciously to the very last gasp for the
purpose he has set his heart and hand to, but sometime however little his.
determination may waver his soul may be in high heaven or the darkest
valley of despond. Sometime he feels the Mission is declining into nothing
more than a human relief agency. So he feels today when only 6 adults and
20 young people heard Mass on St. Michael and All Angels and only 5
communions were made.

A STRIKE, Sherwood's first, in the Lime Plant is three weeks old.
The plant has been a great blessing to the town's people, particularly
through the last lean years and the people would probably be gratefully
content but for extraneous agitation. The plant may not be opened for a
long time. The men speak of gay courage but there are sad hearts among
them. If the plant, which is the goose that lays the golden eggs, remains
closed it will be a winter of the greatest destitution Sherwood has known.
Little children will suffer.

CHRISTMAS, 1937

 "I CALL, and the trembling horizon obeys.
 I call, vainly night tries to bribe me with grays.
 I chant a clear note and at once I am smit
 And recoil with my plumage committed and lit
 With the. full light striking me straight in the eyes
 And I know that I, chanticleer, made the sun rise!"

HOW BEAUTIFUL IS GOD'S WORLD! This morn within the
octave the Mass of All Saints' was said at St. Anne's altar. 'Twas bitter
chill. The beautiful leaves carpeting the town, piled in drifts in the corners,
were frosted white and it was difficult to remove enough frozen moisture
from the windshield to drive. Within the church in spite of stove the
priest's fingers were numb; colored women knelt in lumps but soon hearts
were to glow. At mass the full sun rose above the eastern mountain, its
clear light flooding the altar, turning the server's scarlet cassock to flame,

 81



glistening upon vestments and chalice, warming the priest to the marrow
like God's smile. The rising sun like a symbol of the elevation of the Host
giving benediction to His children and a new day.

All the day long the heavens above the Mission were an immense
inverted bluebird's eggshell turned infinitely pellucid.

Long before evening twilight fell upon the Mission church close under
the western mountains. Slowly twilight crept upward on the mountains to
the cast, their tops still encarmined and lit. Mountains painted by autumn
that crowns each ripe year with a victor's crown of gold. The dying light
drew smoky films of amethyst and rose over the high points and the
hollows were dusky, purple as grapes. Higher, higher even toward the
kindling stars enfolding sapphirine shade crept until everywhere was
wrapped in night.

Lighten our darkness, O God, that maketh our darkness to be light for
into Thy hands we commend our souls.

CHRISTMAS! A Babe was born. A little Child in the arms of His
mother. The God Child. Regard the faith of that little Child: faith in the
love of His mother; faith in the security and safety of His mother's arms.
The faith of God in humanity. The faith of God in you.

Then go to Him, as a little child, asking not why nor how nor whence
after. Put aside your splendid intelligence and your wisdom garnered
through the years as He in the arms of His mother had put aside His deity.
Incarnate your intelligence in faith as His Godhood was incarnate in flesh;
the flesh of mankind; your Flesh.

"Except ye become as little children." Turn back to the comfortable
simplicity of your infancy. Meet Him without reason and without
wisdom, ("For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.") Meet
Him as a very small child - repentant, full of faith in His Christmas gifts to
you of Self, love, security, safety. Remember little children do not argue;
they wonder; they feel. So lift up your heart to Him, so draw your soul
near to receive Him in the Christ Mass, in the Wafer, praying front the
heart of a child of Christ to the Sacred Heart of the Christ Child, "Lord, I
believe, help Thou my unbelief."

If you will, beloved, you will find this Christmas very holy.

82



IN THE SACRISTY-Study-Office of the Mission church priest and
David, altar server for more than five years. As David thumbed a card
index the priest said to him, "In thing about the servers for the Booklet,
what do you wish said of you?" From David, who has often heard the
psalms for Morning Prayer and who might naturally give attention to the
first verse of Psalm 132, came the laconic answer as he, always nonchalant
as a cow upon a country highway, continued to thumb his cards, " 'Lord,
remember David and all his trouble', I reckon."

AN OLD MAN is ever present in the Mission congregation. His
ancient face beneath his thick white hair has been left creased and lined by
the sweep of stress and storm but is full of peace and the simplicity of
second-childhood. (The dear old face would be very comely if it was ever
once perfectly clean.) The old man cannot rcad but has long since learned
the Our Father, Hail Mary, the Creeds, the responses in Morning and
Evening Prayer and the Mass, and says them lustily. He hangs upon every
word of a sermon and with closed eyes bows his head with approval
continually. In St. Anne's congregation a much younger colored map
always listens and constantly bows his head in acquiescence to the Gospel
preached. Happened these two to belong to other bodies of Christians,
they would exclaim, "Amen!" with a long a, or "Yes, Jesus!" or "Blessed
be God!" How precious are all such sincere children of Christi

DEAR TRAGEDY. Innumerable notes are received by the priest.
Notes requesting, beseeching, urging. Notes written on cheap stationery,
wrapping paper, margins of newspapers. Notes accumulate on the desk, in
cassock pockets. Notes of today and notes of yesterday long since grown
crumpled and soft. in the priest's pockets these notes are very numerous
and dollar notes are rather few. Not long since his hand encountered in his
trousers pocket a small soft fold of crumpled paper. His mind thought
"note" and into the stove the paper went. And lo, upon the hot coals was a
precious dollar bill! It was rescued scorched, but negotiable - fit to satisfy
the plea of the next note at least.

MOTHER JONES. The Mission priest's mother has lived with him
and for nearly six years kept his little house which is sarcely larger than
was her bedroom in the plantation house where

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she was wife and mistress long happy years. In those days she never
dreamed she would live out her life in a house meaner than the Negro
houses at home. Her silver, some of which had been in daily use well over a
hundred years, is in use in the little kitchen; there is no dining room. And
there is no bath room. Not of necessity, but for love; love of her son, love
of service is the sacrifice made. Mother Jones, as many of the Mission
people address her, has opened your boxes, distributed clothing, conducted
sales. direted the distribution of Christmas gifts. She taught a devoted class
of girls in the Church School until increasing deafness made teaching
impossible. She is an able and conscientious Godmother to 90 Mission
children. May her plenteous service with little reward in this life be
plenteously rewarded in life eternal.

MANY A CONFESSION in the Mission is terminated: "'Go in peace
now for God bath put away all your sins.' Pray for Father, my child. Be
sure to wash your face and hands clean before coming to make your
communion."

UNWORTHY POOR is the Mission's poor. And unworthy the more
fortunate. The Mission has its "poor but proud," too. Poor youngsters, too
proud to wear clothing of demoted vogues. Mail order illustrations
distributed in free floods keep Sherwood people abreast of styles. They
may not know values. Generally glass gems are as good as true precious
stones. Imitations will answer from hats to shoe sole. They may lack good
taste and prefer the tawdry, but they know the outlines of what was smart
in New York last month. Do not blame our "poor but proud" youngsters
too much for being human. Remember it would take a brave or perhaps an
unpardonably indifferent man to wear today a suit of 1910 or woman to
wear a dinner gown of 1921. And remember there are less proud among the
poor in the Mission who are glad to work over the suits of 1910 and the
dresses of 1921 into useful garments.

UNCLE HENRY (perhaps in relation to his station the most faithful
Christian in the Mission) at 76 is an old man, his once titanic physique
shrunken. The story goes that when well past middle age he was employed
by the railroad. His work was moving ties which are solid timbers 8x10
inches and 8 feet long. Uncle Henry was observed lifting ties to his
shoulder and bearing them

 84



unaided to the appointed place. The foreman said to him, "Look
here, Henry, we are 'two-timing' on this work," meaning that two
men and not one transported each timber. But Uncle Henry, mis-
understanding "two-timing," said cheerily, "All right, Boss," and
managed ' to lift a tic to each shoulder and move them both. The
old man has reared a large family and his children, according
to their ability, are good to him. But like as he finds wells of
living water for his soul's comfort through the Mission also he
finds through the Mission comfort for his body-clothing, medicine,
sometime a little trip, sometime a dimie.

AT A FUNERAL in the Mission a few months ago was buried
supposedly a man who had not lived in Sherwood for many years. After
the funeral the priest was absent from the Mission. Upon his return a small
boy was first to inform, "Father, you know that man you buried? Well,
they dug him up and took him away." The man whose "funeral was
preached," before a large gathering of relations and old friends is still alive.
The body that was mistakenly identified was sent elsewhere for reburial
among true relatives.

RUBE is the most piteous soul in Sherwood. Sixty-seven years old he
has for thirty years been a slave. For thirty years "fast bound in misery
and iron" to a merciless habit that enslaved him in a long and serious
illness. Since that illness, his master, which is habit, has exacted from him,
a laborer, two dollars each day for the narcotic that sustains him, and in
spite of occasional rebellions has held in abject bondage his mind, his will,
his soul. Rube is a liar, is dishonest, not at all trustworthy. He has a keen
mind and an uncannily true estimate of every character in town. He is kind
and infinitely kind to little children. He gained the parent's consent to the
baptism of his grandchildren when the priest was unavailing. Rube is one
of the best workers in town who does not spare himself toiling at odd jobs
early and late in blazing sun, or rain, or ice, or snow to meet the quota of
his master.

Shortly Rube came to the priest and this time unquestionably
sincere said, "Father, I am a man growing old and never yet bent my knee
in church. I surely believe I'll go to hell if I do not repent and be baptized.
Will you baptize me?"

Beloved, what would you do if Rube came to you at the end of a day
wherein he had striven and failed to meet his quota to

 85



his devil? When he was racked with as real pain as flesh knows; when he
was suffering the agonies of the damned for his medicine? What would
Jesus do?

ADVENT. It is night. The high altar in the Mission church where
twice this day He has been present in the Holy Mass is dark. His altar,
hallowed, blessed always because it is His throne, is relatively dark now
because the Presence is withdrawn. Still He abides in my heart. The altar is
dark but a shrine, the infant Godman in the arms of His human mother,
glows in the dark church, foretelling that my poor humanity in obedience
to Him may glow and be glorified.

Rain sweeps the church roof. The wind of winter drives the chilled
rain hard. Someone comes in and kneels near me. The church grows cold
but the chill is negligible in the warmth of His love. At the shrine one blood
red rose reaches to His infant feet, like a symbol of His Sacred Heart. In
blue glass a burning wick in almost spent hot oil gives a flickering light,
throbbing, pulsating as a beating heart, enkindling the Virgin's plaster
mantle to silken fabric virginal blue and gold. The little flame incarnates the
Mother and Child with warm rosy flesh; symbolizes the Light of the
World; glows into the rafters of His house; touches me a sinner . . . and yet
unworthily His beloved.

OUR FATHER  forgive me as I forgive ... love me as I
love.

HAIL MARY . . . (A sword pierced through thy own soul also) ...
FULL OF GRACE ... Give me also thy grace, O Lord, to say "Be it unto
me according to Thy word." BLESSED ART TH0U AMONG WOMEN
... the mother of God ... not of Almighty God the Father . . . but of the
Son of Man . . . the only begotten Son of the Father ... eternal Almighty
God the Son. HOLY MARY ... mother of the Saviour.

O GOD, HOLY GHOST, Comforter, Truth Giver, what greater
comfort can You give, what greater truth can You lead to, what greater
mystery can You show me to contemplate? Obedient humanity.... Be it
unto me according to Thy word", . . . exalted, glorified. Not to worship, but
as our Lord loves and adores her, to love and adore.

Thy grace, O JESUS.... Thy love, O GOD ....Thy fellowship, O HOLY GHOST ... evermore ... Amen.

 86



EASTER, 1938

EASTER. Writes a server of the servers of God, "'Twas in April,
although the day was a bitter day, smacking of winter rather than spring.
Sharp, gusty winds, idly cold, seethed and stormed beneath black
heavens. Forward, and a bit froward, verdure and bloom recoiled
remorseful and penitent. Human kind appeared frost bitten and animals
stood with lowered heads. The elements were neither lovely nor kind that
April day. And I was ill with a ghastly headache accompanied by
devastating nausea.

"Toward evening I lay on my bed utterly exhausted. The day's display
of nature on a cruel rampage would alone have shaken good courage. Not
seriously ill, I was nevertheless racked with pain. My mind was greatly
disordered. I felt death quite near. Through the windows I watched the
dying day that had hurt me. By now the wind barely whispered, as if the
Master had spoken, 'Peace, be still.' The murky silver gray skies were
fading .to darkness. An everywhere of nature seemed so obviously sorry to
have been wicked; seemed so contrite; so subdued. As full darkness
withdrew all things from my sight I found I, too, was subdued. At last the
Master's hand was upon my brow; He had spoken to my turbulent spirit,
'Peace, be still.' Now I felt no pain, no discomfort, only serenity,
tranquillity, peace. Travail and burden bearing lay behind. After storm;
calm. After pain; anodyne. After labor; rest. All things seemed finished.
How passing sweet! Lo, I go with Thee, Lord, my hand in thine.' And by
his side I went down and down into deepest darkness and fell sleep. And
this was death!

"And then resurrection. A new day! I was awake, alive, conscious,
without an ailment in the world; I could leap over the wall. And the new
day was as miraculous as resurrection; foreign to winter, skipping spring,
smacking of summer. Clear bright sunlight warmed my soul to the depths
of the wellsprings of gladness. Trees decked in tender green beckoned to
come out and live. Hyacinths, narcissuses, violets, jasmines, roses utterly
forgetful of yesterday's bitterness, filled the world with rare and magic
perfume that, like incense, went up to God with the prayers of saints.
Happy birds from swaying tree tops sang Solemn Te Deums. And today
the wind was a tender lover, warming, caressing, begetting one's love.
Surely I had entered the edge of Heaven.

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"And so I believe is death. Such is the assurance of Easter. To that
end was our Lord's incarnation, precious death, mighty resurrection. To die
is to pass through darkness; the night of weeping, to reach the morn of
song; to enter the gates of Heaven. Alleluia!"

A WEDDING. From the day the present priest took residence in
Sherwood he was accepted as a priest. A cassock in the post office, on the
street or in the general stores created no apparent surprise; nor was it
shunned. The wearer was asked for an interpretation of scripture; if he
thought it would rain or clear; what he thought a mule or cow might bring in
the market. The priest passing through the town carrying the Blessed
Sacrament to the sick was accorded respect and deference. Not once
through the years has a word of disrespect been spoken in his hearing. Be
that as it may, things were otherwise in the community of Anderson, six
miles south and hard on the border of Alabama. Should the priest pass in a
car, a "Hi, Pappy!" was generally flung after him. But this is no more. The
offenders attended funerals conducted by the priest and became respectful.
Their respect has grown. About half of the rather few couples the priest
marries are the now respectful and affectionate once "Hi Pappies." But a
little while ago an awkward but reverent couple from Anderson, in the
presence of a half dozen awkward but reverent relatives, was married
before the altar in the little chapel. This was the first wedding before an
altar in Sherwood in the 38 years of the Mission's life. It will by no means
be the last.

THEY SHALL NOT FAIL. Tyrants. Dictators. Coercion.
Despicable! How unlovely such attributes and methods for God's priests.
Yet doctors, hospitals, nurses are tyrants and dictators. One puts crie's self
in one's lawyer's hands knowing how disastrous the course might be for
one to act as one's own lawyer. But every man, woman and child, in the
last analysis, will be found sometime or always satisfied to act as his, her
or its own priest. God's priests may preach, may plead, may pray and his
children will often listen with tear filled eyes and tomorrow fail. And then
somewhere a priest who won't be defeated stiffens with some latent,
potent driving force and cries to Heaven, "They shall not fail!" And with
Protruding chin and thin pressed lips lie becomes a holy tyrant; a dictator
who passes among his children. With a smile for each,

 88



a smile that conveys his deepest love for each, but with eyes and
chin telling each, "You shall not fail," never blaming, never scold-
ing, but saying unanswerably as he passes, "Come for your confession 
Saturday." "Be at Mass on Sunday." "Be at the service 
Wednesday.evening." Such approach they seem to love and they do
not fail.

CAME' THIS NOTE, fair, to the point, admirable. "I feel that you are
doing a good work, but so is the Roman Church which I do not support. I
prefer to contribute to a more evangelical type of church work." He feels
the Mission is doing a good work; after all he cannot know. He knows the
Roman Church is doing a good work. The Mission applauds having little
patience with the brethren who disparage good work done by the Roman
brethren or the Holy Roller brethren. He prefers supporting Church work
more nearly conforming to his conception of manifesting Christianity.
Liberal and fair. Then a vestment of woven gold, studded with diamonds,
and with aquamarines for His blessed Mother's color, were such a
vestment possible, the Mission would rather offer to our Lord liberal and
fair minds. The first, the vestment, would mean much to the Mission and,
it is believed, much to Our Lord. But it is utterly certain the first would
mean nothing unless the second was first offered.

MISS FLORENCE who is middle aged is of inestimable worth and of
the saints without which no parish or mission is half complete. Six, five,
four years ago she was, as she was born, a Lutheran. Teaching in the
Sherwood public school she attended, supported, served the Episcopal
Mission church; ever spending beyond her strength and means for every
good work of the Lord's. Splendid with children; likewise splendid with the
poor and sick. Then came the season when Florence knew her position as a
churchwoman was dubious. Perhaps against her will she learned the value,
the reward of peace, of sacramental confession; she discovered that the
Holy Mass had become something that to lose meant spiritual poverty;
and she was confirmed. A devout child of God; a perennial godmother;
superintendent of the Junior Church School and an indefatigable worker
with the Mission children; and intermediary between those cold to the
Mission and whom the Mission seeks; doing the attar flowers often when
weary enough to die; leaving doors ajar to winter's cold; forgetting to turn
off the

 89



lights; Florence is one of the richest blessings vouchsafed Mission labors.

AN OLD CASSOCK. Who can measure the potential worth of an
investment in our Father's business? Who can know, having cast bread
upon the waters, the return? About the time our country was getting into
the World War some two decades ago a Branch of the Auxiliary, a Guild or
some similar organization, (more definite data has long since been
forgotten), sent a young lay reader a cassock, since the lay reader was
active, had no cassock and was unable to purchase one. The cassock served
time in the lowlands of Georgia, then served some years in the highlands of
North Carolina, and finally moved to the Cumberlands of Tennessee.
Numerous the mission and parish altars it has touched. In time the cassock
clothed the once lay reader when he was advanced to the diaconate and
later clothed him when he was priested and was further sanctified by the
priest's first Mass. The old cassock, now rent and darned and rusty, has
long hung in the little sacristy of the Mission church for the occasional use
of servers. Today for a very muddy walk of some miles to a hill home to
baptize infant Juanita, who could not be brought to the church, the priest
wore the old cassock. It seems fitting that the cassock should he cleaned
and mended once more and put away in a cedar chest to be used for an
occasional Christmas, Easter or Whitsunday Mass and for the priest's
burial.

SUMMER, 1938

MARY LEE IN THE RAIN. The summer rain fell in a steady
downpour. Riverlets formed in low ground and the streets were sheeted
with water. Mankind as well as beasts and fowls bad sought shelter. But
not so Mary Lee. Before the rain Mary Lee had come down the mountain
to town for a pail of lard and was still in the store when the rain came.
How urgently the lard was needed at home is not known, but it is known
that Mary Lee waited only long enough for the rain to reach the teeming
stage before she started home. And so she passed the Mission church,
dressed in her Sunday clothes, bareheaded and with her two long plaits of
yellow hair tied with two large bows of ribbons that might have been
passed down to her from the first year of the century. Scorning sidewalk
she pursued her way down the very middle of the

 90



street, her leather shoes submerging at each step. In her left hand she
carried the pail of lard and from her right she ate a rainsogged ice cream
cone. Mary Lee, drenched, rain streaming down her face, going home. Calm,
placid, unruffled. Mary Lee in the pooring rain, as serenely casual as the
cherubs at the feet of Raphael's Sistine Madonna. Mary Lee, Mission child.
Lord Jesus, bless and keep your lamb.

SWEET CHARITY. "Dear Lord, Rube is knocking at my door again.
Begging. It is his third visit today, his twentieth within the week. The sight
of him, making me conscious of his misery, makes me most uncomfortable,
actually gives me pain. He has been coming to my door for years, be is
cracking my nerves, please, Lord, send him away forever."

"Inasmuch as you do unto him, my son, you do unto Me."

"But, Lord, Rube spends all I can give him for morphine. It is like
throwing alms into the sea. Besides one simply cannot .take care of all the
drug addicts, the pity of their plight is tragic but one simply cannot
alleviate all the misery in the world."

"You have never been asked to assuage all the misery in the world but
only try to do your little part. Rube is the only drug addict in your charge,
just one whose burden you may help bear, one opportunity for the
exercise of your charity."

"True, Lord. And please, Lord, define charity for me again."

"Charity, my son, is now and always will be the most essential
goodness required by Me and my Father of my children. Though
you believe in Me with a faith that will move mountains, even
though you give your body to the stake for my sake, and have
no t charity it profiteth you nothing. Charity suffereth long. Char-
ity is infinite patience with the Rubes in one's life. Is kind. Charity
is being as kind to every living creature as one is to one's self.
Vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, thinketh no evil. Charity
enshrines humility, the greatest godly virtue. Charity remembers
ones own sins somehow as equal to those of the Rubes. Charity
magnifies the Rubes! virtues and leaves their sins to the One just
judge."

"But, Lord, Rube is a notorious liar and thief. He steals coal from the
church; he sold the church a hoe in the morning and stole it back in the
afternoon."

"May I tell you, my son, that Rube often cries out to Me,

91



'Lord, be merciful to me a sinner,' but that he has never once confessed
your sins to Me? As for Rube's transgressions they are all the more reason
for your charity. You cannot and must not condone Rube's sins but you
must remember that any publican would be charitable to Rube if he were
worthy and virtuous and charming. Only my faithful children are charitable
to my poor unworthy black sheep."

"Yes, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Please pour your grace and charity and
courage into my poor soul.

MORNING PRAYER is sometimes disparaged by the catholic
minded of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Of course it is to be deplored
that some parishes still make Morning Prayer the chief service of the day.
The office has sweetness and beauty as well as dignity and majesty all its
own. Sonic years ago the priests who ministered in the Mission were of the
opinion that Sherwood people were pleased with no service without a
sermon and ale sermon long. 'The truth is the people like sermons but
definitely dislike long sermons. However, frequently in the Mission church
both Morning and Evening Prayer are said exactly as in the Book except for
a hymn sung before and one after, with no sermon, and for that matter not
one jot or tittle otherwise appended, and the congregation seems to love it
so. Probably the Mission people have never considered whether they love
and appreciate Morning and Evening Prayer but doubtless the offices are
one of the most gratifying habits they have formed through the years.

TEMPLES of Immortal Souls warrant every Christian's guardianship.
The protection of bodies against ill health; the repair of bodies when
broken is Christian responsibility. The greater number of Sherwood people
grow up improperly nourished and inadequately nurtured; easy prey for
disease. Year after year the Mission's little procession of bodies, some that
they may remain as well and as strong as they are, others that they may be
repaired, marches onward through clinics, into dentist's chairs, through
hospitals. Even the cases obtaining preventive treatment are serious. David
is at this time going to a dentist for the first time. Splendid teeth! He is 20
years old and has not one single cavity. But he barely got to the dentist
soon enough. A disease of the gums had commenced its deadly work. A
few more years of neglect would have resulted in broken health and lost
teeth. The

 92



Mission cannot cure all the ills in Sherwood but through you, praise God,
it does a splendid part. And through the charity of doctors, dentists,
hospitals the healing power of your gift is multiplied some tenfold.

WORSHIP in the Mission church occupies so few of the hours that
fill a week's time. Yet in a recent week the Mass was offered every
morning and twice on Sunday, Evening Prayer was said on Sunday and
Wednesday, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament was given on Thursday,
Confessions were heard on Saturday, three times on Saturday and Sunday
there were baptisms, and the Bishop preached after confirming a class of
19 on Monday within the week.

NOBLESSE OBLIGE. Lately a young man, a candidate for Holy
Orders, brought to the attention of the Mission a letter to him from a
distant Bishop. Although short the letter was so noteworthy that the
Mission asked for a copy which has been studied from time to time.
Granted that the young man has made large mistakes it must be presumed
that the Bishop has also made large mistakes unless he is miraculously
superior to one Bishop Peter and one Bishop Paul. Granted that much
blame falls on the shoulders of Bishops it must be acknowledged that some
of it must belong as upon the shoulders of all mankind. Granted that often
much is read into what has been written that the writer never intended. But
the Bishop's short letter in answer to the erring young man's query is
contemptuous, scornful, sneering, totally lacking in sweet charity, totally
lacking in common courtesy. Doubtless this particular Right Reverend
Father in God is a kindly Christian soul; doubtless he was tired, hot,
righteously exasperated; and doubtless lie for the moment forgot that
spiritual or temporal nobility and rank imposes obligations if not of
Christ's sweet charity then certainly of common courtesy.

PRECIOUS JERRY, who is 5 was taken to see the 58-foot Latin
cross, memorial to University of the South's World War dead. The cross on
the mountain top at Sewanee may be seen for miles from the valleys below.
Jerry viewed the cross with a puzzled expression and asked, "But where is
God? It is empty." Therein is so much to make clear to His little ones, so
much as simple and as difficult as the Trinity; one God, three Persons.
How meaningless unless we can visualize the cross empty when after His
sacrifice of

 93



Himself once offered He was removed and buried and the third day rose
again. How meaningless unless we grasp that His dying upon the cross is a
full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins
of the whole world offered in every moment and hour and day in all
endless time and eternity.

FRED, who six years ago was so naive (and still is) and who
"destinguished" the candles after serving a mass as reported in the Third
Mission Booklet, now 19, after 14 months in the Navy has just visited the
Mission. At 19 young to have for 14 months experienced life so crudely
raw he returned neither in a state of untried innocence nor of victorious
virtue. But it was a blessing to have him come home and make a good
confession, serve two masses, make his communion, be seen at his prayers
and blessing himself before and after meals. 'Twas good to find him to a
large degree loyal to the Christian nurture of his childhood.

CLARA MAE, too, came home for a week-end faithful to her duties
to make her communion at her home altar. Clara Mae's destiny the priest
foresaw some years ago when the question box was so popular in the
Mission at which time she asked such intelligent questions pertaining to
Christian faith. Clara Mae who asked the priest to attend her mother's
death and conduct her burial; who made her first confession, was baptized
and confirmed in the Mission church; who graduated from St. Mary's
School; who brought her brother and nieces and nephews to baptism and
confirmation in the Mission church; who is taking nurse training 10O miles
front the Mission; who is pure and fine and good. Alas! that the Mission
must lose all of its best children to parishes in cities where they find
employment bemuse Sherwood has nothing to offer them except the
Church.

THE PRIEST'S HOUSE. Year after year members of the Mission's
Greater Congregation have read in The Booklet paragraphs concerning the
great need of a home for the Mission priest. The home has been supplied.
One of God's saints who makes life richer and happier for many of His
children, who has visited the Mission and worshipped in the Mission
church, who has for years done much to keep the Mission alive and active,
gave the priest in the spring a lovely home for a 50th birthday gift. The
house with a large garden is just across the street from the church. Roomy,
comfortable, with all conveniences the home fills the

 44



priest's heart with happiness and gratitude and particularly be-
cause his mother who chose to live so long with him in a miserable
house now lives so pleasantly. Truly the house is a blessing from
heaven! Why then a single qualm? Simply because one wonders
if living in such luxury is proper imitation of Him whose priest
he is who now lives in such luxury. However, the priest says many
a thanksgiving for one long prayer answered, one fond dream come
true, one great aim accomplished.

WHAT WEARINESS, heaviness, lassitude brings with a duty done
such great relief and a sighing "That's done. Thank you, Lord," is not
known. Perhaps extending age. Perhaps fatigue. But whatever the cause it
now so often recalls those half sad, half joyous lines, "One by one our
duties end, one by one the lights go out."

AUTUMN, 1938

A HYMN might be sung of the church garden or of the church doves
or of the mountains hemming in the church-which mountains are now
changing from lush summer greenness to golden autumn glory. But no
hymn could be sung of more interesting or lovely subjects than God's
Mission children. Bud is pictured at your left on the front cover of the
Booklet. Bud, whose bare feet have padded the sanctuary as he has served
at the altar faithfully through so many years. Bud is still such a small boy
and yet grasps the Catholic faith better than most. Once Bud heard the
priest exclaim with exasperated inflection, "Bless my soul!" and he looked
quite shocked and pained and said "That was the first time I ever heard
you 'cuss' and I hope you will never 'cuss' again." Bud with the hot blood
of youth coursing through his not quite robust young body, who is
overflowing with audacious, impish mischief that never daunts his sincere
piety. The only member of a family of 7 who says his night prayers
regularly (a bit of faithfulness that shames his family). Will Bud like some
after a long period of faithfulness turn away or will he like others find
some impelling urge to remain faithful? God grant him fidelity through
endless always.

CREDO, with all heart and soul, that the faithful dead are alive for
evermore, that the prayers of militant souls that expectant souls may
grow in His love and service aid those expectant souls

 95



toward the state of triumph, that sweet communion with the dear departed
is very real, very actual, very close at His altar because Be is wholly
present and we the living and the beloved we call dead are all in Him and
He is in all of us. But were there no certainty in the soul, in the soul's mind,
were the whole most precious belief but belief in a fable as some scholars
now and through all the years declare, still, the then myth of our Lord's
resurrection, of immortal life, of the precious belief that the All Souls'
Masses comfort and aid those loved long since and lost awhile were more
priceless than any other profound truth wholly proven in the whole world.

O! Beloved, when he who writes passes pray for his soul. Ask,
please, a Requiem Mass at your altar, remember him on every All Souls'
Day (not on All Saints' because only after aeons of time in the fuller life
dares he hope to deserve to be honored with saints).

A FUNERAL this past summer is worthy of note. A girl of 17 died of
a ruptured appendix because medical aid was sought too late. The family is
not a Mission family but favors the Mission church; is of the fringe which
may sometime be assimilated into the fabric. The Mission priest was asked
to conduct the burial, such a burial as he often has which is in a measure
churchly but must make concessions to the customs of the primitive
mountain people. Such concessions in the long run win souls to the whole
Catholic faith. The priest called upon the heartbroken family whose grief
was real and loud and uncontrolled and some measure of comfort was
given. The priest was assured that the girl had been sweet, lovable, good.
Was she baptized? No. Had she any religious inclinations? She had
sometime said she would like to attend the Episcopal Sunday School. What
were the family's wishes as to the funeral? "We want you to preach her
into heaven, father!" At least they did not desire her consigned to hell as
probably their native preachers would in her adult unbaptized state consign
her. "But father, in so doing you will have to determine your own platform,
we do not know what to suggest."

The largely attended funeral was conducted at the grave. Perhaps 10
minutes were devoted to the Prayer Book Office, a few minutes to
lugubrious singing, fully 20 minutes to last views of the corpse,
lamentation in traditional phrases, much proposed fainting

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and applying of camphor water brought in large bottles. The oration of 10
minutes duration had much to do with the Catholic faith. May His good
child neglected for 17 years by Mission priests perhaps because they were
over burdened somehow rest in peace. The "platform" must have been
acceptable because the family was pleased and two Mission women said,
"Father, we know you do riot like to preach (at) funerals but won't you
please make just a little talk like you did today at our funerals?" God
willing, he will.

THE CATHOLIC FAITH the Mission priest has felt impelled
through the past 6 years to put forward in the Mission and in the Booklet.
Had the priest been satisfied to touch lightly and speak but little of the
Catholic conception of Holy Communion, sacramental penance, veneration
of the Lord's mother and other saints of God's great family, such devotions
as the Stations and the Rosary; had he been satisfied to present a nominal
Catholicism, an inoffensive churchmanship and to harp upon humane
efforts and achievements the Mission would perhaps have had a somewhat
larger Mission congregation, a much larger Greater Congregation, surely
twice as much support and much less than half as much holy joy and
satisfaction.

RITUAL. There is one simplicity loving catholic who also loves being
present at services in the parish and cathedral churches of the protestant
wing of that branch of the Holy Catholic Church officially known as the
Protestant Episcopal Church to which the catholic belongs. He enjoys the
superlative ritual often employed although he cannot always follow it. The
big parade, the organ soaring, crucifer with cross aloft, flag unfurled, vested
choir and academic hoods flaunting. (To the poor catholic academic hoods
seem utterly unchristian but perhaps they are merely sour grapes to him).
Then what more majestic bit of ritual in a thousand churches than the
presentation of alms. The parade of the alms takers, left, right, left, right,
up the aisles, generally to acolytes who take the basins and deliver them to
one in orders who in turn delivers them to the celebrant who holds them
aloft before the altar while organ peals and choir turned eastward joined by
the congregation in tones triumphantly, "All things come of thee O Lord
and of thine own have given thee." The back of the poor catholic's neck
tingles with ecstasy. The gesture is so filled

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with majesty and glory that he hears the unrolled roll of drums and the roar
of cannon which in truth have not been fired. That indeed seems the
pompous high point of the celebration in relation to which the consecration
of the elements is dwarfed. But later there is the extinguishing of altar
candies before a hushed and reverent congregation a member of which it
seems would rise from his knees only at peril of excommunication and
eternal damnation. And finally the prayer intoned from the sacristy for the
benefit of the congregation. (After ample opportunity for prayers with and
for the congregation why not a quiet prayer of dismissal for altar
attendants and choir in the sacristy?) It is ritual sublime!

As for the poor catholic he likes rich Mass vestments. and incense
which is unquestionably a stench in the nostrils of innumerable righteous
and even votive candles which sear the souls of some saintly Christians.
God bless us all, diverse but in the same fold, bishops, priests, deacon,
lay people, all but grown up, little children, trying faithfully to worship
Thee, Thy children.

TWO BARBER SHOPS there were in Sherwood. Now there is one.
Bill, the barber who until just recently kept the now empty shop had not
lived long in Sherwood. He had never been in the Mission church but was
invariably present at the funerals conducted by the Mission priest in
homes or at graves. That was about all to the relationship between the
barber and the priest but there must have been something about the
funerals that interested the barber in the priest's religion. For one late
afternoon when the priest was feeding the church pigeons a small boy came
running to him and said, "That barber has killed himself, father, and he
wants you."

He had tried for his heart with a shot gun and missed a little. Shot
guns are so devastating! He had fallen too broken to be moved outside his
shop door. The priest knelt beside him while lie cried, "Father Jones.
Father Jones." "How long doctor?" asked the priest. "Any minute." And
the barber cried, "Father, I'm dying; read the Bible to me. I do not want to
die, father." "Bill, have you been baptized?" "Yes, father, in the Methodist
church." For a little space he was gone, then back by a thread. The crowd
shut in the doctor and the priest beside him. His old mother knelt in his
blood and kissed her son goodbye.

"The Lord be in your heart and on your lips that you may

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confess all of your sins. . . . Bill, are you sorry, do you repent of killing
yourself?" "Yes, God knows I'm sorry. " "Tell God whether you are sorry
for all your sins-lying, stealing, impurity, this murder and all else you
cannot remember now." "I'm sorry, God." "Bill, if you are straight, if you
truly repent, God forgives you everything and you will be all right." Bill
took the priest's hand in his bloody hands and kissed it and clung to it.

"O God the Father; Have mercy ...." and after the Litany for the
Dying, Absolution and thrilling Commendation committing the passing
soul to the protection of Triune God, "Depart, O Christian soul.... In the
Name of God ... who created thee ... Name of the Holy Ghost who
sanctifieth thee.... May thy rest be this day in peace in the paradise of
God."

And the barber died.

"EVEN from my youth up, thy terrors have I suffered with a
troubled mind."

 BELOVED OF the Mission's Greater Congregation somewhere out
there beyond our Sherwood mountains, do you realize that your Mission
might praise and worship God, hear the gospel preached, baptize His
children and try to satisfy His hungry and sick and fail unless an attractive
and interesting Booklet reached you now and again? Not enough to harvest
souls, to "make the best mouse traps," the laborer must find his hire and
the means with which to labor. Lots of good money is spent on the
Booklet for exactly the same reason manufacturers pay $5,70O a page to
advertise in Life. Through 6 years the most attractive Booklets have
brought the best returns. However, the last Booklet, the 25th, brought as a
whole the lowest returns of any of the series, which sad fact has left the
Mission right thoroughly embarrassed.

AVEN died a few weeks ago. His was the second death in the
congregation of St. Anne's since Fr. Miller commenced the mission for
Sherwood negroes. Aven was confirmed last spring by Bishop Demby. In
poor health for some time he was ill for 10 days and was given Unction a
week before his death. The Requiem Mass was very sweet because the
congregation is like a family, the members have strong and child-like faith
and all (save one child away in school) were so reverently present and
made their communions.

DESPISE WELL some poor, vile, revolting wretch, perhaps

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some booring egomaniac, certainly offending your taste and transgressing
your codes and be well assured that similar is your measure in the eyes,
ears and nostrils of at least some one.

THE LITTLE CHAPEL in the Mission church is 10 x 20 feet in size.
Here the Holy Sacrifice is offered some 250 mornings a year. In the chapel
is not one seat, worshipers stand or kneel.

VISITORS reached the Mission in larger number than ever before this
summer ended. One day 7 cars, no two having license tags from the same
state and no two arriving in the Mission at the &me time, brought 35
visitors. At a low celebration of the Mass at 8 o'clock one Sunday morning
9 of the congregation of 96 were visitors from 5 states. It has been very
gratifying to count visitors by hundreds and have them seem pleased with
the Mission.

CHRISTMAS TREES bear fruit in proportion to the fertility of the
soil in which they grow. Mission Christmas trees bear prolific or scant
crops according to your interest. The trees of 1936 were too fruitful while
the trees of last Christmas produced a short crop. The cold-blooded,
practical remedy to produce uniform crops would he for you to send your
investment in the trees in money. Thus postage would be saved and an
over-supply of some things and a woeful shortage of others avoided. The
priest with a list of names could spend a day in Chattanooga dime stores
buying gifts suitable for those to receive them which would be easier than
trying to allot appropriate gifts from a partly inappropriate assortment.
But such remedy would be joy-killing to the Greater Congregation and it is
not proposed.

For infants rubber toys are most desired. For girls' dolls, sewing sets,
perfume and cake powder. For boys knives, harmonica and flashlights. For
all, including men and women, Bibles, Prayer Books, clothing, stockings
and socks. Tooth brushes and paste are heartily endorsed by the priest.
These are but a few suggestions. It is very difficult to send you a
comprehensive list but if a few Mission children young or old, could be
sent you would know at once the right gifts.

It is difficult also to send you an idea of how much the trees and gifts
matter. It must be true that the trees are in the thoughts of the Mission
children every day in the year, half the Year re-

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membering the thrilling joy, half the year in eager anticipation. "ONLY
God and I know What is in my heart."

CHRISTMAS, 1938

BE IT KNOWN that the Booklet is sometime written on the wing, a
paragraph just before going to bed perhaps or in the car one day on the
back of an envelope. Sufficient time seems impossible to find to assort the
scraps and type the relatively long manuscript. The proof of a Booklet is
meticulously labored over and even then glaring mistakes mar the finally
printed words. Sometime when a Booklet is finished the editor burns with
shame at something he has written, seeing in the cold print himself or
having some gently reproving friend point out sarcasm, unkindness, or
some other shameful thing. Arrogance, meanness, ignorance are such subtle
sins, creeping in so quietly and unawares to throttle meekness, kindness
and wisdom that were sometime fatuously fancied impregnable virtues
impregnably possessed.

CHRISTMAS. Almighty God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob, the Eternal Father to be loved with all heart and soul and mind and
to be obeyed to the last line and precept was enthroned in faraway heaven,
distant, intangible.

Mandkind upon earth suffered. Strong nations raped weak nations.
Capital exploited labor and labor squirmed to sit in the seat of capital.
Youth was godless, maturity longed for social security, age wanted a
pension and to be young again. Some pious longed for Messiah's coming
for the consolation of Israel.

"Hail Mary, thou that are highly favored, the Lord is with thee,
blessed art thou among women." And Mary said, "Behold the handmaid of
the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word." In other words, God's will
be done,- in me. Myself I give to His will utterly that this incalculable
thing may come to pass. And the angel departed from her.

And God became flesh and dwelt among us, tangible, touchable,
understandable upon an altar throne of straw. The Incarnation. The Union
of Godhead with manhood. Nativity, pledge of perpetual Incarnation. The
Union of Godhead with Bread and Wine. The Union of Godhead with
souls.

Sad. Today mankind still outrages mankind. Relatively few

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souls are offered for union with God. Little is cared for the daily
Incarnation at the altar. No other feast in the year will by so many be
attentively observed as Christmas yet to most the feast will be without
Christ. Very sad.

O Beloved, how blessed you are above all kindreds and all nations.
Your Christmas with Christ! O little town of Bethlehem. O Sherwood. 0
anywhere meek souls will receive Him, still the dear Christ enters in.
Yours the knowledge and faith and consummation. You will receive Him.
He will be re-born in your soul. Christ, the one medicine for what ails as
and for what ails the bleeding world,

MIDNIGHT MASS. I am a student at the door of my 22nd year,
Since I was born my religious life has centered in cassocked priests,
confessions and masses. Often I have felt rebellious because of all the
monks and nuns cluttering my life. I have been attending Midnight
Masses enveloped in incense since probably before I was old enough to
attend. What I am trying to express is that the experience could be neither
novel nor new. Of course the Christmas Masses always impress me
profoundly but when I as a visitor attended the Midnight Mass in
Epiphany Mission last Christmas I was not prepared for translation to
heaven. Nothing new, and yet before I entered the Mission church at
midnight I was awed and once inside I was delirious. I was there, yet not
there. I lost consciousness of body, my mind was there but no longer
capable of dealing with earthly things. There was the altar before me with
candles gleaming through smoke and I did not at all feel sure that it was not
a heavenly vision. There were rows of human forms in the pews but to me
they were ghosts, the church was peopled with spirits. Our Lady and her
God Child enshrined amidst candles and flowers were as alive to me as any
forms present. There was music, probably ordinary enough actually, but,
to me exquisite music, ethereal music, the music of heavenly harps and
angels' voices. And our Lord, come down to the Cup and Wafer, was far
more real than my own presence. He all, I nothing. it was a ghostly Mass,
like sweetest heaven, like a vision, and I, a mortal, was for the hour lifted
up into immortality. - Contributed.

To PRAISE small virtues believes the Mission priest is more
efficacious in making good churchmen than to damn grave faults. Fault-
finding seems only to beget faults whereas if some good deed

 102



or duty done is honestly praised certainly goodness is stimulated to
overcome evil. And it would seem no matter how dark the prospect
something can be found worthy of sincere praise. The priest was calling
upon Maggie who had been most remiss in her church duties. The home
was rather like a pig sty, the scanty supply of dishes unwashed, dirty beds
unmade. Maggie and the children were really filthy. What on earth to
praise? Without any realization of having been searching the priest was
rather surprised at tile enthusiasm of his voice as his eyes came to rest at
the fire place. "Maggie, what fine ashes!" Piles of hardwood ashes on the
hearth because no one had moved them, but ashes lately burned, clean, the
cleanest thing in the house. "These ashes remind me of the great ash-
hoppers full at home when I was a child. From the ashes they made all the
soap for the farm." Truly visions came flooding of scrubbed piazza floors
at the plantation house, of scrubbed Negro cabins. "These are splendid
ashes, Maggie, they make me feel young and happy and to remember all the
lovely clean smells of long ago." Maggie's soiled face glowed with pride.

The following Sunday Maggie, her husband and her children, all as
resplendent as if they had been scoured with old-fashioned potash soap
were early in the Church for Mass.

GARSON is a fictitious name chosen for a composite Sherwood boy
(chosen perhaps bemuse Garners and Eppersons; predominate). Let
Garson be 15. His not robust body is underweight and marked with scars
from burns and sores. He is dirty, all winter long his baths are confined to
his face and hands and occasionally his feet but his hair is always liberally
dressed with brilliantine. His summer baths are unsoaped swims in the
creek. He smokes cigarettes and has since he was 3 or 4. He gave tip his
education around the 5th or 7th grade. Most children go to school in
Sherwood if and when they like. The teachers care. The best citizens are
very, very mildly interested. It seems nothing ran be done about it.

Garson is satisfied and does not aspire. He loves unrestrained liberty
and his parents rarely interfere. He eats and sleeps in the shelter of home,
such as it is. He will work long enough to earn the admission charge
happens a show to come to town. He may be wholly trustworthy, he may
be a scoundrel.

The Mission has been Garson's greatest urge to respectabiliy

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as well as to God. Garson has been baptized. He has learned to face,
sometime at least, his defections and confess them to his Lord. The
Mission has been the most helpful agency in his life. The priest is often
weary and discouraged but he remembers he did not in the first place come
to Sherwood to dwell with angels nor to reform mankind, rather to seek and
save the lost, rather to point folk as they are to sainthood. The Mission
wishes to make no silk purses but it will long doggedly labor to make its
sow's ears the cleanest, most self-respecting, God-fearing sow's ears in
Christendom.

THE CHRISTMAS TREE will be as a forest, it will be as all the
plantations of Christmas trees in the world, the gifts it bears will equal in
import all the cargoes that sail the seven seas. The crowd that will gather
for the trees will be stimulated by feverish exultation and piercing
eagerness. The hour will be six in the evening and the place the Community
House. By four the earliest guests will commence to arrive. Admission will
be by ticket and when the doors are opened even an officer of the law who
will be present will find it not easy to prevent a stampede. Once inside it
will be very difficult to force a way through the crowd in the assembly
room. There will be a holy pageant enacted by the children under
Florence's teaching and guidance. The people want their pageant. It has
been thought that in their eagerness to receive their gifts the delay of a
program would be irksome but such thought is far from the truth. Santa
Claus is generally very reticent, it is difficult to find a dynamic one in
Sherwood. To have recipients come forward to receive their gifts will be all
but impossible, they will be too thick to move. Young men will put the
gifts, as eagerly received by the old as by the young, into their hands. As
they leave the building each will be given a small bag of fruit and candy.

The tree represents more hard work, more long hours of preparation
than any other event within the year. The greatest care is exercised and yet
immediately the party is over children come who were overlooked or
whose gifts were lost and such are generally satisfied before they go.
Others come not pleased with their gifts, and sometime the gifts are not at
all fitting and adjustment goes on for a few days. But as a whole happiness
is supreme. You can not understand it, Beloved. However little you have
had you have

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had too much, your desire and your gratification have dulled. They have
had nothing.

Comes just now, as comes each December, that gnawing anxiety as to
whether gifts will be sufficient. They must be otherwise it would be the
meanest cruelty imaginable.

INDIAN SUMMER in November. The love of God constrains His
child to conceive that the mountains have walled Sherwood into a vast
cathedral with the arch of the firmament its dome. All the day long the
heavenly dome and all its roofs have declared His glory. In the cathedral,
gold. The trees holding half their leaves are bright red gold, the corn is
ruddy gold and the warm light filtered through autumn haze is pale glowing
gold. The earth smells of ripeness, ripe harvest, ripe apples, ripe fodder,
spicy and sweet. The last warmth of the aging year is tenderly caressing.
The day is breathless. There is neither speech nor language but nature is
very dear, "Be still. Know God in the work of His hands."

And then day is done and the shadows of the evening as the vanguards
of night steal across the sky. The mountain squarely west of Sherwood
becomes the high altar of the cathedral. Fallen leaves carpeting the temple
and raked into a hundred mounds by a hundred thurifers make incense and
the smoke rises thick before the mighty altar and dims the great cathedral as
it climbs, spirals, weaves upward and upward into the celestial dome. The
sinking sun all day long veiled by golden haze at last becomes visible, then
portentous, as the huge disk above the mountain altar sinks lower, lower to
the altar throne and into the far flung monstrance of golden sunset clouds.
The sun, through the haze of incense the color of blood, even His precious
Blood, is the symbol of the Host in benediction. The gates of heaven seem
opened very wide to man below.

O Jesus, now the day is done, with Thy tenderest blessings of calm
and sweet repose, put Thou weary Sherwood people to bed like little
children all.

The great altar is dark and it is night.

EASTER, 1939

THE SHEPHERD of Sherwood sometime discouraged by the
apparent futility of shepherding such unworthy and wayward black
sheep as are in his charge remember how the Great Shep-

 105



herd is patient with His poor Sherwood shepherd's wayward
unworthiness and shepherds on.

I H S. Once upon a time there was a child starving for the Catholic
religion for which he has only an instinct and could gain little more because
none with knowledge of the faith came his way. Ahungered even as to the
meaning of symbols he asked Catholics who in time became them the
meaning of I H S. I HAVE SUFFERED was for years the only answer.
The child grew to maturity and knowledge and even a state of meticulosity
wherein the definition qiNen him as a child was scorned. Now older, not so
wise, less meticulous he wonders if I HAVE SUFFERED is not the best
definition he has known.

 I am ... Life," saith the Lord. "He that believeth in me ... shall never die." There is no death. The mortal must put on immortality.

Perhaps of all things conceivable nothing could be less desirable than
eternal physical life. The burden of years, the weariness, the pain! The
cruel mystery of the pain. Sweet innocent babes or the so fair young often
broken and tormented. Mental torture that victimizes indiscriminately.
Men and women, just, good, kind, dealing with life so fairly and then
stretched on the rack of torture before death is merciful. Why pain O God?

Were mortal life the beginning and end what a senseless and
unreasonable thing perpetrated by a cruel Creator God it would be. But in
the hands of a loving Creator, through Christ, mortal becomes immortal, the
imperfect perfect, neither helpless in youth nor depleted by age, rather
prime, invulnerable, above pain. Christ is Life Eternal. Each soul, with its
personality and knowledge is eternal.

On the road to Emmaus on first Easter Day our Lord asked, "Ought
not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?" Does
pain in the light of Easter and eternal life make sense then? Ought His
children to stiffer and finally to enter into His glory? Regard those great
souls, still on our side of the grave, who have become god-like in
compassion through suffering. Who their may predict the immortal glory of
bewildered mortals now tortured in the crucible of pain? Why should not
the I H S upon His Sacred Heart remind His children that he has borne and
understands all pain? Why should not the glorified wound

 106



scars of pain become the holy symbol, I H S, precious above sceptors and
tiaras, upon the souls of mortals become immortals, marking the wearers as
greatest in the Kingdom of God?

GEORGE, 12 years old, had been a faithful altar server for a year. For
two years he had missed few Sunday Masses. He was a normal imp, not
too bad, reverent where reverence was due, precious. Then, last fall, he
commenced to fail to appear on his mornings to serve. Soon he failed to
appear at the church at all and it followed naturally that lie avoided the
priest and that is rarely done in Sherwood. Here was a strange thing,
unprecedented, a boy backsliding with Christmas upon him and drawing
nearer each day. When all small boys were polishing their halos, steaming
their black eyes and saying their prayers George was growing more
adamant, possessed of the devil and the truth was not in him. In the end he
did not come for his Christmas confession which was his initial failure in
that duty since his first.

Even in the extraordinary todo of Christmas the priest felt keenly the
pain the self-exiled little fellow suffered and kept him in his prayers. (The
priest was sympathetic because lie has within his experience been as
unreasonable as Georgie). Christmas, when the Mission is like Heaven on
earth, and that small lad outside! Some of his companions insisted to him
that lie Would have no part, no shoes nor sweater nor toy. However his
Christmas tree ticket was of course sent to him as if he had been good and
he was present at the tree. A few days later to the priest he came of his
own volition, a heart-broken little penitent and between the two his
defections have never since been mentioned. For the past 12 weeks he has
been consumed with holy zeal. Whether the evil spirit was lodged in his
little liver or his soul is not known.

"THEY ROSE up in the morning early, and worshipped before the
Lord." The privilege of offering the Mass early each morning is very
precious. Yet, when one walks only a few blocks or rides any number in
comfort to the church the duty done seems very small. When one walks
from one's home 5 miles away, when one braves the descent of a mountain
paved with ice, or wades through frigid flood, or defies ones illness to be
present when the Mass is offered it seems one has done a more
worthwhile thing. This morning while cold rain poured and the wind swept
it like bullets against the roof the Mass was offered in the Mission church.
The

 107



half dark of the stormy morning brightened only by two altar candies, in
the chapel 10 x 20 feet in size, where there are no seats and where each
damp kneeling worshiper touched another worshiper and the nearest the
altar touched the server and the server touched the priest the whole Body
of Christ offered the whole Body of Christ, our only Mediator and
Advocate offered the Lamb of God to the Eternal Father, the Supreme
Sacrifice, the Divine Gift. God was offered to God. "It is the Mass that
matters" in the Mission.

"O MY PEOPLE, what have 1 done unto thee? Wherein have I
wearied thee?" So rings the anguish in the priest's heart when those of his
Sherwood flock or those of his Greater Congregation turn away. He does
not pretend that his pain approaches our Lord's pain when He turned to
His few faithful and asked, "Will ye also go away?" But there is a hurt. In
happy moments the priest sings Te Deums because of the vast number
who succor God's poor but when his people have failed to provide and lie
must send the suffering needy empty away he feels with St. Francis,
"There are none left to love the poor but God and me!" However, this too
is true; when the Greater Congregation fails to provide, when the home
flock grows cold, when suffering which could be assuaged with means
continues for lack of means the priest cries with St. Catherine, "My sins!
My sins are the cause of all." Sufficient his very own poor example, his
failures, his mistakes to cause his people to turn away, to cause his people
to fail to desire to satisfy the needs of the poor.

TRIBUTE to whom tribute is due. The Mission priest when young
had one Andrea to come into his life and become his friend and give him the
Catholic religion, previously picked up in crumbs, in precious abundance.

Later came Father Harris and Father Lobdell. To look upon either was
to long to be Christlike for as they simply walked the earth they presented
Christianity so winsomely that one saw it as a state insatiably desired.
Today 30 priests active in the Church admit that their greatest incentive to
Holy Orders was Father Harris. Father Lobdell baptized his thousands and
sent his hundreds Home in peace with all Holy Church could bestow. If
one Mass can possibly be holier than another their daily Masses were the
holiest the Mission priest has known.

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Finally there was Ellen, brilliant, traveled, the Church her chief
interest, Catholic to the marrow. As a liturgist or ceremonialist she was
letter perfect, even headache given in her precision in subtleties, training
the unspecting priest-to-be in so much he has since shamefully forgotten.

Many laymen and many priests have through the years been kind and
most helpful in making the Mission priest what he is today and his heart is
full of gratitude but in the hands of Andrea, Father Harris, Father Lobdell
and Ellen the priest was finished long before he was a priest and those are
responsible for Catholic faith and practice as in the Mission today. May
God's richest blessings rest upon Andrea still in the flesh. Father Harris,
Father Lobdell and Ellen are remembered before the Mission altars daily.
May they rest in peace.

PRINNEY is an unlovely name for a comely child. Prin from Prince
and ney from Haney. Do you remember Garson, the composite Sherwood
boy? Prinney will be his composite sister at the age of 15 years. Prinney
has no realization of how poor she has been all of her life, having never
known security nor tasted wealth. But with a change of clothing at best and
quite uncertain about the next meal she manages to curl her hair and paint
her nails. The urge in her to primp is irresistible even as in many is the
irresistible urge to piety. Many times a day trains roar through Sherwood
with cars from New York or Miami, and planes pan overhead, but Prinney
has never seen a large town. This year she is finishing her education with
the tenth grade, all that is offered in the Sherwood school.

Prinney's chief thought is her boy friend and they are generally in the
church together for Prinney is faithfully religious as may well be the boy.
The boy is a serious business because whether she does or not, and the
chances are about 7 to 1 she will, she intends to marry him within a year
or two.

Prinney, darling child, the truth is you are a very crude and silly
young woman and when you come in out of the air it is very obvious that
you have always needed a bath but are God's child and the Mission loves
you and when you many Garson the Mission will bless your wedding,
perhaps help guide you through marital quarrels, and will stand by when
your children are born and baptize them and when your life is done send
you Home

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shriven and pray for your soul while the seasons blasphemously or
tenderly pass over your grave and after.

SUMMER 1939

WHEREFORE THE MASS? That which is sometime called Holy
Communion our Lord did institute, and in His Holy Gospel command us
to continue, a perpetual memory of that His precious death and sacrifice
until His coming again. So we have in remembrance His passion and death,
even His bloody death upon the cross, the one sacrifice of all the ten
thousands of celebrations of Holy Communion yesterday, today and in
perpetuity.

His perpetual sacrifice is enshrined in our perpetual memorial
actually. Therein is His Body spiritually present to be spiritually taken,
His glorious and incorruptible Body. But where God the Son there is the
Son of Man because He is one indivisible Person. Where His spiritual
Body there His carnal Body bleeding on Calvary. The Body in the wafer is
at once tire perfect Body of Eternal God and the vulnerable, bleeding Body
of the Lamb. And the Blood is hot, not yet coagulated, but spilling on
because He died for His children in all time, and because since His wounds
were made, and ever before, until this hour, His children have wounded
Him too often afresh for His dear bleeding to be stanched.

A perpetual memory could perhaps be reduced to one celebration a
year so long as the world stands. But Beloved, the blessed privilege of a
daily memory! It is as if the Mission congregation, having given gifts to its
sick and poor, assembled to ponder a gift for the Great Good God. What
fitting, what good enough to offer? A Mission child speaks, "The Greatest
Gift in all time is our Lord's offering upon the cross." "Ah!" answers the
priest, "only that gift is worthy of offering. Tomorrow we rise up early
and offer to Almighty God the Eternal Father His dear Son in His Passion
and Death."

“ ... O Father we Thy humble servants, here bring before Thee, Christ,
Thy well Beloved, all-perfect Offering, Sacrifice immortal.... See now Thy
children, making intercession, through Him our Saviour . . . pleading before
Thee."

Wishes the Mission to thank God efficaciously? Then to Mass, Does
the Mission picnic today? Then the picnic commences with the Mass. Is
there a yearning for the peace of God for all men, or for healing for the
sick, or for comfort for the poor? For the

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faithful departed to grow on in His love and service? Then to the Holy
Mass to replead The Sacrifice and offer therewith souls and bodies that
human wills may be one with Divine Will Who has prepared for His
children such good things as pass man's understanding if they but will.
Beloved, the days are all too few and the priest but one, alack! for the
Masses that Holy Church should offer in the Mission.

ONE in the Mission found a grain of solace in this bit of nonsense
after The Purple Cow who, by the way, is not to be confused with
Ferdinand

 "I NEVER saw a perfect priest,
I scarcely hope to see one,
But I do know 'twere easier far
To see one than to be one!"

And then on a recent Sunday morning when epidemics of whooping
cough and measles invaded homes, playing field and any congregation
assembled in the church this to the surprise of the priest flashed in his
head and popped out as the opening sentences of his general instruction to
the Church School:

 DAVID has the whooping cough, Marie has
 the measles, And two score more are right
 bad off, Pop goes the weasel.

THE HOURS of relief from dire want, the hours of consolation and
renewed courage, of happiness and of worship afforded individuals of the
Mission through the years are as countless pearls strung upon the stalwart
cords of the Greater Congregation's charity and woven by Divine Love into
an eternal life line reaching to the very feet of God.

SOME MISSION CHILDREN say Father in quite perfect English,
others say Faver and many say Far' Jone.' As they say it they say it in
their joys, they say it in their pains, often the cry it out in their dreams and
sometimes in illness and delirium and from them all it rings like heavenly
music in the cars of one who although unworthy above all wishes to father
them in the Name of our Father in Heaven.

"IN THE multitude of the sorrows that I had in my heart, thy
comforts have refreshed my soul."

STRANGE it seems that of all the women in Sherwood desper-

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ately in need of employment none can be found who can scrub a floor
clean, make a windowpane perfectly clear, send back washed clothes
acceptably laundered and free from smells. Of all the men standing idle in
the market place, many of whom declare that the world and the
government owe them a living, not one skilled painter, nor one carpenter
that can make a true joint, scarcely a pair of hands to handle a fine thing
safely can be found. Surely they could have learned but they did not and
they do not. They are as hopeless as team drawn vehicles upon modern
highways.

FOURTEEN TIMES from 6:0O to 7:30 o'clock on Saturday evening
the weary priest answered knocks on his door. Such is Saturday evening's
average. One man's need was urgent and granted for his family's sake.
Another man's need was real but he was refused because the need was not
urgent. Two young men dear to the priest were refused reasonable requests
because no suffering was involved. A woman wanted a bit of advice and it
was given. Eight others, (one small girl came twice), were children, all
wanting tickets to the picture show because all Father's children think he
can give them the moon if he will. All were refused with pain. The priest
abhors the Sherwood Saturday evening picture show, a fairly recent
novelty, cheap, poorest of the poor, but harmless, and yet through his
poor pocket the priest is the best patron in Sherwood because he realizes
that to his children the show is what Bernhardt and Caruso were to him in
days agone and he would like having an inexhaustible supply of dimes to
indulge his brats who rap on his door of a Saturday evening thinking weary
but, let us pray, cheerful though disappointing Father can give them the
moon if he will.

LOVELY THINGS. Two tears on the cheeks of a strong young man
when he was asked by his confessor, "Are you ever thoroughly ashamed?"
and whispered in reply, "I am always thoroughly ashamed when I have
sinned." The Mission children singing "Jesus from Thy throne on high. . . .
Hear us Holy Jesus." The Mission church's 60 odd white pigeons forming
a great white cross on the lawn where Bud has put down their feed in
cruciform pattern. Bud's face as he looks upon his cross of white doves.
Little girls, too or three together, going into the empty church to sing a
hymn and say their prayers. Upon the crucifix at the little

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chapel altar the glint of candle shine filling the wound in His side with
warm red blood. Candle shine, true. But it has been a daily miracle for
years.

AUTUMN, 1939

O BELOVED, Beloved, who sometime in the summer past intended to
succor the Mission and did not, and who intended to pray, and forgot to
pray, if you had known, even you, at least in the day of your privilege,
what suffering you could have assuaged, what peace you could have given!
But that knowledge was hidden from your eyes.

THE FEASTS of the Christian year are exceedingly lovely. Christmas
is sweet and peace on earth, good will toward men for the moment
materializes. Easter is full of triumph. Whitsunday seems to bring gifts of
renewed life from God the Holy Ghost and also seems a little like a
patriotic festival. St. Michael and All Angels is thrilling. It is thrilling to be
reminded that we are as actually surrounded by angels as we are by germs.
Devilish angels with their poison. Holy angels to succor us. Nowadays
Christians need much reminding, one finds that they give very little thought
to God's angels who march in an endless procession through God's Book
from Genesis through Revelation. How worthy are the angels of love and
thought and thanks when one considers.

All Saints' is triumphant too. The feast of the Church Triumphant.
One thinks of victors' crowns of gold. But it is a very white feast with
white banners fitting rather than gold, perhaps because it reaches so far into
heaven, so near to God's heavenly throne, this feast of God's great who
already enjoy the Beatific Vision.

All Souls', O dear God, the day of those so greatly loved and lately lost
for a while. Righteous souls though imperfect, now growing on in God's
love and service, marching forward through the aisles of the Church
Expectant where we shall so soon march to the still distant triumph at the
last. The color of the day is black for if there had been no sin there would
be no death. Thank God the color is black bemuse grief of separation is still
so poignant that color offends as pain.

The time of All Souls' Masses when for the living and departed

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through Christ separation ends. All Souls' for those grief stricken by death,
the bitter-sweetest day of the Christian year.

 "A PRIMROSE by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."

MISSION CHILDREN, young and old, persist in calling the
Mission church the church house. Half the congregation, some
members confirmed 25 years; ago, refuse to be led or driven from
that appellation. For 10 years the priest has patiently explained,
"We call the building in which we worship the church and not
the church house, just as we say post office and do not say post
office house or depot and not depot house." And then some in-
nocent who has probably heard it all over and over for 10 years
will ask, "Are you talking about the church house, Father?" The
habit is derived from the long usage of protestant bodies. More-
over to those who think and reason simply and who have been
taught that Holy Church is the actual Body of Christ with distinct
Divine life it is but natural to think of the building as a house of
the Church or the church house. Perhaps when you next hear of
the matter the Mission congregation will have their priest too
saying the church house.

DAVID DID NOT DIE. As the summer Booklet with its mention of
David was being mailed to you David was stricken with a crucial illness.
His pain was devastating and unbearable without opiates. From the
beginning symptoms were so baffling that local doctors were lost as to
diagnosis and even the surgeons who eventually saved his life frankly
admitted that they did not know what they were looking for when they
resorted to an abdominal operation.

Before the operation David spent several days in a hospital in
Chattanooga attended by the best doctors available. There was ample
warning, even David knew how near was death and as he left his priest to
go on the table both the sufferer and his priest knew that no spiritual
preparation had been neglected. A few interminable hours later the doctors
said David had a chance to live. A few days later his recovery had become
miraculous. A month later on a Saturday his regular morning to serve for
seven years, he served the Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary, his Mass of
thanksgiving.

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David's convalescence both in the hospital and at home was lovely.
The priests and the churches in Chattanooga were most kind. The
Mission car frequently took family and friends to the bedside. The ward
always had an ample supply of David's flowers.

In this. case there was not time to appeal to hospitals for charity. In
the end the hospital's and the doctor's fees were cut but the Mission paid
relatively enormous bills. This you should know Beloved, had the Mission
not been responsible, bad the Mission not been able through your charity
to act swiftly and authoritatively David most positively would have by
now been three months dead.

THE JESTER'S picture, even its last minute detail, as stored in the
mind is perhaps clearer today than when actually seen for the first and last
time near two score years ago. In spite of a clown's paint the humor and
mirth in the jester's face is so sincere that it is irresistible and one looking
into the laughing eyes feels one's own eyes twinkle and the corners of one's
month draw upward-until one sees the rest of the picture, the jester's
shadow upon the wall. The shadow is only a silhouette of the jester but
the whole naked truth is there and the tottering spirit and its anguish
breaks one's heart. The whole is a magnificent picture of courage and the
jester's face makes for a happier world until one sees the truth in the
suffering shadow.

If The Booklet sang only of success and happiness it would be a poor
jest, it would be untrue and it would not be so appealing for your
sympathy and help that are always so desperately needed. God grant that
a measure Of Courage be always written into The Booklet but God grant
also that The Booklet be always honest enough to sing melancholy music.

AN ACTIVE SUMMER ended the Mission is all quiet. All the
youngsters aye back in school and many far from Sherwood. Polly is
working in a distant field. David is not yet strong enough to take up his
full duties. Except the library just now the Community House that was as
active as a beehive each day all summer long is closed except on Sundays.
The Mission Masses except by the absent are attended as usual. The
year's exuberance of youth is past and its middle age has been richly spent
but Indian summer and a gloriously golden autumn still lie ahead for revival
before the advent of the new year and the Mission shall press on with
small

 115



regret for its spilt milk, rather determined that His Kingdom come and His
will be done more fully tomorrow.

"IF WINTER COMES will Spring be far behind?" O far, far behind
Beloved. Before the silver cords of spring be loosed, or spring's golden
sunshine warms again and melts winter's ice away, or verdure lives and
greens, or flowers' perfumes lade the air file pitcher will indeed be broken
at the fountain, the wheel broken at the cistern, and the Mission poor will
be engulfed in the dark shadows of a valley of despond.

Up some street or road the keepers of the shacks and houses
will see fuel exhausted and stoves grow gray and cold and suffer
doubly to be (old and see their babes cold. Hunger that is en-
durable in summer and that may even be appeased from an abund-
ance of fruit and vegetables is more painful in winter especially
when there is not so much as a belt to tighten. Bare feet are often
a joy in summer but the joy turns to pain when frost and ice are
their carpets and perhaps more painful are hopelessly broken wet
shoes. Sufficient clothing and bedding will be lacked and there
will be multiples of Alice and Mary and Jules weeping in bitter
night upon their beds of straw. Perhaps of the poor the sick are
cruelest hit by winter. When spring comes and cherry blossoms
bloom there will be new graves swept by the warm friendly air
that would not be had those sleeping been ill in summer.

Through you Beloved, the Mission will be the anodyne for many
griefs. Some will have food and clothing and bedding and doctors. Your
prayers and the Mission's will temper many a wintry wind for His shorn
lambs. Christmas will make nearly all forget even for many days before
and after. And then soon the somber shades of Lent will burst into the
Glory of Easter and spring will have come at long last, like peace after war.

SOMEWHERE on the hill sides the Mission's Christmas trees as yet
unchosen lift their boughs heavenward and are blessed of God to bear their
fruitful crops of joy when the Christ Child comes again. And somewhere
out among the members of the Mission's Greater Congregation many
hearts are planning to make the Mission's Christmas trees bear abundantly.
Some have been knitting delightful things that will give much comfort as
well as joy. Some have invested in bargains or have put aside attractive
gifts. Those who are privileged will please remember that money sent for
the

 116



trees will be invested by the priest himself in Chattanooga stores for
exactly the most fitting gift for the individual with less expense of thought
and action. All may remember that the Christmas trees, Confessions and
Masses for Christmas communions are bound into one glorious whole by
far the holiest and happiest in the Mission year.

UNCLE HENRY peacefully entered into life eternal on the evening of
September 19th in the 79th year of his age. Failing for some years he was
ill through the summer although be seldom suffered greatly. He was well
cared [or by members of his family and the Mission was able to provide
material comforts to the end. He was thoroughly prepared and died a good
death. The Requiem Mass and Burial Office were of Course said in the
Mission church. Before the altar the old man's body in his coffin covered
with the pall and surrounded by candles, knew a dignity and majesty in
death which it had not known in life.

Uncle Henry was unlettered, he could not write his name, but he long
since learned all the responses in the Mass and Offices and doubtless the
Creed, Our Father and Hail Mary will vibrate in his powerful voice
through the Mission church as long as the present congregation's memory
endures. He was a most faithful Churchman and as a saint perhaps stands
close to the greatest in the Kingdom of God.

With Uncle Henry's passing to the Church Expectant the Mission has
lost here her most faithful son and perhaps the most colorful figure in her
picturesque atmosphere. His place will long be conspicuously empty and
the Mission mourns his absence with the community and his large family
of children, grand children and great-grand children.

CHRISTMAS, 1939

THE MISSION, Beloved, sometime is puzzled to understand why in
its earnest purpose to harvest souls and assuage the pain of His poor it
should lack means and always be financially pinched. In more spiritual
moments the Mission sees in its poverty the tender blessing of God's love.
Were the Mission financially potent and felt not the pinch of indigence it
would in a measure forget God and His mercy and sink into a humanitarian
institution. More over its financial impotence quickens your interest and
provides

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for the exercise of your charity in prayers and alms and thereby the
enrichment of your soul.

CHRISTMAS, holy Christmas, enshrines a sacred store of
blessedness. The Christ Child reigns again. St. Mary and St. Joseph in
Bethlehem worshipfully before the manger in the hay live not in blessed
obscurity but in holy positiveness. Few at Christmas think to doubt that
the same shepherds watch their flocks again or that the same Christmas
angels bend near the earth and touch their harps of gold. Than at any other
season more souls return to the altars of God, God is love and love blooms,
hearts are kinder and for a few hallowed hours His peace on earth, good
will toward men all but reigns supreme.

Shrine is a sweet euphonious name for sacred places and hallowed
objects cherished as holy. The Creche in the Mission church with its little
plaster figures is a shrine, this Christmas before another precious Shrine, at
the dear plaster feet of Holy Mary and God become flesh and testing in her
arms. The Mission's high altar, notwithstanding its material insignificance
is an exquisite shrine to enshrine the Shrine of Shrines, the Wafer, wherein
at the Christmas Masses Mission souls will receive the Christmas Child
forever God. The Crucifix standing in the churchyard is a shrine saying
always that as we have known the incarnation by the message of an angel,
so by His cross and passion we may be brought to the glory of His
resurrection. The Mission itself is a shrine well beloved. The graves of
loved ones and since His Mother particularly the graves of all mothers are
shrines. Life is far, far richer for these holy places holding God or symbolic
plaster and bronze or ashes revered.

And hearts are shrines. Wouldst know true Christmas joy Beloved?
Then empty your heart to Him. Of good and evil there stored, of
happiness and pain, fulfillment and desire, wealth and ashes, wisdom and
stupidity give up to him, give until your heart is as empty as a very little
child's and then give Him even your emptied heart itself for the Christ
Child's manger-shrine. Then you will foretaste the joy of good angels and
the saints in glory.

LAST CHRIST MASS. Last Christmas Mother Jones reluctantly
resigned to others many duties and privileges she had tenaciously clung to
and then far outreached her strength. On Christmas Eve she left the
Community House well after seven in

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near collapse and rested upon her pillows in her sitting room tenderly
covered. She drank a cup of hot bouillon. At ten o'clock her temperature
was above 102 degrees and her son told her she must go to bed, that she
could not possibly risk going to the church for the Midnight Mass. She
turned upon him an aroused Winged Victory. She would go to Mass. She
must go to Mass. The Midnight Mass was far more to her than anything
within the year, within her life. This was her last, her very last. She must
make her Christmas communion at the altar of God and if the cost was so
great then she would gladly accept life's end. At last she was calm and 0
what resignation is the submission of the unyielding! She was tucked into
bed with hot water bottles and kissed goodnight and he who is first of all a
priest and second of all her son left for the church. When the Midnight
Mass was done her room was dark but it is certain her pillow was wet with
tears. On Christmas morning she as ill and the priest in gold vestments
proceeded by scarlet dad server went directly from the high altar to her
bedside altar with the Blessed Sacrament and she made her last Christmas
communion. Her priest-son prayed that she might be spared for many
Nativities but Mother Jones knew she had forfeited in well meaning her
last Christ Mass on earth.

FATHER in his old blue dressing gown knelt at an old easy chair, his
feet toward the warm, grate. A smaller house boy supposed to be about
his duties came in on tiptoe and went out and tipped in and out again and
again. At last when Father stood up the boy said "Father, I thought you
would never finish your prayers." "My child," answered Father, "I
finished my prayers sometime ago." True I was thinking holy thoughts and
God was warming my heart but for quite sometime I have just been
warming my toes.

THE CHRISTMAS TREES in the Mission will see before them much
of what the Mission has done and left undone. Many old and young will
be in good health through Mission efforts. Many children, many adults
will be warmer for Mission clothes and shoes and less hungry for Mission
food and others will see the trees cold and hungry because of the Mission's
lack. Epiphany's tree is the tremendous one. St. Anne's much smaller is
equally important. Then if possible a tree for very poor children who do
not belong to the Mission and who have nothing at all. What is

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left goes to Sinking Cove. For sometime children have been very pious,
parents are remembering to bring their babes for baptism, attendance and
ardor have increased at all church services not as policies of avarice, most
are much too naive, but in sincerity, in gratitude for what is to be-the
Christmas trees, It does not make sense Beloved, their long anticipation,
their eagerness, their boundless joy. Draw no conclusion because of their
poverty and longing that just any gift will do. In your station perhaps any
gift would make you grateful. Theirs must be good because they have had
nothing. To disappoint one soul will be as savage cruelty. Money spent by
the Mission buys the most appropriate gifts.

MOTHER JONES, after leaving Sherwood in July to be in her old
plantation home with her daughter was ill toward the end of the summer
and every hour was thought to be her last. Then she grew better with but
one wish, to return to her beloved Mission. Finally doctor and family
submitted against all reason to her indomitable will and planned to take her
back to Sherwood. Her joy was past bearing and on the eve of her journey
excitement of anticipation made her ill. On Tuesday when her journey was
to have been made as well as Wednesday and Thursday she grew weaker
although constantly planning her trip. On Friday morning the Mass was
offered by her bedside. For three days her mouth had been willfully closed
to food and medicine but when her priest went to her with the Viaticum
she opened her mouth to receive and blessed herself. Absolution and
Unction were given. The final prayers were said and with the last Amen
she sank into coma never to regain consciousness. She slipped quietly
home at noon on Sunday, November l2th.

In the great bay window of the drawing room of the plantation house
which room is scarcely smaller than the Mission church the altar was set
up and furnished with the richest furnishing from the Mission. Best
Mission acolytes were present to anticipate the priest's every need.
Beneath the Mission pall surrounded by stalwart candles Mother Jones'
body lay in the great dignity that is death's. The Requiem Mass, dear
Andrea in a corner saying his beads, the incense, the holy water, were
among the many things she loved. Interment was in the plantation
cemetery near six resting generations.

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Mother Jones, courageous, indomitable, bowed in her nearly 80 years
of life to no enemy but death and even now one can hear her challenge as
she grows on in God's love and service, "O death where is thy sting? O
grave where is thy victory?"

EASTER, 1940

CHRISTIANS are catholic or non-catholic. It is unfortunate that
noncatholics, have no positive appellation and are called non or protestant.
Fundamentally catholics and non-catholics are different, however, either
may be equally perfect or imperfect, either may be saint or devil, and most
of either are far from the extremes. Innumerable are definitions explaining
what a catholic or protestant is superficially or in the marrow bones of his
soul, yet literally nobody knows off-hand what makes them different.

It all seems very simple. The Christian who invariably first thinks of
Christ as God is a catholic. Upon second thought a catholic can remember
the manhood, the humanity of Christ, but it is not his normal conception.
To him Jesus, the Christ, the Master, our Lord, the Son of Man is first
God the Son. To him the divinity of out Lord looms so large that effort is
required to think of Him as human. The non-catholic sees the humanity of
our Lord. His first thought is the Man, the Friend. the Teacher. the
Master, scarcely the Son of God perhaps never as a first thought God the
Son. The non-catholic is conscious rather of the Son of Man as our only
Mediator and Advocate standing before God the Father, that is the first
person of the Trinity stands out as God. The catholic is conscious of the
fact that on, on1y Mediator and Advocate is God the Son co-equal with
God the Father. Neither catholic or nor catholic rejects our Lord's
humanity or divinity but one has the emphasis here and the other there.
However necessary to the perfect conception is equal regard for our Lord's
humanity and divinity the imperfect emphasis stands.

A Christian's first thought of our Lord is His divinity and the
conception behind that fact makes him a catholic. The Babe in Mary's
womb is always God. Then Mary is so simple and so naturally the
Mother of God, God the Son and then only of His manhood of course but
the Son of Mail is so utterly God. It is God on the straw in Bethlehem and
God on the cross on Calvary. As God came down to Mary it is so simple
that he comes to the

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cup and wafer and that His virtue may flow through the hems of His
garments as in a crucifix or holy water or votive candle. God walked and
talked with Mary, Peter, James and John. How natural that He speaks to
them and hears them now. How natural for a catholic to ask their prayers.
As God the Son, Priest and Victim, offered Himself in propitiation on
Calvary how simple that He comes each morn to ten thousand altars and
perpetuates that finished yet never finished sacrifice in every Holy
Communion. The catholic's Father God may be relatively intangible but his
Saviour God, his Intermediary God and His attributes seem physically
near and tangible. The non-catholic's God is apt to be in faraway heaven, to
be reached only spiritually and to be physically intangible.

This Holy Week Christians in the Mission will watch our Lord's
passion and death. To some He will be the one good Man, the kind
Master, and to some He will be Lord and God. On Easter Day catholic and
non-catholic Episcopalians will kneel in the Mission church to worship the
Resurrection and the Life and some will receive the veritable Body and
Blood of God and others merely a wafer and wine in His memory but the
universality of the Mission's embrace will make for a catholic Easter.

COME BELOVED, visit with the Mission priest a Sherwood home.
It is the Average home where Mr. and Mrs. Average live with 8 of their 10
children. 'The oldest child is 25 and the youngest three. The Averages live
in a house like most in Sherwood, by no means the finest or poorest. The
house has two 12 x 12 rooms and a leanto 8 x 24 which serves as a kitchen
and laundry. Of course there is no bath room. We enter the "front room"
furnished with rug, curtains, dresser, davenport, radio, one chair and a
double bed wherein is sick John who is 20. In the bed room we find a
dresser, two chairs, a coal heater and two double beds in one of which is
sick Mary who is 22. Often the married daughter comes home with her
husband for weeks when beyond doubt the house and beds are crowded.
The house is in some order but is not clean, it never is, it never was. Three-
year-old Tony looks as if he slept in the coal bin.

We converse with sick John while Mrs. Average talks in a loud tone
to Tony in the kitchen for our elucidation, "I told Magie 'twernt right,
'twernt religion . . . " Later she comes into the "front room" to say,
"John's better today. The doctor said not

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to give him no active medicine but I knowed 'twere what he needed." Mrs.
Average is a Holy Roller. A while ago in meeting she rolled in a trance
upon the floor but when a fight started down the street and church turned
out to see it she was first upon the scene. Papa Average provides
moderately for his family but does not pay obligations he can avoid. He
was shot while stealing a pig not so long ago. Neither Papa nor Mama have
ever shown any interest in the religion of the Mission church.

Such is the background of the Average family. Such is the
environment in which the seeds of religion planted by the Mission in the
Average children are nourished and grow or are starved and die. Mary and
John were confirmed eight years ago. They are somehow foursquare and
faithful. Four more of the children are the Mission's. Perhaps not once in
two years have one of these six youngsters failed to hear Holy Communion
on Sunday or failed to attend Church School. Thus and through hundreds
of other intimate contacts the Mission has marked the eternal destiny of
the Average children with a wholesomeness and holiness otherwise
ungained.

THIS DEVASTATING WINTER ending with its cruelties was not
inaccurately foretold in the Autumn Booklet. The piercing, conquering,
enfolding cold that forced the mercury down and down to zero for days on
end and one day to seven below stealthily possessed cabin homes and
froze them to within a few feet of ill fed stoves. Every water pipe in town
was paralyzed with ice. The Holy Water font was solid. The bird bath in
the church garden was a mound of ice and snow but in the church yard each
day empty grain sacks were spread atop all the hoarfrost and food for the
pigeons put on in abundance to be enjoyed by innumerable feathered
creatures. All the good angels of God did not keep His children from
suffering. Among the very poor that which is usually a bane became a
blessing and the enforced huddle of bodies in proximity brought a degree of
warmth and safety such as is vouchsafed pigs and puppies. The angels of
death were perhaps too cold to reap, or perhaps they were moved to
mercy. A few babies came and died but more came and lived. There was
much illness but little death.

Beloved, did you remember that your bounty was assuaging griefs?
Great the quantity of food given. Clothing, shoes and blankets

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were supplied. Finally there was utterly nothing left to give.

So the bitterest winter within the memory of most ends at last in
Spring. Resurrection and life are manifest again and one feels the urge to
sing from The Song of Songs

 RISE UP, my Beloved, my fair one, and come away.

 For, lo, the winter is past, 
 The flowers appear on the earth; 
 The time of singing has come, 
 The voice of the turtle is heard in our land, 
 And the vines in blossom give forth their fragrance. 
 Arise, my Beloved, my fair one, and come away.

THE LITTLE CHURCH, as many Mission children call it to
distinguish it from the church proper, is the chapel 10 x 20 feet in size in
what would be were the church more pretentious the south transept. The
altar is well appointed. The chapel is furnished with prayer desks and
heated with a coal stove. Here the daily Mass is said in winter because the
small chapel heats quickly with little fuel.

Always about the church, near Father's house, around the brick
making sheds and in gardens are Mission boys, and this winter they have
looked frozen. The Mission has never had a room for boys' constant use
that could be heated. The new community house will take care of that.
Benches have been put around the stove in the chapel and through the
days, after Mass, the boys have used the chapel for a sitting room and
place to warm. Father does not like the arrangement because he knows as
any one else who knows any kind of boys that while there is probably no
irreverence there is bound to be a lack of reverence in the chapel sitting
room. However, there is not indication that practical use of the chapel has
cheapened reverence for the altar when in use. Stopping to think as it were.
-one wonders who on earth could possibly imagine that our Lord would
not have opened the chapel the first winter of its existence and asked the
youngsters to come in and be warm.

JAMES is barely seventeen. Neither James nor Father seem to be
able to remember so long ago as when James became an acolyte, but
however long not long enough to find James unfaithful. Through the years
James has worked almost daily in the Mission. He has helped at brick
making for a year and just now is Mission

 124



fireman, having the chapel warm early each morning and firing the
Mission's seven stoves as needed.

At 15 James was definitely girl conscious, and at 16 he had picked his
mate, and for a year never wavered in his declaration to wed her soon. Last
November James came seriously to Father. Maude, slightly older, has long
been wait and James wanted to be married at once. Quite thoroughly it was
explained to the boy why fie should not marry for years. But a month later
he was back, and again a worthy effort was made to talk some sense into
him. At Christmas James came handing over a large envelope and saying, -
This is my license to marry Maude." And so it was, all in order. "Please
keep it for me. Now listen, Father," continued 17 to 52, "1 do not want
anybody else in the world to marry me but you. I want to be married by
the Church and you are the only priest I want, and you know it. But if
you won't marry me you can't stop me. Plenty will marry me and you will
have me and Maude to take care of just the same."

Father married the babes disapprovingly and gave them the blessing
of Holy Church. However reluctant in wedding them, knowing them as he
does, Father feels assured if they are spared it will be Maude and James,
sweethearts, cleaving only each to the other till comes their golden wedding
day and after.

A NEW COMMUNITY HOUSE I just ache for you to have. I have
seen and been in your present one, and I know what you are talking about.
I have done considerable thinking. Here is a check for $50O from my life's
savings for my old age- The check leaves me very, very happy." So runs a
letter from a member of the Greater Congregation.

SUMMER, 1940

OF ANOTHER GARDEN St. Paul wrote, "I have planted, Apollos
watered; but God gave the increase." The inevitable financial drought of
summer is upon God's Sherwood garden. It is Your privilege Beloved to
give support to the gardener that nothing be lost. When our Lord Beloved
comes into His Sherwood garden to gather His precious fruits let none have
perished because you forgot to water.

 125


"AWAKE, O north wind; And come, thou south;
Blow upon my garden, That the spices
thereof may flow out. Let my Beloved come
into His garden, And gather His precious
fruits."

A GARDEN belongs to the Mission. it is not much of a garden, rather
the beginning of a garden, but as the years pass there is more of definite
form and substance. The shepherd of souls is the chief gardener but the
Mission youths are the gardeners who toil. In the beginning the soil was
impoverished, in fact it was not soil at all but cinders and grew cockleburs.
The under gardeners hauled soil in wheelbarrows for days and months and
flood came and in one night washed away all but the cinders. To hold the
soil next brought to make the garden flower beds were raised above flood
level and walled about with stone and with brick made by the boys in the
garden. Now there is an addition to the walls a pool 9 x 18 feet in size with
fish, bulrushes, lilies. Thirteen hundred square feet of walks have been
paved by boys with boy-made brick. In the spring a thousand tulips, the
collection of seven years, bloomed in one bed. This summer there is a
circular bed of 10O tuberoses set in a rectangle of periwinkle backed by
tithonia. Among more than 70 varieties of growing things in other beds
bloom 20O rose plants, zinnias, dahlias, gladioli, and there are vegetables
too. Whence came this array? Mother Jones brought the first rose plants
from the plantation in 1932. Bulbs, cuttings, roots, seeds have been
contributed from Sherwood and from members of the Greater Congregation.
There are lilies from Connecticut and New Hampshire and dahlias from
Delaware among many gifts. Seedsmen and nurserymen have been
generous.

This beginning of a garden blooms but behind the bloom is much
patience and tenacious toil. Even so there would be no bloom for all the
toil but for the generosity of many who will never see the garden. Patience,
toil, co-operation, generosity and the garden blooms but never a day that
has not seen frost or drought or flood or beetles or blight eager to destroy
and always some plants are wayward or sick or dead. Such is this flower
garden.

The Mission is a spiritual garden, the Mission priest a spiritual

 126



gardener. God's children grow in impoverished environment that must
be enriched with imports from afar. The forces of evil lurk to blight bodies
and souls. With tenacious toil bodies and souls are nourished, roots seem in
richer soil; the garden looks a little flourishing And fruitful when a flood of
indifference, or of unemployment, or false doctrine, or devastating winter
sweeps and takes its toll. But with patience and toil and your cooperation
and generosity this other unfinished garden of God's also blooms.

PITCHED HORSESHOES ring against metal stakes all day long this
summer as the games are played just outside the garden. The playing
commences when Mass is finished and ends when the darkness of new
night compels. The courts are seldom empty. Often twenty players and
spectators are assembled and a few hours later an entirely different twenty
will play and wisecrack and applaud. John who is 60 may stand up with
Jesse of 10 but they are extremes and young men of 20 probably
predominate. In God's Sherwood garden idleness is a fearsome enemy but
horseshoes this summer have been a right efficacious weapon.

TWO BOOTLEGGERS are in jail. They are remarkably like average
men except that when free they sell vile whiskey made in our mountains.
One is rather far along with tuberculosis. Neither has been employed for
ages and neither would sell whiskey if he had a job. But the men are not
under consideration. There are two wives. One was a Mission girl,
confirmed and grew unfaithful. There are two little daughters to each
mother and both mothers are expecting a third child shortly. The little girls
have been baptized in the Mission and attend Church school. At present
there is not one sure penny from any source for the living of these mothers
and children. When they get their relief doles and if they get them each
family will have $12 a month which is infinitely better than nothing and
yet very near nothing when shelter, fuel, food, clothing and all else must be
purchased. Now these fathers and mothers have never been won for God
and the Church through the years. They have been rather anti-Mission and
probably always will be in spite of what is done for them. However from
the Mission's view point the little children are potential saints. All are
human sufferers and the children are innocent. Upon these facts the case
rests. Although the Mission can not possibly continue to

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help its needy faithful as it has through the past few months it has added
to its load one dollar each week to each of these mothers. Although the
Mission is giving twice as much as it has to give it can do no leis.

THE DAILY MASS is the beginning of all things pertaining to the
Mission and is as constant as the cycle of days.

A ROSE by any name would be as sweet but thank God for roses. In
one plot of the Mission garden are Crimson Glory, Queen Mary,
Briarcliff, Autumn, Columbia, Condesa de Sastago and in others Marechal
Niel, Etoile de Hollande, Sr. Therese, Ami Quinard and many more. Queen
of flowers! It would seem one single rose bloom would be sufficient to
dispel all doubt of an omnipotent God of Love. But for every rose there
are manifold cruel thorns. In God's Mission garden of souls there are sharp
thorns that pierce our Lord's brow anew each day but there are also sweet
roses, in bud and full blown, blooming for His glory.

SINCE MOTHER JONES left the Mission to march on toward glory
a kindly friend thinking the Mission priest lonely has asked him, "Are not
ten years of service in Sherwood and three thousand Masses at those altars
enough? Why not let me secure for you a parish of more cultured and
congenial people?" And relatives have asked, "Why not come home to
your people and the soil you love and grow roses and write story books?"
Lonely without mother. Home to brethren! They so little understand.
These Sherwood people, on either side of the railroad track, old and voting
children of native nobles or of fishwives, these souls growing in God's
Sherwood garden, these arc the priest's mother and his brethren.

CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS. Atop a mountain some ten
miles from Sherwood there is a CCC Camp. Since the camp's location
some few years ago its boys have frequented the town below them. Their
contacts with the Mission have been numerous and although there has
been but one Church boy many have found their way on Sundays to the
Mission church for Mass, Morning and Evening prayer. Sometimes as
many as fifteen have been present at a service. The Mission has found the
boys remarkably well mannered. The Mission girls sometime either fondly
in love with the boys or at least charmed and fascinated have now

 128



and again been kept up too late on Saturday nights and failed to hear the
Sunday Mass for the first time in years. Moreover two Mission girls have
married these CCC boys with the Mission thoroughly disapproving
because of their tender age.

A number of Mission boys are in CCC camps and just now several
have been sent to camps in California. The Mission is very pleased that its
boys can take advantage of such wholesome and delightful change and
extravagant travel but is astounded at such superfluous expenditure by a
debt ladened government and over-taxed citizenry. Perhaps the Mission
would feel more favorably inclined to the spending had the local
achievements of the labors of the Civilian Conservation Corps been of
more practical and enduring nature.

Incidentally, in writing of Mission boys, beside some six or more
already in the Army and Navy, foul most faithful at the commencement of
this year, Cy, Lewis, Robert, Lark, are in the Army now.

DAVID, a few weeks ago, was severe1y hurt in an automobile
accident and had to spend a few days in tire hospital. In a few weeks more
he will be quite over any ill effects of his crack-tip. He has just left
Sherwood for six months in a California CCC camp, an opportunity too
splendid to fail to embrace. He will be missed in the Mission as few could
be missed. David's base-ball teams have been repeating last summer's
successes and at this time have lost but one game. There is no one else just
now to carry on quite so well as David but there will be no change in the
season's schedule.

ISAIAH wrote, "The daughter of Zion is left . . . as a lodge in a garden
of cucumbers." In the Mission garden bordered by gladoli and zinnias is a
small bed of cucumbers because Fr. Jones always has a yen for them at
planting time. The half dozen vines could hardly be called a garden.

When pleas for aid and succor from those in sickness and in health
are urgent and insistent all day long and half the night and by no manner of
magic can the means at hand be made equal to the need, when in fatigue of
body and soul it all comes to seem a bit futile, Fr. Jones as no doubt does
all flesh at times, feels quite desolate, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,
as a besieged city.

 129


THE COMMUNITY HOUSE is still in the mill, a mill that
apparently grinds slowly but grinds exceedingly fine. The architects are at
present completing working plans. It has been found that neither of the
two plots of land owned by the Mission is large enough for the building
and ample land is being given adjoining the Mission's property. The year
has brought, in one man, the most powerful and helpful agent yet
interested through whom the land is being given and to whom in the end
large credit must be given for success.

God willing as much as can be built with present funds will be built
before the year is done. To this end ten thousand cement blocks are stacked
in readiness at a cost of $1,600.00. The blocks test twice the strength
required by the American Society for Testing Materials. Every block was
made by Mission boys between 10 and 22 who were present at Mass and
Morning Prayer on the preceding Sunday of each week in which they were
employed. Inferior blocks could not be bought for the same money and
while some of the money earned by the boys, by far the greater part at ten
cents an hour, has been spent for amusements most has been spent for
necessities in Mission families. O Beloved, this employment at such trifling
remuneration and enormous benefit must not end!

"He will make her desert like the garden of the
Lord; joy and gladness shall be found
therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of
melody."

THIS TREASURED LETTER received in June from Maryland guilds
the lily but just so is it written: A year ago today my heart was singing
with joy because I would see the Mission the next day, and when
tomorrow comes I shall live over again what still seems to me the most
completely happy day of my life because the happiness was of a spiritual
nature. I felt that simply to be near the Mission satisfied: a mission
putting religion into action in the way our Lord did, caring for bodies and
souls at the same time; a church which is a real part of the life of its
people, not just a place they go to sometime. One of the things that seemed
to me especially dear and which intensified the feeling of the all embracing
brand of Sherwood religion was the can of feed for the

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pigeons that stood at the back of the "Little Church." (The Mission
children call the Lady Chapel the Little Church to distinguish it from the
church itself.-Fr. Jones). What I am rather unsuccessfully trying to put into
words is that real religion in its simplicity is inextricably woven into every
least thing of life. I would not give up my day in the Mission for any other
pleasure I have had including my three trips to Europe, because in the
Mission I was given an inner happiness nothing else has ever given, a
happiness that goes on. I have relived that day many times, and no moment
of it is lost.

A GARDEN finished is a lovely thing but the building of a garden
smacks of nearness to God and His unfolding heavenly joy. In making
gardens, as in so many endeavors, "It is better to travel hopefully than to
arrive."

AUTUMN, 1940

 JEREMIAH saith: "Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her
attire? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number." Through
the summer's financial famine some of the Greater Congregation surely
forgot the Mission "days without number." There were of course many
who like as the God of Israel remembered His children "remembered us in
our low estate." If you forgot, some wheel in the Mission's machinery
stopped turning, someone stayed hungry. If you remembered, some wheel
turned on, some child who was very actually too hungry was fed. In
remonstrance to those who forgot the Mission quotes St. Peter, "I will not
be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things ... Yea, I
think it meet, so long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting
you in remembrance."

HOLY COMMUNION. A priest is on duty from the hour of his
priesting until his life's end. He may often be "at ease" to rest or play or
sleep, lie may take vacations, but in every moment of his life he is subject
to instant call to the exercise of his priesthood whether the need be normal
or extraordinary. Because a priest is never off duty is one reason why he
should always wear his uniform.

The Mission priest is utterly human. He does not wish to ap-

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pear holy and if a tone of affection of pureness and piety should sound in
his voice he would be horrified. The priest always loves God but is not
always conscious of God. He exercises many interests that have little or
nothing to do with his priesthood anti the greater part of most of his days
are spent, as a priest, informally "at ease" although surely laboring at
something. Be that as it may each day is begun by the priest in the exercise
of his total priesthood, he is all priest and nothing beside. On each week
day he arises at 6:30 in silence and fasting and both conditions are
maintained until his Mass is finished unless there is practical urgency for
speech. He reads office and preparation sometime in his house but
generally in the church. His thanksgiving is of course said after Mass which
is at 7:0O promptly.

Just so each and every day is begun with the Holy Communion.
Communion with God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Communion with angels and saints and souls living and departed. All
meeting and meeting all at the focal point between those of nine and those
of eternity. God the Son comes to the Chalice of His Blood as the bleeding
Lamb of God and while He is present there is put into His arms all the
thanksgivings the Mission must offer and all the intercessions for all in the
whole world; intercessions for bleeding nations, sufferers in need and
sorrow and in sickness of body and mind and soul, intercessions for the
departed; yea, all tacked into His dear arms and He with all the
thanksgivings and intercessions is offered up to the Almighty Father. And
at this Source the grace giving Bread of Heaven, the Food of Angels is
received to carry God's poor servant onward. Thus, while angels and
archangels worship and adore is the Mass. Thus are all days begun in the
Mission.

IT HAPPENED some years ago. In fact it had been forgotten until a
moment ago when it turned up in the mind as forgotten things have a way
of turning up in minds. Fanny at the time was a woman of middle age. She
was then a fairly faithful member of the Mission. She has since
disappeared and is now numbered with those neither present nor
accounted for but where ever she is she carries in her soul for all time some
betterment from the Mission.

On a hot afternoon in blackberry time Fanny came to the

132



priest's door with two lard tins of blackberries. She had picked them early
in the morning, and tried to sell them all over town, and now because she
was exhausted thought her priest somehow obligated to buy. "But Fanny, I
have no use for them, I do not care for blackberries in any form at all." The
woman however was doggedly persistent and the priest gave in saying,
"Well I will buy them if you will give me the old pails to keep them in."
She agreed and the deal was made. Fifteen minutes later Fanny returned
saying, "I want my buckets." Father was rather exasperated by now and
surely sharp words were near the tip of his tongue when his good angel
reminded, "Come now Father, you know this woman is the merest child."
So Father hunted around and found a cardboard carton to hold the berries
and gave Fanny her pails. For thanks his ears, as the woman went down
the walk, caught perhaps the nearest blasphemy intended for their owner in
all their years in Sherwood, "Old fool, wanted to keep my buckets."

Incidentally the berries were made by the priest into wine which in
time fortified, bottle by bottle, a great woman after a grave illness.

THIRTEEN YEARS ago the present Mission priest was first aware
of the incomparable opportunities of Holy Church in Sherwood. Eight
years ago he was nearing the end of his first year in residence and his
visions of a large parish to be were very clear. Instead of a not much larger
mission after all the years of labor there would be a noteworthy parish
indeed were all those baptized, taught, confirmed and who practiced their
religion still present in Sherwood. The disillusioned priest has found that
the Mission is largely a school. Three-fourths of its congregation is
composed of children and young people and most of them are faithful in
the Mission until they have finished high school and then are gone as
Sherwood offers no further education and no employment. So the
Mission's precious ones go. No matter how large the confirmation class a
similar number will graduate from the Mission and march out, most into
distant parishes, while the Mission is starting all over again at the beginning
with other babes who will grow up and learn and be precious and then
depart. Life no matter what its triumphs or joys is indeed made up in
large part of disappointments and sad partings and long separations some
of which do not end upon this earth.

 133



SHERWOOD lies in a peaceful valley. No citizen fears an invasion.
From above no blasting bombs have hurtled down. There is not a single
shell hole to be found. Perhaps only Sherwood's soldier boys in distant
posts ever saw a tank or heard the death dealing staccato notes of a
machine gun. All communication lines to Sherwood are wide open. The
stores are full of supplies and food. And yet there are always cases of
adults and children suffering just as definitely from the elements bemuse
they lack adequate shelter, fuel, and clothing, and suffering just as
definitely the pangs and weakness of hunger as those whom the stench of
Herr Hitler's devastating breath has cursed. Regard the Haney family for
instance, just now a family at home but homeless, surrounded by plenty
but penniless and destitute.

There is no apparent reason why the Haney family can not get along.
The father is strong and able and would be employed did he not elect to get
drunk sometime. I rue some there are who think the man's inebriety is the
inevitable effect of his wife. There is an able son well up in the teens, stout
and able to labor but who has lost employment because of indifferent
attitude and efforts. There are several small helpless children. The family
with all its woe is just now being evicted from its miserable house with no
other shelter found. A drunk, a weak wife, an irresponsible son. You are
right, they deserve nothing. Who does, dear God? Let them starve. Upon
second thought you are wrong. Somehow that family is a victim of the
omissions and commissions of Holy Church and society.

Beloved, picture the dirty but somehow comely Haney babies of
perhaps 3, 6, and 9 coming to the Mission's door step morning after
morning and somehow bringing to remembrance the feel of them in the
priest's arms when they were baptized into Christ. Hear those barefoot
babies whisper, "We are hungry, we ain't had nothing to eat since breakfast
yesterday." Of course the Mission gives them food. Can you possibly
visualize our Lord sending them empty away? Of course you will help the
Mission feed such babies. The Mission thanks you Beloved.

VISITORS this summer ending have come to the Mission in larger
number than ever before. Visitors living near Sherwood, from further and
far away and a few from points half way round the world. At almost any
day time hour a group might have been

 134



seen at or in the church or strolling through the garden. Crews from
sidetracked freight trains, business travelers, all manner of people curious
or interested, and of these more than 400 from 28 states. Many came from
afar to pray and some to be prayed for, some came for penance, counsel
and absolution, some to be present at the offering of the Holy Mass, some
to offer a Mass. Your Mission, Beloved is indeed a shrine.

STRANGE INDEED it seems that in the very hour, a little while ago,
in which the local labor union in deliberation voted to strike if two Mission
young men were given employment in the lime plant laboratory in order
that they might continue their cooperative course in chemical engineering at
the University of Tennessee a note from the mother of a local union official
reached the Mission priest praying for $12.50 a month to secure otherwise
unobtainable medicine necessary to her health and possibly her life. The
woman is a dear sweet old lady belonging to the Mission. She is now
receiving from the Mission some help toward her vital need.

CHRISTMAS TREES are in the thoughts of Mission children and
members of the Greater Congregation are remembering. Some of the latter
have invested in bargains or have put aside attractive gifts. Those who are
privileged to send money instead of gifts may remember that the money
sent will be invested by the priest himself in Chattanooga stores for
exactly the most fitting gift for the individual with less expense of thought
and labor than is involved in making right selections from the store on
hand. Christmas confessions and the Masses for Christmas communion
and Christmas trees make the happiest whole of the Mission year.

A YOUNG MAN of the Mission passed through the deepest sloughs
of the valley of death and was convalescing. To the priest a little
Methodist doctor said, "There he is Father, alive, and he is going to get
well. You brought him to the hospital determined to keep him alive and it
was our business to do just that. But if ever I saw a soul ready to pass it
was his. I saw you give and saw him receive every preparation. For dying
he bad everything and I wonder if you were not mistaken in witholding him
from his Creator. Now he has life and for life he has little. He can never

 135



have as good as mediocre health and intellect. To me he looks like just one
more for the Grapes of Wrath. Beyond a doubt you saved his life, Father,
but I wonder what on earth you are going to do with it." The question does
give one seriously to think.

"IT IS not sight or sound That, when a heart
forgets, Most makes it to remember; It's
some old poignant scent refound, Like
breath of April violets Or apples in
September.

"It's brush smoke from the hills, at night,
Spicy and sweet; or that wet, keen, Long-
 lost aroma of delight, Fresh plowed fields
 after rain."

THAT LOVELY LEGEND of the Christ Child's garden is worthy to
be retold and kept fresh in memory. The Holy Lad, say at 12, made a
garden of roses. Gathered fertile soil in a basket, load after load, to enrich
the thin barren soil among limestone rocks. Planted, cultivated, fetched jars
of water for irrigation, pruned, toiled. Then reward! the lovely rose
blooms. Came all the friends and neighbors saying, "Give me a rose." Not
one did the generous Sacred Heart refuse. Cried the Holy Mother, "Every
bloom is gone, You have nothing left." "But yes," answered Mary's Son, "I
have left the thorns."

Be it the fresh mild perfume of the Mission garden in the cool of the
new day before Mass time, or the pungent scent of a thousand rose blooms
beneath a hot midday sun, or the heavy fulsome poignancy of tuberoses
and petunias laced with rose and spiced with carnation permeating the dark
night air at Evening Prayer time, be it any smell of the garden it brings
memories of the Christ Child's Garden and some time of the garden of St.
Joseph of Arimathaea and again speculation as to whether Mary, Martha
and Lazarus had a garden. Surely they had a garden.

'I hen summer's end brings the scent of ripening things and harvest,
the scent of ripening corn and fodder. Sharp mornings, hot noon times, the
fast cooling days' ends gives many varying

 136



scents to the smell of hay. The whole earth smells of hay and makes the
heart remember Bethlehem and the hay that was the

throne of God and that from the beginning to world without end God had
glorified simple things.

The bouquet of over-ripe grapes like the bouquet of wine, the scent of
grapes blooms caught with the smell of summer days and blue skies and
sunshine and rain. Bouquet is so fittingly expressive. The bouquet of over-
ripe grapes stirs the tears again. His precious Blood. Calvary. His thorns.
The sacrifice of the Lamb of God.

And somehow with it all the leaves begin to fall and neat housewives
and gardeners rake them into little piles and burn them and their smoke is
an incense gathering unto itself all the other spicy, sweet, holy scents and
offering them up to God.

CHRISTMAS, 1940

CHRISTMAS comes again and countless lips, many lately learned to
sing, many near the end of song, many all the way between will part in
singing carols and sweet hymns to honor the Christ Child. True there will
be lips too weak from hunger or illness or sorrow to sing, but such ever is
the scheme of things.

Many poor souls who throng the King's Highway will go to their
confessors to pour out their guilt to God and to seek absolution in order to
be clean to receive the Christ Child when He comes in Christmas
communions. Among such the Mission priest, somehow unfaithfully true.
His mistakes and failures count large and some there be who see nothing
beside. Perhaps St. Paul had such in mind when he wrote, "I will very
gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you,
the less I be loved." All that is also in the scheme of things.

But when the joys and burdens of Christmas all but sink the priest
completely still will be cherished the satisfaction that a precious soul in
Connecticut is happier, that a soul in Maryland passed in peace, that in
Pennsylvania and California and other where souls have received
consolation and courage and that in the Mission there be a few souls
bettered to all eternity. Although naturally handicapped by human frailty
the Mission has nevertheless served to some good end.

 137



THE NATIVITY OF CHRIST was the Nativity of Love. The Holy
Infant so tender and mild is very God of very God. God is Love. Love is
the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Love is the Lamb
of God. Love is the Saviour of the world. Love was born. Love became
flesh.

When Love was born Hate did not die but Hate received the wound
that will in time prove to be Hate's end. When Love was crucified Hate
gloated but Hate's mortal wound was worsened. Hate is a roaring lion
seeking whom he may devour. Hate has many kindred tongues, and nations
suffering the agonies of the damned. Because this is so, often the cry is
heard, "I have lost my faith! There is no Love." Perhaps it is rather likely
that such a one really had no faith to lose.

There is a Good Friday miracle and there is a Christmas miracle. The
sacrifice of the cross and Its Propitiation go on forever, the spilled Blood of
the Lamb of God is never cooled. The Christmas miracle is that the
Nativity of Love is never ended. Love is born anew in hearts each day.
Love is reincarnated in you whenever you receive His Body and Blood at
the altar if you are ready to receive Him. Make ready for the Christ Mass,
Beloved. Give your body for the creche of Love. If you can give utterly,
tile Blood of Love will wash you worthy. Love will not guarantee that
Hate will not blast and destroy your body in agony but Love will guarantee
you the power and the glory to witness with perfect calm, the destruction
of your body, if it come, while you and your soul march on unscathed.
Love, born of Mary, while shepherds watched and angels sang, Glory be to
God.

IN SHERWOOD, they, that is almost anybody, will tell you that
Sherwood is a law unto itself. just what they mean is not perfectly clear,
but Sherwood is totally different. Remember Sherwood is a community in a
valley closely hemmed in by mountains and until a few years ago had no
easy outlet. For generations its people largely lived in their green valley
with their vision limited to a few miles at most. Most of its people were
primitive, rather savage as viewed by an outside world, but actually as
kindly and God-fearing as people be. Modernity is changing all that and
within another generation Sherwood will have lost its charm.

In Sherwood social barriers are definitely different but they are as
sharply obvious as they are elsewhere. There is no denial of

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desires that can be gratified. If one desires ease or snuff or whiskey or
purity or religion one takes it if one can. Many do not know the words,
thank you, but their gratitude is deeper than most. There is profound
respect for the individual wish; generally if a child dislikes school it does
not go to school; if a child does not want appendix out or tonsils or tooth
they just stay in regardless of the results. There is scant discipline. The
peop1e have all easy going compassion and the probable verdict of any
jury composed of them to find for their own would be, not guilty. Where
but in the Mission church could courtesan sit beside enduring immaculate
purity for Evening Prayer as a matter of course?

Some there be who are dependent upon doles of relief and charity but
they are doggedly independently dependent. Some there be so worthless
that only their immortal souls make them priceless. These as well as the
more normal are imbued with an enviable vein of stern metal, they know
little of fear, they do not countenance coercion, and as frail as they appear
when it comes to endurance they are there and when it comes to suffering
they can take it.

Convention in Sherwood is also law peculiar to Sherwood but tile
people are its slaves even as the Englishman who dresses for dinner in
equatorial Africa. White tie and tails even as knickers would be ridiculous
in Sherwood where some men wear normal business suits but where
overalls and jumpers have the social entree. As for women the newest in
complete evening ensemble would be welcome and envied. Polite phrases
are nearly as fixed as those of royal usage, for instance, in parting the lines
are as right as Emily Post and very gracious, "Come go home with me."
The response, "You come."

Such are the people to whom you, the Greater Congregation, extend
the mercies of our Lord and whom the Mission priest loves and shall love,
God bless them, while his soul endures.

IN CONTRAST to the law of Sherwood your Mission priest, even is
you were, Beloved, was nurtured on discipline and self denial. Whatever
has been accomplished for God in the Mission these last years is largely
attributable to that rearing, however, the priest must confess that he falls
far short of both virtues as he learned them.

There are those who are growing up, by no means in Sherwood

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alone, wantonly refusing teaching, discipline, training and are maturing
incapable of earning the comforts of life but who may be willing to demand
them unearned if dangerous leaders urge them to do so. There is the grave
danger that those who spend their God-given freedom in growing up into
incompetence imperil the freedom of all to the discipline of other Hitlers
and Stalins. Only the love and discipline of our Lord can avert it. Let that
not be withholden in Sherwood, Beloved.

THE PRIEST'S DIARY contributes.

August 12th -The Summer Booklet has turned out a financial failure as
most of the summer number do. The four numbers of The Booklet
published within the year must average a gross return of $1,00O each, This
summer's number fell $700 short. * * * October 15th -The Autumn
Booklet is in the post. No urgent appeal was included as there was a year
ago. Money now is just as short as then but plain begging is so dreadfully
obnoxious. * * * November 2nd -An urgent appeal should have been sent.
The Autumn Booklet has grossed only $500.... November 9th-Home after
a week's absence and thus getting exactly a full week's mail, which brought
$70, and will pay the week's expenses, but nothing on bills in arrears.
Thank God for $70! * * * November 12th -Three dollars from a woman
who writes, God bless her, "I know it is lovely to be able to give your
people a Christmas party." Have the Booklets left her in ignorance of the
fact that the offerings they inspire feed hungry mouths, buy medicine and
treatment for the ill, buy small mountains of fuel, feed and keep the priest
who ministers, and keep the Mission's car shuttling back and forth to move
the sick to clinics, to find employment for the unemployed, to bury the
dead? November l4th -Little sleep last night. Many overdue and unpaid
bills have a tendency to make one squirm and wrestle with one's pillow.
November 19th -The Red Mass of God the Holy Ghost was offered this
morning asking for inspiration for The Christmas Booklet which was
commenced later in the day. The question tonight is, must some urgent
appeal be sent with The Booklet? The answer has not as yet been given.
Certainly the Christmas offering this year must be the best of all the years
merely to balance accounts at the end of the year. Many have given their
full share. But death and ever new appeals have taken a dreadful toll. To
get down to the crucial analysis it is those who have

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forgotten their full offerings who have distressed the Mission. Somehow
the Mission believes they will remember.

IF IN GREAT BAZAARS, they sold the golden stars and you
bought them, Beloved, and actually hung them on the Mission's Christmas
trees you would find that the trees would be no more wonderful, no more
miraculous than they already are to the Mission Children. To have fifty
Christmas seasons, more or less, come and go, as most who read have, does
not wear away the holiness and the glamour of Christmas; the thrill is still
there. Nevertheless, you Beloved, are in degree surfeited, your emotions
are a little calloused. You have had comforts and pleasures amid the pains
and griefs not only at Christmas but in all the seasons through all the years.
No so these little ones. Their few years have been drab and monotonously
empty. Aside from nature the richest thing they have ever seen is a festival
Christmas Mass in the Mission church and the Christmas trees have given
them their nearest approach to ecstasy. The ecstasy of this Christmas has
long been tingling in their blood. When the long anticipated hour comes at
last and the children stand beneath their particular tree their eyes are wide,
their breath short and goose flesh coven them as a rash. One wonders how
their little nervous systems stand the strain! However thrilling, and this is
the sweetest fact of all, the trees are accepted as a part and not the whole
of Christmas and solemn and holy Christmas duties are faithfully done.
Never let the Mission trees wither, Beloved. Never let their crops of gifts
be short. Disappointment beneath the Mission's Christmas trees would be
an agony of hurt to wring tears front eyes of stone.

THE CASE OF THE YEAR. It has become the Mission's custom to
ask tile Greater Congregation to make some one soul, outstanding in
worthiness, supremely happy at Christmas. Della, in 1938, received new
teeth and new health through a total investment of $150.00. In 1939,
Noah, who has tuberculosis, received the one suit of his lifetime, a
Christmas dinner with turkey and cranberries for his family, and a purse of
$50.00.

This Christmas the priest's choice is David of whom be might quote,
"I have found David my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him.
My hand shall hold him fast, and my arm shall strengthen him." In 1932
the priest baptized David, and since, while so great a number have been
faithful and passed on, David

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has been superlatively faithful and remains. As this is written David is at
work in the garden. In the church, at the altar, in the priest's house, in brick
making, in gardening, in confidence, in trustworthiness, in thoughtfulness,
David has been the bravest of them all. It was David who replied some
years ago when asked what might be written of him in The Booklet, "'Lord,
remember David, and all his trouble,' I reckon."

Irene is the only sweetheart David ever knew. Although 22 and 18 are
right ripe ages for wedlock in Sherwood they did not intend to be wed for a
few years until the Selective Service registration made them panicky. War
might cause Irene to lose him, and cost David the loss of Irene, forever.
Their nothing at all was as much as is ever required for marriage in
Sherwood. Their wedding in October was the sweetest the Mission ever
had. They set up housekeeping, with the Mission's aid, in a most miserable
little two room shack, the best house available in Sherwood.

Beloved, let us build David and Irene a little house and give them a
good start down the years together. They deserve it, and of not too many
can that lie said. There is a bit of land behind the church. The brick for all
the walls are already made by David's hands. The house will belong to the
church and David will pay four dollars a month for rent. The sum of
$150.00 will not quite manage the floor and roof but the Mission will take
care of the balance. Add your bit to your Christmas offering. The case of
the year! Happiness for Irene and David. Oh! Christ Child, make it true.

THE SADDEST DEATH of the Mission's year among many in the
Greater Congregation is Sarah's, somewhere in New York. Her dear letters
through the years were always sources of joy and inspiration. Her gifts to
the Mission are obvious at every turn and her St. Gabriel, the church bell,
will ever toll her requiem as it daily calls to worship or merely calls
Sherwood out of its bed. The loss of Sarah's offerings reduce the Mission's
income four per cent. Her peace will be remembered before the Mission
altars as long as the present priest stands before them. Lord grant her rest
eternal.

THE SUSTAINING PRAYERS of the Greater Congregation are
invaluable. Often their efficacy is distinctly felt. Intercessions for you
asked by wire and post are faithfully offered daily and

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many of your thanksgivings are said, And now remember just past
midnight on Christmas morning and liter in the day, at each Christ Mass,
the blessing of Him who was the Christ Child, given by the Mission priest
with His authority from the Mission's Christmas altar, will just as
definitely and as positively rest upon you, an individual member of the
Greater Congregation, as upon the members of the Mission flock. May
your Christmas be holy.

EASTER, 1941

EPIPHANY MISSION. A mission of sorrows, a mission to the poor,
to the sick and them that have cause for bitter tears, to them of faint hope
and fainter courage and faintest ambition; yet a mission glorying in the
privilege to serve. A mission of poverty, without endowment or certain
income and sometime without so much as one dime, but daily affording
healing for the sick, food for the hungry, sweet anodynes for them that
mourn. A mission without status, without one lay vote in Convention, but
a mission with God and God's altars and God's sacraments and His love
and His mercy. Epiphany Mission, "As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing;
as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all
things."

'TRIUMPH is an exultant synonym of victory. There is a glory in the
very word. Triumph is never the achievement of its hour. One's victory of
this morning was the accomplishment of all one's yesteryears and the
yesteryears of one's forebears.

Easter is the Feast of Triumph. It is a feast for majestic banners of
white and gold. True the great feast in a small way marks one's small
personal victory over one's self, the achievement of a somber Lenten fast
and all the fasts before; the little personal victory that submerges one
deeper in Christ in preparation for participation in His eternal victory. But
Easter is the feast of the triumph of the Babe of Bethlehem, the Son of
Man, the Lamb of God, of God the Son. The triumph, not just of today,
but of all time and eternity, that reaches back to, "As it was in the
beginning," and hung upon a Blessed Maid's, "Be it unto me according to
Thy word," and was proclaimed, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," to
Mary of Bethany before it was a triumph accomplished in fact. Easter
marks the triumph that is the heritage

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of every faithful child of God "now, and ever shall be, world without end."

Easter is the Feast of Resurrection and Life, the eternal conquering of
death. What then does it mean to one whose years are full and who nears
the western gate? To one desiring a simple answer that a child might
understand. Well, there is such a one, whose tired eyes sometime look
down on tired hands and limbs and remembers that a marvelous body has
grown old, remembers the heights and depths once reached by the spirit
and the body in all but perfect harmony of union, thinks of the failing
physique which now imprisons the ageless spirit and knows the body
must soon surrender and set the spirit free. Such a one stood by the grave
of loved ones lost awhile, graves beneath ancient live oaks and gardenias
and camellias and thought, "They are not here, they who laughed and loved
and knew did not die but left their dear bodies here while they moved
onward to grow in God's greater love and service. Here the precious dust
that once formed their comely houses rests or perhaps a fraction of that
dust is the heart of a camellia or courses through the veins of a wind tossed
live oak bough." And such a one thought, "How sweet a disposition of
one's body until the Almighty Father calls it to resurrection and glorious
perfection and reunion with one's self, one's soul." To such a one the
triumph of Easter is very real. At Easter one knows there is no death. One
knows that before long one's corruptible body must be surrendered until
God raises it incorruptible and glorious to partake of Christ's-eternal
triumph. Alleluia!

IN SHERWOOD there are those who nominally are wholehearted
champions and advocates of Epiphany Mission but who actually although
unconsciously, give their support to its destruction. These are highly
respectable people, honorable, admirable. From a purely human angle
stauncher or more loyal friends could not be found on earth. They do not
realize that their influence is actually all out for the destruction of the
Mission, that what ever spiritual good has been accomplished has been
achieved in spite of them and would deny that this is true. Were they
convinced they would be grieved but perhaps scarcely grieved enough to
altar their course. Some of these do, some do not, support the Mission
financially. All laud the Mission for its work of charity and mercy.

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None seem to realize that faithful and earnest use of the Mission altars and
of the Holy Sacraments determines the worthiness of the Mission's
support by the Greater Congregation and the scope of the Mission's
charities.

Three -hundred and sixty-three mornings a year these dear souls do
not come near the church for Mass. Fifty-two Sundays a year they do not
approach the church for Morning Prayer. It is a tragedy that by their
example they do not influence imitative youth to come into the church and
learn of God and of worship and of Christian precepts. These good people
deplore the fact that freedom and democracy are threatened by world-wide
peril. Freedom and democracy, those cherished ideals emanating from
nothing on earth but the principles of Christianity! Then how doubly
tragic is the fact that by their very own examples they deny youth the
knowledge of those principles, that by their very own example they are
potent fifth columnists of the evils they deplore.

These passive souls are first citizens, therein is their influence. They
are shining examples. They cannot escape their responsibility. The world is
full of evil, but there is not much urge in youth to imitate derelicts, thieves
and drunkards. Unconsciously youth irresistibly imitates respectability. In
the Mission, beyond a doubt, one between the ages 18 and 30 would
become faithful for each one past 40 who would become a faithful example.
The situation is not peculiar to Sherwood but what is peculiar to Sherwood
is that in the Mission church fully sixty per cent of any congregation is
under the age of 20. Could a score of Sherwood's most privileged but
conceive the eternal value of the power with which they trifle, would they
but make the unfailing holy gesture, neither feeling nor fire nor flood
preventing, of never failing the Sunday Mass, what a firm, foundation their
ever presence would be to pliant youth, what a rock upon which to build
for God, what a different story Epiphany Mission would have to tell!

A NOTE left by a visitor: Dear Father: I am sorry to have missed you
but very pleased to have seen the lovely little church. Your arrangements
of prayer desks around the nave of the church convenient to all the
Stations I found irresistible. And I love the little typed meditations for
each Station affixed to the prayer desk,

 145



for instance, that for the XI Station with this line, "They nailed His hands
and feet to the Cross with railroad spikes." And at the XIII Station,
"Removed from the Cross His body rested in His Holy Mama's arms." I
think that in terms easily understood you must make religion very real to
your people.

THROUGH THE YEARS in endless procession they have come,
dear children, to the Font and have been signed with the sign of the Cross
and made Christ's faithful soldiers and servants until their life's end.
Through the years they have been faithful, just that. And now the years
have come when in endless procession they match away to distant scenes
as earners of bread, laborers, typists, teachers, nurses, wives, soldiers,
sailors, aviators, and in spite of the ranks they have broken in the Mission
filling with those but a year or two behind, their shepherd is bereft. It
somehow seems sweeter to have one long absent back but an hour than to
hold the ninety and nine at home in the hollow of the hand. How blessed
was last Sunday with Howard, married nine months, home and serving the
Mass, and with Robert, Lewis and Cy in such resplendent uniforms kneeling with the congregation before the altar. And Savannah, rarely at
home the past three years, with her little one beside her. Mission children,
sometime wayward, always precious, faithful soldiers and servants until
their life's end.

ANOTHER PROCESSION, also endless, marches always through the
Mission, Those who march represent the least of those His brethren of
whom He said, "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: naked, and ye
clothed me: sick, and ye visited me." The plight of most of those who come
has long since been determined, in some cases years ago; generally there is
no question of their vital need. A mother, once constant in her church
duties, has been in bed three years. Her husband is dead. Her family of
little ones is large. She gets a Federal relief check each month that by no
means makes ends meet. Her lad comes weekly for his Mission dole of one
and one-half dollars. Three little girls come weekly for three mothers and a
number of sisters and brothers and get their doles of one dollar for each
family. An older woman comes for a dollar a week for medicine for her ill
mother. So the procession marches and so are fixed doles granted at an
expense to the Mission of a dollar a day for every day in the year.

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March also those in emergencies who come first off to the Mission
or come in the end when other sources have failed them. It may be that
illness has stricken, it may be that the baby is coming, or it may be that
death has visited in the night. Within this hour came a girl still in her teens
albeit married and the mother of two; a girl once on her knees in the church
several times a week but now doing little beside nursing her babies. Came
this child mother saying, "Mamma has been in bed in Chattanooga three
months ... .. Yes, I know." "But she is worse and may die before I get
there. I must go. Please let me have eighty-four cents for my ticket." "But
how will you get back?" "Oh, I do not know, but I must get there now."
She got a half dollar, two dimes and fourteen pennies. There was not
another coin to give her. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least
of these My brethren ...

DAVID AND IRENE have their little house. A sitting room, a
bedroom, an ample kitchen and two porches, all lighted with electricity and
with water in the kitchen. The house is snug and cozy, white and
immaculate. Yesterday the priest found David hanging curtains under
Irene's directions and they were like lovely children, full of pride in their
nest, and fairly bursting with happiness. Irene made Father happy too
when she invited him to come for dinner one day soon.

THE GARDEN has been a dormant thing through weary winter, dun
and drab, and full of shrouds of burlap and straw entombing plants against
the frost. Even the evergreens are rusty brown, seared by icy winds and
laden with lime dust and soft coal soot from the Lime Plant. Now in mid
Lent the Garden is gaunt, it appears as though it had kept a strict fast, as
though its beauty is heavily veiled for Passion Tide. Today the soil is cold,
the wind sharp, the sun pale, and yet one cannot enter the garden and fail
to feel a push and a throb, in the soil and the wind and the sun, pregnant
with promise of spring. When Easter comes to the Garden a thousand
entombed plants will be bursting forward and upward into resurrection.

The influence of the Mission Garden spills abroad. Sherwood's Lime
Plant has 60 rose plants around its office building. Some

 147



of the Mission boys have rose beds in their home gardens and they have
learned how to care for their plants to get the best roses.

THIS DAY NOW DONE was Sunday. The last routine duty is
finished, the last caller departed, and go-to-bed time has come.

In achievement this has been a mediocre Sunday. The IV Sunday in
Lent with flowers in memory of Mother Jones and Mother Stuttle on the
altar from a member of the Greater Congregation in Massachusetts.
Refreshment Sunday with Rose Vestments and but 52 souls present for the
early Mass. Between Mass and Morning Prayer time an interlude wherein
came breakfast and many souls, some with joys and more with woes.
Morning prayer time and Sunday School time. Vernon at home for the first
hour since Christ Mass. Mr. Albert, the theological student who is ably
helping in the Mission was down for the day. A visit to a sick person. The
Stations said. Lunch. From two to four a funeral down Little Creek side 12
miles away in Alabama. It rained. The Question of a school for Buddie,
now orphaned. Driving the bereaved home. A sick person visited. The
discussion of problems with those who have every right to present them.
Evening Prayer time. Rain. Now it is go-to-bed time. Has there been an idle
minute this day. Lord? The sound of the rain on the roof is very lovely.
Those are greatly blessed who when it rains sleep with roofs immediately
overhead and the blessing is richer if the roofs are of tin.

Perhaps ten thousand priests and missions ind parishes haxe had as
mediocre Sunday and surely millions of souls with numerous griefs have
greater causes for weariness. Dear God, gather Thy tired children all to bed,
and please God grant them all a bed this night, and give all sweet repose
and refreshment and bring them to a rich tomorrow graciously blessed in
Thy love, mercy, strength. Amen.

SUMMER, 1941
 "A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,

Fringed pool,
Ferned grot

The veriest school

Of peace; and yet the fool

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 Contends that God is not
 Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? Nay,
 but I have a sign: 'Tis very sure God walks in
 mine."

IN THE MISSION GARDEN, Florence was cutting roses after David
died. There she pondered, as perhaps at sometime do all why Of Len the
fairest of the young must die, as our Melvin or David or sweet little ones.
Many wonder why David had to die at 23, the best boy, the best young
man the Mission has nurtured. Florence though how she loved all the roses,
how she gathered those spent and withered and old into her basket and as
cherished things rather than trash tenderly put them away. But she further
thought how in selecting roses for God's altars and shrines and glory she
selected the fairest, most perfect buds. When the Mission folk heard her
story many better understood how God, Who loves us all and gathers all at
last, reached into His Mission Garden and gathered David, so young, so
fair, into His bosom for His glory.

DAVID entered into rest, just as the Mass for the dying was finished,
at 7:20 on Thursday morning, July 24th. On July 11th he spent the day in
Chattanooga with Father and seemed in good health. He was stricken in the
night. On Sunday, Father and Irene, his wife, took him to a hospital in
Chattanooga, where he had an operation for an intestinal obstruction at
eight in the evening. The following Thursday he underwent a second
operation. He was given eight transfusions. Nothing was spared to save his
life but he was mortally stricken from the first. The Holy Sacrifice was
offered by David's bed. Every spiritual preparation for the passing of his
soul was made. If ever mortal was ready to go home to God, David was.
May he rest in peace.

OF THE MISSION GARDEN remember that every block and brick
has been made and then built into walls and walks by Mission boys. The
garden builders have hauled in every cubic foot of soil to make the garden.
Now that there is a garden the youngsters are the gardeners who keep the
garden. Many a young gardener has served and passed on to other labors
distant from Sherwood or to become soldier or sailor. Come and serve and
go as they must, may God grant for a long time gardeners to keep the
garden each day, season after season, through the cycles of the years.

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THE MISSION GARDEN of flowers is often sprayed with
concentrated insect sprays and fungicides. Sometime souls in the Mission's
spiritual garden have to be sprayed with vitriol, perhaps -- a solution of two
parts to 98 parts of love.

THE COMMUNITY HOUSE has not progressed of late. But after all
the great cathedrals are a long time in building and although perhaps a dime
cathedral the Community House will nevertheless be as a cathedral in
Sherwood. May the day soon come when new heart, new courage and new
effort will bring the building into being.

A STORM a while ago broke over the garden. Only the most
luxurious growth suffered destruction. Sun flowers ten feet tall reclined in
the mud. A trellis of morning glories had fallen like the mighty and some
upright holyhocks were prostrate. The tougher, smaller plants survived and
bloomed as usual. All of which might remind the faithful that when one
stands out too markedly high one may be in peril.

ST. CHRYSOSTOM came to the garden on Easter Day. Marguerite
found him in the south pool and stroked his back and he stuck out his chest
and sang. He was just a toad at first but when he sang in the evenings, of
summer and rain, and soothed his hearers into slumber his voice indeed
seemed golden and he became St. Chrysostom. Evidently the lady frogs
also thought his voice a voice of gold and to the garden they came to sing
with him among the lily pads symphonies from the great operas of God.
Of course the inevitable happened and it seemed that St. Chrysostom
should more fittingly have been named Father Abraham when his progeny
numbered as the sands of the sea. When, in due time, on one rainy
afternoon the innumerable baby frogs into which the tadpoles had grown
hopped out of the pool in multitudes, the garden suggested Egypt with a
plague upon it. A while ago a great basso joined the pool's company and
being a bullfrog is of course The Fat Bull of Bashan.

The pool is lovely with its planting at the peak and with its new lily
blooms each day but it would not be half so lovely lacking St.
Chrysostorn's chorus singing praises to God.

MISCELLANY. It is the morning of August 6th, in the year of our
Lord, 1941. The heat is intense. Sherwood has lately felt

 150



a few of the hottest nights in ten years. This morning the Mass of the
Feast of Transfiguration has been offered for God's blessing on the 37th
Booklet. This time the Booklet is a month late but will be in type before
the day is done. When the Booklet is in your hands may God indeed bless
your reaction for it is a weak Booklet. It seems that all the flowers in
Sherwood's valley withered when David died, that all strength turned to
weakness, that the Booklet became an inconsequential thing. The will to
make a fair Booklet is strong again, the spirit still too bereft to succeed. * *
* Passing sweet and holy was David's Requiem Mass. Mama Nic was
present for the funeral and brought some of the theological students from
DuBose School to sing hymns before and after the Burial Office which
according to old custom in Sherwood was in the afternoon. The hymns
were fittingly tendered and filled the hearts of those who loved David with
gratitude. * * O For a year now finished attendance in the Mission at the eight
o'clock Sunday Mass has been but 50 souls whereas for many years the
attendance was 70 souls. Removals are entirely responsible. Within the
year more than 20 youth have left Sherwood, some to be employed
elsewhere, some married quite out of the community, many in various
branches of military service. All the more gratifying because of so many
losses was an attendance of 70 for the Holy Communion on the VIII
Sunday after Trinity. * * * Bishop Dandridge confirmed a class of 15 and
preached in the Mission church last Sunday evening. The whole Mission is
thankfully rejoicing because seven members of the class are married adults
averaging 50 years of age and all sought, and besought in intercession, for
ten long years. The community's well beloved doctor and his wife are
included. There are also six stalwart youths and two sweet girls. Surely
there are 15 other young people ready for cofirmation but little instruction
has been given this sad summer and these others will be better prepared
another time. * * *

Blooming in the Mission garden at this time are more than 400 rose
plants including 70 varieties. The garden includes a rather separate garden
of zinnias that are truly magnificent. This zinnia garden is a tulip garden in
spring. The Mission's collection of tulip bulbs represent the efforts and
increase of 7 or 8 years but have cost little in money. These bulbs that
will be put into the soil this autumn are in perfect condition at this time.
The bulbs

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number about 1,500 and if sold at present values would bring
around $150.00. Bloom what may, the heavenly blue morning
glories will be the sensation upon which all eyes must fix until
frost strikes them down.

HEAVINESS may endure for a night but joy cometh in the
morning. Spring marches behind winter. The ebb tide turns to
flood. The devil incarnate for the moment tends God's earth and
the inhabitants thereof and in little corners little storms devastate
little gardens and always somewhere death has left a sadness. But
courage sometime shaken will be strong again, hearts will be brave
and true, peace at the last will prevail. God lives.

AUTUMN, 1941

ALL SOULS' will be celebrated on Monday, November 3rd, as
the 2nd falls on Sunday. Many of our communion ask, "Why All
Souls' when we have All Saints'." Had all the departed died perfect,
were there no need of continual growth in God's love and service,
were all immaculate saints, then all the departed could be remem-
bered with All Saints' and there would be little reason for All
Souls' except for those still so human as to cherish the imperfect
humanity of loved ones lost awhile.

The Mission knows that Mother Jones and David were faithful
unto death, true to their faith through the years, ready to die but
that they passed in much need of growth in knowledge of God and
His service, far from perfect saints. The Mission knows that the
prayers of Mother Jones and David are efficacious for those still in
the flesh and that for them the Mission's prayers are effective in
promoting their growth in God. The mightiest prayer of flesh is
the offering of tire Holy Sacrifice. The Victim of Calvary, the
everlasting Holy Sacrifice, our only Mediator and Advocate comes
down to the Host and Chalice and Mother Jones and David with
their needs are put into His arms to take back to the throne on
high where He pleads for them, and then He, the Holy Sacrifice,
the Crucified, as it were with Mother Jones and David in His arms,
is offered up to the Father. Such is a Requiem Mass for Mother
Jones and David, the mightiest intercession possible for their peace-
ful growth in God.

For years it has been customary in the Mission to place by
name your dear ones in our Lord's arms at the Masses on All

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Souls' Day and through November, the month of All Souls. Year after
year more than fifteen hundred souls are so remembered. The privilege is
most precious.

'THE LITTLE HOMES of Sherwood house families not unlike those
dwelling in fine houses and mansions. In Sherwood's little homes babies
are born, they grow, they hunger and thirst, enjoy laughter, suffer pain,
mature, marry, produce babies, A peculiar people? Yes, and no. They
differ one front another in the same family, neighboring families differ,
families differ from the families of the near great and great who have been
privileged through generations of sterner rearing and training, of discipline
and restraint. The differences are subtle differences, to demarcate, to
distinguish, to define is impossible. The differences do not matter one jot
or tittle, they make all the difference in the world.

The little homes of Sherwood house unquiet souls even as the little
homes of anywhere or the mansions. Souls unquieted by desire, desire
misdirected toward security, pleasure, material baubles. Souls created by
God for Himself and restless until they repose in Him.

Sherwood in its valley of slopes between its limestone hills and with
its little homes must be very like Nazareth of Zebulon, the dwelling place
of our Lord. The Holy Family lived in a little home. Surely two rooms
were the tabernacle of the Presence, the shrine of Our Lady and St. Joseph.
Surely our Lord loves the little homes of Sherwood and where the souls
dwelling in them are meek enough to receive Him joyfully enters in and
abides. And surely He who sits on the right hand of the throne of Glory as
well as enters humble homes comforts, when the little home is so much too
small for a family of ten, or too cold, or too dirty, saying, "Have courage,
endure, the little home is for only a season; in my Father's house are many
mansions."

THE VERSATILITY of the Mission's Ministry may be seen by
bringing into comparison two recent funerals. The norm. of all Mission
ministrations is the Holy Catholic rite in its integrity but there is never any
hesitancy in tempering the rite with expediency. For instance, when
David's body was brought home in the evening of the day of his passing it
should have rested before

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the altar in the church through the night with those who loved him present,
keeping vigil. However, for his body to pass a last night in his little home
was priceless to Irene, his wife, and there it rested, a large crucifix on the
wall at the head of the coffin and bier lights burning beneath at either
shoulder. In the morning while the church bell tolled the procession on foot
followed the hearse from David's house to the church and the Requiem
Mass was offered with no deviation from the rite. After the Mass, with
pall removed the coffin stood open with the six high reaching bier lights
burning until afternoon when the coffin was closed and covered with the
pall for the Burial Office and the Absolution. Before the interment the
grave was properly blessed. Black Mass vestments were of course used,
black cope, incense and holy water. All candles, except those on our Lady's
shrine, were unbleached, brown wax. Caring tenderly, our Lord was
present, David and those who loved him unseparated in Him. The holy
dignity of the Catholic rites were charged with His majesty and glory.

Far different the next Mission funeral down in Round Cove across the
Alabama line. An unbaptized young man of twenty-one years, belonging to
no Mission family, was accidently shot instantly to death. Far back into
the mountains that are so rugged and so fast is the cabin home. Upon
arrival condolence was offered the family and their beneath a tree, with the
congregation gathered around the coffin and seated upon stones or upon
the ground, the priest in cassock and surplice read from the Prayer Book
Burial Office what was fitting and in simple sermon offered milk of the
Catholic faith to those who listened.

The cemetery, a mile and a half deeper in the mountains was reached
over a trail difficult for human limbs. Two hours was spent in waiting for
the grave to be finished. That lonely, lovely spot seemed the most isolated
in the world, when, as if to prove there is no isolation, two planes flew
over directly above. The wait seemed very long and a storm brewed in the
east and broke and passed in two torrents, one to the north and one to the
south but withal drenching those between who waited for the grave to be
done. When the day was dying the commital was at last made, Through
all, loving and merciful, caring tenderly, our Lord was surely present and
the holy simplicity of interring a body in His name was charged with His
glory.

 154



FLOSSIE'S is situated about 100 yards from the Mission church,
within the Mission close if it may be so called. Flossie's is a commodious
room with clothes presses, table, book shelves with books, really the
Mission clothes room and library. Flossie, a young Mission woman,
spends a good part of six days a week conducting her establishment. Here
the contents of your boxes sent to the Mission are classified and sold to
the poor from miles around for a bit of money whenever possible or given
without price when the poor has nothing to pay. The money so received is
a tremendous help in paying Mission expenses. Truly you can have no full
realization of the value to the Mission of the old shoes, suits, clothing,
curtains, notions, in fact, any single such thing sent.

In the Greater Congregation the Mission's outstanding contributor of
boxes lives in Baltimore. She collects from a large circle of friends anything
from soap to blankets. So much good has she accomplished that the
Mission unhesitatingly, if it could, would canonize her forthright, St.
Minnie.

Remember always, Beloved, how even a small box furthers the
Mission's purpose and remember that books of fairly up to date fiction
help to satisfy an insatiable demand.

ALL THE WORLD is queer save thee and me and sometime even
thee is a little queer. Ten years lived with a once strange people would
seem a right long time to learn its idiosyncrasies and perversities but the
Mission priest has been slow in learning. True, he long ago learned that his
children are queer and iniquitous, in fact, some are so queer and so
iniquitous that the priest knows could some members of the Greater
Congregation know they would advise leaving them despised and forsaken.
But somewhere in every soul there is an imperfect area, at least a spot, all
are perverse, even thee and me. It is only that the mote in our brother's eye
is so much more obvious. Perhaps often enough what is called
idiosyncrasies and iniquities are merely differences in viewpoints rather
than queerness and immorality.

Ten years it took the Mission priest to learn the meaning in Sherwood
of, "I do not want to." Having been reared to disregard one's own wishes,
and having lived among people who did so when courtesy or rightness or
duty opposed it took long to learn the

 155



finality of people's "I do not want to." Perhaps a limited vocabulary is
partly accountable, surely courtesy attempts to soften a more direct
refusal, idiosyncrasy can not be discounted, but, "I do not want to," in
Sherwood is the most positive and final NO that language expresses.

The Mission priest thinks he is tired. just now he does not want to
commence with a group of children just where he commenced with similar
groups ten or eight or six years ago, exactly at the beginning, teaching them
to learn and practice the Catholic faith. He will. Maybe he is a little queer
but the fact that he does not want to simply does not matter at all.

OCTOBER is swiftly moving from out of the future into the past. In
Tennessee a devastating summer and drought holds on. The nights grow a
bit cooler. This morning the pigeons met the priest as he left the priest's
house at 6:40 o'clock to cross the street to the church. The pigeons meet
the priest every morning. The church bell told the waiting town when it
was exactly 6:50. At 7:0O o'clock the votive Mass of the Most Sacred
Heart of Jesus was offered. First intention was to offer the Mass for mercy
and comfort for all those in this round world suffering innocently. It was
actually offered for all suffering. After Mass, poor, pathetic Rube wanted a
dime for aspirin. Never a day Rube does not bring his woes. This morn,
much as usual, after Rube, the deluge. In the two hours since Mass time a
score of God's children with uneasy minds have gotten the little decisions
they sought, A number of stations common to the way of any day have
been passed and this paragraph has been written between a dozen
interruptions.

One family sent Bill and asked next week's supply of food today,
having today nothing to eat. The carpenters doing Mission repair work
were consulted and corrected. Two small boys brought barnyard manure to
sell. The boys working in the garden and building a wall were directed and
encouraged. Irene gave the priest his breakfast of grapefruit, an egg, toast
and coffee. The mail brought from Henry a request to get him released
from jail. Stella's letter asked work for her husband. A tragic story from a
young wife in Buffalo mistreated and deserted by her husband, who is a
one-time protege of the priest's. News of a Mission friend

 156



ill in Maryland and of another friend isolated and lonely in Florida. One
letter enclosed an offering of ten dollars, which, by the way, is the only
one for the week.

Callie has come requesting that Bill, who is ill, be taken to
Chattanooga. Another pleads for some supply of winter fuel. One asked
for stove pipe. Two came to know if and when there will be sweaters for
the. children this autumn.

So the priest has spent the time from 6:30 until 9:00 in the morning
upon the day of this writing. It is an average beginning of a day, a
beginning truly, because some serious business may be undertaken after
nine o'clock.

DEATH draws near to the season as another cycle of the fruits of the
earth is passing. Old age is upon the year. In the morning it is green, and
groweth up, but in the evening it is cut down, dried up and withered.
Spring time is birth time, the time of quickening; summer is the time of
growth, of fullness; autumn sees maturity, ripeness, passing and winter is
death.

In the Mission's valley summer imperceptibly wanes, the vanguards
of autumn grow bolder. Indian summer is upon the valley, Indian summer
hoarding the passing loveliness of a season ending and embracing the
pleasant promises of a season to come. The skies are the bluest of the
twelvemonth, the early morns the fairest, the perfumes of ripeness and
harvest are pleasant to smell. The last days of a fruitful year that is at the
point to die are touched with a sweet sadness but they are lovely, lovely.

In the Mission's valley are those of venerable age known as Granny or
Aunt Bess or Uncle Tom or the Old Man or the Old Lady. Their Indian
summer is far spent. Winter's snow crowns their brows. Growth is over,
maturity finished, ripeness has grown too mellow, passing is at hand, and
yet these precious ones are beautiful as never in the spring time of life or in
the summer of life's fullness. Theirs the refined loveliness of a season
ending blessed with the holy promises of the fuller life to come. The last
roses of summer are the fairest, the mellow smiles of God's children near
long life's end are the sweetest.

CHRISTMAS, 1941

"WHEN JESUS was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod
the king, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was

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Simeon; just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. And shortly
when the child Jesus was brought to the temple Simeon took Him up in his
arms, and blessed God and said, "Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation."

The years and the centuries have unfolded and been alive and then
gathered into the archives of eternity. In the scheme of the ages as
measured by the inexorable heart beat of time again there has come upon us
the season to contemplate the Nativity of our Lord. There be at this
present season many souls, just and devout, waiting for some new
consolation of Israel; some new consolation for Holy Church; for self. So
some waited after Calvary and when Titus destroyed Jerusalem, so some
waited when Nero burned and martyred and so some wait now as in the
long ago when the barbarians devastate Christendom or even often enough
when Christians deflower barbarians or Christians. There are no new
failures or woes or persecutions needing consolation this Nativity, all have
been suffered of old. Holy Church has always had darksome nights and
winters of despair followed by joyous mornings and returns of eternal
spring. Always beyond the sloughs of despond, above the valleys veiled
with the shadows of death are the hills of God's will be done and beyond
the hills rise the mountains of His Kingdom and Glory. Such is the life of
the Church Militant, so wends the Kings Highway.

Yes, Beloved, on this nineteen hundred and forty-first anniversary of
our Lord's birthday some few of His children are very Antichrists, many
nearer home seem indifferent, faith seems a dim thing, congregations of
Holy Church are small and their support meager, but there be a few
faithful, even a few. Think back to the actual Nativity, the birth of the
Lord God the Son in Bethlehem of Judea. The only multitude corporately
interested was a heavenly host. Of mortals, on one maid rested the whole
Incarnation, "Be it unto me according to Thy word"; two only and the
beasts were present when Mary brought forth her Son; the shepherds were
few; the Wise Men but three.

Yes, Beloved, on this Nativity just and devout as you are your need
of consolation may be crushing, but you have a few blessings. Think of
Mary, full of grace, blessed among women, with a sword piercing her
heart. Think of the daily toil and woe she suffered in uncomplaining love
and remember that shining through her

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sorrows was supremest joy in the knowledge of her son, Christ Jesus.
Remember that Jesus-God was not born in Bethlehem that you might wear
soft raiment and live in king's houses but that your immortality might be
vested in sublimity. Remember that for Holy Church there ate no new ills
and no new medicines. Rededicate your life according to Blessed Mary's,
"Be it unto me," and except a sword to pierce you too. Worship and live as
a Christian, that alone is what He who was the Christ Child requires of
you for the cure of all ills. Realize with blessed Simeon and declare before
the Presence in the Christ Mass, "Mine eyes have seen the Consolation of
Israel, mine eyes have seen the cub, Salvation." He is wholly sufficient.

GRAPES are not gathered from thorns nor figs from thistles in the
Mission but even as thorns were twisted into the holiest crown in all time
and eternity so the Mission's thorns have their places of usefulness. The
difficulty is not to make use of the thorns but rather to distinguish which
the thorns and which the grapes. Tom will not serve at the altar, in fact it
seems impossible for him to learn, he hears Mass as one rather dumb and
makes no responses but is aware of the Presence and his religion is deep
and very real. Bill, on the other hand, is letter perfect as a server, but as far
as can be judged his religion, if he has any, is utterly superficial. Mary just
out of her teens refuses to even try to sing or to read the psalms at
Morning Prayer and tries her Shepherd's soul, but in deep reverence she is
always on her knees in her pew at 8 o'clock on Sunday& and for years has
done all the sacred linen beautifully. Clarence will work in the garden
painstakingly for about 3 hours when he then becomes as a bull in a china
shop. If Ralph went near the roses with a hoe there would be a massacre
but give him mortar and stone and his wall will be a poem. Which then
the thorns and which the grapes?

One Georgie, gradually improving through the years, has often been
thought a thorn. He is a young dreamer of dreams and early of a morning
his good intentions are beyond his powers. The daily assignment of his
task always disappoints him; it is always smaller than his anticipations.
And always after an hour or two his spirit faints, hard work dispells his
dreams of achievement, his task is left unfinished, not enough will to do is
left to put away


 159

his tools or implements. He is utterly deflated until the next morn-
ing with its new dreams and boundless enthusiasms. Georgie's
priest-friend is daily exasperated but daily the dear God stirs his
memory and brings flooding back reminiscences of his own six-
teenth year filled with mornings of over-reaching ambitions and
noons of misplaced tools and frustrated dreams and complete
failures.

FLOSSIE'S is the place. Flossie's is the Mission library and
"Rag Shop," (a passing name lately facetiously bestowed by those
who love it to the center of distribution of the contents of boxes).
The time is 10:30 o'clock of any week day morning. Present are
six women or perhaps twelve women and two men and several
children. Some live just up the street, some live quite up the
mountain, a few live miles away, perhaps down across the Alabama
line or deep in the coves. Some came to get a book, some came
to see if a new box had arrived which might contain just what they
so greatly need. The stock of used clothing and shoes is rather
thoroughly depleted and they wait hoping that the mid-morning
express, now over due, may bring a box. They thumb magazines.
They gossip. They think of their need of shoes, a dress, coat,
stockings. The train arrives and they watch the station a hundred
yards away. No express. Disappointment. But there are a number
of large mail pouches and hope revives. Twenty minutes pass and
the mail is up. There is a sizeable box from Cleveland or La Jolla
or Baltimore. There is a woman's coat. Flossie says the price must
be $3.0O which is fabulous but five women eagerly try it on. There
are some collar band shirts (never worn in Sherwood) which are
priced at ten cents each and bought at once to be made into
baby dresses. A pair of shoes, Flossie tells the disappointed women,
are not for sale because they will just fit Mrs. McGowan and she
has nothing to pay. Some clean rags will go to the sick. Perhaps
a man's coat or suit has been spoken for by a dozen men. If there
is children's clothing or curtains or underwear or odds and ends
of notions all are needed and wanted. (The Mission priest person-
ally inspects each and every box and reserves to himself the distri-
bution of soap, and a number of other articles). When little is left
of the box the people depart but others drop in all day long to
search through the meager store. Day by day, year after year, the
boxes from members of the Greater Congregation supply in part

 160



these people's great need that otherwise could not possibly be supplied.

THE MISSION is essential to the Greater Congregation. The Greater
Congregation is essential to the Mission. If there were no Mission there
would be no Greater Congregation. If there were no Greater Congregation
there would be no Mission. So are all members of the Mission, Sherwood's
affluent and Sherwood's poor and the benefactors of the Greater
Congregation, through privilege, bound by gold chains about the feet of
God. So are God's hands bound or freed by frail mankind.

THE GARDEN has been put to bed for the winter. The rose plants
have been billed up with the good earth and the hills covered with blankets
of barnyard manure. Some eight score rose cuttings put down in late
summer and in autumn seem to be living beneath glass jars. The pools look
a bit stagnant, St. Chrysostom and his company of singers have departed
for some other where, the fish swim deep and sometime the water is
frozen over. Truly winter his flung her mantle over the garden and however
fertile and potent perennial life may be down in the soil, above the soil
there is desolation and dreariness. Good Gardeners and good Christians
have much in common, great faith in God. Relatively somber preludes are
Advent to Christmas, Lent to Easter, mortal life to life eternal, and in a
garden, winter to the fulsomeness and exuberance of spring and summer.
Earnest preparation for the glory to be blesses these preludes with the rich
joy of satisfaction. In the garden new walls and walks are growing under
bov-masons hands. An altar is being built. Under the horde of young
gardeners soil is being changed and enriched. New plants are being set. An
indomitable faith in God's blessings upon these labors makes possible,
now in the time of winter, a vision of the glory of the garden as will be,
come June.

Within the year several thousand barrow loads of cinders have been
removed from the garden and replaced with good soil. Day by day
barnyard manure has been saved and hauled to the garden until the year's
toll is more than a thousand barrow loads. Week in and week out
cultivation has gone on, additions to the garden take shape. The Mission
boys toil and thus keep out of mischief and learn to do remunerative work
and are paid ten cents air hour.

 161



Within the year there has been carried in the garden more than 1,000 meals,
50 pair of shoes, shirts and trousers in proportion and a fulsome round of
pleasures. In the garden spiritual and material needs are determined in all
manner of people, heavy and gladsome hearts come and go. Marvelous
indeed is the measure of parochial life that can transpire in a garden closely
linked to an altar throne of God.

THE CHRIST CHILD is the first prerequisite of Christmas. But there
could be no Child without the Mother and Blessed Mary is essential. And
to the perfect scheme the angels are absolutely vital, as is the manger
throne with straw for ermine and precious old St. Joseph adoring with the
poor shepherds and the beasts. The holy vision widens with the Eternal
Father standing behind all and God the Action, the Mover, the Holy Spirit
brooding over the whole. Somehow the peacefulness of Nativity, the
tenderness of Mary and her infant son of God, may be the pure soft mantle
of Christmas snows, enhanced by the angels singing, promote, above all our
Lord's two hundred names and titles, thought of the Prince of Peace, The
Babe of Bethlehem and the Prince of Peace are so easily synonymous. This
Christmas, in a peaceless world, may the Prince of Peace loom large on land
and sea and in the skies if but for a holy moment.

In Epiphany Mission, as in other years, all these aspects of
Christmas will be alive. It is the same glorious story. There is nothing new.
Only a repetition of the Christmas message of other years can be sent to
you from the Christmas altars of the Mission: May the Christmas angels
succor and defend you, May Blessed Mary and Joseph and all the Saints
pray for you, May the Holy Child, the Prince of Peace, grant you that
peace which passeth all understanding.

EASTER, 1942

To you, Beloved, may God grant a joyous Easter. Yes, in this dark
night of doubt and sorrow, a joyous Easter, no less.

For the joy that was set before Him, our Lord, endured the cross.
There is no end or completion of the fruits of that joy for they are active
from eternity unto eternity, nevertheless Easter is the feast of the
consummation of that joy that was set before our

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@@@
Lord. Regard joy. There is an earthly, worldly joy, festive, gay, often
wholesome enough but dependent upon good fortune and fair winds.
Sorrow, fear, disaster wipes it out. There is a spiritual, heavenly joy, the
joy of our Lord, joy that the world can not give, joy of Christians being
martyred, joy of relinquishing a beloved soul to life eternal. The joy that
remaineth through fortune good (r ill, winds fair or foul, in pain, in peril.
The joy of Easter. It is very real.

All earthly good we will gladly die to defend if need be is at stake. Our
sons, brothers, husbands are leaving us for the hell of war. Many will not
return this way. Shall we delay victory and fetter our men with heaviness
of spirit, sadness? Shall we be guilty of such unchristian behavior, such
poor patriotism? Our fighting men do not want their hardship or even their
death wrapped by us in gloom wool. For victory's sake, for our soldier's
we must be filled with the courage of joy and a joyous courage. Empty self
of apprehensions and sorrows by giving them to our risen Lord to carry, as
He wishes to do, and let Him fill your soul instead with celestial joy.

TWENTY-FOUR BOYS AND A GIRL from Epiphany Mission are
now in military service. More will, of course, go. The priest sits amidst
comfortable surroundings with a troubled mind, uncomfortably comfortable
thinking of the discomforts of his soldier children scattered around the
world because of war and because of the necessity of winning a righteous
and victorious peace. The priest longs to be with each one, to comfort,
cheer, to administer the sacraments and if needs be the last rites. To be
with each one is impossible, but the priest is doing for his children the
greater service that is possible to him and that is remaining at the Mission
altar. The fact that he is there, that the Sacrifice is offered daily, that
intercession is made for them is carried in their hearts. That altar before
which most of them were baptized and confirmed and served the Holy
Mass and before which all worshipped and received the Holy Sacrament of
God's Body and Blood. That altar is the anchor of their disturbed souls
that holds them fast to God and there is balm in that knowledge that must
enhance their stout courage. Could the Mission altar by any possibility be
of greater value or importance at one time than another then

 163



the time of its superlative worth is here and the candles for the Holy
Sacrifice must burn without cessation, just as those children know they are
burning, until ultimate victory and peace brings the Mission's children
home.

OUR LORD was not shocked by a woman taken in adultery. He
defended her from her tormentors, was understanding and forgiving and
helpful toward rehabilitation. Nor was our Lord repelled by lepers and
demoniacs. Rather he had been sent to the lost sheep. Gentle folk
surrounded with carefully nurtured, well manered, thoroughly moral
Christian children might be pardonably shocked by some of the young
people of Epiphany Mission. It has happened. Even the Mission priest
sometimes feels that he and his flock constitute a community of sinners in
the communion of saints but he aims to stand by his black lambs, his lost
lambs.

Michael, because there is no Michael in the Mission, (bad luck! it is a
glorious name), and obviously because this lad of sixteen can not be denoted
by his actual name, has worldly grace and charm and a bit hidden in his
nature a gentleness, a tenderness so rare that it gives one to think of the
divine spark of our Lord. Michael is a mixture of good and evil. as are we
all, sometimes very crass, sometimes very tough and sometimes a liar and a
thief. Even from his priest he has pilfered money and little treasures
possessed for half a life time. The sin is hated, but what are the loss of such
baubles in the ultimate salvation of a soul? In this case the priest is a bit
clairvoyant in scenting defection, Sometimes when confronted Michael is
defiant, but under ever gentle pressure he breaks and his eyes fill with tears.
Then he lifts his head and looks his priest squarely in the eyes and says, "I
swear I tried hard. I swear I'll try harder. I am ready to make my confession
but it seems silly to make a confession when you seem to know as well as
God every time I crook my finger, and I know God knows. Then it seems
silly not to make my confession and get forgiven. So I am ready to ask
forgiveness of God." And God forgives because Michael is a good penitent.
And God loves this so-called Michael and knows who he really is. Please
pray for Michael and his priest.

AT FLOSSIE'S the people great and small have rejoiced over the
contents of your boxes of used shoes and clothing of any description. This
morning, as they have done through the weeks

 164



 I
and months, they are sitting around Flossie's little stove waiting
for the boxes which have never yet arrived, which have never yet
been sent. Your worn, discarded dress, or suit, or sweater means
more to them than such garments meant to you when they were
new. Next. to offerings of money the boxes sent to the Mission,
more than any other material help, have sustained the Mission's
purpose of charity and mercy to mankind and worship of God. The
boxes have sustained the worship of God through the revenue from
sales which help defray the upkeep of the Mission's altars and
to support the Mission priest.

Within the past few months it has been found that pots and
pans, china and glassware, lamps, ornaments, furniture, in fact
anything that can be used can be sold at Flossie's. This fact certain-
ly opens a wider field from which to glean much needed revenue
to support the Mission and its aims. There is no doubt of your
response. There is no doubt of the Mission's gratitude.

A GRIEVANCE OR TWO AND A CONSOLATION. To
love one's neighbor as one's self and to succor and defend him in
need, sorrow, sickness and adversity does not often bring one's
neighbor to his knees loving God with all his mind and soul and
strength. It takes a discreet and clever Christian to exercise his
mercy and charity at no expense of impoverishment to his neigh-
bor. A Christian needs a heart of love and a head of ice. It is
true that many feed their bodies from time to time with food from
the Mission and warm them with Mission clothing who want
neither spiritual food nor soul warming from the Mission altars.
What to do beside strive and hope and pray? At least they will
ask for Christian death and burial if they have time at the end.

Increasing removals from the Mission's church-going congrega-
tion, accounted for by military service and employment in distant
fields, are making gaps in church attendance faster than they can
be filled. However, of those left, should all come to church services
who should come, the church would scarcely hold them.

Well, sweet are the uses of adversity. There are a dozen small
boys playing an the church lawn this afternoon who are almost
strangers. They seem to have grown into boys from babies over
night. Somewhere around there are as many girls who were babies
just a while ago. How on earth could these boys and girls be given

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all the time and attention they now need if some of the laiddul had not
gone away, were all members of the congregation faithful,

REMEMBER OLD JOHN? Him who at Christmas, 1934, with his
buttortless coat pinned over his thin chest, came for a bit of meal and lard
because he was hungry? He marches through the Booklets. He was
scheduled to die in May, 1935, but did not because at Christmas that year
we find him after a last fling with Tennessee corn whiskey and the devil ...
astride his scrawny longmaned mule which was led by his scrawny long-
haired son ... to the westward, into the sunset, onto the last trail. The
summer Booklet of 1936 tells of John's death and burial and leaves him
resting at the feet of plaster statuettes of our Lord and our Lady placed by
his daughter. Three years after John died Mama Nic, who adopted Old
John from the beginning, with Father Jones visited the grave and
straightened up the statuettes. The other day Father went back alone and
found them face down half buried in the earth. They were set up again and
for perhaps the last time as they will have crumbled utterly before long.
But Old John will not be Forgotten. Jesus will have mercy. Mary will
pray.

THIS ORAL REMONSTRANCE from friend to friend is reproduced
as faithfully as memory permits. May it bring a smile to the lips of its
origin. Your sermons are like orchids on the Amazon, wasted. You have
poured out some sublime ones in Sherwood that went practically unnoted,
sermons the upper classes of great parishes yearn to hear. Your spiritual
counsel to the poor and dumb is rather wonderful andd largely a total loss.
Countless cultured souls long for what, certainly in part, you throw away.
Your comradery with poor children is remarkable but you have the entree
anywhere, in any circle. If you would mix with the bigwigs and slap them
on the back you could go places and get anything you sought but instead
you are not interested and when with your peers look bored or stupid.
Really, I must confess, I do not know what, to think.

A LADY of the Old South who was a child a hundred years ago loved
St. Thomas' Imitation of Christ in both the days of opulence before, and
the days of poverty after, what was so long known as the war. Great
indeed was her adversity. From carefree

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youth she was plunged into the grim reality of the struggle to survive on a
scorched earth. Her husband was a poor helpmate and struggled little but
to maintain the tradition of wine, women and song, He lived long enough to
beget a family and then graciously while on a spree fell over a chicken coop
and broke his neck. His dying words were, "I have done the best I could."
No one doubted him.

The lady reared her children creditably and was an all-round good
soldier. In fact she was something of a war-horse at tire latter end of her
life. Through her deprivations and suffering the Imitation was a daily
consolation. Near the end of her days probably thinking of her life as
ended, with a heart grateful to her Lord for His constant blessings to her
through the long years, she copied onto the fly leaf of her consoling
companion a single quotation, His manner over me was that of love.

SUMMER, 1942

IN THE MISSION GARDEN in three pools some rushes grow and
lilies of purest white and also reddish lilies, and orchid, pink, blue and gold.
A lotus lifts high her glorious leaves, blue-green, silver-sheened and higher
still her lovely spectacular blooms. Bullfrogs roll their drums, their big bass
drums. Toads perch on lily pads or in the parrots feather and sing
sometime as if their hearts were bursting with joy and sometime as if their
hearts were breaking with sorrow. The fish seem a delight to all from
infancy to old age, male and female. A bit ago Norma, not yet two, in her
enthusiasm plunged head first into the pool among them. There is a
fascination about the pools. One gazes upon them and sensc of proportion
is lost, a lagoon, a bayou is before one's eyes. Breadth and depth are
exaggerated. One thinks, "I wish I could know what swimmeth below."
And so happens the pool brings to memoi y "In the rose and silver evening
glow" -- "The marvelous marshes of Glynn." One recalls the declaration, -
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me
a-hold on the greatness of God."

THE LORD GOD planted a garden eastward in Eden; and the Lord
God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. The man and the woman
were planted in the garden in happiness and

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innocency and unashamed. But in the garden the man and the woman
became disobedient and reaped the curse of sin.

Christ our Lord suffered excruciating agony in a garden. Christ our
Lord from His sepulchre into a garden stepped on the mom of His
resurrection.

The Mission garden knows heavy hearts and gay. In the cool of
evening or night or early morning sinners and saints come and stop and go.
A bedlam the garden might be thought when children's laughter and carefree
shouts of happiness fill the air and distress some seeker of quiet peace.
Sometime sobs are heard and tear-filled eyes am seen. Bishops, priests,
religious along with the lay folk come and pass on. Native drunks have
been known to stumble through. The Holy Sacrifice is sometime offered at
the garden altar. At some other time from careless lips an oath is heard and
the priest has come upon games of craps. Who can for a moment doubt
that drunks sometime staggered through Gethsemane and that the dice were
rattled and rolled there? Who can doubt the probability that our Lord's
eyes saw both and that His Sacred Heart was sad?

ONE WHO TOILS, one whose hands are callous, looked upon the
garden and was moved to declare, "Much work has been done and is done
here." In the spring of 1938 the garden was begun and is thus passing its
fifth summer. Some 75 boys and men at the rate of about 20 each summer
have been the builders and the gardeners. From crushed stone furnished by
the local Lime Plant and cement all the bricks of various sizes have been
trade. With the bricks the walls and pools and the arches suggesting cloister
colonnades have been built and all the walks have been paved. The garden
was commenced on a cinder dump and bit by bit the entire area has been
excavated to the depth of two feet and with wheelbarrows the cinders have
been hauled away and good soil hauled in to fill the excavations. The
gardeners have planted and pruned, watched and watered, and in turn
shivered or sweltered and sweated. Truly, much work has been done,
thousands of hours of work, and each hour of toil has canceled an hour of
idleness and many a would have been oath has not been sworn and much
dicing that might have been never was.

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ONE, whose first thought, like the first thought of Judas Iscariot who
carried the money bag, is of cash values, looked upon the garden and said,
"This garden has cost a lot of money." Truly, in relation to the Mission's
poverty the garden has cost a fortune in money, the Greater Congregation's
money. With few exceptions the thousands of hours of work through the
years have been paid for at the rate of one dime an hour. Obviously the
laborers were in need or greatly in love with the garden to work for the so
small wage. Large indeed the quantities of shoes and shirts and trousers
these dimes have purchased and the food and doubtless some of them have
passed hands when won or lost over dice. This probability always grieves
the Mission priest and brings to his recollection the casting of lots for the
Crucified's vesture.

SCARCELY A DAY some youngster does not come through the
garden dripping blood front some accidentally lacerated hand or foot or
limb to be washed and swabbed with alcohol and painted with iodine and
bound up with antiseptic gauze and tape. As often as not these first aid
treatments are Do privileges of the priest's and are not even brought to his
knowledge. Many of the older children know where in Father's middle
room stays for their use the first aid kit, often replenished with supplies,
given to the Mission by Mama Nic after its service to Camp Gailor-
Maxon in 1938.

MANY A YOUNG MAN now on foreign field or water or employed
nearer home is the proud owner of stock in the garden and in the garden
has sometime said, "I made these brick." Or perhaps it was an arch or wall
he made, a pool or walk.

NO IMPS have had their tails cemented into the masonry of the
garden walls, as was the Imp of Lincoln's in the cathedral, from no lack of
Sherwood imps but probably only because those so frequently cluttering
the garden have no tails. The garden is the result of a long effort to give idle
and needy boys employment and small remuneration. The stoutest garden
is a perishable and fragile thing and boys and bullocks particularly in the
aggregate are not unlike in destructive gamboling. These years in the garden
have been rather like building and maintaining a china shop with bulls.
Sometime patience has been at the point to break but there

 169

has been no thought of forbearance ceasing to be a virtue. Most saints
were once imps.

NO, there are no "Keep off the grass" signs. The garden is for all,
but first of all the garden is for the Mission boys and for its own sake is
quite second in importance. The boys sometime play and smash into a rose
bed or break a lily but let it be understood that girls who have some small
part in keeping the garden, though suffering little the burden of the toil,
particularly very small girls, are apt to be far more destructive. The boys
are often thoughtless and sometime bad but never as mean as the adults of
a parish of nice, cultured gentle folk who crucified their rector once upon a
time. The boys are exuberant, thank God. Some of those who were brimful
and bubbling over in the garden last summer have gone to help subdue the
foes of God and man and their exuberance will tip the scales.

A bit of common sense is used to safeguard the garden. The concrete
walls and colonnades are stern and rough and will tear flesh if dashed
against them. Trellises are of barbed wire. Thorns are judiciously cultivated
to make proper paths pleasanter places. Stout old wagon wheels are firmly
set up as rather attractive and effective stopgaps. These mail barriers are as
it were covered with the velvet of morning glories and roses, and no one
reads or hears, "Keep off the grass."

BE IT REMEMBERED that David made the first bricks made in the
Mission and that his spade turned the first foot of the garden's soil. The
garden altar stands on the spot where lie made some thousands of brick. In
the priest's heart the garden will always be a sweet memory of David. May
his Soul Test in peace and may the good earth rest lightly upon his body
'til resurrection.

THE MORNING GLORIES; Ipomoea Heavenly Blue, Scarlet
O'Hara, Pearly Gatesl have reached perfection and their exquisite loveliness
is breath-taking at Mass time. Bindweeds! What rapacious and zealous
lovers they seem to be, relentlessly embracing everything within reach,
tenaciously binding all to themselves. God's love does not embrace
coercively but the tenacity of the bindweeds is symbolic of Love Who will
not let one go.

AH, WOULD THE SYMBOL of strength in the garden's concrete
walls but inspire the Mission folk to strengthen character;

 170



would the symbol of fidelity manifest in aphides and moles butprovoke
faithfulness; would the purity symbolized in a rose unfolding its petals but
incite virtue and cleanliness the garden would indeed be the means of
drawing the Mission nearer to God.

SHORTLY after the concrete statue of our Lady and our Lord came
to the garden some child in holy zeal painted with green paint in small
letters on its back, "I love little Jesus."

OF THE HANDMAIDS OF MERCY a word must be said. Sisters
Mary Frances and Letitia are passably comfortable in their home. Sister
Irmengard, the nurse, has been detained on account of the shortages of
nurses. She is expected eventually. It is too early to report the
accomplishments of these missionaries. It is not possible to get into the
swing of Epiphany Mission's extraordinary procedures in a few months
and the Mission priest has found it difficult to know his Sherwood in 13
years. The Sisters at least have stamina. They have thus far survived their
day hours deafened by the shrieks of children playing outside their window
and their day and night hours made hideous by passing trains and ever
present locomotives 10O yards from their door. And they are learning how
the lime and soft coal soot and cinders creep in and fall like the sands of a
perpetual hourglass covering all relentlessly.

MOTHER JONES was wont to walk in the newly unfolding garden in
the summer of 1939. When the summer sun sank behind the lush verdure
covered mountain to westward and evening came and the edges of night's
mantle were imminent she was in the garden loving her own rose plants, the
mint, the tuberoses, the annuals. She knew her star hovered near the
western mountain top and very close to the sun now set; she knew she was
making her last visits to the garden. Alone, she was so intent. One wonders
if she saw ahead, if the dear Lord in His great compassion vouchsafed her,
whose interest in the present garden would have been greater than any
living soul's, the first vision of what in His wisdom was to be. One
believes.

OUR LADY OF THE ROSES pressing her God Child to he, heart,
with the eternal hills through the arches behind her, look, down from above
the garden altar upon the Mission garden. Just

 171



now around her and above her at dewy dawn hundreds of morning glories,
colored with her heavenly blue, glorify her; about her feet behind the altar
are massed giant caladiums that revere her. Her loving gaze is down a vista
bordered with rose blooms and seem to rest, at the end of the vista, upon
the Mission church with its altar thrones of her Son. She, Mystic Rose,
seems to assure that nothing to the garden can come lovelier than a rose,
more precious than a child.

CHRlSTMAS, 1942

A tomb, containing but dust, sometime is a shrine and a wreath is
placed thereat as a pledge of undying love or loyalty to the soul once
housed by the dust that rests there. The pictured image of a loved one now
dead is sometime a shrine before which is placed flowers or even candles.
Such shrines are not necessarily religious shrines.

Religious icons and holy shrines are composed of profane substance,
poor or precious, physical relic or spiritual ideal, formed into image, effigy,
building Park, that will eventually resolve into dust, but the shrines make
more tangible the entity of Everlasting God. These symbols the devotees of
holy shrines hold in their hearts and love, because they are holy symbols,
but it is the Eternal God, 'Whose transcendent Deity gives the symbol
import: it is the Eternal God, not the symbol Who is worshiped and
adored.

Before certain holy shrines, one lights a votive candle, a vow candle, a
candle pledging one's love to God and leaves it burning as a thanksgiving or
an intercession. A heart is filled with thanksgiving and joy and a candle
burns before a holy shrine; a body is racked with pain and a candle burns;
votive candles, inarticulate prayers that through the virtue of God imposed
in the Shrine may flow succor and blessing as through the hem of God's
garment.

You, Beloved, out there in God's world, you, who read these lines,
from here your heart is regarded as a shrine. Your heart is thought a
reliquary enclosing a spark of the transcendent and eternal God;
Eternal God in your heart to be worshiped and adored. Before the shrine
of your heart these following lines, these following paragraphs. dealing
with Epiphany Mission and its

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people are offered as votive candles; offered as pledges that God loves
you, as He loves his Mission children, regardless of estate. To this end
have these phrases been lit to the glory of God, to bum, however feebly,
before the shrine of your heart with a prayer that somehow a line or two
may be a gleam to lighten your life today; may be a beacon to guide you
safely onward to life eternal.

WHEN THE CHRIST CHILD was born there was no shortage of
rubber and there was no rationing of gasoline and sugar and coffee. There
simply was none at all. Neither was there any maternity hospital nor
doctor nor nurse. But there were taxes. The Christ Child was born to be
crucified before the prime of life, but at His birth the angels from heaven
came down to earth and sang. Sang of peace on earth. And He grew up to
be the Prince of Peace. And they crucified Him. And martyred His
disciples and apostles in great numbers for a few hundred years and in fact
still do.

 . On His birthday this year there are still taxes and there an
unaccustomed deprivations and most grievous of all hearts that already
know and others that must yet know what His Mother's heart suffered on
the first Good Friday when He was taken down from the cross crucified.
What to those hearts are taxes or deprivations less than heart's blood?
Those hearts must hold fast to the knowledge that crucifixion was
necessary to salvation. Salvation of souls and salvation of Christian
principles.

It is the birthday of the Prince of Peace. The world is His kingdom as
is the universe and the Kingdom of Heaven but His kingdom is not of the
world. Nevertheless, after the travail, after the devastation, His peace will
prevail in the world again because when He was born there came to the
world enduring supernatural virtue which can be assailed by the gates of
hell but against which the gates of hell can not prevail.

The birthdays He knew on earth were unlike birthdays we have kept.
Now adversity and grief bring us a mite nearer to the birthdays He knew.
This Nativity adversity should bring sweet humility into our hearts and
more nearly enable us to put out our hand and clasp the ever outstretched
hand of God. He is indeed the Prince of Peace and the spiritual peace of
His true kingdom

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that passes human understanding transcends war and loss and grief and
pain and may be had for earnest seeking.

OF BAPTISMS there had been a normal number for this year but
somehow there were many babies that had not been brought to the font
and so a decree went out that all the infants would be baptized at 2:32
o'clock on the afternoon of a certain Saturday. Flossie was deeply
concerned and assumed the obligation of assembling the babies at the
appointed time. She visited early and late, reminding, admonishing, even
prodding the slightly indifferent. No small child in Sherwood can be
touched without touching Florence and she also was at work with the
mothers.

The church bell rang at the appointed hour. In the Mission burials
have been sorrowful, weddings joyful, the Christmas midnight Masses have
been veiled in holy glamour but there was to be a strange new magical and
ecstatic emotion in the Mission in that holy hour. The bell rang. They were
coming. The infants and the mother! Ordinary flesh and blood With
tongues often mild yet sometime so vitriolic they would shame fishwives.
But thev were pure then. These mothers were veritable madonnas that day.
From east and west, from north and south they came, the little ones and
mothers and godmothers and friends and the angels, the holy guardian
angels, a host of angels. Our Mother of mothers, the Mother of our Lord
was certainly present in the church to oversee those little ones baptized
into the Body of her dear Son and Lord. The precious babes, with but few
exceptions so sweetly quiet, were made faithful soldiers and servants unto
their lives, end and were signed with the sign of the cross with holy oil.
One knows that our Lord took each child into His arms and to His Sacred
Heart, It is certain that either the Mission church was in that hour lifted up
into heaven, or else heaven came down and for that space enveloped that
precious congregation.

Thirty-one little ones baptized in that hour. Thirty~ne more small
servants of Christ to nurture and to Year. Thirty-one babes that must have
gifts come Christmas.

AMONG COUNTLESS NOTES received by the Mission was this
one: "The children's tennis is full of holes and they are walking on the
ground and they can't go to school and Sunday school tell you get them
some shoes." And this one from a widowed

 174



mother: "I got the lowance for this week but we aint got nothing left to eat.
Please send the lowance for next week now and we wont eat nothing next
week." When J. D. was ill his mother wrote: "J. D. asks you to please send
him Bologna sausage for supper and to pray for him." From a bootlegger in
jail: "Please send me a recommendation before my trial." A soldier boy on
furlough wrote: "Father, if )on will let me have your car to take my girl to
the dance tonight I will fill you up with gas and give you $5. Please let me,
Father, for I might get killed in the war and never see my girl again." Father
was understanding, moved by the generous offer of compensation and his
patriotism was touched; but request was refused.

Then there was a scalawag who wrote no note but furtively beckoned
the priest aside and made his base offer: "I've got three kids you can
baptize at a dollar a head." Those little ones are as yet unbaptized but they
are in the Mission's prayers.

SELFISH PARENTS rear generous children, it has been said. Or
conversely, generous parents rear selfish children. Of course the generous
parents who rear selfish children are those of unbalanced character those
who are generous without firmness, those whose generosity is the course
of least resistance, those who do not take the trouble or who do not have
the will to inculcate generosity into their offsprings. One of the Mission
priest's many besetting sins is generosity, the urge to give and to impress
the beneficiary that there must be no sense of obligation; the terribly hard
to overcome impulse to compensate well-doing; to reward virtue. The
besetting sin of shrinking to ask labor, even for God, without material
reward. How refreshing then, some weeks ago, after the priest told the
congregation of young people that the Mission was temporarily bankrupt;
that there was to be no work with pay for anyone, to have volunteers who
wished to work as usual without pay: to have some on those terms get out
the last news letter, Working long hours by day and far into the night.

THE HANDMAIDS OF MERCY report. Our women and older girls'
Sunday School is getting to feel itself as an entity. it averages a little over
15 in number a Sunday and is taking a course on The Church's Object
Lessons. The girls have begun to answer questions about a previous
Sunday's work. After about 10 weeks'

 175



attendance a girl gets a (combined) Prayer Book and Hymnal of her very
own, owing to a grant to the Sisters from the Bishop White Society.

We have the nucleus of a People's Choir in process of formation.

Orphie, whom you will remember, has at last succeeded in feeling well
enough to go with Father to Winchester and get a chest X-ray. Perhaps one
reason was that someone who had been through the ordeal herself was able
to assure Orphie that one feels nothing of an X-ray.

The National Day of Prayer was marked by the special intention of
the daily Mass, and by devotions conducted by the Sisters at 9 and 3
o'clock, the Passion hours. The mission church was warmed all day and
lighted till about nine at night. Thirty or more people took their parts in
the day's work of prayer, besides six of the colored folk in St. Anne's
Mission. There, as well as Services and religious instruction classes, an
effort is being made to intruct a tiny group of the children, for whom the
colored school is too far off, in the ordinary branches.

The mothers' cottage class has resulted in one young woman's
declared intention to make a regular monthly Communion. She had been
baptized only a few months. It is hoped her example may be followed by
the rest of the little group.

MISSION CHILDREN WRITE HOME. Frank in Australia. I
enjoyed the Summer Booklet with all my heart and it brought back golden
memories. I wish I could be it home for just a day and spend some time in
the garden, where I used to work and also play, thinking of the past.
Remember us all in your prayers, Father.

Jessie in Hawaii. The church services I have found here are Catholic
and Protestant. Neither satisfy me and I long for what we have in
Sherwood.

Buddie in Bermuda. I received the Summer Booklet and I think it is
the most amazing thing I ever had the pleasure of reading. I look at the
pictures and picture myself sitting on the edge of a pool or upon a high
wall, smelling the lilies and other flowers, and saying to myself, "You are a
maker of part of it." God must

 176



have pictured it all in your mind before we all helped to build it. All the
blessings that God can send upon you all, Father.

Howard working in California. Believe me, I have not forgotten about
you and the Church and everything. I may not show it well but I
appreciate it all. I have gone to church when I could but have only found
low churches and do not enjoy the services as I do at home.

Paul. Air Service. California. I liked the Booklet very much. Truly, I
am a "proud owner of stock in the garden." However, Father, you failed to
mention your own long hours of toil.

Fred. Somewhere in the Atlantic. I feel that there is one thing solid in
this hellish war and that is that God and you are behind me, Father.

THE MISSION PRIEST looks back to the days of his youth spent on
the Georgia plantation where he was born and remembers a youth always
building important things like theaters and roller coasters and gardens and
almost everything else under the sun. The fruits of those inspirations and
labors, for labors they were, do not stand today as monuments to flaming
youth, except in memory. In sweet memory they stand, but otherwise they
perished as youth passed. Once there was a matter of building that required
much rock. At the time there were no cousins or plantation Negro boys to
serve as helpmates, which was unusual. There was an ox cart but no ox.
But such minor difficulties were no obstacles and there never was a time
when those projects of youth could wait. The rock desired was at the edge
of the sheep pasture beyond the cow barn and 20O yards from the building
site. The first hundred yards of the distance, or as far as the carriage house,
were over deepish sand; the second hundred yards were over firmer ground
but on a slightly inclined grade. The cart was overloaded and the architect
and builder of air castles took up the shaves. That youth was not robust, in
fact he was known to be "delicate." By superhuman effort the cart wheels
commenced to slowly turn and the agonizing burden of transport was
begun. Straining every jot of will, straining every shred of sinew it seemed
that in spite of so much effort lungs would fail until while panting and even
sobbing some new strength came in second wind. Those two hundred yards
were covered in a lifetime, aye, an eternity. They were

 177



achieved by inches, no quarter inches, and every fraction of an inch was
travail. There was never, for the fraction of a second, thought of failure or
of the wisdom of lightening the load. Nor was there any exhilaration when
the destination was accomplished. The rock had arrived. That was all. Life
has so often been like that. Forwarding Epiphany Mission, even from the
beginning until now, has often been like hauling that load of stones.

THE GARDEN is stripped of its finery and the mantle of Winter's
sleep has all but totally enfolded it. Egg, seventeen, builds outside the
garden at the northeast corner, a new pigeon house, a matter of concrete
brick, arches above arches, and a concrete dome topped with an iron cross.
All is in the Spanish mission manner and is the tallest of all the garden's
structures and all is to hide the railroad water tank from outward vision
from the garden, and well, because the days of painstaking building are
good for Egg's and his helpers' souls. It isn't building and keeping a garden
that matters but the somewhat futile aim to strengthen souls. After me
cometh a builder, tell him I too have known.

SUMMER, 1943

FATHER WILSON of St. Augustine's, Haggerston, in his Received
with Thanks, quotes these often-quoted words from Frank, Bishop of
Zanzibar, and comments, "I am glad that in Haggerston I have not far to
look for Him whom he bade me seek."

You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have

begun to get your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and

hedges. Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in

the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in

those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And

when you see him, gird yourselves with His towel and try to

wash their feet.

In the poor and miserable always at hand in Epiphany Mission He
has been sought, He has been found, He has been served.

WRITTEN for this space was a bit on way and peace, of consolation
and sanctuary. It was an honest effort. to help bewildered souls but it
seemed to aspire to profundity, in truth it was a presumption beyond the
realm of simple things that belong

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to Epiphany Mission. it were better that the Mission keep within its
sphere.

Of the Mission the most interesting and touching things can not be
told because they are too intimate or too sweet or too close to God. It may
be that what is told in the paragraphs of this Booklet is irrelevant but
perhaps what is told will reveal a glimpse of the Mission's soul. The
paragraphs are vagaries but souls are wrapped in vagueness.

As for concrete things our Bishop confirmed a class of 22 in the
church and an elderly cripple in her home ten days ago. A baptism on
Sunday brought the year's total to twenty. Yesterday afternoon there was
the third Sinking Cove burial for the year. Sinking Cove, 15 miles from the
Mission church, as remote as it was a hundred and fifty years ago except
that planes now cross the blue above. This morning the Mass of tire Holy
Angels was offered at the garden altar beneath the statue of Holy Mary
and the little Lord God haloed with nimbus of heavenly blue morning
glories and behind them everlasting hills showing through the arches of the
garden wall. It was the occasion of Mama Nic's birthday and she was
present.

Thus ever, vagueness of souls, the passing reality of human beings,
the Greater Congregation and the Mission congregation meet at the feet of
God in Epiphany Mission.

 Like those in Kalamazoo
 Like those in Timbuktu
 Like His friends in Galilee
 And the sons of Zebedee And
 Martha of Bethany

WOULD THAT IT COULD be written that the adult members of the
Mission congregation abound in good fellowship and good will. Alm, that
they behave like average pious Christians; alas, that their behaviour is too,
too true to their human nature! How often the members of the Mission
congregation manifest the desire to receive rather than the desire to give.
The propensity to receive is as strong as the propensity to suspect evil.
How more obvious is envy, jealousy, greed than benevolence. "Dorcas gets
better clothing from Flossie's than I" "That old Finnigan woman (a
destitute widowed mother) gets two dollars every single week and I (who
am comfortably affluent) get nothing." "The money

 179

those kids get for making them brick and playing in that garden and I never
get a dime!" "That Ford hauls them (who have no car) coming and going
but I (who have a good car) was never hauled a mile."

Plainly it is our Lord's will that the hungry be fed, the sick
healed, the naked clothed but one wonders if it were not better
impossible for a priest to give material aid; if it were not better
for a priest to be able to say in all truthfulness, "Of silver and gold
have I none." No, such thought is fallacy for still would be heard,
"Dorcas has a better seat in church than I.- "Father visited Mrs.
Finnigan twice and me but once."  "Three prayers were offered for
John and I was not mentioned."

The Mission regrets and strives to understand rather than blame.
Every manifestation of the soul is contagious. Lacked there in the breeding
of the selfish and envious sufficient example of nobility? After all there is
but one way to deal with the situation: to be as right as one can, to be as
patient as job, to bear the long suffering of a little pain in memory of His
great pain; to be as noble as one can and trust God the germ is sown and
finds culture to eternity.

'TWAS SUNDAY. The rail fell down and wet the ground the church
and garden all around, and feet that traveled street and lane, to reach the
church in spite of rain, to duty do and be on hand, to pray and praise, to
kneel and stand, and see the Bishop confirm the class before lie celebrated
Mass.

Upon the roof beat loud the rain, o'er near by tracks there roared a
train as before the Bishop, beneath the roof and facing the altar, assembled
stood, the precious class of twenty-two, touching and timid and mostly
true.

The priest presented the class and thought of what poor teaching had
been taught. Tilly and Tim are not even here because the priest has not
made things clear. Few the commandments are able to say, some won't
know the creed for many a day, and not all know Our Father.

Little ones, what do you confirm? Did not your teachers help you to
learn? Did not your priest make you discern? John, do vou renew the
solemn vow at your baptism made, when you were washed of sin for
which your Saviour paid? Do you ken what to believe and do you as you
(undertook), or was undertook for you?

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And Mary, do you understand bow grace flows through the Bishop's
hand? Tess, though not a moron certainly is not bright and Tom has neither
learned to read nor write. For years they've heard the Sunday Mass again
and yet again, still, what it's all about to them is not too plain.

Hark, Holy Bishop, with wisdom rare and rich in sacred lore, how
plain is all to you, what do you know? How saves baptismal water poured
upon the head? How does God get in and occupy the Bread-,

Nay, little ones, neither does your priest understand. But come, rise,
clasp his outstretched hand and be led to your first communion. Not to
argue why or how. Simply to obey Him now and herd His command.
Enough to comprehend

 He was the Word that spake it;
 He took the bread and brake it;

 And what that Word did make it, I do
 believe and take it.

THE VALUE OF THE MISSION'S ALTARS in the vague
consciousness of average Mission youth has been revealed in the written
expressions of these just grown-ups who have been shocked into a
semblance of soberness by training as soldiers and sailors. True, even their
present unusual expressions must be winnowed for tile whole truth but
they do express themselves now whereas when they were a bit younger
and less sober their thoughts and valuations, though vitally real, were to all
apparencies deep secrets in their souls unrevealed even to themselves.

Indeed they do express themselves now in definite statements and
revelations between the lines. In spite of bravado they are often
bewildered, unhappy and dreadfully homesick. And they have magnificent
courage too, more of which seems needed under harsh discipline a thousand
miles from a battle front than when bombs are bursting and devastation
prevails. They are religious but they want no pap. The Mission's altars are
a bulwark to these children of yesterday who are men today and the altars
have been a bulwark all along. However little they did to sustain them,
however faithless they may have been to them, however small their
consciousness of their regard the functioning altars have been a keystone in
the arch of these young adult's youth. As these seat

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tered young people want the Mission's altars alive now so through their
adolescent years they wanted the priest at the altars, they wanted to be
reproved for their defections, they wanted to be coerced, tactfully and
quietly, but nevertheless coerced into the peformance of their duty. (As one
has written, "You are my priest, Father. You know I was never any good,
but you know I did gladly whatever you made me do.") When hurt they
wanted consolation from these altars. It has long been known that the
priest had to bear them on his shoulders, but is a heartening revelation that
they so greatly cared to be borne.

LIFE in general is full of favor and adversity. Only the dead escape
the checkerboard of life's heavy nights and joyous moms. Only the
immortal dead are free of mortal uncertainty. Individual life on earth is
more or less fortunate but never, even when most fortunate, is there
perfect Security for the body. As for the soul, in all time and eternity, there
is perfect peace, but only in the arms of God.

THE OFFERING THE MASS: The offering of His precious Sacrifice
until His coming again. The offering of His one Sacrifice of Himself once
offered. Once offered; next two thousand years ago, this morning, next
year. Once offered through every moment of eternity. The offering of the
Mass. The offering of the eternal Lamb of God to eternal God the Father.
The offering of the only offering perfect in God's eyes. The low offering of
the Mass, offered quietly of a dewy early morn. The feast day offering of
the Mass, the pageantry, the drama, the splendor of the offering of the King
of kings. Candle flames, acolyte's scarlet cassocks, wraiths of pungent
incense, vestments of gold doing homage to the Presence. A hundred
worshippers offering the Mass and praising God and crying Alleluia, Lord
most high! It is the glory of Christ, it is the power of God, it is the majesty
of heaven.

But He the King of kings, accepts offerings well beloved of other
sweet and lovely things; sometime a smile, enticed into the angel eyes of a
little child; sometime assuagement to a soul, grieved and desolate and cold;
sometime bestowal of peace and courage unto life eternal as a frightened
voyager embarks; some time words of comfort when the voyager has left a
lover with a broken heart. No less holy than the Mass is one such lovely
thing offered by a disciple in the name of Christ the King.

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CHRISTMAS, 1943

BELOVED:

The spirit of Christmas is a powerful stimulus. Shall we make
good use of the incentive and gain grace against the griefs of the
coming year? It will be a grim year. We always need our Lord as
a Rock and Fortress, but God help some of us indeed if in 1944
we have not the full realization that He in darkness drear is the
one true Light. No Mission boy has yet died in this war. There
is small chance that such statement can be made next Christmas.
We shall need our Lord. He seems very near at this season. Let
us seek His fullness while He is near. He, the Prince of Peace,
alone can temper gloom with the assurance of calm after storm;
the assurance that the most glorious day of His earthly Kingdom is
yet to dawn,

You write me so often that there is no more used clothing to
send the Mission. Yet what you do send works miracles. It is quite
true that often the richest gifts are given by those who have
nothing left to give.

This will be a quiet Christmas in the Mission. Our boys in
the Armed Forces will be cruelly missed but they will be spiritually
present at the Christmas Masses. Doubtless their spirit will come
of their own great desire but the spirit of their priest will be reach-
ing into the uttermost ends of the earth to compel them.

The little children will have their usual glamorous trees. The
poor families their baskets. The other members of the congrega-
tion will do with less material gifts.

And now my usual blessing; May the Christmas Angels succor
and defend you; May the Blessed Virgin intercede for you; May
God the Prince of Peace bless you, Beloved.
Affectionately yours,
Father Jones.

THE WEDDING of Charles and Pauline was on this wise.
But, first let the Mission priest state that he loves none of his chil-
dren less, and then let him confess that he loves some of them more.
Then he had best state and confess that he loves some of them more.
Charles and Pauline. Well, the precious children had long been
sweethearts. Last Easter Charles was within a few months of his
eighteenth birthday and Pauline neared her sixteenth, but actually

 183



they were 17 and 15. They attended the Easter Day Mass and in the
afternoon slipped away to Rossville, Georgia (where they wed children if
the children will state that they are adults), and were given a license to
marry and were married by a justice.

Two days later the bride and groom returned to Sherwood by train and
came instantly to their priest. Surely it was too late for reproaches and
they were simply gathered into the priest's arms and for a space of silence
three hearts heard and understood all that there was to say. And then to the
church and the altar of God for a real wedding; a lovely little wedding
wherein God blessed the sacramental union; a little wedding of sweet
dignity to live in their memories down the years.

Charles' fine father later remarked, "I could really say nothing to
Charles because I was married when I was sixteen." Truly, it is traditional.
Also traditional is the almost total lack of divorces in the Mission's valley.

ROBIN HOOD of Sherwood Forest left behind him romantic legend.
It is no legend that there is legion living in the symbol of a forest in
Sherwood, Tennessee who more or less often practice robbing good and
there is nothing romantic about it. The Mission priest was told by one
caught robber that some of his goods and chattels had been taken into
custody to protect them against his carelessness. From that robber, as from
the protective custody of the super robbers of this time, nothing has been
recovered.

Upon first thought thieves are despicable. Upon deeper thought the
approach to the status of thieves is bewildering and strange,

 The law locks up both man and woman who
 steals the goose from off the common, But lets the
 greater felon loose

 who steals the common from the goose.

Who steals my purse steals trash . . . but . . . my good name . . . Alas!
How often good names are stolen by meticulously honest Christians.

Regard the Hindu caste of ten million snobbish, hereditary thieves
prouder of their heritage than Christians are proud of honor and religion.
Think of the famous thieves of the Old Testa-

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ment. Think of all the jean VaIjeans in time. St. Augustine confessed
that in his youth he stole pears!

Surely there should be chaplains to thieves serving perhaps its the
priests served who once offered the special early Masses at

Notre Dame de Lorette for the ample attendance of the bad girls of the
streets in Paris. One of our Lord's last acts was in the capacity of chaplain
to a thief. Who knows but what there will be it last earthly hour of
repentance and absolution for some other thieves as was vouchsafed the
dying thief on Calvary?

LETTERS FROM MISSION BOYS IN MITITARY SERVICE.

From camp, I often hear a church bell ring and when I do God only
knows how I want to go to Mass at home.

Up to the time I left Sherwood I never thought much. I reckon I just
took everything for granted. I did not know what I was getting from over
there. (The Mission.) The pleasures, tire clothes, the base-ball games, the
money I earned. And going to Mass, serving, getting and putting up the
Christmas trees. I did not know what I was learning. Now I know it was
tile biggest thing in my life. And now I can not do anything about it
because I'll never live in Sherwood again.

Sometimes I feel like I would give all I may ever have in life just to be
at home for one hour.

Of course you used to insist that I never miss a Sunday Mass, that I
never miss my time to serve, nor to be a minute late. And you were
wounded if I did not make all the responses in the right place. I wondered
why you thought it mattered if I failed a little, or even as much as half,
because I thought getting it half done was good. You always said it was
God's business and perfection was terribly important. And I even thought,
"What the hell!" Well, Father I have been in the Navy a year now. I have
learned a little, To be a moment late; to fail to give ALL the right answers
is just too bad. Perfection in the Navy is terribly important. And 1 get it
now, Father, God is even greater than the Navy.

Please write to me often, Father. All the other letters I get are just
blab-blab but yours seem to tell me all I want to know.

UNCLE DICK was a rare sweet soul. Naive in his life; naive

 185



in his religion. Inately kind; inately gentle. When occasionally in
liquor he was still kind and gentle and winsome. As he passed
through life that has never known enough smiles his twinkling
smiles must have ignited millions of smiles in gloomy faces. Uncle
Dick and the Mission priest were friends. They gave each other
gifts of tomato plants. They were often jocular and sometimes
serious, one with the other.

Last summer Uncle Dick was stricken in the field with a brain
hemorrhage. When the priest visited him for the rites of Holy
Church his right side was paralyzed and he seemed to have but
few gleams of consciousness. When the priest spoke Uncle Dick's
left hand was lifted high in welcoming jesture, his twinkling eyes
unclosed, his old smile sparkled, and he whispered quite audibly
his parting blessing to his friend, "You are a good old man."

Uncle Dick had the best burial the Mission can give. As he
lay before the altar covered with the purple pall and candles
smiled around his bier his priest friend knew that nothing that
glorified God so much as his gentleness, his kindness, his happy
smile could die were merely blacked out here because they had
been translated into Life Eternal.

THE MISSION is of the Body of Christ and its soul is the
Holy Spirit. A while ago a visiting young man watched the con-
gregation at a well attended Mission Mass disband and involuntary
tears wet his checks. "it simply gets me," he explained. What
touched him? He did not know. The Mass had not been a holier
Mass. The priest was the average imperfect priest. The congrega-
tion had not been a more pious congregation. None of these
things of themselves touched him. But what touched him was
the Soul of the Mission. It was God the Life Giver.

Of the Mission there is little to see. Its priest and its people
are full of imperfections. It is justly criticized. It stems few or
perhaps no waves of wickedness. But almost all, up and down the
valley, up and down the mountains, sooner or later, feel the warmth
of its soul. At Christmas and Easter, when death strikes, in
baptism, in need and succor, some force unseen and inexplicable,
is powerful and warming and wining. It is the Soul of the Mission.
It is God.

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EASTER, 1944

LORD, You made me gardener in Your Sherwood garden, I've toiled
through the seasons and the years, many souls that had their roots in
cinders, now grow in soil that fertile richness bears. But, Lord, some of my
plants that should be rose or violet, persist in growing up obnoxious
weeds. Lord, I pray, make all plants in iny garden grow to Thy glory and
to fulfill Thy needs.

My son, since the day of good earth's creation, Mine it has been to
sow goodsome seeds of grain, Mine the wisdom to send the proper
seasons, Mine to send the sunshine and the rain. Throughout the ages I've
yearned for each plant to reach perfection, to provide the means, to every
end I go, but I have never forced a single plant to please me, I've never even
forced a single plant to grow. 

BELOVED: "I suppose you have no enemy in your entire
community?" asked a visitor of the Mission priest. It was a question that
startled. 1, the Mission priest, could not remember having given it thought
before. Adverse critics I surely have. Who can deal with many human
beings, poor and privileged, often involuntarily cursed with selfishness and
jealousy, and give and withhold aid and succor, with the approval of all?
What fallible priest ran shape his conduct to the varied ideals of all his
flock? Critics of course I have, often just, sometime offensive. Critics lay
at my door sins of which generally I am not guilty, although I sin sins of
which I have never been accused. I have no illusions; I have seen better
priests than 1, even as our blessed Lord, crucified by pious enemies. The
Mission priest is not without dishonor in his own country. But, all in all, if
I have a real personal enemy I know it not.

The war has wrought havoc in the Mission's visible success. Those
the times have made richer are arrogant, those made poorer are bitter,
demoralization is rife. The older children have gone to war, the younger
children have gone wild, perhaps I should say wilder. Sunday School
attendance is down thirty per cent from the average of two years ago.
Spirituality has cooled. True there were 194 baptisms in the past two
years, sixty-five attended the Ash Wednesday Mass commencing this
Lent, seventy-seven attended the nine o'clock Mass last Sunday, but,
ninety and nine did not attend.

 187



It is not for me to know the times or the seasons, which the Father
has put in His own power. I am not unduly discouraged. I know that
sometime, "God sits in the corner-but waits."

Affectionately yours,
 Father Jones

THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS is the most important event
that has come to pass on earth. So important is victory in the present war,
that if need be, you would willingly die to gain it, or, what is much harder,
see your sons die. To realize the significance of the resurrection remember,
that in comparison, victory in this present war matters no more than an
April shower. The resurrection of Jesus is the superlative victory and yet
its preJude was death by crucifixion. The Crucified conquered many
enemies, hardship and discouragement, pain and passion, and finally on the
first Good Friday bowed to the last enemy which on the third day He put
under His feet. That is triumph for every soul in time and eternity.
Victory over the sting of death. For all, victory over the inevitable and all
consuming grave. That is the most momentous news the world will ever
know.

The first Easter. The blessed Mother, the Magdalene, loving Peter and
beloved John, rational Thomas, all His beloved disciples. First incredulity
and bewilderment, then conviction, then growth as was grasped the
fullness happier than joy, greater than hope, undaunted to the end by
inevitable hardship and persecution and martyrdom. Inevitable hardship,
persecution, martyrdom. That is all the greatest thing that ever happened
promises in this world.

Are you incredulous and bewildered this Easter, Beloved? Are you a
reed shaken in the wind? I-lave you forgotten that mortal life in its noblest
estate is but a travesty of beatific perfection? Remember that it is not
mortal life that matters but the Christian courage with which it is lived.
Remember Easter is a pledge that mortal life is earnest and worthy of
heroes because it is the battleground of eternal victory. Easter means that at
some long last mortal life's fitful fever, beset with doubt and cowardice and
vacillation, but in all and through all and above all blessed with Christian
fortitude, will succumb triumphantly to the last enemy and then in Christ
shall the mortal through the resurrection of the dead put on immortality
and live in immortal heaven. Heaven, perfect beyond any dreams of this
fallacious world.

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LETTERS AND LITTLE NOTES from the Mission to you
do, in the aggregate, require a large amount of time but in addi-
tion to being a bounden duty they are both a treasured privilege
and pleasure. When they are a few weeks late the delay is un-
avoidable and deeply regretted. Often members of the Greater Con-
gregation suggest that no acknowledgment or thanks be sent. Such
thoughtfulness always moves the Mission priest and fills his heart
with gratitude. However, if he long neglected to take the time to
Write some simple expression of thanks for the favors that re-
quired interest and time to send the wellsprings of Mission support
would soon run dry, and justly.

One dear friend cautioned that Bishop Brooks felt compelled to
acknowledge in long hand at length every communication lie received
probably to the impairment of his health and life's span. We ... Bishop
Brooks, long dead, is alive in thousands of hearts. He had a contemporary,
a priest, who spared himself. That priest Was gifted and able in many
ways a saint and would doubtless have made a good bishop, but no one on
earth remembers who he was.

LIFE IS CASUALLY LIVED by some in the Mission community. No
fools are they for lack of minds, but with small concept of life as you
regard it. Life for them is as carefree as they can arrange it. Possessions end
at the point they require care. In June they do not bother with the burden
of an overcoat. Parents gain freedom by letting their children run free and
the children in their freedom simply do not bother with school. No thought
is taken of a dentist today because a tooth will not ache till tomorrow.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. The present moment is carefree
and filled with laughter and song. They live a life that misses the
earnestness of God.

Your way of life demanded teaching, discipline, sacrificial rearing that
led to the endless privilege of responsibility and obligation. Your life is
noble and rich but it is complicated; it is missing the simplicity of God.

The Mission priest despises the irresponsibility of some of the
people he serves, but be very sure they, when they take the trouble, look
upon him with equal scorn because he takes life too seriously; because he
is too much trouble to himself. Surely our Lord regrets either extreme. Life
to Him was surely serious and lacked no

 189

discipline, responsibility, obligation but was not too much concerned
with earthly security.

SUCH SMALL THINGS make hearts heavy or gay. Peter, a clever
and able lad, has been as Father's good right hand. Peter actually has grown
up in the very heart of the Mission and learned to anticipate all Father's
whims and to execute them in a manner perfect. Peter passed his sixteenth
birthday a little while ago and went to work for the Lime Company. Father
is a little desolate as there are no other hands to do so well the many things
that Peter did. His desolation has been tempered by Peter coming out of
his way, early each morning when going to work, and making the fire in the
"front" of the priest's house. All things considered of course Peter should,
but so few do all they should. At any rate to be awakened by Peter
scratching in the grate definitely commences the day on a gladsome note.

REMEMBER THE WEDDING of Charles and Pauline last Easter?
A baby is coming to these dear children before the summer is past. A new
Mission baby is almost a weekly occurrence but Charles and Pauline are
very, very special. In the Greater Congregation many loving hands will
fashion lovely things against the coming of this very special Mission babe.

INCENSE GEORGE ABHORRED. He loathed the smell and hated
the smoke; it burned his eyes and made him cough; to his stomach it was
revolting; it made him feel he would swoon and left him with a headache.
This was a bit hard on Georgie as he was always present at Mass either
serving or in the congregation.

Inasmuch as Georgiee was an inveterate cigarette smoker and
apparently enjoyed his addiction his one-side taste in smoke seemed an
inconsistency. For the Mission priest incense has ever been an ambrosial
delight. Moreover, for him it has soothing and curative properties even as
myrrh. The priest finds that incense smoke alleviates head cold stuffiness
and chest congestion. It is possible that Georgie's former aversion and
Father's admiration might be attributed to imagination.

Came an afternon in spring when a lusty April shower confined the
priest and Georgie in the sacristy. The priest was looking at the thurible
and an idea came to him. "Georgie," he said,

 190



"light some charcoal for me." The ignited charcoal was placed in the
thurible which was given to the boy. "Now keep the cover up and swing
until the coals glow red hot." Incense was placed upon the coals and rich
smoke came in puffs from the swinging thurible. Thick smoke, oily,
aromatic. Father several times placed his face close over the thurible and
inhaled deeply and stepped aside and exhaled much as the boy smoked his
cigarettes. A sharp gleam of interest shone Georgie's eyes. "Hey, let me
try." He inhaled and exhaled again and again. 'Boy! that's not bad. I like it,
Father."

Several springs have passed and Georgie still likes incense. He is
smelling the smoke and smell of battles in the south Pacific now. What
would he give to be upon his knees at Mass in his Mission church and
smelling the smoke of holy frankincense offered, as the Magi offered it, to
his blessed Lord?

 Fort Riley, 1941

Dear Father: I have served in the army 18 months, I want to come
home. I swear to you when I come home I will settle down. I am sorry, for
all my sins and I declare to you that when I get home I will try hard to be
the good man you want me to be. Love, Cy

 England, 1944

Dear Father: Here I am, the same Cy, except that I belong to the
Bruish Off Club now. I hear my girl has married another man. Here I sit in
England, Father, as discontented a soldier is I ever was in the States,
wanting an invasion, wanting to get it over and done with at any cost so I
can come home. Please write and keep on writing. Next to Father and
Mother, I love you always and always. Cy.

 Camp Polk, Louisiana

Dear Father: Being Christmas I know very well you are too busy to
read a long letter or to answer one. I will be brief. I am sending you ten
dollars. I have not had time to get presents for home folks and this is the
best way I know of getting something to them for when you have ten
dollars they have ten dollars. How well I know that. Don't work too hard
and make yourself ill. A merry Christmas to all. Love. JM.

 191



 USS Indianapolis, South Pacific

Dear Irene: . . . I hear from Father Jones very often, and do I like to
hear from him! When mail calls goes sometime I say to my buddy, "I'll bet
you a dollar I get a letter from Father Jones." And 1 do. Tell him I said
hello. Take good care of him for me Sis for he is getting very old and needs
some one like you to look after him. Love. George.

SUMMER, 1944

LORD, before too late, I want to write some old long thoughts into
books, religious quite, that at least a few more souls might more clearly
catch the light of Thy great love. The years march swiftly on. Too soon
my thoughts will falter, my small ability will alter, the time to write for
Thee be gone. I pray Thee, Lord, of some lesser duties relieve Thou me, in
order, that I may have the time to write of Thee.

My Son, many there be to write for me of My great love. But I have
none but thee to write for Me, rather, as none but thee can write to My
Sherwood boys, where'er they be, all over the world in stormy weather.
Through the years you have gained their ears ~ no other and I have
endowed thee with a little gift to write a letter.

Think not that you could write for more fertile fields.... Salvation of
your boys' immortal souls upon the cross I bought. For My great pain
serve them as thou ought. Thought from your letters will become immortal
thought. Mine to know what the harvest yields, of your letters that reach
the battle fields, to say to each boy you care and for him daily say a prayer
bemuse of my great love.

 I have boiled the rice, I have milked the kine, the

 house is roofed, the fire is lighted-then rain if

 thou wilt, O sky!

 I am free from anger, free from stubborness, the fire of

 passion is extinguished-then rain if thou wilt, O

 sky!

PAGAN poetry inspired by God. Song of honest effort and rewards.
Then come if thou wilt, adversity. I cannot stay thee, but I have done what
I could, I am fortified.

St. Paul wrote: I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I
have kept the faith. What effort, what achievement was

 192



his. What reward to be his at long last. And what adversity surrounded
him even unto his martyrdom. How aptly he might have finished his triple
declaration-then rain if thou wilt, O, sky!

The Mission priest might today sing with many another: I have
bought a War Bond, and have recapped my tires, and have a C ration-then
rain if thou wilt, O skyl It is good to be able to drive but if war's end can be
hastened with the priest's C rationthen let it rain and he will sing: OPA has
given, and OPA has taken away, blessed be the name of OPA.

All of which is apropos of the Mission priest's little heartbreaks over
the receding tide of the practice of religion in Sherwood and the rising tide
of general spiritual indifference. The condition is very real. Perhaps it is
not too bad. Both ebb and flood tides ever turn. At any rate tire priest tries
to sing: For 15 years I have nurtured God's Sherwood children. Much
effort has brought great reward. After all many are the souls who love
God. It has been glorious, dear Lord.-Then rain if thou wilt, O skyl

THE EMERALD-HODGSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL at
Sewanee is 12 miles from the Mission church in Sherwood. To Sherwood it
is THE Hospital. Among the members of the Hospital staff the number
and nature of emergency cases from Sherwood make for a standing joke.
Comes a rush hour, more patients than can be easily handled, an emergency
or two to do with, the entire staff with overfilled hands, and some doctor
or nurse is bound to crack, "It's time for Sherwood." And who ever savs it
is bound to be right and at the most inopportune moment of tile weeks
come a Sherwood wife stabbed by her husband, or a Sherwood man beaten
insensible by his brother, or another who has been held against a red hot
stove by his neighbor, or a suicide who has been remarkably successful in
attempting to shoot out his own heart. Then of course there are many
accidents among sober em. ployees of the lime plant and railroad and so it
goes on world without end. Sometimes it is too late and the Hospital sends
a victim back lot the Mission to bury but generally all the maimed and
mutilated come back to Sherwood sound and whole.

Legion are the Sherwood patients, from birth to old age, treated for all
the ailments common to man. The Mission car alone moves some hundreds
of Sherwood patients a year to and

 193



from the Hospital. And Sherwood takes the Hospital as a matter of course.
A matter of course! The good God's greatest mercy and blessing within
reach. Within their sphere the Emerald Hodgson Memorial Hospital is the
great complement of the aims and efforts of Epiphany Mission and when
the Mission seriously contemplates the Hospital the Mission is at once
ashamed and inspired.

THE HONOR ROLL of Service Men in the Mission church is against
the north wall a few feet from the shrine of Our Lady which faces west.
There is about the Honor Roll, flanked by flag and with the War Cross
above it, a simple richness and a dignity befitting the simple church. The
perpetual votive light before our Lady's shrine has nothing to do with the
Honor Roll except that the light is a perpetual intercession for the boys
whose names the Honor Roll bears.

The Roll contains the names of 177 Sherwood men and one woman in
Military service. Of the total 178 seventy are baptized members of the
Mission and of the 70 twenty-four are veteran servers at the Mission
altars. On each Thursday the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered for
worthy victory, righteous peace, and for those who serve in battle. Each
name on the Mission Honor Roll is pronounced aloud, as is the name of
many a Mission friend in service, and its owner's keeping commended to
Almighty God. Prayers for our Sherwood own as well as for those many
others serving God and Country and Allied Cause are by no means
confined to the weekly Mass.

TO, ELIZABETH, at her request, a picture of the Mission priest was
sent for her birthday. Elizabeth, whose heart is young and whose birthday
was her 85th.

Elizabeth has written that the likeness is not satisfying, that it is not
comparable to the image in her memory. The face is too tired and dejected
to the point of surrender. Well, most faces look tired these days. As for
sadness it is a face that in repose has always been sad. But it is a face that
smiles easily and often, a smile like a light flicked on in a gloomy room.
Perhaps Elizabeth onconsciously remembers the smile which can not be
photographed in a still.

Behind the saddish face is too much knowledge of the secrets of
souls, and a deal of patience and understanding and sympathy,

 194



and too great an awareness of the sobbing need of them. In the face is some
weakness, perhaps above all the weakness of too ready credulousness, to
free liberality. The mouth is a bit stern. Perhaps the mouth and chin and
jowl suggest that in spite of weakness and mistakes and failures there is
no point of surrender.

A HOLY CROSS MISSAL printed in 1920, already well used as well
as obsolete, was first used by the deacon who became the Mission priest
in rehearsing before the altar the celebration of Holy Communion. For
weeks, the words were daily recited and all the accompanying postures and
gestures assumed and made. 'the Missal still bears the penciled marks and
notations that were helpful to the novice. In due time the priest said his
first Mass from the old Missal and in spite of the earnest preparation all
but collapsed at the sublimity of the rite.

As time went on the Missal became a scrapbook of pasted in introits,
collects, offertories, prefaces. Many years ago it was given ~ new cover to
hold it together. In spite of use of the American Missal the priest has given
the old Holy Cross Missal little rest. Its pages are heavy with mending
tape. Half the Creed and Gloria in Excelsis are gone. The Canon itself is far
from whole. The exact area where servers' thumbs, more than 3,00O times,
have rested in moving the Book after the ablutions is deep, dark brown.
Now it seems that each Mass must be the old Book's last. The priest
should rather like putting it tenderly away, frayed, tattered, candle wax
spotted, soiled with the service of years, until it may be placed in his
hands when time comes for his burial.

Holy Missal, spent in service in His every Presence. Looking on
through all the years of mornings as the priest day after day held in his
hands within the Host and offered up to God the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass; the Lamb of God dying once for all. Each morning the Book and the
priest might have sung together:

 Wherefore, O Father

 We Thy humble servants
 Here bring before Thee,

 Christ, Thy Well-Beloved
 All-perfcct Offering,

 Sacrifice immortal,

Spotless Oblation

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BITS OF WHAT THEY WRITE

CLARENCE: I have just heard from Mother that Ted is
in the army. All three of her big boys are in now and that leaves
Mother at home with the little ones. Father, I want you to watch
after Mother because she is all in all to me. I sure will be thankful
to you.

PAUL: You are very kind, Father, to offer your prayers for
one so undeserving as 1. 1 am really deeply indebted to you just
as so many others from Sherwood are. I wonder why it is that
most people just take such things for granted until they leave
and really see how helpful and kind you have been. May God
bless you and keep you.

HOWARD: There are about 20,00O Aviation Cadets here.
There are six chapels on the post and Sunday services commence at
seven and are continuous until noon and it is always difficult to find
a seat. We have the church-goingest bunch of boys I have ever
seen. But, Father, nothing ever satisfies me as the Masses at home.
Remember me at the altar.

ALVIN: I have just returned to Camp Mackall from Sherwood
where I was pleasantly surprised to find my name on the plaque
in the church dedicated to the members of tile Armed Services. It
having been long since I lived in Sherwood I assumed that I had
been forgotten and it is comforting to know that I am remembered.
One hardly realizes how great a part the spiritual side plays in this
conflict. We soldiers often think of our ivy covered churches, our
pastors, homes, loved ones and faith. It is these things that keep
us going and it is these things for which we fight.

I never realized how lucky we of Sherwood were. After
traveling over the world I have come to realize that we have taken
for granted the quiet beauty of our church, the lovely garden, the
springs and mountains. I pray we may do our duty as soldiers
of the Amy as well as you have done as a soldier of the Cross.

FLOYD: Please cut down all the hedges I used to trim before
I get home. There are too many hedges in France. I do not like
them any more.... Today I certainly had a good laugh. We were
getting paid off when shells began to fall very close and everybody
forgot their money in their dash to fall into holes all over each

 196



other and all laughing. . . . Do not worry about me. I will be back some
happy day.

FRED: All the churches in Sicily, and I truly mean all I could see,
were so beautiful. I have never seen any at home to compare with them.
The gold things and the silver dresses the Blessed Virgin wears are, O so
lovely that it hurts me way down to look at them. Each small village
seemed to try to make their altar the prettiest. Some of us would stand
guard at the front of a church and watch for Germans while the rest of us
went in and prayed.... A priest gave me a silver crucifix and medal and I
wear them on my dog chain.... I was in the front lines when Monte Cassino
Monastery was bombed.... When I was in London I went to a Sunday
Mass in St. Paul's and the following Sunday went to Westminster. After
all, those are the two churches I shall never forget.

LEO: You do not know how much it means to me that I was able to
be at home for Easter. It was the first time I had had a chance to serve at
High Mass in over a year and I know you know how much that meant.
There is nothing in the world I would like better than for Clarence and me
to be able to serve you at the midnight Mass next Christmas. Now that I
ant no longer there you can not know how much pleasure it is to remember
such things. And such things as working in the Garden and making it as
beautiful as we boys did. And the pleasure it always was to please you,
Father, God bless you.

THAT A NEGRO who never saw Tennessee should have a
paragraph in the Booklet is fitting. What out of the past has shaped the
Mission priest has shaped the Mission. Then strange but true that like all
the recondite or unobserved moulders of destiny plantation Negroes of
many years agone, some among the best friends the priest has known, have
had a finger in the Mission pie.

Walton was horn free rather than slave by a narrow margin of years.
He was married and had children when the priest was born. Later in life
when asked the number of his offspring he replied, "Me and the old lady
have 23 children at home, but I has a few more scattered here and there."

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Walton had no education. He could not read print, but he had a mind
and he read life and imbibed wisdom and became a philosopher more
profound than many with a doctor's degree. His language was the
plantation Negro's language but he spoke it without profanity and without
indelicacies which authors of modern fiction make a pleasant memory.

A few years ago on the plantation Walton's hand clasped the priest's
hand. His body was frail and tired from a life of toil in cotton fields but in
his rather handsome face youth lingered and his eyes twinkled. "Yous
Father George now" lie said. "Yous sho looking fine." And Father George
thought, "I love you, old friend, and this is the last time I shall see you on
earth."

The other day at the Mission altar a Requiem Mass was offered for
Walton when his burial 30 days since was commemorated. Walton Jones, if
there should be written before your name the vacuous title of Mister you
would turn in your grave horrified at the thing so contrary to your life.
Then after your name let be written what you were. Gentleman,
Philosopher, Friend. May your soul rest in the sweetest peace the Eternal
Father has prepared for His noblest.

OUR MISSION GARDEN like the Mission passed an indiffer-
ent spring. The spring was the least sympathetic the garden has
seen, in fact it was utterly hostile. Two weeks in March saw most
of the garden area inundated and even in April freezes were
devastating. The most precious plants in the garden, the roses,
were the most severely stricken. Today they still look like lost
souls, Roses are like souls; they can look so utterly lost and later
bloom again in vigorous salvation. If one could but know. If
either are definitely lost there are always new rose plants and new
souls to cultivate. But the Almighty Gardener leaves His lesser
gardeners to struggle with rose plants and souls, hopeful but
never certain, until the last &park of life is dead.

Suppose the Garden has had a barren season? There will be other
springs and this August day sees much of life and loveliness within the
garden in spite of parching drought beyond the garden walls. Within the
garden rain is produced at will with water pumped from the inexhaustible
creek.

This August day the skies above are bluest blue wherein fluffs

 198




f white clouds are flying. A smacking breeze ripples the willows into green
waterfall-trees. The grass lately drenched is sparkling emerald. The sweet
oily pungency of mint, the heavy fragrance of tuberoses and tubbed
oleanders and oranges in bloom lade the air. Indeed, the winter is past, the
rain is over and gone. What if the frost was cruel in April? What if thou
didst rain floods in March, O Sky?

OCTOBER, 1944 BELOVED:

I had a vacation; I who preached no vacations and no travel, unless
vitally necessary, for the duration. But a few who love me and one who is
far too generous to me and payed my way refused to be refused and away
I went although I left full of reluctance and under protest.

Altogether I spent 48 hours traveling by train 40O miles away and
40O miles returning. Half the trip first class space was impossible. I
traveled with soldiers and sailors in hot dusty coaches and loved every fine
lad, but bemuse I am 56 and perhaps fastidious, alas! the going was
ghastly. I stayed with my sister and family on the plantation in Georgia
and read murder stories and rested when the quiet pastoral life was not too
deafening; too deafening with the sounds of what seemed in the beguiling
weirdness of night 4,00O planes continually overhead, 4,00O dogs barking,
the crowing of 4,00O cocks, or the roar of 4,00O tractors rushing out to
greet the dawn.

Yes, I had a vacation, and people were lovely to me and made my
heart glow. I missed a burial in the Mission, but did baptize my grand
nephew while away. I had a vacation and I loved it, especially getting home
and back to my people and the Mission altars.

Requiem Masses are so precious to me. Our Lord is so vividly
present, the dead are so much nearer than near; the living beings of the dead
and my being touch and are united. It is the simplest thing in the world and
yet so vast. I wish I might explain. I wish I might impart to every living
soul all the simplicity and all the profundity I never fail to feel. All Saints'
is a glorious feast but it is not personal. Perhaps of all the church year
feasts the very

 199
 




personal feast of All Souls' is the most satisfying for All Souls' transforms
bitterest grief of the living, the death of loved ones, into tranquil sweetness,
if the living permit. I am so sorry that so many do not know and not
knowing can not care to know,

For many years it has been Epiphany Mission's custom to link your
departed loved ones with the All Souls' Masses before the Mission Altars
and each year more than 1,50O such loved ones have been remembered by
name.

Our Bishop confirmed a class of 28 on August 28th. just now
baptisms number but 41 for this year. The average for the past 13 years is
45 each year. In 1935 the number of Mission baptisms was 57 and only
one parish in the Diocese of Tennessee exceeded that number. In 1936 the
Mission led every parish in the Diocese with 74 baptisms. In 1942 the
Mission again led with 104 baptisms. And once more in 1943 with 90. For
four years out of the past nine the Mission has led every parish in the
Diocese in the number of baptisms with one parish excepted in 1935.

I have not yet baptized some I have been trying to persuade since
1932. 1 am often unable to overcome refusals or deferments. 1 compete
with three churches in Sherwood.

Blanche lives in the sister's house, is always present at daily Mass, is
teaching her second year in the Sberwood public school and is all-round
Mission missionary. Flossie is faithful in the Clothes Shop that materially
benefits more people than any other Sherwood institution. Beth, when ever
needed, as always through the years, is at the church organ and the Mission
would have a poor time without her. Irene drives the Ford 1,000 miles a
month moving the sick and helpless as need demands. Florence is teaching
in the Sherwood public school for her 20th year. A thousand dollars a year
would be inadequate remuneration for Florence's services in the Mission.
She receives nothing but supports the Mission financially in addition to the
gift of her constant labor.

Frequently I fail to write you that some gadget or garment considered
of ordinary value and usefulness in checking the contents of your box upon
arrival later serves some extraordinary purpose. Perhaps a dress or a
blanket, a dish or a toy, a gewgaw of ribbon or a book may just exactly
grace a wedding, a birthday, baptism or burial, a convalescent or a prisoner
in jail. The story is always full of interest and sometimes pathos and
sometimes joy. I he

 200
 



trouble about telling you is that generally the article has lost its
identity with you before it becomes of such great importance.

In Sherwood the first frost has not fallen but the season is
definitely autumn. The Mission garden is lovelier than at any
time wiLh.in the year. Lovely with a melancholy loveliness so fair,
so full of peace, and yet veiled in sadness. One thinks of a comely
gentle lamb so soon to be slain. The dear God knows best; night
and rest must come before the next fair morning; winter and
death must come before the miraculous resurrection of The dear God who knows best bless you and keep you.
 Affectionately yours
 Father Jones

CHRISTMAS, 1944

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS upon earth which was the In-
carnation itself was not without poverty of a bed of straw and
pain of a woman's travail although the angels sang. The first
Christmas incited Herod's blood purge of innocents and opened
the gate onto the sorrowful highway for Mary and her Son. The
first Christmas was not all joy although it was the keystone of
the assurance of salvation and immortality.

In our time and nation Christmas still has its share of hearts
throbbing with pain or broken with grief but nevertheless is the
supreme season of mercy and love and joy. For a few hours peace
and good will prevail. For a few hours earth makes its nearest
approach to heaven. For a few hours many hearts are holier and
most hearts are gay.

This Christmas some brave heart, however determined to carry
on, will be pierced with pain remembering the sweet seasons
agone, remembering now one who will never be here for Christmas
any more. Then remembering, remember this too, Beloved; where
that loved one spends this Christmas Christmas is not for a day
but is a fairer, happier, holier Christmas of joyous peace and
good will and divine purpose for ever and for ever.

NO MARY, NO CHRISTMAS. No Mary, no Jesus. No In-
carnation had Mary been unwilling that God's will be done in
her. The miracle of her fitness! Full of grace indeed. Small
wonder some need an immaculate Conception to justify credulity.
Our Lord's life is the perfect example of Christian life. Mary's

 201



life is doubtless the perfect achievement of our Lord's example. And Mary
belonged to frail humanity.

No Church, then no knowledge of Christ; no Christmas. No frail
humanity, then no members of the Body of Christ; no Church. As Mary
could have refused the motherhood of God incarnate you can refuse to
function as a member of the Body of Mary's Son, that is as a member of
Holy Church without which there would be no knowledge of Christ and no
Christmas. Beloved, yours is such an awful privilege and obligation to
uphold the hands of God. And you are not worthy. Why? Your mind is a
fountain of bitter water; can it also send forth sweet? Surely in a measure
you are a thorn bush; can any grapes of your life be good?

Courage, Beloved. Was not so human Peter a sinner and a saint? Did
not the saint called Paul confess that he was the greatest sinner of all? All
the saints in glary were sometime fountains of both sweet and bitter water.
He, Who was the Christmas Child, saw them evil, saw them good, saw
them struggle and saw them through. Lift up your heart, strive onward, at
long last sweetness will overcome bitterness; at long last you will be a
saint.

COCKLEBURS, in most of the world, are as common to lambs as
stars to the heavens. Wool snarls about the burs and sometimes the lamb's
fleece, like a soul, becomes a mass of softness tangled in prickles. The
Sherwood valley bears prolific crops of cockleburs. In the beginning the.
Mission garden was a field of cockleburs. This is cocklebur season and
human pedestrians also unwillingly catch tenacious burs in their clothing
and as is to be seen even in their hair.

Within the hour this is written the shepherd of God's Sherwood flock
has baptized a precious male lamb. The 49th baptism for the year. The
barefoot child was clean enough and sweet a plenty and appeared
acceptable to priest and sponsors but when the priest said, "Name this
child" and with his left hand lifted the hair from the child's forehead the
child's hair was matted with cockleburs. Well. perhaps such a thing never
happened in an urban parish but doubtless there are not i few saints in
glory who were baptized in the wilds with cockleburs in their hair.

THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT of members of the Mission
congregation goes far in making the Mission whatever it is. The priest,

 202



Florence and Blanche, who might be called professional missionaries, labor
and sometimes achieve and sometimes wait. The amateurs, largely young
people barely 20 years old or less, who have never realized that they are
missionaries, bring many a not quite successful effort of the professionals
to a wholey successful conclusion.

The attendance at Mass of many a not so faithful young man or
young woman of her own age must be credited to Marie.

Again and again a child after being prepared is brought to a first
confession by another child without whom the young penitent would not
have come.

For years the older acolytes in service have trained the new servers to
serve a Mass with precision with never a care to the priest except an
instruction as to the seriousness and sacredness of the privilege.

Very often infants ready to be baptized do not show up until the
priest tells Flossie and Irene and then shortly the babies are at the font.

Many a young man, often soldier or sailor, has been sought and
instructed for baptism and in spite of all the priest's urging has
procrastinated until Melvin's help has been asked. Then in a day or two
Melvin comes and says, "He is in the church, Father, ready and anxious for
you to baptize him now if you will."

There is the young mother of three baptized little ones who
postponed her own baptism. The priest appealed to her brother of sixteen
years who promptly went to his sister and said, "We are going to the
church this afternoon and you are going to be baptized." His sister
answered, "OK." It was as simple as that with Peter.

So, case after case, time after time, has it been through the years.
Only Gott knows what the Mission's young missionaries have
accomplished. Only God's eternity will tell.

NO BEGGAR, maybe, is conscious of the persistence of his begging.
Some beggars, be assured, find begging extremely distasteful. The Mission
is not conscious of begging but rather of publishing paragraphs about God's
children and frankly stating their needs.

A religious recently sent a generous and hard earned alms and a note
saying some godly friend had told her the Mission was

 203



most worthy and the Mission priest the best beggar in the world. Once a
good Bishop pointed a finger toward the priest's face and as his eyes
twinkled with humor and love, said, "Father, you are the most subtle
beggar I have ever known."

Whether the priest's begging be good, subtle, or blatant, it is very true
that without it the Mission, pleasing to God or otherwise, most certainly
could not have endured.

TWO WHEELBARROWS with pneumatic tires that are irreplaceable
now belong to the Mission. The Mission has long had a goodly supply of
tools and equipment for brick making, carpentry, house painting, gardening
and such like. Most of the dwellers in Sherwood as well as the public
school and even on occasions the lime plant use Mission tools. Little is
lost or stolen but most has to be recovered when needed from borrowers
who almost invariably forget to return. No one means to be troublesome
but it takes a store of patience for the Mission to continue year after year
the truly helpful service to the community.

For four years the wheelbarrows have all but never stopped rolling.
They must have rolled as far as around the world and moved incalculable
tonnage. And if they are ever unemployed in work they become the
pleasure cars of small boys who never, never tire of riding each other over
the garden walks and often over the town. That is a nuisance! And how
well the irreplaceable wheelbarrows might be spared the grind, But both
nuisance and extravagance are well endured because the keen delight of the
two score small boys is harmless and wholesome and long since has
equaled in value the wheelbarrows' weight in gold.

HYACINTHS the priest some time ago took to an old woman near
the end. "Why did you bring me flowers?" she asked and added, "You
know that I am blind." When she was told that they were brought that
she might enjoy their fragrance she retorted, "Humph, they smell bad; they
smell terrible". She was not ungrateful. She was rude although she did not
know having known little gentleness in her life. And she was sincere
being one of those few unfortunate ones to whom a flower means less
than nothing.

How different the reception of most flowers from the garden.
Nosegays, or rather bouquets in Sherwood, are so constantly sought that it
is difficult to keep any bloom for exhibition. Florence daily

 204



supplies the sick, the bereaved, the aged, and remembers birthdays and
dresses the altars and while it may be that few see God in each rose or
violet, as the priest does, flowers are wanted and often cherished.

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS write many a letter home to the
Mission. If these extracts from their letters concern the priest to
personally for publication be forgiving, in remembering the priest struggled
with each writer as he grew to manhood, and in knowing his great love for
each, and his frail humanness in finding inspiration in their regard.

FLOYD, whose letter in the Summer Booklet said he did not like the
hedges in Normany, was, a few days after writing the letter, wounded, and
after a month in England return to America and wrote: A lady came to see
me today. She is a nurse here in the hospital. She said she heard I was from
Sherwood and asked me if I knew you. And I said, "Do you want to see
his picture because it is right here on my bed," and I picked up the frame
and handed it to her.

VERNON from France: Obviously, I am still alive and able but danger
is all around me and one can never tell. I can not get used to so many being
killed. . . . I saw about 20O receive Purple Hearts when discharged from a
hospital this morning-The Media are doing a great job. . . . Keep praying
for me. Keep writing whenever you can. Hang on.

JOHNNIE is so winsomely unpretentious, gentle, good. As many
attest, to know him is to love him comfortably, alway. He has written: I
am in Belgium now. I have been in more countries as a soldier than I had
been in states two years ago. . . . I am homesick. You know the saying, I
would give my right arna to be home. When I think of home I always think
of the garden. That place means lots to me although I did not know it when
I worked there. If I were an artist I could draw it perfectly from memory to
every last brick and flower pot.... I always thank God that there are men in
the world, like you, that people can trust.... Pray for me a lot.

HOWARD: In thinking of you, Father, I often ask myself, "Does he
think that I forget all he has done for me? Does he

 205



think that I do not care?" Well, I do not know how to express it, Father,
but I appreciate everything all the time.

GEORGE: I got back to my ship on time. It was great to be at home
after 19 months in the Pacific. I sure was glad to attend to my religious
duties and make my communion and serve at Mass all for the first time in
nearly two years. When I come home I am going to church all my life,
Father.

ANDREW: Write me as often as you can. No one ever wrote me
letters like yours. When I have time I sit on my bunk and read them all
over again and they always do me good.

NEVER THINK because there is much of kindness and gentleness
marking the Mission's life that the character of the Mission is soft and
lackadaisical. The affairs of the Mission move in well ordered firmness.
Sometimes misconduct is handled with unflinching sternness. Sometimes in
relation to a Mission's NO steel is but down.

 Grant to little children

 Visions bright of Thee

AT MIDNIGHT THE GARDEN at the season of this writing has been found as a gossamer thing. just as the waning moon cleared the eastern mountain to plow through the stars. A night of faint mists; a star sapphire night, like the night the Saviour was born, with the haze-screened golden light of the heavens marking mingling areas of less hazy blue shot with motes of silver and areas of dusky sapphirine shades and taking away the material substance of the garden and leaving it an ethereal thing. The real garden gone; only the soul of the garden real. The garden at midnight brought to memory a visitor who once came to the garden altar and knelt and prayed there wanting to kneel and pray there because the altar is on the spot where David made the first Mission brick which commenced the garden. Then after her prayer, perhaps because through David she glimpsed something beyond flesh, she exclaimed, "When the Mission's last picture is painted; when all now living have passed from work to reward; when the garden altar and walls have crumbled and cockleburs grow on the ruin, let us ask God to let us come back some Christmas to the ghost of this garden for a gloriousmidnight Mass." Back to the ghost of a garden.

On that recent midnight there was only a ghost of the garden. And in the ghost garden midnight Mass at the garden altar at some point in eternity seemed as rational as immortal life.

Perhaps it is childish to dwell on that Mass even in fancy but it is a sweet and lovely vision. A bit of heaven once of earth come back to earth again. All who were ever numbered with either the Mission or the Greater Congregation, all the children, all the acolytes the Mission ever had assembled with the angels in the Mission garden. All to whom faith was natural and all to whom faith was a struggle no longer needing a creed in the light of mutual knowing. Every voice lifted in heavenly paeans. The ghosts of all the candle flames that ever graced the Mission altars; the ghosts of all the incense ever offered. Perhaps behind the garden altar where now stands a statue of Holy Mary, she might really come and stand with the ghosts of all the roses that ever bloomed in the garden blooming at her feet, and she might actually hold in her arms no less than the eternal Christmas Child while all the stars of the heavens gathered an their will for her diadem pale in His blinding glory.

JANUARY, 1945
BELOVED:

Baptism, to me, is the most important thing in life and the
world. That sacrament that regenerates the animal and grafts it
into the Body of Christ. That first necessity of religion and lite
according to God's purpose in the creation of life. Through the
past year the Mission was given a goodly number of baptisms. In
the past three years the Mission has baptized 270 souls; an average
of 90 each year. Truly, I think of all the privileges God has vouch-
safed me, the Mission priest, the privilege of the large number of
baptisms makes me the happiest.

On the fourth Sunday in Advent, which was the day before
Christmas Day, eight minutes before the Mass was to commence,
the priest walked through the Mission church and counted 60
young people in the pews. Excepting the priest there was not ill

 207



the church a single soul who had lived 25 years. In how many churches
was a similar condition a fact? Three to eight minutes later the middle aged
and older were also in the pews.

There were the Christmas confessions. Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
God forgive me that I had an easy chair placed for my use in hearing
confessions in order to spare my tired body for the Masses. It was no
good. My hard stool was more comfortable. Confessions fell a little short
of the usual Christmas eighty. I remember looking out of the window in
one short idle interval and thinking, "If there were but a little more time; if I
could speak now into the ears of so many of my people how easily I could
hear 10O confessions." And another thought, really a question, passed
through my consciousness, "How many priests in how many parishes are
hearing 75 or even 50, or 25 good confessions this Christmas?"

The Christmas decoration of the church was left to Peter asisted by
Charles and Raymond.

Cedar boughs and cedar trees were used throughout. The decoration
was simpler than in some years and I think in better taste although I
suggested none of it; only praised the finished work. Florence, as usual, did
the altar. Twelve stalwart candles, six vigil lights in red glass, three dozen
white gladioli against holly. The gladioli unasked memorial gifts from
members of the Greater Congregation.

At the shrine, Holy Mary with her Christmas Child was ringed with
six tall candles. At her feet burned vigil lights ill blue and bloomed three
dozen red roses the unsought offering of members of the Mission
congregation in memory of Joyce, David, Doris, Papa John, and Mother
Jones. How fitting the honor to our Lady because no Mary, no Christ
Child; no Mary, no Christmas. At the font (which is at the head of the
nave at the south and exactly opposite our Lady's statue at the north)
before tile crucifix, two long candles burned in their holders, each holder a
cross and three nails, all wrought of iron by the village blacksmith years
ago. Again how fitting that the candles burned there. No Crucified, no
Christmas.

Three hours before midnight the congregation commenced to gather in
the church. just to sit and wait. At eleven the church was filling and very
quiet. At ten minutes to twelve there were

 208



no more seats. The priest wore the gold vestments and he was hoarse;
although his voice was very husky it was not impaired. The servers were
correct and not at all obvious. The prayers for the soldiers and sailors, air
men and marines at the end of the creed marked a profound point in the
Mass.

The utter stillness, the perfect quiet through the entire celebration
was remarkable. It always is. It seems that the fraction of the Host could
have been heard in the fartherest comer of the church. Midnight and candle
light, flowers and incense, gleaming scarlet and gold of cassocks and
vestments can awe but only the Presence of Very God can subdue a
Sherwood gathering to perfect silence.

The night was warm. The church doors were spread wide. For their
communions some men and boys came to the altar from the church steps
out of the rain. The recessional hymn was a departure from usual
Christmas custom. But it too was fitting. At the behest of the priest,
remembering so vividly those who so often served at the Mission altars,
those to whom the Mission midnight Christmas Mass is so dear, those
whose thoughts were then at our altar, those others for whom the Mission
prays, as they battled or readied to battle, the congregation sang with heart
and soul, for God and nation and allies and the boys they love, "My
Country 'tis of Thee."

Such was the midnight Mass. The nine o'clock Mass on Christmas
Day was well attended by an almost totally different congregation that had
been asleep at midnight.

I want to thank you, Beloved, for all your lovely Christmas letters,
and messages, and cards. You greatly over estimate my worth and
exaggerate my poor virtues but I assure you that you have made me a
better priest with your high regardMay our Lord richly bless the new year for you. Affectionately
 yours Father Jones

EASTER, 1945

EASTER'S meaning is very large. Easter is never more or less
significant. Nor is death. Death and the meaning of Easter; resurrection, are
always supremely significant. But in the presence of death there is a
quickening realization of the significance of

 209




the extinction of mortal life and to Christians a quickening realization of the
significance of resurrection. In our time as the battles rage so furiously we
are constantly in the presence of death. None escape the imminent
possibility of the regretful information of son or husband or friend. In this
very presence of death let us realize resurrection, let us hour by hour feel
that death is but the gate of immortality.

There is One who died violently, Who paid the supreme sacrifice,
Whose death was crucifixion by evil, all for redemption of mankind's
immortality. Our men can not be pure as He was pure; our men can riot
redeem as He redeemed, but our men are dying violently, are paying the
supreme sacrifice, are being crucified by evil, all for redemption of
perishable civilization. How He loves them! And the foe that exacts the
sacrifice, how He pities them!

St. Dismas, a thief; at least a sinner or the liver of an imperfect life;
hung by His side dying and cried, "Lord, remember me . . . " And the
Crucified answered, "This night shalt thou be with Me in paradise." Not in
heaven yet, but in heaven's nursery the training camp of those inducted
into life eternal. Many a soldier or sailor lad, or stalwart veteran, in
extremism, has cried, "O God, this is it . . . " And the clear answer has
doubtless reached his ears and calmed his fright, "This night . . . " Or those
whose last short earthly vision is of chaos and death as with last breath
they scream,   "JesusAnd doubtless He blesses with that Peace the
world can never give or know when He doubtless assures, "My son, this
night shalt thou be with Me in paradise."

TIME AND TIDE from far and near bring incredible jetsam to the
Mission's shore. Goods, as material as mud, as ethereal as love; both rich
and worthless; both joy giving and heart breaking; both beautiful and
hideous. The mail pouches bring a goodly share; letters so lovely that the
Mission longs to publish a collection of them; and on the other hand some
letters so ugly that they curdle peace and well-being. A recent letter neither
lovely nor ugly is travel instead; its ambiguity is intriguing; its affectionate
badinage could easily be mistaken for outright disparagement! But the letter
was accompanied by a quite generous offering. To quote in part:

... If your work is any good, which I doubt, it takes folding

 210



money to run it. Why don't you ... instead of for dimes appeal for ... ten
and twenty dollar bills and get rich sitting down there doing nothing? I saw
your picture in a folder you sent out which shows you much emaciated
and underfed, so take this and go out and get a good feed . . . and fatten up
a bit. You must have been sick, wasn't you?

To quote as briefly from the Mission's reply attempted in the same
half serious, half facetious vein: If you are serious when you write that you
doubt if my work is any good I must tell you frankly that I do not know. I
hope the results satisfy God better than they do me. As for my picture I
think I was looking unusually well when it was made. I have always been
puny and ugly and for many years have looked old. I have never been able
to do anything about it.

A CERTAIN BISHOP who had two brothers was wont to say, "I
think Asa is a fool, and Asa thinks I am a fool, but we both know and God
knows that John is a fool." And he would add, "But we get along."

Then there were two certain rectors. The first was sharp and not apt
to be caught napping. He had form. He was a much more interesting
preacher than most, which quality made him tolerable, His pews were not
empty and judging by statistics he was successful. But one did not feel an
over abundance of love in his parish. That rector drove imperiously and
reaped results and animosity, animosity being the most obvious result of
all.

The certain other rector, one gathered, believed that love will
accomplish all things but, one also gathered, that the rector desired to love
his people deeply rather than actually to do so. Certainly be was marked
with mildness. He was a pleasing preacher. The members of his parish
were satisfied and they sincerely liked their rector. His mildness
engendered no animosity, and no figures. Relatively his statistics were the
lowest in his diocese.

The Mission priest sometimes thinks some of his people are fools,
and some of his people think the priest is a fool, and the priest and some
of the people think they know that some of the rest of the people are
fools. But they all get along. The priest and his people get along because
they are friends. Foolish they often may be but their mutual love covers a
multitude of shortcomings. The Mission people as a whole, like the
majority of

 211



Christians, left to themselves give their allegiance to God rather
negatively. That they better obey God's precepts and that Mission
statistics are above average is not because the priest is imperious,
or because love is left to accomplish all things, but because of the
people's abiding affection through which they endure their priest's
determined, persistent, urging that will not be denied.

TO DISCHARGED SERVICE MEN it is not what is going
to be done now but rather what has been done and is finished now
that is going to matter in the immediate future.

The Mission knows that the men from its community will
come back a few years older; that they will have developed; and
that thcN will not have changed. Readjustment will of course be
necessary. A few will never live permanently in Sherwood again.
But most will come home to live and adjust themselves to rather
the same life they would have come to live had they never gone
to war. The industrious will be industrious and for the most part
get along and ahead and the easy going will not bother. Some will
do well and some ill very much the same as they would have done
had there been no war. Those who practiced religion before the
war will after and those who did not will not.

When the boys come home the Mission will be a part of home
as it was when they went away. The Church bell will not ring out
and there will not be any hullabaloo and the Mission will not be
able to get them jobs but there will be some Masses of thanksgiv-
ing and a lot of time and patience and sympathy to give to their
woes and to help them get their wits together. Of those who take
up their lives in Sherwood some will worship in the Church often
and some rarely, some will be baptized at the Mission font, and
when the veterans come to die they will be brought to the Mission
attar as a part of the office of their Christian burial. In full course
of things and time but few parishes will accomplish more.

THREE MISSION BOYS are not coming home to Sherwood.
One died in Italy a year ago, another in France recently, and a
third at about the same time went down with his ship in the
Pacific. One was a special friend to David who died a few months
before our country was at war, but they were all friends; and now
when the Mission priest prays for one he must pray for each of
the others and for all. When he prays for them he envisions those
three Mission musketeers who have finished with battle and dune

 212



with death and are commencing to taste the fruits of victory over the last
enemy; who are beginning to know the meaning of supreme triumph. The
priest envisions those two soldiers and that sailor, three lifelong friends,
among bewildered dead boys in multitudes, marching side by side across
the valley of death, directed by weary, overworked angels to the gates of
immortal life, to be met by David, eager with welcome and divinely
commissioned to commence the initiation of his friends into the eternal
purpose of God.

Requiescat in peace
GEORGE WILSON
WILLIE
 FRED HERBERT

EUCADOR

Dear Father Jones: The Christmas Booklet reached me on December
15th and is a very lovely one. The enclosed money order is your part of
my Christmas offering, may the Lord bless it and muse it to do much for
His cause in Sherwood!

I am assistant to the Protestant chaplain. I also serve the Maryknoll
Fathers who bring the Latin Mass to us. For many weeks I was busy with
hammer, saw, and paint brush in order that we might have a beautiful place
in which to worship our Infant Redeemer on His Birthday. I am happy to
report that the job was completed in time and that all the services were
beautiful. Unfortunately I have been unable to make my Christmas
communion for we have no Episcopal priest neater than Panama and none
has come this way as yet . . . As ever yours, Kenneth.

 CARE FLEET POST OFFICE, SAN FRANCISCO

Dear Father: Received the Booklet yesterday. I sure was glad to get it.
I have been showing it to my Buddies. They don't know what to think
about it. They like it. One of the boys asked about th~ background in the
picture taken in front of the Altar in the Garden. Then I told him about us
building everything, If you have any pictures of the Garden handy send me
a few. I want to show him something. Write soon. Bud.

 CAMP MAXEY, TEXAS

Hello Father: Will write you a few lines to let you know how I am.
This leaves me fine and hope you are the same. They sure are keeping us
busy now but I think we get this week end off. Well any way I got home
for Christmas and midnight Mass and 1

 213



sure was proud of that. I have four more weeks here and then
I go to Fort Mead and then over sea and there is no telling what
will happen before I see you again. just keep on praying for me.
Here's hoping good luck until I get back to Sherwood and you all
again. Love always. Clarence.

YOUR EVANGELISTIC BOXES of used clothing so well
support the whole purpose of Epiphany Mission. Charitable dis-
posal to the penniless and suffering is always made according to
the need and in times past the need has been enormous but is
relatively small now. For some time the inestimable good ac-
complished by your boxes has been clothing families able to pay
something for what they get. For their money many are able to
obtain from the Mission a necessary amount of clothing which will
wear longer than cheap new clothing, whereas without the M ission
their money would not buy all the clothing often desperately
needed. This is not the kind of charity that impoverishes. The
service benefits hundreds throughout a large community.

The revenue from sales helps to finance the Mission; to main-
tain and heat Church. and Mission House; to provide compensation
for boys and girls in welfare employment; to aid the helpless and
sick.

Your boxes do evangelize; convert. What good preaching to
deaf ears? What ears are deafer than those ill disposed? The fruit
Of Your boxes begets good will; good disposition, and cars are
opened and teaching and instruction are favorably received and
converts are made and baptized.

Did you ever need a rag? What a lovely and invaluable thing
a rag that is needed! Rags, all clothing, hats, shoes, pots and pans,
bric-a-brac and gimcracks, all serve. Unless some special end is
directed disposal of everything received is according to the priest's
discretion.

THE GARDEN, early in Lent, looks neglected, even abused.
Few Mission boys older than 14 are left to do much about it. Of
the scores of younger boys many will spend many hours working in
the garden from Eastff onward through the summer. just now
Cob, still not quite old enough for military service, makes brick
and has things much his own way. Three years ago two dozen
daily fought for the privilege. Raymond, slightly younger than
Cob, is chief gardener. He is also chief sexton, chief fireman,

 214



chief expressman and really a full list of his positions would be impressive.
Peter'& 17th birthday is before Easter and he is determined to enlist in
something on the very dav, and he will. Certain garden walls he purposes
to finish building before he goes away; real walls, stout and tall, upon
substantial footings. It is amazing w1rat at skillful mason the youngster
has gotten to bel For weeks he has been racing against weather; day after
day his mortar would have frozen had it been laid and on such days he
chafes and exclaims, "It has got to be done before I go and I have got to go
on the very day." God's precious youngsters. Soon they will all be gone
like all those precious ones before them. And the younger will step up into
their room. What a garden!

SUMMER, 1945

THE LETTER reproduced below once garnered many times its weight
in gold and won many members of the Mission's Greater Congregation
who have been unfailing in their interest arid support through the ensuing
years.

Dear Mr. Potentiality:

John rather defies description. Picture the boy David or St. John
Baptist at twelve. Think of a healthy boy with tawny hair and with just a
suggestion of freckles on his audacious nose. Think of inimitable light in
boyish eyes that look very frankly into one's own-eyes that provoke
smiles on the bluest Mondays in the world.

John has suffered. Like many another Sherwood child's his family
knew poverty when prosperity raged. John knows the feel of poverty
enforced hanger. And, again like many Sherwood children, in the intimacy
of his family, that close intimacy of 7 living in 2 rooms, John has learned
what crime and death mean.

Once each week John serves at the altar. His best friend is his priest.
His character is being marked with God's holy religion. He needs his priest-
friend always within reach. And John is just a typical one of Epiphany
Mission's 30O children, not to mention adults.

Were you sitting beside John in the Mission's little church how
gladly you would contribute to the offering, Will you not be very pleased
to give the alms, anyway? By such means alone can John and the Mission
have a resident priest.

Epiphany's souls! Knowing their need, seeing their response

 215



and strengthening their priest would give his all rather than fail
them. God moNe )on to visualize and respond. God bless you.
 Faithfully yours,
EPIPHANY MISSION

BELOVED:

The Mission's Playground Plan was enthusiastically approved
by the Greater Congregation and especially by the M

 ission Boys
in armed service. A quite earnest effort was made to build the
pool and equip the playground for this summer's use. It has been
simply impossible to find either the materials necessary or any
competent builder who is not doubly engaged for months and
months and months to come. It is just another wartime disap-
pointment that will eventually become a peacetime joy.

Softball and bats have ben plentiful. The far more popular
baseballs and bats have been difficult to find, although small lack
has been suffered. The only ball gloves and mitts obtained this
summer came in boxes and are in constant use. Really there
have been few daytime hours this summer when Mission boys of
all ages were not playing ball and sometimes girls play, too. Some
other games are far less employed. Your boxes have brought more
than 50 swimming suits that are priceless. The same old swimming
holes in the creek that were good enough for the grandfathers (in
which some very alive today took their last baths 50 years ago) are
inadequate and health hazards but heavenly.

At the beginning of the year while Hit Parades and such
musical broadcasts seldom emitted Don't Fence Me In, Peter, the
greatest single Mission garden builder, week after week brought
the complete fencing in of the garden nearer its completion. And
now, this summer, Peter is a seaman in the greatest Navy in the
world and the garden for this first time is completely walled in
with eight-foot walls and gates of solid oak. If you ask why, you
will in turn be asked if you ever had a garden that 50 small chil-
dren adored and lived in. Your children, any children, the sweet-
est little cherubs on earth are 99 per cent imps in a garden. The
Mission children have not minded being denied unrestricted access,
they have been too busy at their games. Visitors from just over
the wall or from halfway round the world are always welcome,
definitely wanted; and the garden completely inclosed is decidedly
intriguing and possesses a new charm.

 216



Alas, that the garden is now build Building served so much
better end than does the finished garden. How true it is that it
is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Still maintenance of
the garden will employ many lads most of their working hours
for all theyears the garden is a garden. An inch Of relaxed vigil-
ance, and gardens revert an ell toward chaos. Dutiful maintenance
will be pridefully pleasant, but it can never have the thrill of
building.

The season and excessive rains have not been favorable to
the roses which in past years have been much better, but the garden
as a whole is better than it ever has been. The three pools are
lovely. The tubbed citrus trees and gardcnias were never better.
Red hibiscus are conspicuous against ivy covered walls. Single
portulaca in a twenty-four-inch terra cotta strawberry jar, graced
with hundreds of blooms in a half score of colors is alone worth
coming to see.
. A victory garden has been scattered through the garden. Straw-
berries, beets, carrots, bush beans, endive, parsley, bordered flower
beds. Onions and tuberoses grow together as do gladioli and cab-
bages. To spare the grass in the plots where it has taken years to
establish sod, twelve-inch circles of sod were removed and in the
sodless circles okra, pepper and tomatoes flourish with the lawn
neatly clipped beneath them. Tomatoes and dahlias and all staked
things are bound to stakes with old stockings received in boxes.

God walks in the garden I know. In the casal of the evening
when the sun has sunk into the western mountain that seems
to rise just beyond the garden wall, and sweet flower perfumes
tantalize the little breezes. When the whispering, tinkling, dripping
of water into the pools delights the ear and every aspect of plants
and blooms charm. the sight and swallows skim across the sky.
When peace so placid prevails as can be found only in the pres-
ence of God.

Through the years I have written you fully 50 messages re-
garding your box offerings of used clothing, shoes, and in truth
any thing of any nature that you are willing to pass on to others
whose need is definitely greater than your own. There is just
the simple truth to tell you; your boxes are needed, they render
merciful service, they bridge the financial gap between cash on
hand and cash necessary to pay Mission expenses. All received is

 217



sold, given, loaned at the discretion of the priest. just that I have
told you fifty times and I hope in fifty different dresses. I think my
literary sands are running out, but perhaps I have not said it like
this before: Most hours of every day the church is empty of
worshipers; most hour of every day the garden is empty of visitors;
but in no minute of any day, year in and out, do your boxes fail
to give service and comfort.

And now may I pass on an old, old blessing a most dea:r friend
gave me? Boreen is byway, lane, and who does not spend now and
again an hour or a day in some gloomy lowroad or darksome
lane or sooner or later tread the footpaths of the valley of the
shadow of death?

May God and our Lady bless and protect you and may the
blessed angels and saints with white candles light your feet when
you walk the dark boreen.
 Affectionately Yours,

Father Jones
 MARY'S MEADOW
 Gazenovia, New York

Dear Father Jones:

We are farm folk and as such raise our own animals for our
meat. Last year I had a bullock bom on Epiphany and I promptly
named him Epiphany. Then as that word association in our home
is so strongly for Father Jones' Mission the bullock naturally ac-
quired the title Epiphany Jones. (I hope the sense of humor, that
wrote of the termites clasping hands to hold your old Mission house
together, will appreciate this namesake.)

As a thank offering for our very good beef, (Epiphany Jones),
butchered recently, I am sending the Mission the price of his hide.
I wish I could enclose a steak.
 Sincerely,

Your friend.

SUMMER 1945
 EPIPHANY MISSION
 Sherwood, Tennessee
 Dear Susan:

in your grief you have lost your balance. Had I not known
your great faith for years I should say that you never had faith

 218



when you tell me that you have lost it. How unlike the noble
Susan, whom I have known through the years, you are when you
say that either there is no God as you have worshipped and served
or else He has failed you utterly and you are done with Him.

You say that Jim merited a more merciful and efficient pro-
tecLion than God gave because Jim was thoroughly wholesome and
truly loved God and served Him and would have come home the
superior citizen that our country needs so dreadfully. And now
because God's carelessness Jim is buried in foreign soil while
hordes of godless and giddy and immoral young men are coming
safely home to foster sin. Of worse you are right in that Jim was
richly endowed in body, mind and soul. I have known neither a
finer character nor a more inspiring Christian. Doubtless he in-
herited from you, his mother Susan, for when he was born you
had all he ever developed. And you, with all you have been for
forty odd years, are done with God! If I may ask how do you
know that if Jim, who for all his fineness was no finer than you,
had come home he would not have conic done with God and de-
cency as outmoded failures? Do not for a moment think that
God let Jim die to prevent such but do think how silly it is to
criticize Providence.

You are right in thinking that few young men are as wholly
sound as Jim was. And of course, godliness and gross immorality
are far too prevalent and when ten million boys went to war some
of it naturally went with them, although most of it stayed right
here at home. Be assured that very, very few boys are godless at
heart and that most are ashamed of their morals and keep in mind
that all of their "betters" could set them a fairer example. Remem.
ber that if here or there, there is a boy godless and bad God loves
him and yearns for his love.

Why have you forgotten that we cannot deserve God's favor?
Nor buy it with loyal service? And to have been as deserving as
you seem to think you were of the special privileges of protection
you prayed for Jim how could you have been so selfish as to ask
anything special at all?

God's eyes are on the sparrow, and I know he watches me is
good theology. Our Lord did much healing and doubtless much
for the comfort of bodies other than His own. We do well to

 219




wrestle in prayer for healing and health and bodily protection fut
those near to us, but for God's will to be done we must be un-
selfish !it our prayer. Then after all, His kingdom is not of this
world; not of the body but of the soul. Do you suppose the sainted
martyrs made their last prayer for bodily protection or for their
souh?

God knows my heart bleeds with sympathy for you in the loss
of the only child you will ever have, but I do assure you that
neither Jim nor God is pleased with your reaction to your grief and
I pray you plant your feet on holy ground again. Will you ponder
this bit from Francis Thompson's immortal Hound of Heaven?

"How has thou merited-
 Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?

 Alack, thou knowest not
 How little worthy of any love thou artl
 Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

 Save Me, save only Me?
 All which I took from thee I did but take,

 Not for thy harms,
 But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms

 All which thy child's mistake
 Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home;

 Rise, clasp My hand and come.

God bless you.
 Affectionately yours,

Father Jones

 PARAGRAPHS FROM LETTERS
 FROM THE MISSION'S OWN
EVELYN: Although I have never met you I feel that I know you
because until Bob went overseas he was always talking of you.
Until I married Bob as a wartime bride and came out here I went
to the Baptist Church, but was never baptized. Here Bob and I
went to St. Mark's, which is like the Mission. I will be baptized
and confirmed soon and you are due the credit for it all as Bob is
yours and he influenced me.
VERNON: I see more disadvantages in nonfraternization than
good in it. Here and seeing what is happening I believe that we
are definitely creating hatred more deeply rooted than ever existed

 220



before just by this rule. I think this is the opinion of millions
just like me. If we never associate with the German people they
will never know just what sort of people we are and what kind of
principles we are fighting for. If we talked with them and by our
actions slaqwed them what kind of people we are then we would
prove that actions speak louder than words. If we show the Ger-
mans that we are human beings and want to make life worth liv-
ing then we could convince enough of the soundness of our way
of living to bring around others to our way of thinking.

JAMES: Twice I have stood on the bridge of a ship carrying troops
in to take land positions. Twice I have watched those same men
vicariously blown and ripped apart until the beaches lay strewn
with butchered flesh and the ocean fairly lap up their blood. But
somehow the land positions were always taken, first at Iwo Jima,
and then at Okinawa. That is why I am able to sit here tonight
still in one piece.

FRED: Well, Father, I want your daily prayers at Mass. I know
even better than you how much I need them. Always pray that
I may return home safe once again for Mother's sake.

JOHN: In short I have been red hot because there has been
the slightest question as to whether the men will be murderers
when they get home-the finest men who ever lived and who had
to kill and kill and hated it. That anybody thought that that
was a possibility makes me so mad that I want to fight whoever
thought it. I have had to write you pages to get it out of my
system. And it had to be to you because in writing you I can turn
loose everything, like making my confession.

SAINT LOUIS
NINI dear Father Jones;

I am sending you the picture I took in your garden of you
beside the regal lily with 26 blooms.

I shall always be glad that on Mr. Burke's chance business
trip to Sherwood we visited your Epiphany Mission, because both
Mr. Burke and I were profoundly impressed. We agree that we
have rarely experienced holier atmosphere than envelops the
church and garden. And we want you to know that the incident
of the blasphemous little boy angry with his playmates who were

 221



playing ball in the street between the church and garden-together
with your lack of embarrassment and the half pained apologetic
little smile you give us-gave a human aside that only made the
holy atmosphere more real.

I feel that I could be very religious, very good in that little
church. It seems to me that [here the very best in one's soul must
be lifted up and drawn out to worship and do good deeds.

I told you that Mr. Burke and I are Catholics, but we too
want to be members of your Greater Congregation and do our part
financially from time to time.
 Sincerely,

Aileen Burke.

AUT UMN, 1945

THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE ALTAR is the Great
Prayer. And the matter and means of the Great Prayer are Holy
Mysteries. What transpires behind the words of the sublime liturgy
transcends discernment as does Triune God. The Holy Sacrifice of
the Altar is supplication, oblation, adoration, thanksgiving; the
Great Prayer. Not at all the prayer of a celebrant nor the public
prayer of a pious congregation for every offering of the Holy Sacri-
fice involves the whole state of Christ's Church and its Head. Its
Headl Our Lord. The Sacrifice of the Altar is our Lord's sacrifice;
present of ourselves, our souls and bodies offered as a reasonable,
giving, offering; His one oblation of Himself once offered in per-
petuity. How? God only fully knows. But it is the only sacrifice,
(offering of intercession, glory, worship, thanks,) perfect in God's
eyes.

What of our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving? What of the
holy, and living sacrifice? My feeble praise and thanks? My ignoble
soul, my clotted clay? A presumptuous offeringl Cheap but for
a mystery of the Holy Mysteries whereby through the Sacrifice my
feebleness is glorified, by ignoble soul made worthy as I am made
one body with Him; one with His sacrifice, reasonable, holy, living.

And so, to use the most efficacious channel from earth to God,
must my poor prayers; my praise, my pleas, my thanks, be made
one with the Great Prayer, the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar, His
death upon the cross, Him.

ON ALL SAINTS' the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered

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rather in honor of all God's saints: That it may avail them to
their honor, and us to our salvation; and that they whose memory
we celebrate on earth vouchsafe to intercede for us in heaven.

On ALL SOULS the Holy Sacrifice is offered that God may Grant
unto the gouls of His servants and handmaids departed the re-
mission of all their sins; that through devout supplication they
may obtain the pardon they have always desired.

MISSION MUSINGS AND MURMURS

FROM THE PRIEST'S DIARY. December 21st, 1944. To
Little Creek to baptize six in mud and rain.

LOVELY THINGS. In late September a stalwart Sterling
rose bush in the garden with the inimitable half bursting buds and
full blown silver pink blooms. And a giant Frau Karl Druschki
that was a slip in 1938 beating at once fifteen perfect blooms. * * *
Giving thanks is a lovely thing. There are the thank offerings that
come to the Mission and are blessed at the Mission altar when God
is thanked. Thanks for the safe return of war-tired loved ones.
Thanks for improved health. Thanks for various blessings. It is
indeed so beautiful to be thankful. * * * And there are the lovely
letters in the Mission's mail. In God's great motley family there
are here and there one and another so noble, so understanding, so
sympathetic, that an occasional touch with them helps to make
life in this vale of sorrows worthwhile.

A SMALL BOY quite some years ago was asked by the priest
the reason for his continued absence from church. The small boy
answered, "Bemuse I hate it. I hate Mass and I am never coming
over there again." Yet, what hath God wrought? As Peter turned
out there has been no one more faithful, no helper more able, no
greater satisfaction in all the years of Mission effort.

ARE PROTESTANTS supposed to suppose that the end of
all Catholics is hell and damnation, and vice versa? In short, is
the other's religion sufficient unto salvation? Catholics are at
least charitable enough to consign sincere though erring Protest-
ants to limbo. Perhaps unfortunately, Protestants knowing no way
stations such as purgatory or limbo must consign passing souls
directly to heaven or hell. But surely no truly good Christian

 223



Protestant believes that good Catholics go to hell. And no good
Christian Catholic but who must privately believe that at least
a few good Protestants escape limbo and advance through purga-
tory into the heart of heaven. Well, if each antagonist's religion
is sufficient unto salvation what is the old, old eternal row about?

ATREE GROWS IN SHERWOOD, a cedrus deodara, planted
in 1935, outside the Lady Chapel Sanctuary window as a back-
ground for the roofed crucifix in the church garden. The Mission
priest has looked upon the growing tree at the time of his Mass
on almost every week day morning through ten years, near 3,000
mornings and 3,00O Masses. At first the topmost tip did not reach
the peak of the shrine but as the mornings, the months, the years
passed the topmost twig was higher than the cross, an inch, a foot,
a yard and now grown twice as tall the tree's top can no longer be
seen from the altar. How imperceptibly the tree growsl And how
positively. God grant that His Sherwood family that is nourished
at the Mission altars and strengthens as imperceptibly as a tree,
strengthens as positively.

A BABY GIRL to whom the priest was a stranger and to
whose mountain home he had come to baptize the family lisped
to him, "I know you. You are Saint Jones the Baptize."

GEORGE was David's little brother. Remember him down the
years as he appeared in the Booklets? Serving at the altar first in
1937. Christmas 1938 bad, rebellious and skipping his confession,
Playing his way to an outstanding Mission baseball star, Garden-
ing with keenest ambition at day's beginning and with persever,
ance a deflated balloon at noon. Putting the carp that is so fat
and faincant today in the garden pool six long summers ago. Ac-
quiring the nickname Hunky Jones, Learning to like incense
while confined in the sacristy by a passing April shower. Learning
to drive Father's car, and smashing the fenders. And so the Mis-
sion lad grew into young manhood. No sissy and no saint. Gambling
a little. Lying a little. Drinking a little. But there was a quality
in his penitence and Fidelity that was a delight unto the Lord, He
served more than 20O weekday Masses. Never but once failed
when a confession was due. Was never absent from the Sunday
Mass. And his friendship was superlative loyalty.

The first days of 1943 saw George in the Navy. Last May

 224



George was at home on his last furlough and made his last con-
fession and served his last Mass and made his last communion.
On his twentieth birthday, July 16th, he wrote his last letter to
his priest-friend and the same day his ship, the Indianapolis, sailed,
with something to do with atomic bombs, for Japanese waters. On
July 30th 6eorge was lost with his ship and the torpedo that
fatally pierced his ship's vitals and gave hundreds to death pierced
through his priest-friend!s heart also.

O you were lovely and pleasant in life, Georgie, swifter than
eagles, stronger than lions. How are the mighty fallen in the midst
of battle! I am distressed for thee my little brother. And happy
that you and David are reunited in life eternal. All the remaining
mornings of my life I shall remember you so softly at the altars
where the memory of you is so indelible. O sailor boy, sailor boy,
peace to your soul.

CHRISTMAS, 1945

THE SAILORS AND SOLDIERS come home from the wars.
The Mission men must be like all others who served in armed
service. It is impossible to fully rmlize what those who come
home to Sherwood have experienced and endured. There is little
or no indication that they themselves are too consciously aware.
It would seem that to them it is as a nightmare of the past, tinged
now with vagueness as is all when it has passed. What is most ob-
t iously remarkable about the Sherwood men is that there is no ap-
parent change in them other than that they have just been growing
up. As far as may be judged whatever tribulations they have suf-
fered. or whatever cNils they have endured have not canceled half a
line, nor blurred a single word that destiny had written upon the
characters of the little boys who were playing in the streets of Sher-
wood in the 1930s. And they come home with casual opinions of
world affairs as well as home affairs and no inclination to do any-
thing about things like that.

In the Mission church there have been numerous Masses of
thanksgiving for the safe return of all those who served in the war,
some returned men have been devoted to their religious duties and
privileges, and some have not as yet entered the church at all.

HOLY MARY, Mother of God, is definitely essential to
Christmas. The Mother of God as a title of the Blessed Virgin

 225



Mary is shocking to some. Such well take the point that the mere
title, ambiguous as it is, leads countless less perspicacious souls to
blasphemous Mariolatry and the inclusion of the Saints in the
perogatives of the Holy Trinity.

The entirety of our Lord gives Him many titles and a very
necessary one is, Son of Man. And there are countless intelligent
and sagacious souls who deny the divinity of the Son of Man. Oc-
casionally there are minorities here or there who construe some
passage of the very Word of God to make pleasing in His sight the
fondling of rattlesnakes in His worship. And the devil quotes
scripture to his purpose.

What matters God, omnipotent, eternal, to humanity without
tangible relationship between God and humanity? And Mary, the
Mother of God, is a supreme expression of that relationship.

Mary is the mother of the Son of Man, Mary's flesh is His
flesh, her humanity is His humanity, and His flesh and humanity
are the flesh and humanity of all mankind. But the Son of Man
and God the Son are indivisible and it is true, however ambiguous,
that Mary is the mother of God.

The fact of the Mother of Godl Consolation of common flesh;
earnest of God to humanityl The Son of Mary and His eternal
Father are One. Eternal God is incarnate in tangible flesh. Human-
ity can grasp Him, can understand Him; can understand that flesh,
obedient to His Word, sanctified, can become the incarnation of the
glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Christmas star, high in heaven, tell us, were you shining then?
Did you hear the angels singing, "Peace, good will to men?"

CHILDREN OF THE MISSION, in Miss Florence's Sunday
School, singing may be a carol, it could be, O Little Town of Beth-
lehem, or perhaps, Jesus Loves Me, a thing they seem to like best
of all to sing. Multiply the number pictured by three or four and
the result will be something like the total number of Mission chil.
dren of the ages shown.

These very children are Sherwood tomorrow; they are Epiph-
any Mission in the years ahead. From among them and from no
other where can other Davids, Georges, Peters be reared. Among
them must develop as needed another Flossie, or Elizabeth or Irene.

 226



As a whole no other influence in Sherwood so bends these
twigs of potentiality toward good and toward God as does Epiphany
Mission. God grant that these men and women of tomorrow am
rigidly inclined to His kingdom and His righteousness.

THAT, MISSION YOUNG CHURCHMEN should prefer the
liturgy and prayers as rendered in their own Mission church is
natural. Most churchmen prefer the services as read or celebrated
in their own parishes as they have heard them so long as they have
lived. Those of the Mission congregation who are privileged to
visit other churches of their communion invariably come home and
say they like the Mission Mass better than any church service they
ever attended. However, many Mission communicants upon leav-
ing Sherwood embrace one of two extremes. Some try the large
parish churches and are socially uncomfortable which is natural
and the parish tried is utterly blameless. Next is tried some small-
ish Methodist Episcopal Church, the title Episcopal having weigh-
mg influence, and in spite of churchmanship social comfort is
found and the wanderers stay. On the other hand a number of
military men from the Mission attended the Masses of the Roman
communion while some wandering civilians attend Roman
churches. Most, until informed, think they have been before their
own altars. "Not exactly like ours," they say, "but not much dif-
ference." Clyde after trying chaplains and churches thought the
Mass at Gesu, Miami, and the sermon by a Jesuite Father very
satisfying and most like those at home.

FLOSSIE'S, a Mission institution, as many know, is the dis-
tribution center for your boxes. And it is the Mission's free li-
brary, such as the library is. Flossie's is housed in a single room
15 feet wide and 30 feet long. Of the 450 square feet of space about
20O square feet are occupied by clothes presses, book shelves, tables
and stove. In the remaining 250 square feet are right often as-
sembled as many as 50 people by actual count. And when 50
assembled people have but five square feet of space per person
there is a jam. Among any such fifty there will be young and old,
whites and a few Negroes, some children and some men, but largely
adult women. Although Flossie's patrons often live 20 miles away
or further a capacity crowd will gather in 15 minutes if the one
daily post and express deliveries are promising.

Clothing, shoes, the hundreds of various things you send in

 227



your boxes, are so definitely needed and so eagerly sought and give such a
large measure of service and comfort.

WHY PRAY? Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of,
before ye ask Him. God art always more ready to hear than we to pray,
and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve. Prayer can be
made for no good thing but is already God's will. But, receiving is
conditional; to receive He must be asked. Ask and ye shall receive. Asking
that which is good is conforming our wills to God's will. Asking is the key
that opens the barrier to the will of God done on earth. Efficacious prayer
is the asking of what God desires to bestow; that His will be done. Thy
will be done is the perfect intercession. Thy will be done on earth is all
inclusive; the prayer complete. Plead for righteousness, justice, mercy'
peace; God wills them all. Ask assuagement for sorrow, ask anodyne for
pain, relief for poor and oppressed, winds tempered to His shorn lambs; all
is God's will. Efficacious prayer is the intercession of a will attuned to
God's will.

Alas, that our wills are but seldom attuned to God's will! God's
kingdom does not come on earth and His will is not done on earth because
the wills of His children are opposed. Even 1, even you, oppose an
entirety of righteousness, justice, mercy, peace: we have reservations.
Blindly, or undiscernibly, or willfully we are opposed. Perhaps at best we
desire His will done conditionally; in such a manner; so far and no further.
We desire world peace but reserve the right to harbor intolerance toward
our neighbor. And thus we tie the hands of God. But we do pray.

There are those who do not pray, some because of total ignorance of
prayer; some because bewildered by the why or how or to what end; some
because paralyzed by pair, the pain of overwhelming sorrow, the
unbearable pain of deranged mind or body. There are those who do not
pray and those who have none to pray for them. In your prayers remember
all these, Beloved. Often on week day mornings the daily offering of the
Holy Sacrifice, the Great Prayer, is offered at a Mission altar with perhaps
three souls present and 1,20O of the community absent. Then the burden of
the need of all these absent and all those others who do not pray is borne,
and it is not that they are prayed for but rather that their own prayers are
prayed for them.

 228



EASTER, 1946

BELOVED:

I am sitting in a split hickory bark chair, the kind common to our
mountain folk, and the chair is passing comfortable. I am sitting in the
Mission garden and the eternal miracle of spring is pulsing around me; the
sunshine warms my flesh so pleasantly and the cockles of my heart so
peacefully; like God's most precious smile; like happiness after adversity.
The birds feel this, too. The cooing pigeons and some three trilling
songsters I can not see or quite identify tell me definitely.

I can watch Raymond repainting the green hydrangea tubs and Bill
putting the sixth annual coat of blind green Utilac on a steel garden chair
making it ready for its seventh summer. And all the while I contemplate
you. You whom I address, the composite a thousand souls. And you little
know that, apart from the composite, you as an individual, no matter that I
never have ken you, are as intimately real to me as Raymond or Bill whom
I have reared.

A letter came to me this morning and pleased me and made my heart
grateful, -- for what is perhaps a failure after all. Through fourteen years a
certain man has read from my pen and typewriter. I quote a random but
typical line or two from his letters through the years, letters disparaging
my expressed views and actions: "Christ no more taught your mumbo
jumbo than He sanctioned polygamy."

"I do not care nor believe in beautiful worship."
"Your teaching about the Lord's Supper is blasphemous."

"I throw your circulars into the waste basket where they belong and then I
get them out and read evey word." And now this morning: "Every single
paragraph of your last printing is irresistible. Almost thou persuadest me
to be a Catholic."

Remember the law firm of Levy and O'Brien? In a certain case Levy
thought a five hundred dollar fee would do and when O'Brien collected a
thousand he exclaimed, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."

Well, it is not recorded that King Agrippa embraced Christian. ity in
this world so St. Paul's almost was but to fail. I suppose that all of us have
many almosts. Almost always Mission alms total

 229




almost enough to adequately sustain the Mission. I wonder how often
others are almost persuaded to give an offering, but to fail,

Through the years how very many pleasant times has the Community
House been spun in cobwebs, and lately Mission conversation has been
agog with it again. And now in this morning's paper a headline is spread:
ALL BUILDING NOT ESSENTIAL TO BE BANNED. U. S. ORDER
TO BE ANNOUNCED TUESDAY. It is true that we have at best met
with little encouragement at any time but have hoped and prayed that each
next month would he better and that we could start building and see it
through. How anxious we are that another year will not have to be spent
erecting our Community House with the construction material of air
castles!

You are ever so kindly solicitous about my health. I am well. But I
seek more or less eagerly behind every shadow that phantasmal best that is
to be, promised to those who grow old along with that optimistic poet.
Perhaps the rainbow is enough; to seek the pot of gold but avarice.

And now, may a bit of real Lenten strife and battle be drawing to a
close for you and when in the ever recurring pageant of holiness the angels
roll the rock away may our risen Lord bless you.

 Affectionately yours,

Father Jones.

SUMMER, 1946

DO YOU LIGHT VOTIVE CANDLES? Did you ever wish upon a
star? Did you ever lay a flower on a grave? On a gay fiesta, for one loved
and absent, did you ever turn down an empty glass? Did you ever give
just a cup of cold water in His name?

Frankincense and myrrh. A cup of cold water. A candle flame lit to
the accompaniment of wordy prayers or the devout prayers of a full heart
and muted lips; it is not the words that matter, it is the soul's sincerity of
purpose. A candle lit for any word or volume that may be addressed to
God. A candle that simply says all day long, "Thank you, Lord." Or
through interminable hours of night watches, "Give succor in distress; grant
assuagement in pain." A little flame keeping a ten hour vigil before God for
a soul an interceding soul especially loves. A burning taper asking

 230



peaceful rest for a soul departed. Little flame stars between man and God.

One star differeth from another star in glory. The star that stood over
the manger throne in Bethlehem was majestically and potently glorious.
But the little candle stars that burn before Him cuddled in His Virgin
Mother's arms burn with holy glory, too, and point wise men to God.

Votive candlcs lit before a plaster effigy in a gloomy corner of a
simple mission church, some of course, casually, some as piteous or pious
or passionate prayers. Little candle stars. Ten hour prayers. Visible
prayers. Each flame a prayer. One flame, one plea. The more flames the
richer the irresistible atmosphere of prayer. O the excellency of counting
the little flames, seeing just so many souls are praying, seeing just so many
tapers sparkle for the honor of God.

BELOVED:

You might well ask, How goes the Mission from the angle of the
prime purpose of its being, a cure of souls? I think any survey should be
weighed against the background of the whole Church. There are pastors
with feet in the mud who speak only of the stars and there are those with
heads among the stars who seem conscious only of the mud that weights
their feet. From near and far from priests and parishes come intimations of
glowing successes and groveling failures. It is best to always take both
glowing and groveling with a pinch of salt.

Our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem occupied an hour out of a
life time and the fanfare was a little untimely. The failures of Christians
and the disappointments of priests, are granted, the failures of priests and
the disappointments of Christians is nothing new. Holy Church on earth
has neither been as successful as heaven nor as lost as hell but has thrived
through the centuries on a composite of failure and success; mediocrity.
Our Lord knew the heart breaks of leading souls and he Perhaps summed
up the hurts of His experience when He asked a few faithful followers, of
whom some were faint hearted and skeptical, Will ye also go away?

The celebration of Easter in the Mission was holy and triumphal, it
was a crown of glory for all the years I have been

 231



in Sherwood. But, alas, the crown seems to have been returned to dark
vaults of safety; silent indeed are the hosannas of Easter Day. The fact is
that the past few Sundays have seen the consecutively smallest
congregations at Mass within my term of labor.

Church attendance is not the last word in the measure of a churchman
or of a congregation but a Catholic occasionally absent from Sunday Mass,
except for good reason and verily a valid excuse is a rare thing in a life time,
will prove to be of little value to God's earthly Kingdom. My dictionary
gives the colloquial meaning of white elephant as something requiring much
care and expense and yielding little profit; a burdensome possession. Every
communicant is precious and most be clung to but a communicant absent
from Holy Communion is verily one of God's white elephants. That the
Episcopal Church survives the weight of white elephants is one of God's
greatest miracles.

The mission has its mud and stars and lesser depths and heights. just
now if earthly properties are not too intolerably muddy the glow of
heaven is a little dim. But the Mission gets along.

Did you read in The Reader's Digest for June Dr. Cronin's A Candle
in Vienna? It is very lovely and gives one seriously to think. In devastated
Vienna an impoverished aristocrat of a war ravished family and a war
maimed child daily visit a church to pray and light a candle. "And also to
show the good God they are not too angry with Him." And Dr. Cronin
concludes, "One candle in a ruined city. But while it shown there seemed
hope for the world."

I am somehow glad I had written my bit on votive candles for this
Booklet before I read A Candle in Vienna. My short paragraphs need no
justification but Dr. Cronin seems to give them just that.

There is rather much about the little symbols of The Light of the
World in this Booklet. Please do not entertain any ugly thoughts about
lighting candles as ridiculous and superstitious devotions; as a fetish. No
more magic is implied than the magic of a prie-dieu; the only virtue in
either is an utterly sterile accessory of prayer hallowed by use. All the
virtue, all the power is God's alone.

And now may The Light of the World abide with you, forever

 232



more lightening your darkness, and leading you in the way everlasting.

 Affectionately yours,

FATHER JONES.

SPAKE THE SPIRIT TO THE BODY, "You are failing me
deplorably. Your coordination is going and your precision is gone. Your
feet are heavy and stumble; your hands shake and fumble; this morning
you bungled the pall and let it fall and all but upset the chalice." And the
Body replied, "Alas, I regret that all is too true. That I weaken, that I fail, I
rue. Fain would I serve as I used to do, before I grew old."

The Spirit continued, "Old? Old at three score years? How comes this
aging premature? Which is a rhetorical question. Long have I known that
you could not indulge your voracious appetites; that you could not burn
the candle at both ends and in the middle too; that you could not grind at
your unhalting, giddy pace and last over long."

"Hark, Soul," exclaimed the incensed Body, "my voracious appetites
are a myth. My inherent cravings have been few, my natural tastes for
wholesome and simple food and drink. The feel of sun and rain, the sting
of wind and weather, the stretch of muscles and sweat and ensuing sweet
peaceful slumber; these have been the appetites I fain would have
satisfied.

"But you! You Spirit, have been the flame that has consumed me,
your tabernacle. You, burning, unwearing insatiable. Had you but
sometimes heard and heeded me, mortal Body, how much better had our
union been. Sometimes you have flamed for heaven and sometimes you
burned with the fires of hell. Sometimes you filled me, your house, with
very God and sometimes you peopled me with the devil and his cohorts.
You have blessed me and burned me, you have intrigued me and outraged
me, you have had me serve heaven's holiest purposes and all but hell's
foulest infamies and you have not spa~red. Small wonder L Body, am
intolerablv tired, that I falter and fail.

"You, Spirit, are celestial. 1, Body, am terrestrial. You are immortal
and can know no death, or sleep, or unconsciousness in all eternity, but
soon I resolve in dust to sleep until resurrection. I have much to forgive
you, I pray God has less. I bear you no ill will, but I welcome death which
is no more, no less than our

 233



separation; your eviction from me, yew earthly habitation; no more, no less
than my release to lapse into dust and rest in peace. O eternal, ageless,
flaming Spirit, now that 1, Body, fail, how willing will I be when comes the
time to die and set you free."

PETER is pictured in this Booklet surrounded with Mission church
properties familiar to him all the days of his young life. The altar cross,
and the Book he has moved through the years. The shrine by which
Kenneth stood for his picture ten years ago. The spot whereat he has so
often knelt where Lawrence was kneeling thirteen years since. The crucifix
in the Mission church yard.

Peter is definitely outstanding but he typifies scores of Mission

children and as a type is presented. His real name is Clyde and he

was born on St. David's day the year the present Mission church was

built, actually when the present Mission priest unwittingly was

making ready for his advent to Sherwood of which he had then never

heard. Peter was a year old when the priest reached Sherwood and it

was a long time later before Peter knew the priest had arrived or the

priest knew of Peter's existence. He was seven before he was

baptized and was confirmed at eight. Well remembered his eight year

old Peter's first Mission job when with meticulous effort to do well

he uprooted all the flowers and left all tire weeds. He served first

when he was twelve and weekly thereafter and he served last Sunday

while at home on leave. His hands have fashioned more garden than

any others. In his relation to the Mission there have, of course, been

failures and defections and rifts. Somehow forgotten or hard to recall

are the unhappy things and the vivid satisfactions of happiness and

goodness in Peter's course and conduct glow among the Mission's

brightest and warmest memories.

ST. JAMES saith, Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindlethl
Often we do not want to light candles, we want to light conflagrations.
Our Lord lit candles that are great burning beacons today and forever.
Often our Lord proclaimed the profoundest of truths to a single soul as He
spake to Martha the fact so potent and so eloquent that to read it or hear it
quoted today makes at least one spinal cord tingle. I am the resurrection
and the life. Whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.

Sometimes comes the thought that a sermon seems so good that it
were well to save it for a larger or more appreciative congrega

 234



tion; that some happily conceived bonmot be saved to impress a group
rather than an individual. Nothing so quickly spoils in the saving as
something really worth saying. Give and you will receive is truer of nothing
than of well weighed words of import. The use of ' worthy wit sharpens
wit. The expression of understanding and good will to the nurse, the cook,
the butter and egg man replenishes the store in your heart. It could be that a
grain of wisdom or a pinch of inspiration earnestly imparted to an
individual might take root and grow whereas if broadcast might fall on
stony ground. But deliver the very best sermon within your power to the
small and perhaps unappreciative congregation before you if you want a
better sermon for the next occasion. Spend every such endowment
prodigally and find you have lost nothing at all; spend the richest within
and you will be charged with a richer store. And remember if you really
light candies great fires will kindle themselves.

REMEMBER THE MISSION'S EASTER LETTER? The priest
wrote while sitting in the Mission garden and mentioned the evidences of
spring and the cooing of pigeons. Shortly after Easter came this note: You
had best remove Miss Sarah's name from your mailing list as she is no
longer here but doubtless sits in a passing comfortable split hickory hark
chair listening to the cooing of celestial pigeons and awaiting the heavenly
advent of Father Tones.

This note was received soon after the announcement in the Booklet of
George's end with the USS Indianapolis a year ago. It is from an original
member of the Greater Congregation who knows the Mission and its priest
and children only through the Booklet. Each time the note is reread it
brings a tear to the eyes of the priest and joy to his heart. I have been
praying for dear David's brother George ever since hearing of his going to
sea. I am scary to hear of his death. May God rest his soul!

And this from a soldier come home to New York: I thank you for the
Booklets which reached me all over the world. I brought them back, every
one. They are full of meaning and beauty and truth in a world where
nothing except the Faith makes any sense.

 JUST CANDLES

BEFORE MASS each Sunday Shirley jean, aged six, lights a candle
for Hub, her father, lost with his ship in the Pacific in

 235



December, 1944. Hub's candle burns while the Holy Sacrifice is being
offered and in fact, the whole day long.

IRENE always lights two candles, one for David, her husband, five
years at rest, and one for Peter, her little Mission-brother,

HERSCHEL, who was never absent from Sunday Mass as long as he
was in Sherwood, has a candle burning for him every Sunday, now that he
is a soldier in Japan.

CANDLES ARE not sufficient nor the space for them to offer one
each Sunday for each person or each plea for which they are sometime
offered. But every Sunday a candle burns for the priest's Mother, and one
for Elizabeth, and one for Mary, and one for George.

THERE WAS NICKY, a Greek boy, an Anglo-Orthodox, whose icon
on the bedroom mantle was a chromo of Lessig's Christ in Gethsemane.
Nicky was wont to say, "Every day I tell God good morning and light a
candle in front of Him so he will see it and not forget to take care of me
through the day." And he did. And apparently God did. To some pious
minds Nicky's approach may smack of sacrilegious familiarity but
reminding God not to forget is not utterly lacking in His inspired Word and
after all Nicky seemed to surrender his humanity to God, Who doubtless
understood, familiarity and all, and did keep Nicky within the shelter of
His protection.

VEGETABLES as altar decorations are taboo in the Mission but
lately Florence's altar flowers of dwarf dahlias and dill were very lovely.
Two or three times a summer an altar is done in magnolias and at least
once each summer the Mass is offered on an altar graced with heavenly
blue morning glories.

THE SHEPHERD OF SHERWOOD, as the Mission priest
sometimes fancies himself, now and again has an hour so dark that he feels
very sorry for himself until he remembers with a bit of shame that the
most resourceful if not the happiest creature in Sherwood is a repulsive
mongrel. No sensitive person can look at the dog and its maimed limb
without cringing but there is an unmistakable smile on the dogs face and his
living commands respect for a magnificent example of fortitude in
adversity.

SOME YEARS AGO a young man of the Mission was ill in a
hospital in the nearest city. While a major operation was being performed
the patient's friend went to quiet his anxiety and to

 236



pray in a church not many blocks from the hospital. In the church was, and
surely still is, a statue and before it a small table to serve as a candle stand.
On the table were some half-dozen votive candles in their glasses. George
said there was no alms box but that he put an ample offering on the table
and lit all the candles for his suffering friend. Then as he prayfully watched
them burn an old colored sexton came in and blew them all out. It would
seem that the candles and candle stand were for architectural atmosphere
rather than actual use. George concluded, "You know what Father, I took
back my money." How human were George and the sexton. And how like
us all who somewhere along the line miss subtle points in the practice of
religion. In innocent ignorance the sexton extinguished a hallowed offering
of candle flames and George took back an alms he had placed at the feet of
God.

THAT A CANDLE has burned in the Mission church for you is very
likely if you belong to the Greater Congregation. You may remember that
ten hour candle will be lit with any intention you desire at a nickel a
candle.

 PONDER lingeringly this from Confucius: It is better to light one
 small candle than to curse the darkness.

AUTUMN, 1946

ATMOSPHERE is such an actual reality; such a potent influence and
fertile medium. Although a ghostly substance, wholly immaterial, it is
tangible as well as intangible and it is as real as stone. Atmosphere is a
composite emanation from both material and immaterial factors. It is the
personality of places. It can be peaceful or chaotic, delightful or
distressing, so holy it blesses or so evil it curses.

Not all church atmospheres are appealing, most are imbued with
varying degrees of sanctity, but it some the spirit of holiness is so positive
that it would be very difficult to behave unseemly or to think evil. It would
seem that the atmosphere of a church is not so greatly influenced by the
Presence of God as by the corporate reverence accorded the Presence.

Here and there is an altar with a tabernacle and the Presence. The light
in the church may be bright or very subdued, it does not seem to matter,
There are flickering candles and the smell

 237



of incense burned lately mingled with the butell of that burned long ago.
The atmosphere is vitally alive and as gentle as the Virgin Mother. It is
irresistibly appealing and caresses with benediction. It is indeed a glorious
nimbus and a royal mantle for our Lord and King.

Seek such an altar on All Souls'. In the Presence are you and your
dead. He in us, we in Him. And such atmosphere is a medium; a common
ground between earth and heaven; a vehicle of communion wherein no
spoken or written language is needed for communication, yet the
communion is real, And this is no vagary. This is actual experience. This is
fact as bodyless as air but as tangible as stone. It may or may not be
compatible with reason, but it is veritable; the soul knows.

HOLY CHURCH with divine wisdom created the calendar of
corporate Christian conduct; fasts and feasts, the seasons of penitence and
the seasons of rejoicing; acts and aims all good at any time or at all times,
but to be observed not alone by whim or chance or at any time but in
inflexible order. And so in that holy order we come soon again to All Souls'
Day, a day in that divine order of the calendar not for giving honor to the
saints but for especially definite intercession for the comfort and welfare of
the dead.

Perhaps there is but one vain prayer for the dead, that for the
salvation of a soul definitely damned by God. But there can be no
knowledge that even a soul judged by mankind as the wickedest is so
Judgcd by God and damned. Holy Church has declared many souls saints
but has never declared one soul damned.

In all living souls there is an unerring instinct to pray for the dead. A
mother's prayer for her dead little child has been called the best loved poem
in America. "God be lenient her first night there. The crib she slept in was
so near my bed; Her blueand-white wool blanket was so soft, Her pillow
hollowed so to fit her head! . . . I always left a light out in the hall. . . . 0
God, not too far for her to see, this first night, light a star! And in the
morning, when she first woke up, I always kissed her on her left check
where the dimple was. And 0, 1 wet the brush, it made it easier to curl her
hair. just tomorrow morning, God, I pray, when she wakes up, do things
for her my way!"

When death brings sorrow there is sweet consolation in St.

 238



John's gospel story of the death of Lazarus whom our Lord loved. Not until
after the burial does our Lord belatedly appear and Martha says, "Lord, had
You been here my brother had not died." And then the consolation of her
next words, "But I know, that even now, whatever Thou will ask of God, God
will give it Thee." I KNOW, no faint faith there! EVEN NOW, even now
when my brother is scaled in his grave, what You ask of God He will give.

Pray lot your dead. Your prayers will bridge the distance of separation.
Do not forfeit the consolation your prayers will bring to you; do not deprive
your dead. Even now, whatever thou will ask of God.... At the Mission altar,
come All Souls', the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God will be offered for your
dead; for pardon and everlasting rest amidst such eternal good things as pass
man's understanding which God has prepared for those who love Him.

THE SUMMER BOOKLET, in a manner so redolent with burning candle
wax, returned to the Mission many letters also redolent, some with sweet
poignancy and a few with piercing pungency-really a great many letters and,
relatively, scarcely any money at all with which to sustain the Mission.

One Booklet came back marred in a bold penmanship, I am entirely out
of sympathy with persons who are injecting Roman Catholic customs into
what should be the Protestant Episcopal Church. The innocent Booklet looks
like a child who has been slapped in the face and does not know why. But
even some Catholics who are old Mission devotees and Booklet enthusiasts
did not care for the summer Booklet.

And on the other hand- Every Booklct is best. They all have a quality
that stirs the soul, a quality that only die soul Lail sense, butthis time more.
This last is THE BEST and that is indeed superlative praise.

This pleased Protestant soothes the sting of the displeased Protestant
Episcopalian. I have read your Booklet Number Ffftythree, the fint I have
ever seen, and ant deeply impressed by its spirituality. Please send me a copy
of this Booklet and all others as printed. I am a Presbyterian.

Like some others this paragraph is incredible but exactly copied. I want
this last Booklet within reach as long as I live to read according to my need
and I want to read it when I am dying, because the spirit of it will help me to
go.

 239




There have been requests for hundreds of candles and many of them
from those who never lit a candle before but none sweeter than this. My
mother died quietly this morning. Please light a candle to burn through
the day of her burial. How shocked would be some of her friends and
relatives but how she would have loved it.

THE MONEY, that is the alms, that the summer Booklet did not
inspire is a more or less serious lack. Of course offerings were received and
among them one quite substantial but on the whole adding up to one of the
very lowest returns a Booklet ever brought. Doles for food, needed
financial aid and such have been cut. At the latest date in twelve years no
winter fuel has been bought for church, mission house, priest house or
Mission dependents. A few other painless economies are in practice. There
is no slightest apprehension. Reaction will adjust the Mission purse. You
for God, and God through you, will sustain.

AS TO WHAT ISM of Churchmanship belongs the religious customs
of the Mission surely God is not greatly concerned. God's is the perfect
catholicism imbued with the perfect tolerance so it is not the isms that
matter but the fundamentals and sincerity. The Mission priest is probably
as Catholic minded as the Holy Father in Rome; for him personally there is
no other conveyance for traveling the King's Highway; but, he finds no
difficulty in praying with Protestants, many of whom he thinks well please
God, and ministering earnestly and tenderly to souls uncertain, and
sometimes unconcerned, as to fundamentals.

And the Mission thinks that God is not greatly concerned that the
incensed communicant of the should be Protestant Episcopal Church "is
entirely out of sympathy" with the ism of the Mission priest, but, that it
is conceivable that God is concerned and perhaps grieved that that person
fails to support the Mission in its earnest aims to make His goodness and
mercy tangible realities in the Mission's community.

FACTS OF THE MISSION are generally praiseworthy but
sometimes Mission devotees unwittingly color praise with shameful
exaggeration. Baseball of high quality was played by Sherwood's first team
this summer and held the interest of a number of outlying towns. Boys'
teams also played many games well. It is true that it was not an unusual
game when ninety percent of

 240



the players had been baptized and presented for confirmation by the
Mission priest.

It is true that recently the Mission priest opened the 1946-47 term of
Sherwood's grammar school with prayers and of the 225 children present
the priest had baptized 155 or sixty-nine percent of the school.

But what wildly exaggerated tales are sometimes told of the Mission
In the Mission garden are some Francis Scott Key roses and one very
confused young lady reported that Francis Scott Key was buried in the
garden beside goodness knows what other illustrious dead.

The Mission has a gold cope received as a gift ten years ago when less
than $150.0O was paid for it but rumor sometimes has it absolutely
priceless, woven of the Milky Way and studded with the greater stars of
heaven.

God has been generous in giving the Mission a goodly number of
baptisms, a number equal to sixty percent of the population of the
community including Sherwood but the figures, especially in relation to
statistics of parishes far and near, are sometimes, though innocently,
outrageously exaggerated. And the Mission priest is sometimes a prodigy
and a saintl And sometimes it all is extremely embarrassing and humiliating.

THERE IS A ONE-WAY LANE, sometimes called Straight and
narrow, reaching from In The Beginning to the Eternal Throne of God. It
passes through the Garden of Eden and the Present and the Future into
Ever Shall Be. It is the River of Life; it is the King's Highway. it is traveled
by every human soul and each soul is passing pollutes or sweetens the
waters; each soul mars or mends the road. In our time the channel is clearer,
the highway smoother because of the saints who have gone ahead. We
travel under our own po wer, but our power was determined by the
influence of all those who have traveled before us and shaped our destiny;
we light the way with our own torch, but our torch was lit from the light
of the past. And the traffic moves one way only, we can never go back to
recover losses or to mend.

Away down the river, a hundred miles or more, Other little children
will bring my boats ashore. Not just your own children who are the fruit of
your body, but each child that you touch because the touching makes it the
fruit of your soul. Not just

 241



children in infancy and youth, but any child of God!s. Not just
the boats you launch, but the boats you trim, or do not trim. And
by thought and word and deed you rock the boats or ballast them.

The boats you have launched in Epiphany Mission, the boats
you have made it possible for the Mission to ballast and trim are
small craft with never a dreadnought or even a brave galleon
but like the boats of Christian seamen in any age of simpler faith
their sails bear the cross of Christ, their cargoes have had the
blessing of God, and you may reasonably hope that the) will
weather the storms to be and make havening harbor on the shores
of the Kingdom of Heaven.

 GO WITH GOD

CHRISTMAS, 1946

LOVELY LADY, dr~exl in blue, teach me how to pray! God
~as just your little Boy-Tell me what to my! Did you lift Him
up sometimes, gently, on your knee? Did you sing to Him the way
Mother did to me? . . . Lovely Lady, dressed in blue, teach m4b
bow to pray! lie was just your little Boy-And you know the wayl

The salvation of your soul certainly does not depend upon
your prayers to the Virgin Mother who certainly is above all in
heaven and earth the Christmas Lady. Many who love her Son
would not care to have her teach them to pray. But it is both
sensible and good to remember that when the Christmas Lady
rested in the straw in Bethlehem of Judea and held in her arms
her little boy, the Christmas Child, the little Boy was God. God
the Son was just her little Boy and certainly she taught Him to
pray. Where else but at His mother's knees did He learn the im-
mortal scriptures He quoted so immortally? Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy mind.... My God, my God, why hast thoat forsaken me?
And if it is true, what can be truth and what some scholars have
believed true, that the Our Father was an ancient Jewish prayer
when the Lord was born, why, then Mary surely taught her Son
the most used prayer in the world today.

And so after all, even if remotely and indirectly, she has taught
you to pray. And there is one who seeks her prayers who would
eagerly learn how better to pray at her feet.

 242



O Clai4tinas Lady, mint in heaven, teach me how to prayl You
taught our Lord, condescend, and tell me what to sayl

YOUR CHRISTMAS GIFT TO GOD, have you determined
iu- Is it fitting-, Gold, and frankincense, and myrrh? After all, im-
portant as these are, are they more than accessories of a worthy
gift? Your self, your soul and body? A dutiful gift, but one you
dare not appraise; an important gift but at best also an accessory;
a lamp without light.

Relatively there is little discernment of the celebration of Holy
Communion as an offering to God; embodying The Holy Sacri-
fice. Vaguely recognized as a memorial our Lord commanded in-
volving a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving of hymn and prayer;
the giving of alms; the offering of self; the receiving into hands the
hallowed symbols of our Lord's Body and Blood. But beside the
concrete giving of money and the vague giving of praise, thanks and
self there is nothing to the rite but to get, there is nothing to take
part in but receiving. Clear that it is pointless to be present at the
table and not cat; not at all clear that far more important than
eating at each banquet is the offering of the Food to our heavenly
Father. Clearly enough the Lord~s table where from the guests
are fed, but not at all clear that the Food, so awful and so sweet, is
the one perfectly acceptable oblation to Almighty God.

Perhaps it were impossible to better express the truth, to more
clearly state the theology, embodied in the Holy Communion than
this precious hymn has for near three-quarters of a century; And
now, O Father, mindful of the love that bought us, once for all,
on Calvary's tree, And having with us Him that plead% above, We
here present, we here spread forth to Thee, That only Offering per-
fect in thine eyes, The one true, pure, immortal sacrifice.

There is your Christmas gift to God, Beloved. The Christ
Mass. The Holy Sacrifice of the Altar. The only Offering perfect
in God's eyes. So take into your hands gold, and frankincense,
and myrrh and put your soul and your body into the bleeding arms
of the Cruicified as His immortal sacrifice is offered to the Almighty
Father in the Christ Mass. The Holy Sacrifice is your great gift,
your soul and your body are the widow's mite, but your soul and
your body in conjunction with the eternal oblation of our only
Mediator and Advocate will be fitting and pleasing to God,

SOMETIMES PONDERED is the question of why from the

 243



first Booklet through them all, including this very one, an ostentatious
parade of controversial externals has been necessary. The Booklets have
flamed with candles and reeked of incense, the Sacrament of Penance and
Requiem Masses have been flaunted as well as the Mother of God and the
Real Presence. Such have perhaps been more emphasized in the Booklets
than actually in the Mission. Why has it been necessary to offend good
Christians who have no such vision? The answer is not known. But this is
known; it has been necessary. The mind of the Mission could not have
otherwise functioned, nor the hand have written. And after all, on the
whole, tolerance has been stimulated and some have been almost
persuaded.

REMINISCING OF DAVID, a flash comes of an all but forgotten
incident, atop the Empire State Building of all places, transpiring eleven
months before he died. Memory recalls nothing of David in glowing St.
Patrick's or gloomy St. Mary the Virgin's but the mental picture of him
and his manner that August day on the roof of the Empire State colossal is
cleanly chiseled and alive.

In the press of strangers David was inadvertently near a young
woman when a gusty breeze gave her reason for startled embarrassment
and in smoothing her scanty skirts she dropped her bag. David's eyes
twinkled with amusement and sobered with sympathy as, upon the instant
now attentive, he recovered it for her, and with left hand at his heart and
right holding her property and extended toward her, he bowed graciously
from the hips and said, laconically as always, "Your bag." Memory
persists that he added, "Madam." But David could not possibly have said
that. Nevertheless, it was so definitelv implied that the memory is tricked.

Precious David, hill-billy lout, who never heard of Ernilv Post,
putting my Lord Chesterfield to shame! The incident is so typical of the
wholly unpredictable Mission children.

THE SECRETARIAL EFFORTS of Dave Prince, junior, greatly
assist the priest but by no means relieve him and, alas, the help is
temporary for junior will return to school. Nor could the Mission continue
to pay him $90.0O a month could he stay. The Mission priest has done a
full-time job as Mission secretary for fifteen years and has saved
$15,000.0O for the Mission which the

 244



Mission never had. The Mission can give with almost perfect accuracy the
date and amount of every offering ever received from each and every
member of the Greater Congregation; when and for what all Mission funds
have been spent; the sender and date of receipt of every box ever received.
These records involved work and, the work was the priest's. Moreover, if
all the letters and notes written to the Greater Congregation in fifteen years
were one letter and all the lines one continous line, the letter would contain
seven million words and be near sixty miles long, and every word and every
inch of it were written with love. Secretary and priest, two vocations or
occupations, but one person. While that person as secretary wrote that
long, wordy letter, that person as priest baptized more than eleven souls
for every mile of the letter's length, and for every mile buried two dead, and
offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar 84 times, and spent more than a
thousand dollars of your money to sustain the Mission and its aims.

THE MEN'S SERVICE LEAGUE of St. Paul's, Chattanooga, always
bountifully enriches the Christmas celebration in the Mission. Christmas in
the Mission is so superlative anyway; its holiness, its mystery, its reality
and its unreality; the magic of a delirium of ecstasy. Surely there can be few
parishes where Christmas means so much to so many. The midnight Mass
is the event of the year, each Christmas tree scarcely less momentous, and
the Christmas baskets made possible by the Men's Service League alone
give Christmas happiness sufficient to a half-dozen parishes.

Each year a few days before Christmas the League delivers around
twelve hundred pounds of provisions that are made up in the Mission into
family baskets that serve more than two hundred less fortunate Sherwood
people. When the priest spent his first Christmas in the Mission in 1929
this St. Paul's Men's League Christmas bounty was an established custom
and never once in all the years intervening has the League failed to play a
generous Santa Claus. In the early thirties the Christmas baskets fed
definitely hungry mouths but even this Christmas it will be no difficulty
for the Mission to find among the old, the families without earners, the
families with illness, real need of the baskets. But after all Christmas is
something more than supplying needs and the League's baskets spread the
sweet spirit of the season among the Mission folk; the spirit of good cheer
and good will;

 245



the spirit of happiness that can in no way be measured or weighed. THE

RED MASS is among the Mission's most fervent prayers. All prayer

is solemn and serious and simple, but these adjectives could denote

the three classes of Mission prayer. Simple prayers would be

ejaculatory prayers; short prayers at any time, in any place, and in

any physical posture. Serious prayers would be those perhaps no

more serious than simple prayers and no less solemn than solemn

prayers, but prayers with little formality and without ceremony; the

prayers one makes in a little Visit to the altar to pray outside of

formal worship; or go-to-bed prayers. And solemn prayers would be

quite formal; the most solemn prayer the offering of the Mass. The

Red Mass is, of course, a most solemn prayer.

The Red Mass is the Mass of the Holy Ghost and especially invokes
God the Holy Spirit to bestow Right judgment; discernment,
discrimination, discretion. To all intents and purposes the Mass of
Whitsunday can be the Red Mass. How to the very point is the Proper
Preface for Whitsuntide!

From the long-distant past to this day it has been a custom of Holy
Church to open councils, conventions, conferences, with the Red Mass.
This seems to be so superlatively right and sensible that it seems odd that
the custom is not universally observed today; that any serious meeting of
Churchmen ever convenes without such invocation.

In the Mission for fifteen years the Red Mass has been frequently
celebrated for guidance in teaching and preaching; for the guidance of local
and general conventions; often for all those innumerable souls who suffer
mental or spiritual disquietude.

EASTER, 1947

FATHER, writes a grateful person in a lovely note that quite
naturally pleases the Mission priest, I want to thank you for so beautifully
and satisfyingly conducting my aunt's funeral. Beside the service; the
psalms and prayers read so euphoniously and soothingly, your talk was so
full of truth and tact and beauty and comfort. Although she did not belong
to your church it was long her expressed wish that you should bury her
because she loved the way you conducted your services and lingeringly
remembered all she ever heard you say and I know that she was above all
pleased and satisfied with her own burial.

 246



And do you know Father, that you serve God by your very
appearance? When the hearse had just drawn up at the cemetery and the
pallbearers assembling behind it and the people gathering from their cars
you were standing on those large stone steps leading up into the cemetery.
From beneath your long cloak bits of your hands and Prayer Book, white
cotta and black stole were showing. The winter wind swayed your cloak
and the cold rain was falling upon you and I wondered if you could see
through your wet glasses. Father, you looked so majestic! You were so
defiant of the elements, or so oblivious. At first I thought you looked like a
stoic Indian chief wrapped in his blanket and patrician dignity standing
there in the rain. And then I realized that you stood there as God's
representative, as heaven's envoy to Sherwood, and I thought that God
must be pleased because as you stood there every inch of you was so
worthy of a prophet, priest and king.

IT IS PASSIONTIDE. Travail before joy. His cross and passion
bringing the glory of His resurrection. Another opportunity God given and
God blessed, for His mercy endureth for ever and Jesus of Nazareth
passeth by.

Turn back to the Gospel for Quinquagesima; the Gospel that
epitomizes the doings and teachings and aims of Lent and of Lent
intensified in Holy Week. Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things
that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be
accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be
mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge
him, and put him to death. And a certain blind beggar was told that Jesus
of Nazareth passeth by, And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of David,
have mercy on me. And Jesus asked him, saying, What wilt thou that I
shall do unto thee? And lie said, Lord that I may receive my sight. And
Jesus said unto him. Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.

The Church year is a holy pageant of pageants, a pageant of divine
dramas. Holy Week is the Passion play. Come any season in the Church
year, come the unfolding of the dramatization of any event of our Lord's
life, or the life of His saints, then in a most real and especial way Jesus of
Nazareth passeth by. He may pass as the Babe of Bethlehem, or the
Crucified, or the Glorified, but He passeth.

 247



The drama of Holy Week is so sorrowful and so full of grief and yet
so lovely. The dramatics of the week before Easter are more vivid and
moving than any in the calendar. But His Passion is ever more real that
even the annual Passion play of Holy Church. His Holy Cross and flowing
Blood are not just memories. Before Easter dawns He will be delivered to
us Gentiles, and very really mocked, and very surely spitefully entreated,
and spitted on, and scourged, and crucified bv multitudes and even by you
and me. How blind we are! And none so blind as those who will not see.
The hot Blood will shed from His Sacred Heart because you nor I cry,
saying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me, ... that I may receive
my sight. just now, yearning to hear your prayer, yearning to sharpen your
spiritual vision, yearning for your loving consideration of His Passion,
Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. Regard Him, Beloved.

THE TUCKERS were a larger famliy but through the years the
Mission priest has buried all but Susie the mother and Gilbert her son and
Jinnie her daughter. Susie is seventy, and not quite a helpless invalid, Jinnie
is perhaps thirty-five and Gil a year or two younger. All are as gaunt as
shad; tall living skeletons. All are tubercular and have been most of their
lives and Susie is practically without lungs. Tuberculosis is very common
in Sherwood but no one heeds it, no one ever rests or cures, no one seems
really to mind, like corpses often the afflicted cavort and just defy death to
a very long last. Susie is past the very active cavorting but she still defies
death.

Naturally the Tuckers are quite indigent; literally paupers. Gil works
lackadaisically and earns something and must be called courageous for he is
a frail and sick man. A small government compensation plus a small
Mission dole bridges their financial extremity. They scantily wear clothing
from your boxes, their food is wholely inadequate, they definitely lack
vitamin pills and medicines, their fuel is meager and they positively suffer
from cold when the temperature drops to ten or six degrees and not too
infrequently to zero.

The Tuckers are no converts of the priest's but were all Church
people when he came to Sherwood. They are God conscious. They read
their Bibles. They pray. But so far as the Church is concerned Gil is just
another absentee Christian. Jinnie

 248



is the Sunday School type, but Susie, and Jinnie too are ardent sick bed
Catholics; they eagerly accept the sacraments when brought to them but
never seek them otherwise.

The Tucker home smells like a monkey house. Their home is filled
with gewgaws and keepsakes, dolls, and frills; their hearts' desires, even as
your antiques and silver and china may be your heart's desires cluttering
your home. The Tuckers are human and illogical and irrational, even as you
and 1. They are opinionated. Their views of religion and sanitation and
economy are their own and me as inflexible as mine and yours. Gil likes
alcohol and indulges when he can. Jinnie has had affairs of passion and
dreams of new conquests, even as dying Susie, even as you and I dream of
now conquests in the fields of our choice. Jinnie needs cod liver oil but she
does not wish cod liver oil, she covets a garish gown.

What of the Lord's will can be done for the Tuckers? Dear
God only knows. But if our Lord walked the streets of Sherwood,
and He does, He would stop inside their cottage door and give
them consolation. And so should His priest try to do. When at
tire last longest last they are departing Out of this world of
vanity and tribulation and monkey smells he will at their own
eager urging exact the last act of faith, the last confession of
failure, give the last absolution and the Viaticum, and commend
their souls to the almighty, and all understanding, and all merciful Father 
who created them.

THE RAVENS and God fed Elijah and God and the Ravens feed
Father Jones. And to the latter what generous and epicurean Ravens hath
God sent! Perhaps Mrs. Kelly of 151st Street, New York is Father's oldest
Raven in length of service although Nicky Morailes, up until today, has
kept a full gallon of Spanish oil ahead ever since he thought the priest
especially favored him a long time ago. Mrs. St. Minnie Smith of Baltimore
has been quite a fish and fruit juice and vitamin Raven for years. Gordie,
who has made all the sacramental wine for ages has been a most liberal
purveyor, too. The priest's sister from the plantation in Georgia is not
without merit and in New Orleans there is a Creole Catholic who
sometimes sends smoked oysters and smoked mullet. Outstanding
Sherwood Ravens are Mrs. Flossie Robinson, specializing in a quart of
milk each day and butter, and Mrs. Esther Lynch whose turnip greens with
hog jowl are out of this world. There

 249




is not room to name all the Ravens for there are many in and out
of Sherwood and from coast to coast sending eggs, broilers, ham,
sausage. Perhaps fruit, or Roquefort, or Dundee Marmalade.
Olives or coffee, tea or biscuit.

It is within the priest's means to spend a total of one dollar a
day for food although so much as that would be on the extravagant
side and even such extravagance would buy but the simplest.
Verily, it is the bounty of the provident Ravens that sends to the
priest's table the food of kings.

The priest thinks he knows and appreciates good food and
that he is a good cook. Ile thinks that good food is extremely
rare and that, although he has had delectable food otherwhere,
on the whole tire most consistently good food he has eaten he has
himself prepared in his own kitchen. His breakfast is generally
one raw egg, a vitamin tablet, a glass of milk, a cup of coffee. That
is not food. But there is a substantial luncheon-dinner each day,
with linen and china and old silver and more or less leisure. Today
Father cooked and blessed, ate and gave thanks for a young
chicken with taragon and butter broiled very slowly a long,
long time. (When the Ravens are miraculous it is a very young
guinea fowl with rosemary and asparagus or tender small pods
of okra from the Mission garden.) Today with the chicken was
rice, boiled and steamed; whole, separate, tender and tossed in
the chicken drippings. The only vegetable available was Brussels
sprouts, done but firm, in hot butter and lemon juice.

The priest has eaten corn meal muffins from the kitchens
of a hundred cooks. Perhaps six of the cooks made good muffins.
Those he ate today were and are invariably the best he ever ate.
The salad was whole, carefully skinned grapefruit segments, a
little of Nicky's olive oil, freshly ground salt and hot paprika.
And there was China, jasmine tea with milk, definitely not cream.

THE EASTER MASS at 9 o'clock last Easter Day was a
happy one. One of those lovely Masses when every smallest
detail is right. The congregation sang willingly and well. The
servers served with precision and looked like angels from heaven,
and, as has been written before the priest felt that the Mass was
like a crown of glory upon the efforts of all his years. Attending
the Mass and making his first visit to the church was a man
richly endowed with brain and grace and charm. A good Church-

 250



man but definitely low. He was unable to get a seat and had to stand and
he lost his hat. it is said that when later he was asked how he liked the
Mission's Catholic Mass he answered, "I never felt more certain that I had
worshipped God."

SUMMER, 1947

Beloved:

Certainly "It is always later than you think." But I can not at all
realize that the summer is so far spent and that I have not written so much
as one word to you. Heaven knows that I have been aware that I should.
Heaven alone knows how many days have heard me say, "Surely I will do
it tomorrow." And some times I have been determined to do it "today"
only to have the usual fullness of my days plus the usual unexpected
demands plus the perfectly natural enervation of three score full years,
prevent me. Here at last is a letter. God willing, I shall do better come
October.

What of the fullness of the Mission's days? Since Summer a year ago,
that is from July to July, I beg to report: Daily the Holy Sacrifice offered;
the utmost and the highest in formal praise, thanksgiving and intercession.
Fifty-three baptisms. Twelve confirmations (the smallest class in many
years). Sixteen burials. Four marriages.

Statistics are mundane measures that tell little truly of spiritual
progress and yet necessary if any measuring is to be made of the progress
of parishes or dioceses or the whole of Holy Church. The population of
the Sherwood community, an area of several square miles, is about 1,250
souls, Four church groups are active in the community. I have before me
the journal of the latest Convention of my Diocese with its reports of
Official Acts of all parishes and missions. When consideration is given to a
few conditions such as population there are no statistics from any of
Tennessee's ninety parishes and missions comparable to those of
Epiphany, a mission station, in Sherwood.

Administering the Holy Sacraments and the general spiritual welfare
of souls is the Mission's first consideration and aim. That is what priests
are made for. But that is scarcely the end of the

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Mission's functions. The Mission is never satisfied to serve its children
their spiritual daily bread only.

In May 1946 the Mission was able to buy a new Ford station wagon.
Rather seldom people were brought to Mass, more Often mothers were
brought with their babes for baptism. Baseball, football, basketball teams
were taken to their games. In a year's time probably more than 500
patients were taken to medical or dental clinics. Through the school year
the smaller children living at a distance from two schools in the community
were taken to and from school each day. The station wagon was a great
asset but the Mission simply was not financially able to operate it and it
was sold at the end of a year's use for almost as much as we paid for it in
spite of some thirty odd thousand miles of service.

The Mission has paid little for the service of doctors for its people.
It has in fact paid a larger total sum for their medicines.

The Mission church is 19 years old. For the past few years the eaves
have been rotting and the church commencing to leak. All has been repaired
and painted and a new roof put on. The old dwelling on the old church lot
had become so dilapidated that it could no longer be rented and was torn
down and a new dwelling erected. The boys have made concrete building
blocks all the spring and summer as usual. Many blocks have been sold.

Since David died six years ago his grave plot has always had devoted
care; it has been kept as the garden is kept. From time to time other plots,
with no one to care for them, have been added to the areas in the cemetery
cared for by the Mission boys. This summer the boys have been marking
unmarked graves with concrete crosses.

The garden is very lovely this summer and has been kept in condition,
which is a larger undertaking than you think, by the boys as through past
years. The garden has been enlarged by wine 20 per cent of its former area
which gave the boys around 3,00O hours of work. The enlargement was
most desirable as in the old space the garden had become quite rout bound.
Daily visitors have come interested or curious and all have seemed pleased
and many enthusiastic. Most visitors contribute to the garden's upkeep.

The contractor who is to build the Community House is in Sherwood
and it will be but a matter of days before actual building

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will begin. It seems very probable that the gymnasium will be in use for
the basketball season early in the new year.

I restate what I have so often told you before; the greatest amount of
physical good accomplished by the Mission is made possible by the
various boxes of clothing and the thousand and one other things received.
For some weeks boxes have come to the Mission in the merest trickle of
three or four a week, no doubt because of the discomforts of summer as
well as because I have failed to remind you.

I am by no means trying to report all the Mission's interests and
activities. But at least all this. And yet the realest value, the realest
achievement of the Mission is an intangible value. Something that cannot be
tabulated or explained, investigated or measured or weighed. I think it is the
hovering wings of God overspread.

May God bless you.

 Affectionately,

Father Jones

AUTUMN, 1947

LORD, in the multitude that is Thy family, are souls utterly diverse
in all save the wish to love and serve Thee. Your image seems to be,
different; unlike; separate; as conceived by them and me. So much so that
1, poor clod, am apt to say of them, and they of me, "He knows not God."
Or, with what seems to be a common Christian whim, declare that, "God
does not know him." Heaven forbid that judgment I should dare; heaven
grant my judges the tolerance to forbear; prevail along God's judgment so
righteously fair.

Lord, for so many years as I have lived among my neighbors, I have
loved them to serve in all sincerity, and with never any mind them to
betray, granting always I was an interloper, born alien, knowing that to
them the dust that formed them and me was different clay. And yet
presuming I was well loved by all come fair or stormy day, which was an
illusion I came to learn to my dismay. Bemuse many a one had long a chip
shouldered, hostile and bellicose behind sweet smiles, it seems, speaking
fair words while pugnacious courses smouldered, according hate where

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I bethought to rate esteem, until one day the bubble of my whimsey
burst and by many an imagined friend I found me crust.

But ill indeed the wind that blows no good, for in adversity came to
my aid a statuncher friend to match each bitter foe; pure gold to pit the
dross, and turn to my advantage bitterest blow, and assure assauging gain
from crashing loss. For that reward, I bless Thee, Lord.

Or God, forgive me my mistakes, willful or by mischance; if I were
guilty forgive my unwitting arrogance. And now, Lord, let all my strivings
cease that make not for peace.

LET US PRAY.

"Yes," said a Bishop holy and beloved, may God rest his soul, "Yes,
let us pray, but not that childish repetition of Italian origin called the Hail
Mary."

"Pray what prayer?" asks one suffering late in pain. "I am of a mind
with Emerson that God will not entertain such selfish prayer as, 'Come
heal me.' Such a prayer's very selfishness disannuls it,"

"Let us pray? Granted I am confused, but is not prayer a futile
thing?" asks another representing a larger number than is realized. "I pray
God's children give homage, and they give Him blasphemy. I pray the end
of famine and millions starve. I pray for healing., and countless writhe in
tortured agony. For peace, and the heathen so furiously rage together, and
the people imagine a vain thing. I echo the prophet: Cry? What shall I cry?
All flesh is grass.... The grass withereth, the flower fadeth. Prayer is not a
futile thing? Then pray for my soul for it is neither the heathen, nor the
suffering, Not my sister, nor my brother, but me, O Lord, that is standing
in the need of prayer.,,

Throughout Christendom concerning prayer there is many a troubled
mind. Legion the sincere souls willing to pray, willing to learn to pray, but
confronted with the appalling knowledge of all the pious prayers of the
past and all those of the present to so little avail; witnessing the wars and
the vainly dead and the present chaos. One thing is certain, earth's bedlam
is not because of the prayers; rather because those who pray have~ not
prayed enough, that not nearly enough have prayed. Too many free wills
have obstructed God's will done on earth as in heaven by

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failure to submerge into the will of God. Wills free and so created by God
who does not compel; wills free to foster selfishness unto murder if
mankind can be hoodwinked, or wills free to resign all to God and His
righteousness. God wills on earth no pain, no sorrow, no war, nor famine,
nor chaos. Beloved, can you say truthfully that your choosings have not
obstructed God's will done on earth as in heaven?

Every good prayer is a green light to God's will; a pledge of confidence
given to God. Convinced that you should pray at all, or pray more or
better, and find it difficult try tried prayer. The Our Father. Can you
discern its import? Can you sincerely subscribe to its petitions? Spend all
the remainder of your earthly life trying because that one prayer welled
from enough full hearts; whispered by enough earnest lips will bring the
answer to every prayer that ever reached the throne of God. Offer it often?
A dozen times a day? A dozen, dozen times would be all too few. Try the
perfect and familiar collects. Direct us, O Lord, in all doings, with thy most
gracious favor. . . . Try: Grant us by the Holy Spirit a right judgment in all
things. If the US is universal these are prayers to save the world. As for
childish prayers; as for selfish prayers which perhaps stem from childish
minds, remember, Except ye become as little children.

Be well assured that the ears of God are attuned to every language; the
wordless prattle of infants, even that petition of a billion souls in time and
eternity; that childish repetition of Italian origin, even the erudite
expression of scholars and that His translations of prayers and their
sincerity are divinely true. And remember that the comprehension of God
even as His love is broader than man% mind.

OF A COVETED WOUND SCAR is this heretofore untold story by
a priest. The morning had been demanding with all its fulsome usual duties
and an unusual number of souls in adversity that are never prepared for but
always present with their grievous and perplexing problems. The morning
really stretched on until two in the afternoon when a two-hour burial
advanced the day to four o'clock and then two hours with a dying woman
brought evening. Reaching home in the early dark, hoping for food and
warmth and rest because weary unto death and when one more prayer
could be no less than supererogation, a beggar

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waited on the doorstep. A beggar cold for lack of bedding. Think not that
a tired man of God was not resentful because of this further privilege to
serve the most unworthy poor. Know rather that it took infinite effort to
lay hold on patience and long thoughts of St. Martin and his cloak before
grace was gained to speak half gently, much less to plod to the parish
house and up its rickety stairs to the scantily supplied storeroom and in
the half dark find the beggar a quilt and bestow it and God's blessing upon
him. And then in leaving the building came the tripping over a pile of
crating, a fall, and the left palm lacerated and pierced by a longish nail.

Come next morning at Mass time the little wound was inflamed and
sore and the second morning at Mass time the fingers were stiffer. But in
time the little wound healed and only a scar remained. Surely none ever
saw the scar, but he who possessed it as he shielded it with incurved
fingers and treasured it above riches and longed to keep it. Not five scars,
not one large scar, but just one tiny scar like His great scars. Alas! What a
foolish one to think to purchase even a little wound like our Lord's, to
think to buy it so cheaplyl What a Lucifer to covet the stigmata of the
Lamb of God! But somehow our Lord was never angry about it. And in
perhaps two years the little scar that had blessed so richly was gone.

CHRISTMAS, 1947

MISSION MARRIAGES by the priest, since Easter, have been in
scattered locations with no two in the same place.

Charles and Nell were married in the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta
on a fair morning late in April. Billie and Claudia were married in the
priest's sitting room one evening a week later while Claudia's little sister
looked on and wept. In June Vernon and Nauvoo had a nuptial Mass in
Christ Church, Charlottesville, served by Peter's little brother Van Dee
who went up from Sherwood, and a pretentious wedding in the University
Chapel in the afternoon. Peter and Jimmie were married on a July
afternoon in St. Luke's Church in Scottsboro, Alabama. In September the
wedding of Bill and Betty jean was blessed in the Lady Chapel of the
Mission Church. Raymond and Ann chose an October noon and a bit of
woodland by an old pasture gate and there was some

 256



thing very lovely about it all. But why any wed elsewhere than in the
Mission Church which in all cases was the priest's will? Because these
precious young people have wills of their own.

Charles and Nauvoo married into the Mission family. Nell, one of the
priest's most precious, was born and baptized and grew tip in and belongs
to the community of St. Andrew's School. Vernon came to the Mission
when eleven years old already baptized. Although he has lived all his life in
the Mission Raymond was born in the community of St. Mary's School
for girls and was baptized there. The remaining seven were baptized by the
Mission priest as children-that is little children. To the priest they will
always be children.

CHRISTMAS. (Christ plus Mass. See Dictionary) Christ Mass.
Christmas.

It is fitting that the highest act of worship possible to mortals should
be known by a name that is indeterminate and vague. The word mass in
itself means nothing. Unlike the symbol X which in itself means nothing
but stands for the unknown the symbol Mass in itself means nothing but
stands for that which is well known to be so holy, so profound, so large
and inclusive, at once so simple and so great a mystery, that no word or
combination of words in language can adequately name it. Doubtless God
the Holy Spirit led to a term utterly empty in itself to glorify as the
symbol of the greatest channel from man to God and from God to man.

In spite of the fact that Holy Church makes Faster the greater feast
English speaking people as a whole celebrate Christmas as the greatest
feast in the year. Is it odd, or in the providence of God is it not odd, that
the greatest feast of a greatest people, Christ Mass, is the birthday of God
the Son and is known to all lips and every tongue by His title of the Christ
and the name of the Mass which He did institute and command us to
continue?

Every mortal ever stands before God and eternity. When Edith Cavell
was about to die, as perhaps. all others do who know they are about to die,
she doubtless felt a deeper awareness causing her to say, "As I stand
before God and eternity." Perhaps every priest as he celebrates his Mass
has for the moment a deeper awareness that he stands before God and
eternity. His flock behind him, maybe in the pews, maybe somewhere
seeing their new

 257



ground or proving their new oxen, but wherever still his
responsibility. Before him God and eternity. God the Father, sometimes
almost as distant as eternity. God the Son, immediately before him on His
altar throne. God the Son; the Christmas Child; the Friend of sinners; the
Crucified; the Glorified; our only Mediator and Advocate; always fully
present in every office and person and bringing God the Father out of
distant eternity just as intimately near as the All in All is allowed to come.

Come the nearing Christ Mass, the feast of feasts to millions and with
deeper significance than the millions know, go early to your church, and if
your church is like the Mission church, and if you care for such tangibles of
religion, look long upon the Christmas Lady and her little Son ringed with
candle flames and add your candle and your prayer to the many flickering
at their feet. Stop quietly and long at the crib and look upon what the straw
enthrones until al ' I is living flesh before your eyes. Then let the candles
and tile incense and the hymns and the whole drama of the Christ Mass
charm you; divert you right out of this world and realize that you are
standing with your priest before God and eternity. Remember the creche
where the plaster child became flesh in your eyes. Offer your heart an
empty manger. If you are sincere He will come and your flesh will cradle
the Christ Child and from across eternity God, because the Child and God
are One and where One the Other. And of course if you can hold God in
your heart for just one Christmas moment you will glimpse Heaven, too.

WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN? well might ask the Mission priest.
The hundreds of children nurtured so fondly in the Mission fold; through a
period of years so constantly faithful to being taught and to duties learned;
grown up now and gone with the fateful winds of destiny. Alas! that many
still in Sherwood with deep abiding love in their hearts for their Mission
church and its personifications are wholly unfaithful in duties now; not
lost but missing.

Until some seven years ago Howard and Paul, like Mission twins,
were hourly involved in every Mission heart beat and now one is in
California and the other long gone, too. Floyd gone these years. And a
hundred more or less like them. And Marie, a

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fair jewel indeed in God's Mission crown gone far, far away like Eva and
all the rest married into distant places.

When the priest first entered the Mission church in May, 1929,
Virginia was there, and Beth then six years old asleep on a choir pew
beside her mother. Margie was not born until 1934 but she too has been
faithful for many years. These sisters the most faithful young people of
the congregation through the whole of the priest's residence; when the
church bell rings they are there. Beth has been the only organist for 13
years. Well, such a chronicle of the removed, the missing, the faithful
present could go on without limit.

Peter who was a year old when the priest first saw Sherwood stands
out conspicuously today. In the past 12 years there is little in the Mission
his versatility has not handled. Of 60 altar servers through the years he has
served most and longest. His bands have fashioned more garden than any
others. In clerical work, house work, painting, brick making, gardening,
plumbing, athletics, teaching servers to serve, bringing his associates to
baptism he has excelled. Peter has been in the Navy thirty months and will
be discharged in February. He has been able to spend most of his week
ends at home. Although a child he and Jimmie were married this past
summer and spent their honeymoon in the priest's house. They now live in
a cozy little apartment, in the old Mission House, overlooking the Garden.

Among all the Mission boys none have been at once so interested, so
able, so faithful, so long. As a whole none so attentive to the wishes of his
priest-friend. Of his relation to the priest's labors in the Mission Peter
adapts in all reverence and quotes from the Epistle appointed for the Mass
of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary; that passing lovely praise
of Wisdom from the Book of Proverbs; When he appointed the
foundations of the Mission: then I was by him, as one brought up with
him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in
the habitable part of his earth.

AND I LEARNED ABOUT WOMEN FROM HER. In my youth I
learned about women from Agnes and Mabel and Nellie that which inclined
me toward understanding and respect and often compassion and help and
taught me how to help at least a

 259




little. And I learned about wornen from Lillian and Renee and my Sister
and Mother and the Blessed Mother of God. Lucile taught me to
pronounce trivial, Ellen indigent, simple things like that. A humble old
woman who heard me react explained that the second letter of judge was u
and not e. Esther Lynch got my vigilant in scholarly form even after my
long familiarity with Compline. And hundreds of others corrected
hundreds of other inaccurate pronunciations. Incidentally, I grew up on a
plantation in the deep south with lambs and always knew correctly ewe.

I learned how to preach from a 16 year old girl whom I heard in a
declamation contest at Valle Crucis School and I learned how not to preach
listening to a holy priest of God preach at St. Mary's Church in Asheville.
My beginnings in psychology and philosophy, and perhaps the soundest
and profoundest I have known, came from a plantation Negro whom I
loved and who could neither read nor write.

If I have a bit of education, a jot or tittle of wisdom I think the larger
half came from such as above rather than through textbooks and schools
although, of course, I have learned from books and schools. And I have
learned from gardens and rain, from earthquake, wind, and fire. But the
sweetest and most gratifying knowledge within me, my most priceless
possession, contrary to the world about me and sometimes contrary to
good sense; transcending culture and wisdom is what I know of my Great
High Priest and Master and that I learned from the still small voice of calm,
His voice, the voice of my Lord and my God.

THE COMMUNITY HOUSE was commenced with many
preliminary gestures, some like a kind of mumbo jumbo, quite necessary
but accomplishing nothing tangible. The architect and contractor walking
back and forth in deep concentration, consulting blueprints, driving rods
into the earth and having them extracted, driving stakes to pull up to drive
elsewhere. Later an expert at stake driving came with a transit and moved
all the stakes, but moved them to relatively permanent positions. Days of
all this and just stakes. Then one day there were older men and young men
with picks and shovels and wheelbarrows who a day later had partly
disappeared into the ground and a week later

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had all but totally disappeared. The next week total entanglements of steel
were woven into the excavations and what looked like a million dollars
worth of lumber built into forms. Now there was some real activity to
witness as the mixers got to work and concrete poured in unbroken
streams into the footings, the walls, the foundations. Today, the steel H
columns, that will support the steal beams, stand 30 feet in the air and the
masons build concrete block after concrete block into walls.

Speculation is rife; optimistic, pessimistic, sometimes ridiculing and
often ridiculous. The town is Sherwood, not New York. Think not that the
Community House is just a gymnasium-auditorium 105 feet long and 60
feet wide and costing but $30,000.00. It is an Empire State Building, it is a
Noah's ark, it is a youthful dream of a temple of pleasant activities, it is a
white elephant but always leviathan. Perhaps nothing was ever built on
time but it is expected that boys and girls will play basket-ball in the
gymnasium in the after Christmas basket-ball season. Incidentally no gift of
$1,000.0O has been received to apply on the auditorium stage.

I AM FLYING. I like flying. I liked it when I first flew 18 years ago.
As a matter of fact I liked it for 10 years before that although I had never
been up. It is not that it is pleasant; it just gets you where you are going
and no nonsense about it. Of course I do not fly much; I do not travel
much; I generally stay in Sherwood. But through the years I have made a
number of six or seven hour flights when it has been necessary for me to
travel. This is a six hour flight today.

I HAVE NEVER written a Booklet in the air. Often I have thought I
was going to work on a flight but I always commence a flight tired and
before I ever commence working the deadly monotony of flying is
overcoming me and I sink into a lethargy and stay there for the duration.
That is why a flight always does me good. This flight the lovely young
hostess is a Roman Catholic from Philadelphia. May be the collar and the
Catholic were a bit attracted; certainly the priest and the girl have been
voluble over mutual interest and all but mutual friends. She keeps coming
back and sitting with me; I seem to be something new; well I am very
pleased and it all makes a pleasant excuse not to work.

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CHRISTMAS, 1947

OF CHRISTMAS TREES much was written in the Booklets years
ago. All written then is still true. There will always be Christmas trees in
the Mission I pray. Mission Christmas trees with their magic and ecstasy.
I have written less of them in late years because what I wrote brought such
a difficult assortment of tree gifts. You can understand that I am sure.
Some years there were much too many gifts for little children and almost
none for older children; the next Christmas the other way round. Twenty-
five cent gifts beside three and four dollar gifts for same aged children in the
same groups. It was impossible to be equitable! And there has to be
equity. Many gifts come for Christmas trees each year now. Not too
many. Always more could be used. If you love doing that kind of thing I
should never stay your hand. But I do not encourage you, God bless you.
The money can far more wisely be spent here.

THAT, One by one our duties end; One by one the lights go out, is
true. True, but not merely true to those of riper years; those nearing life's
western gate. No truer in nostalgic looking back along the far traveled
King's Highway than in youth's eager looking forward from the first few
miles. From the beginning duties end and lights go out. And one by one
new duties come with their fuller responsibility. The candles burn out and
oil 1amps are lit to be replaced by gas and eventually electricity. We
companion with angels and then somehow the angels are gone and our
friends are archangels. When the half-gods go, the gods arrive.

Always new duties; always new lights. Life's evening comes at last
with its experience and wisdom; its gentleness and dignity; its richer
privileges of service and example of standing and waiting; the duty and
service and courage of standing and waiting before God and eternity. And
these duties end, too, one by one; the consummations of all the duties of
faith and hope.

Then over the bridge, beyond the sunset, are the eternal duties in
God's love and service throughout ever shall be, world without end. And
always light to lighten the darkness until the further shore is gained where
is no darkness. In the earthly evening the immortal stars are lit and burn
higher, as mortal

 262



darkness deepens, lighting the way onward to the sunset where from
across the bridge in the heavenly morning reach the rays and then the
splendor of the inevitable Light of lights, the beatific vision of God and His
eternal glory.

EASTER, 1948

LORD, THY SERVANT PRAYED. No trembling horizon obeyed,
nor did the sun stand still upon Gibeon. But neither wert Thou deaf nor
ungracious. Perhaps Thy servant prayed for a craving in May which would
have been an abomination in December and Thou withheld; or prayed for
achievement and wealth among the cultured and affluent and Thou gavest
instead a humble cure for souls; or prayed for perfect health and physical
tranquility which perhaps could have involved spiritual inertia, too, and
Thou bestowed instead always a little pain; always a great restlessness, in
order that a body and a soul might fiame for Thee.

Thy servant, for those in deadly peril, some thirty years ago,
prostrate upon an old clotheschest for an altar, or again in less distant time
upon a sandy shore pounded by an angry winter sea, prayed in an agony
of earnestness and in either case the answer was a miracle that always has
seemed as great as the raising of Lazarus from the dead. And again, here
and there in time and place, a few, when good doctors found death
immediately inevitable and sure, have been saved through prayer and live
today in health. But, how beseechingly Thy servant prayed for David's
life, and David, so young to die, was not spared. George, his little brother,
lived to die in a ghastly inferno of way. In a peaceful death what was
spared David, by Thy servant is not known but surely had he not died he
would not have been them with Thee to welcome dear war weary Georgie
home.

Surely in omnipotence Thou hearest Thy servant's every faintest
prayer and in wisdom and compassion granteth all, not always just as
sought, but as Thy servant wouldest desire and seek with all heart and soul
to the weighing brought, couldest Thy servant see the end of all as well as
Thee.

I H S. When comes Easter and the church bells break the silence of
Good Friday and Holy Saturday and ring out in a paean to His triumphant
glory they seem to cry His words; the

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words of God the Son concerning possession; the joint possession of God
the Creator Father and God the Redeemer Son of all the souls in time and
eternity. The clanging bells proclaim, For they are mine, and all mine are
thine, and thine are mine. The reverberating bells proclaim, Mine.-Thine.-
Thine and Mine.

Perhaps all holy symbols are of the fringe of holy mysteries.
Certainly like holy mysteries holy symbols vary in depth and breadth and
substance to various souls. I H S is a holy symbol among predominant
holy symbols. Universally I H S adorns and sanctifies churches, altars,
vestments, missals, prayer books. To some I H S are three Greek capitals
equivalent to I E S, the first three letters of the Greek word for Jesus. 'To
others the initials of Jesus hominum. salvator. Doubtless to most, for
perhaps a minority of the blessed with grace are erudite, I H S stands for I
Have Suffered, which is passing fit for such also is in part the meaning of a
crucifix.

But at Easter when the bells mark feast from fast; gold from purple;
joy from pain; resurrection from death; because He suffered, because He is
the Saviour of men, because He, Jesus-God, is the triumphant Redeemer of
creation read the symbol HIS; His earth and the fullness thereof; His altar;
His vestments; His book; His children. IHS. HIS. His Kingdom and His
Power and His Glory, forever.

THE SIXTY-EIGHTH CONFESSION in the Christmas preparations
was finished. Confessions are heard before the altar in the Lady Chapel;
penitents at a priedieu, the priest seated near.  The Mission church has no
confessional box but desires one. How well the priest remembered the
sixty-eighth Christmas penitent as a little boy making his first confession,
comely then and debonaire. Now, some fifteen years later the sober
husband of a wife to whom wed by the priest; the father of children
baptized by the priest. Mature beyond his years the man suggested a
gorilla now rather than a sylphish boy. As this penitent was leaving the
chapel he turned back and came to the priest. He stooped and placed his
thick muscular arm over the priest's shoulders. Tears were plainly visible
in his eyes. His lips brushed the priest's brow and he said, "You will never
in the least know. what You have meant to me from the earliest times I can
remember." And then he was gone.

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THIS LENTEN DAY IS DYING. Spirit and flesh are aware that
night comes on apace. In the spiritual realm mauve twilight deepens
toward stricter fast and blackest night of Good Friday. In the physical
world shadows lengthen over the Mission garden now bare and covered
with oozy mud from a recent winter flood. World and spirit are yet in a
seasonal dark valley but the ascending way is near ahead.

After a devastating winter at long last the lazy evening air is mild;
spring distant but a week. Beneath the slate-colored mud smearing the
garden there is a quickening and pulsing and pushing of verdant leaf and
bloom to be. The last parting rays of a warmer sun sinking to westward
beyond Jake's Bluff silver the highest brick in the walls of St. David's,
foretelling June. The soul is aware that as Passiontide and death must come
Easter and resurrection will hasten after. In the holy pageantry of worship
in the Mission church and in the Mission garden night looms but pledges a
joyous morning. The deepening twilight is charged with promise. The
somber birds of Lent and Winter have but a little way to flutter and the
birds are on the wing.

SUMMER, 1948

BELOVED:

Once upon a time I wrote you a letter sitting in a split hickory bark
chair in the Garden where I was surrounded by cooing pigeons. Now I am
commencing a letter to you sitting on the floor with my back against the
wall of St. David's Gymnasium. I am sitting on the floor because there is
nothing else to sit on in the gym. Instead of cooing doves I am widely
surrounded with a mob of Sherwood young folk and not so voting folk, and
the roar of collective sounds in my ears, punctuated by the shrill of Peter's
whistle, I think would do credit to any gymnasium in the world.

There is no money in the building fund that can be spent for seats for
the gym but the lack of seats seems not too bad. As I sit other adults sit
upon the floor with backs to the wall As I sit and write Peter is calling a
furious basketball game. Around the outside of the basketball court a score
of padding bare feet race; in a far corner a boxing bout is heatedly pursued;
and here

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and there against the walls are groups of eager girls awaiting their hour of
basketball.

All these before me I claim as my children. Scarcely a one I have not
baptized. Seeing them in a gymnasium has been seeing them from a new
angle and I am newly fascinated with my family. Much about them is
lovely. Many gym incidents and small details that catch the eye are
pleasant just as, at this moment especially pleasing to me are small crosses
or crucifixes chained about some of the boys' necks. Peter has worn his for
four years and Van Dee wears one that has not once been removed in two
years and others I see have been worn for a right long time.

Well, a summer communication should have reached you much before
this date. I have needed desperately to remind you of the Mission but my
whole body, infinitely lazy or tired, has been mutinous since long before
spring came. My brain has refused to think thoughts; my hands have
refused to write notes or letters and on the whole I have been shamefully
indulgent and appeased them with perhaps not less laborious labors but
labors more willingly performed. All summer I have loved you and thought
of you and needed your prayers and your help and now at this long last I
am writing you this letter to tell you so.

To return to St. David's, the community center, some details of the
gymnasium are still incomplete and unfinished but it is in use several hours
a day. As for a stage to convert the building into an auditorium when
needed or desired a plan has evolved for a stage built in sections that can be
moved in and out at will and rather enormous curtains hung from the steel
girders overhead. This solution will be adequate and will be rather grand.

Since my last report on St. David's at Easter the section to be used by
Flossie for the Mission boxes has been commenced and almost finished.
There never has been adequate quarters to handle boxes. Boxes do more
material good than any one thing the Mission supports and at the same
time bring revenue without which the Mission could not possibly make
ends meet. Therefore it was expedient to build Flossie's this summer at a
rather large cost.

The Garden is lovely and has been lovely all summer. Visitors from
near and afar have been a plenty and have left much, much fewer and
smaller offerings for Garden maintenance than

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in recent summers. In closing I will tell you a small secret. I am terribly
proud of St. David's and all the Mission's activities but excluding the
Mission church and its altars of all there is of Epiphany Mission the
Garden is my first love.

May God bless you.

Affectionately yours

Father Jones.

AUTUMN, 1948

ROSEMARY for remembrance, as well as for constant use in the
kitchen, is always in the Mission Garden. And tarragon, thyme, sage,
parsley, chives, and dill are also necessities rather than ornaments that
must always thrive. And still the Garden would be less than half a garden
without lemon verbena, lavender, scented geraniums and the prolific mint
family as well as garlic and a half dozen varieties of onions growing
between the roses or lilies or periwinkle.

But as for true herbs, this summer the Garden must have had near all.
Fragrant herbs and ornamental and culinary including hyssop, and rue, the
herb of grace, and many too many to enumerate. The abundance is due to
the generosity of a member of the Greater Congregation who gardens in
The Hills of the Sky. Sending her gift of all the herb seed she wrote praying
St. Fiacre, the patron saint of garden lovers, would look with an approving
smile upon the Mission gardener's efforts. St. Fiacre did.

She wrote further: I hope you planted your parsley on Good Friday.
You doubtless know the legend that unless planted on Good Friday
parsley rootlets must travel seven times down to hell and up again before
the first spears can break through to the light of day! The Mission parsley
was not planted on Good Friday but is luxuriant. Perhaps Sherwood is
much nearer hell than the Catskills.

My deep interest in gardens and garden folklore goes back to my wee
girlhood in France. It seems we little children were on such charming and
intimate terms with le' Bon Dieu and l'Enfant Jesus and Notre Dame. I
never see sun glistening, of an early morning, on the dew drenched,
sparkling spider webs but that I think our Lady walked through my garden
for there they are, les fils de la Vierge-the threads from the hem of our

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Lady's garment. Yes, le' Bon Dieu and Notre Dame with I'Enfant Jesus
walk in the Mission Garden, too, and often our Lady leaves the gossamer
threads of her garment.

Dear Greater Congregation:

A short time ago The journal of the One Hundred and Sixteenth
Annual Convention of the Diocese of Tennessee with its reports for the
year 1947 reached me. I was happily surprised to find that Epiphany
Mission had a larger number of baptisms last year than any other parish or
mission in the Diocese.

I have no thought of victory in exceeding other missions and parishes
but to baptize relatively large numbers of people gratifies me and gives me
something of happiness.

The Mission Box Business flourishes and is far reaching and before
God does great good. 'I he Garden may be inspiring; what ever it is or does
it definitely belongs. St. David's Gymnasium may tend to build up the
moral fabric of the community and I believe it will. But none of these
members of the Mission fill the church with dutiful and understanding and
worshipful Christians, the primary purpose of the Mission. Neither do 1,
the priest, achieve this primary purpose and often I am sick because of the
failure. But to baptize a soul into the Body of Christ; to make a pagan a
Christian, that is the utmost a priest of God can do. Mission baptisms
mark the Mission as moderately successful in its reason to exist upon your
support; justifies me in expecting you to continue to sustain my efforts
and my aims and doubtless I will remind you of the baptisms again and
again.

The Mission Boxes unit of St. David's Community Center is finished.
Except the roof it is Of permanent construction and should with little need
of repair last a hundred years and more for its present purpose or some
other. Flossie is justly proud of her new quarters which are for the first
time in all the years adequate with the result that both the people and the
Mission derive greater benefit from the contents of your boxes. I thank
you for all the boxes you have sent and I tell you simply and solemnly that
they have held the Mission together when richer support has been
insufficient. Never doubt the need of your box nor its value to Mission
aims.

As all the younger people are in school and those a bit older working
in daytime there is little point in opening the gymnasium

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except in the evenings. It is generally in good use for about three hours five
nights a week. Basketball, although out of season, has been so popular with
boys up to about thirty, and girls, too, that there has been time for little
else. Many sports will be enjoyed in time. The plumbing in the gym is not
finished and it makes no great difference; it will be finished sometime. What
is more important is heat and all the heating equipment is ready for use and
a good supply of fuel is on hand. On the whole there seems to be a
community appreciation of the gymnasium that is gratifying.

For seventeen years the Mission's correspondence has been
enormous. There has seldom been much time to give to it. Although it has
generally been one of my happiest duties I have always handled it like a
galley slave who was, I believe, supposed to drudge furiously under great
strain and stress. This year with a little more to do than before and
handicapped by one of those vague but potent nervous ailments, which
few ever quite take seriously, I have simply been unequal to the Mission's
correspondence. I have simply failed miserably. Unless the number of my
birthdays past is miraculously reduced and I am refreshed beyond normal
expectations I shall probably continue to fail to be punctual, and how I do
regret it!

May God bless you.

 Faithfully yours,

Father Jones

GEORGE HOUSTON was born to Peter and Jimmie at the Emerald-
Memorial Hospital at Sewanee at nine-forty in the morning on Friday,
April sixteenth. The Mission priest saw the uglyish and very red baby
some four hours later and gave him his first blessing. Peter's real name is
Clyde Houston Garner so Houston is for Peter's middle name. Today
George Houston weighs sixteen pounds and is truly handsome and hale.
And lusty? L'Aiglon, no less.

Through all of last winter, for the baby who was going to be born into
this world, a candle burned every day at the holy effigial feet of our Infant
Lord in His precious Mother's arms in the Mission church, and, too, a
candle has burned for him each day since his safe arrival into this sad
world. The Holy Sacrifice was offered for his well-being before he was
born and the morning after his birth the Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary

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was offered in thanksgiving and intercession. At his baptism the purple cope was used with purple stole for the
penitential prayers and godparents' vows and he was baptized lying against the heart of the priest in the folds of the
cope of cloth of gold. In this manner in general are things sometimes done in the Mission.
The baby lives in a little apartment on the second floor of the old Mission house. The apartment has a porch like a
balcony overhanging the Garden and sometimes from this porch "little Peter" watches the pigeons. Peter, the father,
last spring put a clothesline around the balcony. When George Houston's diapers first fluttered above the garden the
priest wondered, but not for long. Perhaps the most touching things a thousand visitors have wen in the garden this
summer are the statued Virgin Mother and Child, to the north of the garden, looking southward to where George
Houston lives, and to the south of the garden on the balcony clothesline George Houston's diapers; banners of
domesticity and the sanctity of holy wedlock and the holiness of infants.
THE NEARING ALL SOULS' MASSES OF REQUIEM bring to mind a corporal (the square of fine linen upon which
the wafers and wine are consecrated in the Mass) used exclusively for Requiem Masses in the Mission. Some
twenty-five years ago Ellen, who delighted in her own exquisite needlework, the kind of needlework sometimes done
with number two-hundred thread, made in her best manner a handkerchief of the finest handkerchief linen for her
friend's birthday. Ellen liked doing thinks like that.
Ellen died one August morning long ago; died like a brilliant flame extinguished instantly. Her friend became a priest
who, because he loved Ellen and because she was a staunch Catholic, has always since offered a Requiem Mass
for her on the anniversary of her passing. Of course the handkerchief, never used as such, embroidered with a fitting
cross by a pious woman who some years ago joined Ellen in the Heavenly Kingdom, is the corporal used for Ellen's
Masses and many another's Requiem. The Mission priest likes doing things like that.
TO PONDER THE INSCRUTABLE is an indulgence of the Mission priest and in pondering he long since concluded
that very simple things can be incomprehensible. Tastes, in the sense of individual aesthetic preferences, are
inscrutable; truly there
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is no accounting for tastes. In rose blooms at least the taste of the priest and his people, from the merest child,
seems to be in near perfect accord. Through the years they have asked for a flower and selected a choice and
almost without fail the choice is in the priest's opinion the best rose in the garden. If there is a Crimson Glory bud
just swelling into perfection and showing its velvet crimson petals smudged with jet and spilling its incomparable
perfume it is their flower. However, generally, two inches of stem suffices and an hour of possession surfeits. The
priest wants it on all of its stem on its own bush in its own garden until it begins to fade.
Once, years ago, when the priest was more unwise he took two of his Mission girls to see an antique that intrigued
him. It was a biscuit box of solid silver. The metal, mellowed by a hundred years, seemed alive and liquid flowing into
lines of grace and loveliness. The priest's taste was upon its knees, his eyes caressed, he coveted. But the girls
were a bit disgusted. "O Father, that old tin can!" They were very serious.
There is the Mission church with its faithful. But St. David's Gymnasium is far and above more popular and the
Picture Theatre is the attraction above all in Sherwood. The priest not too long ago asked an older Mission girl to be
very frank in giving him her estimate of the Mass. "O words and words and some wafers and wine," rather well sums
up her frank estimate but she did say, "I do not mean to be sacrilegious and I do seriously try to understand and
worship." After all, so relatively few try even to understand and worship.
The church, the altar, the Holy Sacrifice! With what insatiable aesthetic preference has the priest desired them. The
privilege, the obligation, the sacredness, the mystery, well considered, the Mass is still the most beautiful entity in
the world. Long and patiently the priest has tried to open the eyes of souls languid and faith dim; pointed to the
glorious realities in all their splendor touched and handled but unseen; dead loved ones, saints, angels and
archangels, very God.
CHRISTMAS, 1948
IT IS ALWAYS CHRISTMAS IN THE MISSION. In May as in December. And of course it is always Good Friday and
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Easter, too, in November as in April and in January and June. just now, in Advent, the daily rise of the Annunciation
collect reminds us, As we have known the Incarnation . . . by the message of an angel, so by His cross and passion
. . . to the glory of His resurrection.
There is a corner in the Mission church that is forever Christmas where stands a plaster Virgin with her Son, the
Christmas Child, in her arms, against her heart. Generally this plaster statue stands among sweet flowers and
candles, like little Christmas stars, twinkle before. In that corner Christmas happiness pre. vails in Lent and Advent
as well as on the Nativity, joy to the world; peace, good will. But the Virgin's face is enigmatic; it shines with love
and Christmas joy; it is filled with tear tracks and Good Friday sorrow; it glows with glory and Easter triumph. In its
loveliness is read knowing and understanding, sympathy and compassion, gentleness beyond compare. Still, above
all, it is the face of the Christmas Lady, the Holy Mother, Mother of Infant God, Mother of His children.
It is Christmas every morning in the Mission. The preparation for every Mass is an Advent season. The Divine Liturgy
proceeds. Blessed is He that cometh ... Hosanna in the highest. And He comes day after day, summer and winter,
spring and fall, to Sherwood and the whole world as surely as He came to Bethlehem. And so ever are the gates of
Heaven open to man below and He comes to the whole world and Christmas corners, and altars and human hearts,
and although it is always Good Friday it is always Christmas, too, and the world and Sherwood hide the gladsome
fact under the bushel measure of their discernment.
ST. DAVID'S GYMNASIUM as an investment in the physical and moral betterment of young Sherwood is a good
investment. It is hoped and believed that the gymnasium has been built to endure and that it will serve several
generations. The time will no doubt come when a spiritual leader of the Mission whose exuberance and enthusiasm;
whose body, brain and soul will have the keenness of the thirties will also derive through the gymnasium as a large
means soul betterment and the advancement of true Holy Church in Sherwood. Gloria in Excelsis Deo, how the
present priest could have achieved that end at thirty or forty!
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The gymnasium is open most nights of the week and some
afternoons. Whenever opened attendance is all that can be orderly
handled. Husbands and wives commonly come together and bring
the babies and take turns at play. Basketball for men, women,
boys, and girls is most popular. Skating ranks second and is
much harder to manage. Some six young men, some pretty
much babes in the woods, share management and direction. Power
for lights costs more than for all the rest of the Mission combined
and so does fuel. But all things considered, beyond any doubt,
it is very splendid to have the gymnasium which should be of in-
creasing value as ten and twenty years go by. However, the priest
often, as it were, sits by the waters of Babylon and weeps and
wonders why he labored so unfailingly for twelve years to incur
such a heavy responsibility.
Most in Sherwood between fifteen and thirty express no doubt
of the building's value as a gymnasium and many do express grati-
tude. Most of the oldsters do not and never will see the point
in a building for sports. More than one fine old man has looked
the gym over. "Good foundation, stout walls, sound roof, sturdy
floor, good light," he will say and turn away. But he looks back
over his shoulder and sighs, "What a fine shirt factory it would
make."
FLOSSIE'S large part of St. David's is the Mission's colossus
in physical and eleemosynary achievement. No other department
or entity of the entire Mission, so far as living human bodies are
concerned, achieves such good results on so large a scale. Nothing
in the Mission, material or otherwise, is without bones over which
contention sometimes flares and flames, perhaps nothing in the
world is. But the Mission Box Business excels in the success of
good purposes and in spite of some contentions generates enough
good will on which to build sometimes conversions and bridges
to numerous baptisms.
So many of the boxes that would a few years ago have come
to the Mission have gone to Europe. The Mission is glad but its
losses are grave. And aid to Europe is not the only reason for less
clothing to Sherwood. But on the whole the Greater Congrega-
tion has done wonderfully well with boxes and largely helped to
keep the Mission healthily alive and fulfilling its purpose, And
remember this; although weightily important it is not so much
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the giving without price to the needy who have no price to
bring that matters-but it is the mutual benefit of the cash the
Mission receives in payment and the clothing received by those
who so greatly need and pay a little and often wonder what the
Mission buys one half so precious as the stuff it sells.
THE MISSION CONGREGATION a year ago adopted a
German family of a war widowed mother named Mirjam, a daugh-
ter of fifteen, eleanor, and a son of twelve, Arnfried. A Sherwood
soldier boy found them in Lebenstedt-Braunschweig and told
them a little of Sherwood and the mother wrote the Mission priest
a letter in German which he could not read. Numerous boxes of
food and clothing have been sent to them through the year. They
are in the English Zone and Eleanor has this year learned English
which makes correspondence now veritably delightful. Incidental-
ly another Sherwood soldier boy who served in the American Zone
came home and had his German sweetheart follow him a few
months ago. They are married and living in Sherwood.
IN -THE MISSION HOUSE, upstairs, there is a hall or large
room Mission visitors almost never see. Perhaps visitors seldom see
because it is sixty paces from the garden gate to the foot of the
stairs and then twerity-three stair steps above the ground and
after tour upon tour through the garden and into the church
and down to the gym and Flossie's those of the Mission staff who
conduct visitors simply let the Mission House and all within it go.
The hall is known a bit vaguely as the Mission House, or Upstairs,
or the Sunday School Room, or Miss Florence's. Whatever
its name or whatever numerous purposes it serves it is Miss Flor-
ence's domain; that is her principal and exclusive domain, for
after all the whole Mission is Miss Florence's domain.
The room includes about one third of the floor space of the
two floors of the Mission House. Its floor and its walls and its
ceiling are striking examples of poverty with her best foot forward.
Old and cheap and shabby they are mended and painted into
respectability. Six windows are hung with washable curtains crisp
and clean. There is an alcove with a well appointed altar and
another lined with book shelves and books. Down one wall are
fixed framed Stations of the Cross and on the other walls are good
framed pictures. Work tables, seats, blackboards, and storage
closets are ample. Through the years the hall has been used
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for perhaps all the purposes a parish hall knows but always, and now above all, for the little children's Sunday
School.
Here, in this room as in so many past years will be the Mission's Christmas trees. Always trees, not tree. This year
perhaps only two but one year agone the Mission had five because on that particular Christmas five seemed
necessary. There are always a number of groups each of which might well have a tree. In war times gifts to normal
adults and upperteen years old boys and girls were discontinued and there will still be no tree or gifts for them. The
very old and adult sick will have baskets delivered to them but no tree, Infants born and baptized within this year will
receive gifts but neither does this group have a Christmas tree. There will of course be a tree for the Sunday School
children; a large and difficult affair for which Miss Florence will deserve to be crowned with many crowns. The second
Christmas tree, a few days later, is for all baptized Mission children older than one year who can not for various
reasons regularly attend, or perhaps attend at all, the Mission Sunday School. This is the group that taxes all
ingenuity; it is very large and unwieldly in spite of the best of records. This is the Christmas tree that in spite of the
happiness it will give will cause many a headache and many a heartache and even many a tear before tile last
satisfying adjustment is made. For this one Miss Florence's crowns will probably be studded with celestial jewels.
PETER, although he makes the spoken responses in the Mass, has never been heard to sing so much as one line
of a hymn. When alone and about his work in the garden or elsewhere he often whistles. Not long ago he was heard
whistling, with every note right and true, O for a closer walk with God, A calm and heavenly frame, A light to shine
upon the road ... One wonders how many minds and hearts and souls have been impressed with godly things
through childhood and youth spent near and around the Mission altars.
EASTER, 1949 BELOVED:
Long I wanted to write to you for Easter. I sat in green clover in south Georgia under pear trees in full bloom and held
a block of paper and sharpened pencils and gazed at a wisteria in full
275



bloom, in full bloom to the tops of a giant live oak and a magnolia one hundred years old. And I did not write a word. I
sat with blank paper and a pen upon a Florida beach under a glowing sun and watched the gulls I love over the blue
and jade Atlantic and when the day was done 1 went to a church where the Presence was powerful and
understanding but my paper was still virgin and blank. For die past week, back in Sherwood, I have been renewing
old ties except the tie of writing; that one stands off and aloof and won't be coaxed or wooed.
Perhaps the trouble is I want to write so much. of the spirit, of things quite out of this world though of it, when the
need is to tell you of right down to earth things that have happened in the Mission.
I got ill. That is for quite a long time I had been gradually but certainly getting more "run down" as my doctor says
and about January first I was down at the bottom with complications. Some I suffered and arn ashamed that it was
not the consecrated suffering I should expect of the least of saints. For two and onehalf months I have been obeying
and refraining and idling (and abhorring each hour of it) to arise from the "bottom", and I have -but I think I can not as
yet even see the top. I had a lot of medicines and they must have been efficacious but of one thing I am certain, the
most curative medicine was the Mission's reaction to my helplessness and my absence.
I love the Mission. I love the Mission congregation and especially my children that have grown up in my sight. Who
can doubt it? Most of my seasons are optimistic seasons. But in hours, even days, of discouragement I have
thought I have the most indifferent people in Christendom; the most apathetic. I have sometimes wondered, in spite
of God's will and my Bishops and my friends beyond these hills how long the Mission would last as it is without me;
loving my flock and lacking faith in it, lacking faith in the structure of my efforts. Well, for ten weeks the Mission lived
without me and prospered.
Before Irene and Peter (who was not quite twenty-one and who has been at my right hand in every Mission interest
since he was eight) took me to the hospital and saw me in bed I turned the Mission over to Peter with my
instructions, renewed from time to time. James Lewis in charge of the gymnasium, Olline in the
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off ice, Raymond and Van Dee gardeners and general workers were under him. Miss Florence, Flossie and Irene
whose departments are independent worked in cooperation. Other work was suspended.
Peter went to see the Father Prior, O.H.C., of St. Andrew's who graciously sent a priest for a Mass each Sunday
and for two burials. The first Masses were poorly attended. The Sherwood Postmaster did something about that and
met ready cooperation. Attendance at Mass reached Easter and Christmas like numbers and so remains with some
at least trying to keep a good Lent.
In the end I came home to a clean, warm house and a garden looking, every inch of it, as if loved and nurtured every
day of my absence. Clean desks, well ordered accounts, and every penny accounted for. It was my happiest day of
this year.
I shall write you when I can. Except for this I have not written a single letter since I got home.
May God grant you the conclusion of a good Lent and at Easter may our risen Lord especially bless you.
Affectionately yours Father Jones.
SUMMER, 1949 Dear Good Friends of Epiphany Mission:
As most of you know after Father Jones was ill in January he left the Mission as early as he was able to do so for
rest and returned in mid Mardi better but not strong. Almost right away Easter was upon him and after that he did
not get any better.
On June 26th after presenting a class for confirmation in the morning he had a second attack similar to the one in
January. He went to Vanderbilt University Hospital July 1 Ith and returned home the 20th, weighing 107 pounds. His
treatment is diet and rest. He has to spend most of the time in bed for some weeks. He now has no pain and is
gaining weight.
One thing is very certain. Father is running the Mission. From the hospital, from his bed at home, he gives the orders
and we who have been in the Mission all our lives carry them out. Different priests come for the Masses. We now
have one from Nebraska through August. The rest of the Mission-the garden, all the Mission property, the gym,
Flossie's, Miss Florence's Sun
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day School and all her work-is running perfectly.
Father could not write you this summer but he is restless to write when autumn comes. He told me to send this
short rnessage to you.
Now please pray for us and especially for Father so he can go on with his baptisms and Masses and all of his work.
You do not know how everybody in the Mission is hungry for his Masses because no other priest can say Mass for
us like he can.
Father sends you his love.
Faithfully yours  Peter
AUTUMN, 1949 BELOVED:
For a long time I have been yearningly anxious to write you a little letter, no matter however little, not through Peter
or Olline, but out of my own mind and with my own hand. Its circular form little matters; its whole may be trivial; but
it must be out of my heart to individual you. A letter not so much to report; not to post the Mission's accounts for
your information, but to spin little cobwebs of chatter cheerfully as if you had come into my presence to visit me.
Should any one of the most of you come in to see me I think I know what I should first say to you. "It is a happiness
to see an old and dear friend whom I have never met." In any case to see you would be a joyous diversion because
when you do sometimes chance to come I ever find you happily satisfying and stimulating beyond my fondest
imaginings.
First, let us get done with my health because I truly dislike to speak of it. I am aware that many who read this have
suffered more than I and are far more ill than I have been. But to me the year has been one of denials and
renunciations, of restrictions and pain. Now I have no physical pain. But my body knows an unending lassitude that
would find everlasting indolence comfortable while my spirit is rampant and my torture is the conflict.
My doctors forbid and I do obey save in one thing. For ten months my doctors have with one voice advised, "Leave
Sherwood". But my heart and soul are here and should I leave, here would they be still. Then, here is my total
responsibility to God and
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man, a thing to be considered with deepest gravity. Here is my
post, my duty, my loyalty and I can not leave without betraying
every grace bestowed by God. So here I will remain with my
heart and soul, to the end.
I manage my Sunday Masses and what others I can. Last
Saturday I baptized twenty children. Yesterday I gave the last rites
to a man who has to die. Never have I doubted the efficacy of
all your prayers. Never have I failed to believe that I will be
normally well. Never have 1 doubted that courage mattered more
than life, or faith more than courage.
George Houston, Peter's year and one-half old boy, is my
first love. What a young Titan he is leading me around the garden;
storming at unopened doors; clamoring to go riding. Such near
memory of the angels shining in his blue eyes; such potent prom-
ise of man hood in his muscles.
Olline types Peters notes to you through the mornings and
sometimes in the afternoons. Peter spends some time each day at
a desk. The October days are full of gold but there could be
fingers of ice on the pools any morning and Peter with Raymond
and Damon are beginning to put the garden to bed for the winter,
St. David's Gym's windows gleam with light in the evenings. Miss
Florence with her helpers gets done near a thousand things. And
Flossie's teems with seeking and finding, trading and gossip, all
the day long, Here and there in the Mission is good and God is
pleased, and here and there is evil and the Sacred Heart is grieved,
What volumes could be written about Flossie's and your
boxes! Generally speaking it might be said if there were no
boxes there would be no Mission. You should most certainly know
a great deal more about the far reaching effects of garments or
articles sent in your boxes. Sonic especial comfort in the last
days or hours of an elderly person or the first of a new barn child.
Some boon to one unfortunate or one not necessarily unfortunate.
Something of hundreds of things. A coat or dress, a blanket or
clock, a shower curtain or yarn or food or soap. Two things pre-
vent your knowing. The Mission seems utterly unable to write
more or longer notes and the fact that when the article does
such tremendous good it has lost all identity with the scrider.
But please write me and tell me who sent early this summer
the lovely three inch silver chalice made by goldsmith Nathanial
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Mills in Birmingham, England exactly a hundred years ago. It is holy and precious. it was found in clothing which
had lost its identity with the sender and at a time when I was ill.
This year as usual the All Souls' Masses will be repeated as often as possible through November. And as usual your
dear dead, in as far as we have knowledge, will be remembered before our altars. The Mission has lost an unusually
large number of beloved benefactors this year whom I shall remember as long as I live.
Gratitude is a godly virtue. Then I ant a little virtuous. Because I am so truly grateful. To you, dear friend in Baltimore,
whose gifts, secretly hidden from your left hand, come every few days. To each and all of you. For your prayers, for
your alms that have kept the Mission whole, for your boxes which have kept the Mission's heart beating to such a
multitude of good ends. I thank you all.
Continue your prayers for the Mission; that the priest may conform wholly to God's will; that the people may show
forth true religion and worthy worship; that the Greater Congregation may be enriched by its contact with the
Mission's little corner of God's Kingdom. May God bless you.
Affectionately yours Father Jones.
CHRISTMAS, 1949
WHEN JESUS was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king and there was no room for Him in the
inn and Mary and the Child with Joseph were deprived and incommoded and humiliated was the Holy Family
frustrated? What greater cause of frustration than that the most royal King of all kings was denied birth in even a
simple inn and forced to be born in the meanest cattle shed and cradled in a manger? The Royal Family balked,
blocked, defeated by circumstances of every prerogative of royalty.
One hears of frustration so often these days. Friends write or say that they are frustrated. The great and near great
are numerously afflicted. The word appears so often in the print of the time. Small wonder. We make such a
complication of life. Nor, are all to blame. One involvement can involve another and soon there
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are vicious circles of circles. The diplomat, the scientist, even the merest man or woman, struggles and undergoes
and overcomes and unlocks the door to which there is no key. Searching frantically for keys and feverish and
restless. Finding no keys and frustrated. As though unwilling to settle for the smallest bit of peace; as though
unwilling for God to have one little secret in the world.
In Bethlehem the Virgin Queen of Mothers was deprived, God the Son suffered humble incarnation, Blessed Joseph
saw a greater thing than the first atomic bomb. Doubtless, not far away, Herod the king and many like him, living in
tarnished mundane glory, were frustrated by some things small. The Holy Family was incommoded but not
frustrated. Mary and Joseph were mature enough and intelligent and sensitive but they were as God's little children,
perhaps naturally incredulous but unquestioning and obedient; bewildered somewhat perhaps baffled a little maybe;
but victorious and not defeated. Because they were as God's little children what might have been their frustration
was really the great glory of God.
Why not relax this Christmas coming? Cease struggling against God's secrets and take Him at His word. Embrace
Christmas like a little child in awe and wonder. Give God the walls that hem you in. Say with the Holy Mother Maid,
Be it unto me according to thy word. Receive the Christ Child in the Wafer and let Him be humbled again by
reincarnation in your soul. So is a way to free the spirit. Thus is a path to peace. This is the road to the strength of
tranquility.
LET PSEUDONYM be his name. Certainly he was given a good and sane name in baptism, like John. But let
Pseudonym be his alias to hide his identical identity and a penance for his sins. Anywise, were Pseudonym his real
name one remembers such names as Aloysius or Hieronymus or worse. Really no alias is needed to hide his
identity in this small biographical sketch; he might well be one of a score or more of Mission young men. Certainly
he is presented as A type and not THE type of Mission Christians.
Pseudonym is a personable young man. If he minds his p's and q's he will not embarrass you among the elite. If be
tips the scale to the other side he is a hoodlum. His regard can be as tender as an angel's and his derision can
smack of the irascibleness of
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hell. On some subjects he is freely frank and totally truthful, or he may be indecisive and evasive, or wholly and
churlishly dumb. At his best he is courteously accommodating. He is religious in so far as believing he has
important religious duties which he sometimes discharges. He will probably fight were his Church disparaged.
Pseudonym drinks native whisky, unaged in the hills, and prefers it to any bourbon or Scotch in the world. A pint
makes him a bragart and a boor, but a quart may actually steady him. The next day he is a remorseful, sullen beast
of no use to God or man.
Pseudonym is a victim of heredity and environment. He is a prenatal alcoholic. His childhood and youth were
undisciplined. His schooling was pitiably little. His potentialities were above average and now he is a vic~im of
neglect. Society may be to blame, unwittingly. The Mission tried desperately hard but with too little resources for too
many, and too late.
Pseudonym is God's and the Mission's. The priest gives him seasons of painful contrition. He has his sprees,
sometimes he is a fool, or he may be ten times a liar, but his priest is his friend, and will be, if need be, to the
gallows-end, and after.
PREACHER, like Father, or Parson is a single word appelation by which ministers are often addressed, and priest
sometimes, too, although less often, thank God. Such address is sometimes heard in smart social circles but above
all among less highly cultured and unsophisticated Protestants who call their pastor Preacher just as devoutly as
catholics call their Pastor Father and sometimes just as sanctimoniously, too.
Father Jones is sometimes called Preacher, with respect and well-meaning, and he knows that Father in the
Mission community is only two generations old while Preacher doubtless dates from the first white settler, but his
horror and abhorrence of being so addressed is, to put it mildly, nothing less than venial sin. Of course he is a
preacher. Of course he was ordained to be a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God and of His Holy Sacraments, and
he veritablv believes, to father the souls committed to his care. First of all a priest, and though he should speak with
the tongues of men and angels, though he should preach as the holy apostles Peter and Paul, or St. Chrystostorn
with a voice of gold, to the last he will be a priest and not a "preacher."
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The most flagrant offense in the matter of the Mission priest being called Preacher in near twenty years was
committed by Jimmie on a late afternoon in summer a year and more ago. Jimmie had been baptized by the priest
but had not been preached to sufficiently to be converted to the priest's idiosyncrasies. Visitors arrived at the garden
gate to be greeted by Jimmie, "You want to see Preacher? He's at the gym. I'll get him for you," and off dashed
Jimmie, screaming with all his power, "Preacher! Preacher! You got company." It is shameful but true that the priest,
who now in his sum of years is slow to wrath, was so angry that come night when the gym was thronged with
skaters he gave Jimmie a brand new pair of skates; a material offering for the sin of his soul.
PREACHING so often seems so futile. Who remembers a fraction of the sermons heard in a lifetime? Blessed
Father Harris of Christ School told a delightful story some twenty-five years ago. After reading the Lesson in Evening
Prayer he intended saying the usual Here endeth the Lesson but unthinkingly said instead Here goeth the Lesson. A
smart boy in the student congregation instantly added audibly, "In one car and out of the other." Father said it was
very true not only of lessons but of sermons. And so as well as being delightful it was a sad story, too.
Preachers are able, and their preparation, if not of the moment then back through the years, is generally earnest and
thorough and the congregation is entertained or bored or offended or sometimes inspired. Then or soon the sermon
is gone as it were in one car and out of the other. The Mission priest finds it difficult to recall more than the smallest
fraction of sermons heard through his life. But he has this truth to add. He must have been often impressed by
sermons and knew it not, often taught when he did not know he was learning, and remembering all the while he was
not remembering because so many of his efforts at preaching have been inspired by thoughts suddenly kindling and
burning in his brain; thoughts from sermons long forgotten with the preachers who preached them through all the
years of his life,
THE GARDEN has the aspect of an etching as the hand of winter grips more firmly. The maples and willows and
Lombardy poplars are empty of leaves and needled against the sky. The high walls so lushly dressed in green in
summer are bare
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now and show the tracery of bricks and mortar laced with the long arterial teachings of the twisting stems of Virginia
creeper and Boston ivy, and where the English ivy grows are the dense contrasting shadows. All the evergreens are
shadows and rose canes and traced paved walks are penciled lines that prevent an emptiness. Already how ruthless
the gardeners have been in removing or destroying the robust tendency that makes of a garden a wilderness. The
pools are quiet now with no fountains playing and the fish swim too deep to be seen and will soon be locked below
the surface of ice above diem.
At the very back of the garden the long, large house, with just enough glass and just enough heat to sustain, is as
full as a thicket. Inside are all the putted and tubbed things from the whole summer garden. Oranges and oleanders
brush the ceiling. The lemons are full of bloom and fill the house with perfume. And loquats, the sweetest honey
scented blooms of all. One gardener thinks of all these pots and tubs of lovely things, from here or there in the
garden through the summers and the years, indeed as Pieces of the Game the gardeners play, Upon the
chequerboard of Nights and Days, Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, And one by one back in the
Closet lays.
OUR DOCTOR DIED. He, George Elbert Bogart, just sight. ing the threshold of old age, was too young to die, We
have seen saints on this earth among all classes of men. Priests and clergymen have not always predominated. We
are almost certain physicians have. Our doctor enhanced the certainty for with inevitable human imperfections he
was able, and good and very kind and great. He was a scholar with a poet's heart and a gentleman; not once in 20
years of intimacy did he offend our fastidious taste with so much as one risque word. He gave his life to general
practice in Sherwood while most loved him and praised him and some disparaged as ever great men are disparaged.
He did major operations on kitchen tables by the light of oil lamps, he sometimes definitely risked his own life with
men mad with mountain whisky to save the life of another, he loved the host of children he delivered into the world,
and he assuaged unbearable suffering. It is ironical that our doctor who saved so many at the end had to suffer some
years of torturing illness that might well have unbalanced his integrity and unable to save himself untimely died.
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We saw him baptized and we saw him confirmed with Linda, his wife. His faith in God was implicit. Being a scholar
he reasoned, but being a saint his faith was a child's faith, his obedience to Holy Church a child's, and his prayers
sincerely simple to the end.
And now our doctor is somewhere in life immortal. We like to think that being a physician he has exchanged
experiences with St. Luke and being a fisherman has with St. Peter gone a fishing. The fallible human, the Great
Fisherman, the First Vicar, the Keeper of the Keys and our Doctor Fisherman gone a fishing in the Realm of Glory.
Why not? O George, our friend, our doctor, may the soil rest lightly upon your body till resurrection and may you in
light perpetual, in God's love and service, grow on, in peace, for thus ever have the fallible sons of God gone onward
from works to reward.
EASTER, 1950
This is the day which the Lord hath made; he will rejoice and be glad in it.
THAT EASTER ANTIPHON is wisdom and power and glory. Twenty-five years ago duty kept me walking the streets
of Asheville all through a winter day magnificent in its perversity. Skies were lead. All day it rained and sleeted
alternately. Capricious rain and sleet erratically interchanging until it seemed to rain sleet and sleet rain. Capricious
wind, too, furiously storming, then holding its breath in sobbing contrition only to rage in anger again. And the wind
and the sleet and the rain stung my cheeks and was in my bare hair and I loved it; welcomed it and loved it as I ever
have.
I met a postman, grown old in line of duty, soaking wet, cold, but never yet hindered by heavy weather. I said, "'Tis a
very bad day, sir." "Look," he answered, "This is not a bad day but it's the best day we've got today. This is the day
which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it."
Lately, in hospital, when dawn was breaking after a painful and sleepless night, a night of distorted values and
troubled mind, my Negro nurse, a Catholic, comforted me. "Heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the
morning, Father." So saying she had touched me with healing ointment; she had given me of my
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priceless anodyne, a psalm sentence I love; myrrh, more precious than frankincense and gold. "Yes, 1 know, Mary.
Life with joy begins this morning or some morning, here or hereafter, with God."
And so the postman and the Mary-nurses; the servants and friends of God, with His grace and power and wisdom,
leave us with heightened courage to suffer our little pain in the light of His great pain; leave us with the fulfilled
promises of Lent, the glory of Easter, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having
nothing, and yet possessing all things.
BELOVED:
I piped when I opened my eyes to the day, and the inner me murmured, "How can you be gay? You've fluttered too
high and you've broken your wing-There's never a reason why cripples should sing!" "But it's Spring!" I said, "It's
Spring!"
Lo, the winter is past. Lent has but a little way to go. Heaviness of night is over. No lamenting spilt milk now, nor the
water that has gone under the bridge. It's Spring and Easter; new life and a new day. What matters a permanently
broken wing? If I can not fly I can walk slowly-along way. And if my gayety is the gayety of late maturity I am
nevertheless gay. Laus Deo!
Always I have fluttered too high. Even as a moppet my gardens were too extensive for my childish ability. As a very
young man my business ventures were too early and too top heavy and crashed. Zeal has so often been my
undoing,
In the Mission these past twenty years, perhaps it has not been my work, or the advent of age, that has broken a
wing, but disappointment at not achieving aims too high. Always if attendance at Sunday Masses has not equaled
half the Mission's confirmed; if baptisms have been less than fifty a year, the priest has been actually ill with
desolation. And also always desolate at the permanent removal, to more lucrative fields than Sherwood affords, of a
large majority of young adults trained from childhood in sound church-manship.
Actually the Mission's rank is the lowest possible for a church; a mission unorganized and for a community too poor
to pay its way. But for your charity a resident priest through the past years simply could not have been had. Actually
a station among the most insignificant and lowliest in a large and significant Diocese the Mission has been
singularly blessed.
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The Mission priest has not so seen it. To me the Mission has not been insignificant but has been and is Holy
Church. Moreover it is my roots, my life, my being. I am the Mission. The Mission, it is 1. My importance is the
Mission's reflected glory and the Mission is so glorious that I have never been satisfied with my single efforts.
However unreasonable, I have wanted not one, but two good priests, and in addition three consecrated sisters with
Tare common sense, all to labor here indefatigably. Here I have wanted Holy Church to wage total way for total
victory and I shall probably die unconvinced that God has not wanted just that, too.
Fluttered too high. A perfectionist who has achieved, but never a perfect thing. And still fluttering. Ah, well! Better to
die for a sheep than a lamb. My senior Bishop has told me that I must learn to do less, and learn to be satisfied and
happy in my heart and soul in doing it. Our Lord saw fit to light candles as it were, and the candles and the Holy
Spirit kindled conflagrations. Pray for me that as I draw nearer to the western horizon I may serve with peace in my
heart, lighting candles, and I shall, and leaving to God a little flame for a day or ignition for raging fires, as He wills.
Pray for the Mission. Pray for Mission souls that their ardor and devotion will be so strong that they will refuse to be
denied a priest-shepherd, that they will never suffer goats to ravish the garden nor allow dust to cover nor termites to
consume the high altar, after you and I behind the veil have passed.
I send you my love. May God bless you.
Father Jones
A MISSION BOY asked his priest to take him to a certain town larger than Sherwood and help him buy a cap, The
boy fancied a chauffeur's cap. So in the store the priest asked to see chauffeur's caps. The salesman said he was
sorry but they had no fur caps at all. The boy said, "But I want a SHO-fer's cap." "Oh!" laconically replied the
salesman and produced it. "He wants size six and three-fourths," informed the priest. "No," said the boy. "I want
size six and three-quarters." The priest at last realizing he was a superfluous helper tactfully withdrew and the boy
and the salesman happily concluded the transaction.
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PETER unconsciously whistles as he works, O for a closer walk with God, a calm and heavenly frame ... to tune
Beatitudo as the hymn is always sung in the Mission.
TO THE EMERALD-HODGSON HOSPITAL the Mission priest went to prepare the soul of a Mission woman for
impending bodily surgery. Besides the Mission woman there was another woman patient in the room. The priest,
who has a deep conviction of the importance of sound technique in the exercise of sacerdotal functions, spread a
linen, set up a crucifix, lit candles, put down the oil stock, and proceed with Office and Unction with a directness he
hoped equal to the waiting surgeon's. The Mission woman, used to such practice, took all devoutly but as a matterof-
course. The other patient in the room, the stranger, watched with fascination.
Then finished, to her, the other woman, the priest moved and spoke, "May I say a prayer for you?" Looking positively
into the priest's eyes she quoted, "Not my feet only, but also my hands and my head," And added, "Won't you do all
for me you did for her?" The spirit of the priest quickened. Who was this woman who quoted scripture so aptly? He
asked, "Are you baptized?" She was and said she belonged to a certain sect. The priest is not a bigot. Of course
not. Who, in his own honest opinion, is? But, he thought, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?
Why did this heretic desire what she had seen a true member of Holy Church receive? Surely because of her innate
longing for the tangible comforts of religion. That the eyes might behold holy ornaments; that the brow might feel the
imposition of holy oil, channels of His grace, even as the hem of His garment. "Are you a sinner?" he asked her.
Looking steadily into his eyes she answered, "Of course, Father." Then the devil urged sarcasm, "Don't you know
you will land in hell if you call any man father?" The grace of God prevented; the suggested taunt was not uttered.
"Do you repent you of your sins?" he asked instead. "Always when I think," she said. She was Anointed, the priest
using such portions of the Office as he saw fit, because in humble faith she desired. And a chastened priest left the
ward remembering, Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: Them also I must bring
and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.
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SUMMER, 1950
Dear Greater Congregation:
At 5:30 the sun was peeping over the small mountains that rise eastward from Sherwood's Main Street. The
temperature was 58 degrees. In the Mission garden the first sun rays glistened on gurgling and tinkling fountains and
bejeweled les fils de la Virge, spider spun and left in the night. Chilly pigeons blinked withholding their sensual coos
until the yet feeble new sunlight striking them in the eyes should give warmth rather than promise. A score of
hummingbirds withholding nothing flitted and hummed over the mimosa tree spanning our Lady's altar. Mimosa and
lemon blooms, gardenias, nasturtiums, tuberoses languorously breathed their perfumed kisses into the air, not the
heady scent of evening but fragrance washed, cool and delicate, exquisite. The garden but for the hummingbirds,
hushed, placid, like a last half slumber before alerting into consciousness. And the Mission priest adoring God in
bird and tendril and blossom passed on his short way to the church and the altar of God for his Offices and Mass.
My Mass was at six. After Mass coffee and eggs. At seven thirty Peter brought the mail and went away to take the
boxes to Flossie's.
Then among the sounds reaching my ears, sounds of the Missions swinging into action for the day, typewriters,
lawn mowers, voices, came the sounds of small bare feet padding my floor, rushing to me, and a small child's eager
voice "Fa'her Jones! Fa'her Jones!" Two year old Houston's voice. Houston, half imp, half angel. Houston's voice to
me utterly irresistible. I baptized Peter his father as a child and Jimmie his mother as a small girl. Am I then his
grandfather in God? But when his blond face dimples and his blue eyes smile into mine I am his little brother, I am
an infant again, all the shackles of the knowledge of greed and evil fall away, I am clean and my only knowledge and
memories are still of the angels who brought me from God into this enigmatical world.
The morning wore on. Houston and 1 toured the Mission. We helped the gardeners a little. We rode to town. Went
into the church and lit a candle. To Flossie's. Into the Gymn. At Flossie's there were 27 people handling clothing,
trading, gossiping. Now
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the morning was far advanced, the sun hot, the temperature 79 degrees. The Gym that would be hot in the afternoon
was still like a vast grotto, shady, cool. Some 30 youngsters were in the Gym, 18 skating.
Visitors came in the morning. Others in the afternoon. From California, Florida, New England. From Omaha, Dallas
and Charleston. The Mission to some a shrine, the garden a jewel. To some all is but a sorry show, seeing is but
wasting moments of vacation. Through long years of need, desire, prayer, and infinite effort the Mission has
accumulated a tolerable store of liturgical vestments. Miss Florence patiently shows these vestments to visitors at
their requests. Interminably shows vestments. I suspect she loves it. I am afraid I do not. Of course there is
occasionally a visitor who should see vestments when they are not in use in the sanctuary, but rarely, and I do know
that there is far greater wear on the Mission vestments showing them to the quite often carnally curious than there is
in their use in the worship of God. Some visitors according to their means leave generous offerings toward the
maintenance of the shrine and show place. Some give nothing for any value perchance received.
There were no baptisms this day but there were three on Sunday. I baptized but 49 souls in 1949. 1 have baptized
876 since I have been here. Sometimes I have worked for a baptism five, ten, even fifteen years. Even now there are
a few I have sought 15 years and have not gained. There are manv (lays without baptisms but perhaps no day
without effort toward that end.
When I came to the Mission there were 67 communicants. Since a few have been added by transfer. I have
presented a total of 349 for confirmation including a class of 22 confirmed this summer.
Of these some 425 communicants there are now in Sherwood about 80 normal churchmen and an equal number of
normally indifferent churchmen. Twenty-five are dead. Transferred to other parishes 25. About 20 now belong to one
of three sectarian churches in Sherwood. Another 20 have become Methodists, Lutherans, Roman Catholics and
otherwise in distant new homes. Fifteen are lost, whereabouts unknown. And some 160 are scattered over the
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face of the earth, accepting no other parish, no other communion.
Some are indifferent but most regard themselves as loyal communi-
cants of Epiphany Mission. Wherever any are now there is ever
the consolation that through the five, ten, fifteen years they were
so actively in the Mission the finger of God indelibly wrote on
their hearts and minds and souls and in all eternity the devil can
wash out but little.
The Mission in human and humane relations is splendid. Re-
garded as a material charity the Mission merits all your alms I
know. As to what is merited as a spiritual success I do not know.
Only God knows. But one more thing I do know. I can assure
you that the priest's primary purpose is the welfare of souls. The
comfort and health of bodies; medicine, clothing, pleasure, sports;
improvement of minds, are fostered for their own good, but actual-
ly the priest asks you to sustain them as a means to one great end,
-the glory and worship of God.
I am quite often conscious of a sense of guilt because you
are sometimes not more adequately thanked for the treasures you
send in your boxes. It is true that every garment and every shoe
are treasures. But you send special treasures. Sometime fine bed-
ding, books, a dish or pot or pan, playing cards and games and
such pleasurable things, food, perhaps a crucifix, lovely garments
made with your own hands. And often such splendid gifts for me,
the Mission priest, gifts indicative of kind and generous thought.
It is fitting that I should especially thank you for all these things
and give you knowledge of just where and whom they SO richly
serve. Please believe that I am sorry for my defections and that
I do always thank you with all my heart.
You see, my doctors insist that I live placidly, really stagnantly,
and writing is supposed to ruffle my calm and those wise and
beneficient friends who protect my health forbid. And so I quite
seldom write but impress my notes on Peter who in turn generally
has Olline write them and in the involved process just what I
want to say to you is not written. Please understand. Generally I
feel quite well and continually thank God that I can do, if not all
I wish, then all I actually these days get done.
In closing this my summer letter to you, and always, I bid
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you Go with God. I assure that my affection goes with you always. May God bless you.
Faithfully yours Father Jones. P.S. Shortly after I had finished my foregoing letter to you Peter came to me to say
that Mart who was lately shot by a would-be assassin wanted to be baptized. Within the hour at the
EmeraldHodgson Hospital in Sewanee Mart was baptized. Mart, whom I had desired to baptize through 12 or 15
years while I have been baptizing his sons and daughters and grandchildren. So this midsummer day was not
without a baptism after all. Or a death. Mart, a shriven Christian, died before the day was done.
AUTUMN, 1950
THE CONCLUSION of Father Jones' acceptance for Sherwood of the Badge of H. M. S. Sherwood from the British
Admiralty on Sherwood Day.
Common ideals of liberty and justice are enshrined in English hearts whether they be British or American. The affairs
of the world are chaotic. The clouds of gloom on horizons can con&olidate into storms of devastation, or yet be
dispelled. In the world as it is today England would not long endure were the United States to succumb. Were the
British Empire subdued by the might of the forces of bandage the American way of liberty and democracy would
soon perish from the earth. The precious ideals of English speaking peoples in the whole world would never be
realities again.
England and America are dedicated to one common purpose. United in effort and action the English speaking
peoples can yet preserve liberty and justice in the world. Neither the British Empire nor the United States has too
little, nor is it too late, if brothers of one blood and one tongue will clasp the hand of brothers and go blundering on,
but blundering in complete unity and in fervent prayer, lifting every English speaking voice in one common
intercession to the Almighty Father, God bless America! God save the King! God save us all!
ONLY A ROSE. The only rose bloom against an ivy covered wall. Blooming higher than the brow of a tall man,
against an ivy wall lush, luxuriant green. Petals prodigal, full textured, crim
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son shading into shadows of jet. Scent spicy, warm as old brandy is warm, richer than all the perfumes of
Damascus and Araby. Only a rose, but a perfect rose as a gardener knows. A rose as perfect as all the skill of a
skillful gardener makes for means for God to make a perfect rose. Though the garden was an extraordinary garden
and was on a highway and many scores pass by only one score entered the garden where the rose bloomed. Of the
score but two saw the rose, Of the two but one remarked it.
Only God could make the rose. The gardeners could plant and cultivate, prune, and spray, coax tenderly and pray.
God alone could create the embryo and the miracle of growth, give the summer, send the sunshine and the Tain.
The rose God did institute and ordain to serve His perpetual glory, unheralded, unsung, all but unseen save by His
omniscience and His angels. A deep red rose against a wall of ivy green.
Only a weekday Mass: A Mass at a lowly altar. An altar in a simple rural church. A small church on a village street,
but where scores pass by. And yet somehow by God's grace an extraordinary church, a God filled altar throne, a
Mass aglow with the Presence. All Masses are perfect but their perfection lies within a latitudinal scale. Here only a
Mass, but a perfect Mass as the priest knows. A mass as perfect as the being of an earnest priest makes for
means for God to make a perfect Mass. The priest gives his poor faculties, but only God can consummate a Mass.
With God alone is the miracle.
God's Mass. And scores pass by unheeding. Scores suffering and yearning for God and blind. Of the scores only
two or three pilgrims pause and hear the Mass and riot all the two or three remark it. Only two or three pilgrims and
a host of angels and archangels and God's omniscience regard the earnest of His eternal mercy and glory. Only a
Mass? Only the cure of every touch of ill. Only the actuality of meeting Almighty God face to face. Only the precious
pulsing Sacred Heart of God.
The Larger Picture in the middle of the Booklet is the stage in St. David's Gymnasium on Sherwood Day in mid-
September of this year. On this occasion more than twelve hundred people were seated in the gymnasium
auditorium you helped to build in the Mission. Pictured is a moment in the ceremonies of the British Admiralty's
presentation to the town of Sherwood the Badge of
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H. M. S. Sherwood in token of good will between Great Britain and the United States. H. M. S. Sherwood was one of
the destroyers transferred by the United States to Great Britain in 1940. On the stage among some of the first
citizens of Sherwood and other notables are H. M. Consul-General, Mr. Dermot MacDermot; Captain John Holmes,
Royal Navy; Captain Wendell Fischer Kline, U. S. N.; World War 1 Hero, Sgt. Alvin C. York; The Hon. Gordon
Browning, the Governor of Tennessee; The Rt. Rev. E. P. Dandridge, D.D., the Bishop of Tennessee; Dr. Boylston
Green, ViceChancellor, the University of the South. Father Jones is speaking.
 FRANKIE AND JOHNNIE are lovers. They are seventeen.
Seventeen! Si jeunesse savait. Si jeurnesse savait, si vieillesse
pouvait. It youth knew, if age were able! One of the oddest trag-
edies of life? Perhaps God in His infinite wisdom safeguards hu-
manity by withholding the knowing from exuberant youth and
exuberance from knowing age. Or perhaps youth knows more
than age recalls of youth and youth is more forebearing than
age remembers.
It is said that the now native inhabitants of the Cumberlands are the purest Anglo-Saxon stock in America. If true
then Frankie and Johnnie are thoroughbred. At any rate their characters are as complex as any king's or any
pauper's. Strong and weak, true and false, kind and cruel. Fiercely proud, and like others the fierceness of their pride
is enhanced by some greater degree of inferiority. Passing comely. Hardily healthy. Their morals are of the complex
Cumberland code. They are virgins. They will defraud their grandmother. They lie. They steal, not promiscuously, but
steal. Against law or justice they aye apt to protect their fellows by silence or perjury.
Frankie and Johnnie make love. Either will pause and spit through their teeth without losing the thread of
conversation pursued in dulcet tones. Their English is remarkably good with the exception of their invariable
confusion of tenses of the verbs see and take. When angry their vocabulary is vitriolicly abusive and foul to the point
of profundity. They are no sissies. Johnnie is a versatile athlete, sans peer. Frankie's life in relation to the essentials
of living is stalwart and should put some of her more privileged contemporaries to shame. Frankie and Johnnie are
unaffected, they intuitively sense shame and insincerity and their scorn
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of either is furious. It is only at long last that they accept the stranger that may have spent lengthy seasons within
their gates but the belated acceptance is unequivocal. When they give their love they give it wholely. They are rather
typical Christians, but that is another story.
God loves Frankie and Johnnie. The Mission priest at once despises and respects them. He should like to think that
he hates sin and loves sinners but he is here skeptical of his virtue. Perhaps their regard for their priest is similar. To
them at least some of his tastes, habits, morals, even some of his guests are fairly intolerable idiosyncrasies. At
their valuation something of the whole is despicable. Howeverbeit they will bring him their troubles. He will in time
see them wed and baptize their children. They will in a large measure obey his precepts. He will not fail them. The
three for the duration of life are for better, for worse, irrevocably bound together, no less. And this the priest knows,
by some ability of ambivalence in his being he despises Frankie and Johnnie and yet fervently loves them with all his
heart and soul.
ELMER, fifteen, came down from the hills or out of a cove some time ago. He is Father's friend. He liked St. David's
Gym and enjoyed it. He had never seen a gym before. Elmer can read a little, but this gym was a new word.
Laboriously he spelled it out letter by letter, G Y M N A S I U M. He seriously looked the priest in the eyes and said
in a tone of disgust, "It doesn't spell a damn thing."
THE MIRACLE of the Crown of Thorns occurred on the feast of The Most Precious Blood of our Lord. Through the
years on many mornings while celebrating Mass the Mission priest has seen distinctly the image of the Crucified
upon the surface of the wine in the cup of the chalice. It is a clear reflection of the altar crucifix )et nevertheless is as
awesome and holy as a miracle. This summer in July at the celebration of the Mass of The Most Precious Blood
there was a new miracle. Arising from the genuflection immediately after the consecration of the chalice and before
the elevation the Mission priest was all but dumbfounded to discover a crown of thorns lying upon the corporal and
encircling the chalice. At the elevation the crown was gone.
Sometimes the mind can entertain some two or three matters at once. Without too much deviation the mind of the
priest was
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true to the Mass but there was deviation enough to be conscious of what had been distinctly seen and was now
gone and to suspect a small hallucination, The thoughts of a split second, for arising from the second genuflection
the crown of golden thorns again encircled the chalice. Stems and thorns exquisitely entangled into a perfect circle
studded with small bleeding hearts, a diadem of molten, scintillating gold. Again and again the crown was alternately
there or gone until the ablutions.
Well, the linen corporal was a little like a mirror. The silver chalice was highly polished. The altar candles burned
brightly. Perhaps in some positions the priest saw rays of candle shine deflected from the polished chalice bowl and
reflected from the glossy linen. Perhaps, not certainly, what the priest actually saw was embellished by fancy.
Mayhap the feast of The Most Precious Blood influenced fancy. May be of such in part is the fabric of miracles. But
why reflected light rays on the particular feast.
Simple or marvelous to the priest still a miracle and he writes as is written of the beginning of miracles in Cana of
Galilee. This other miracle did Jesus in Sherwood of Tennessee and manifested forth His glory.
ONE RENEE, from season to season, makes passing lovely an old man's dreams. It is always spring, it is always
the sitting room of the square house of petit Pere and petit Mere, at noon. Seventeen, eyes dancing, brunet cheeks
flushed, lips laughing and red without rouge. Her wind swept dark hair a little damp over her brow from dashing home
from school. The boy is there, waiting. A dream boy, a dream girl, in dream love. From time to time for nearly fifty
years so has she come, and always it is spring in the same room at noon. Never older, always exuberant, forever
lovelier. Life is many things. One thing is a dream that is woven tissue of many dreams. And this recurring dream is
the most precious of the fabric; this dream of dream love and youth awakening and all the bells of Cockaigne ringing.
Thank you, Dear Heart.
CHRISTMAS, 1950
ON HARVEST THANKSGIVING DAY this is written. The Mission Mass at six o'clock when it was yet dark was
better attended than was anticipated. A Mass of thanksgiving is no rarity at the Mission's altars for it is a rare week
indeed when the Holy Sacri
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fice is not specifically offered in expressed gratitude. The Mission people are told that it is more important to name
blessings and mercies and thank God for them than to make intercessions. That it is probable that thanking God
rather than begging Him is better intercession for His will to be done; is better conformation of our wills to His will
that He may fulfill His promises which exceed all that we can desire.
The Mission folk are reminded that the first words a Christian hears, immediately after his baptism which makes him
a ~hristian, is an exhortation to thank God, to give thanks for his regeneration. The Mission people are reminded that
the other greater sacrament, the Holy Sacrifice, is offered as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, That they receive
God's Body to feed on by faith, with thanksgiving and the Chalice of His Blood with the bidding, be thankful.
Ingratitude is sin. So sing and make melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God.
COME CHRISTMAS wherewith shall I come before the Lord? Shall I be generously thoughtful and kind and in
addition to a few who are precious to me shall I remember little children, the old and the poor, those to whom I am
obligated, and those I call friends? Shall I let my desire to make gladness be so acute that my lavish generosity will
be selfish? To mark the holiday shall I suffer from Christmas madness and prostrate my physical and nervous being?
All this thou mayest do and yet all this is not enough. There will be done by all publicans and sinners the same.
Come Christmas shall I entertain in my mind and heart the religious significance of the feast, a little. Shall I
remember and assure myself sometimes that all the virtue and all the madness of the season is holy as well as
hectic, that all is in the name of the Christ Child, the Prince of Peace and God, but vaguely', Shall I go to church,
perhaps make a halfhearted peace with God, witness a Christmas celebration of holy liturgy and make my
Christmas communion? All this more thou mayest do but neither is all this enough. Millions will do the same.
Truly thou knowest what is good O man, thou knowest what is required of thee. Make your Christmas peace with
God. It will not take forever but a proper peace can not be made with blood racing and mind seething, it requires
thought in quietness
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and calm. Thou shouldest be still to know that God is God. Then your privilege and duty of the Christ Mass. Bring to
the Mass the calm of your peace. Loose from your mind as you would loose from relaxed hands all your wisdom, all
your knowledge; become as simple-minded as a wee shepherd lad before the manger beneath the star over
Bethlehem. Put far away all theology, all striving to rationalize the inscrutable. Be proud to be stupid, empty, dumb.
Give God and your soul a chance for so Faith believes, nor questions how.
 Know only that Christmas is the high feast of the Incarna-
tion, the birthday of God the Son, the Son of God, the Son of
Mary His virgin Mother. The feast of miracles that divine Omni-
potence defies you to rationalize. Know only that the celebration
of the feast is miraculous and transcends rationalization, too, be-
cause again God the Son, conceived by the Holy Ghost, is incar-
nate, now in a Wafer, now in the Wafer upon your tongue, now
in your Soul. God incarnate in you.
Come Christmas so shall you come before the Lord, and bow before the High God and arise with peace in your soul,
the song of the angels on your lips, because of His love in your heart.
ELIZABETH ANN AND RENA LEE are fourteen. Rena Lee is Toots. Toots was baptized at the age of three weeks.
Elizabeth was baptized when older. It would be definitely futile to try to leave them out of any day by day picture of
the Mission. Elizabeth has ten sisters and brothers, a father and a mother. Toots has two sisters and two brothers
and an invalid mother. Perhaps neither of them has suffered poverty at its worst but surely neither of them has
enjoyed any semblance of affluence. The Mission has been a godsend in their lives.
Properly Elizabeth and Toots are Miss Florence's proteges and are church handmaids dealing with dust and candles
and misplaced prayer books but they for some years have been girl gard. eners, too. They have swept the paved
garden walks so often for so long that they are reminiscent of the maids with the mops eternally scrubbing the seven
seas. They are comely children, developing rapidly as girls do, emerging from the imp and pest stage, but still
gigling and gurling, never begetting gloom. and often they are good tonic to dissipate melancholic moods, God grant
them the impish twinkle in their eyes for life and after.
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GARNERS are legion in Sherwood. Elizabeth is a Garner. Toots is a Haney. The priest has baptized fifty-two
Haneys. The first person he ever baptized was a Garner. He baptized a Garner last Sunday. He has baptized
considerably more than one hundred Garners, and presented fifty-four for confirmation, and buried thirteen. Even so
the Mission has no Garner family monopoly.
THE TELEPHONE is an indispensable marvel altogether taken for granted and not infrequently an infernal nuisance.
The telephone expedites matters of life and death, peace and war, labor, recreation, bread and butter, but life is full
of affairs of overrated importance and fuller of inane chatter and the telephone is burdened with both.
Sherwood has never had telephones and has none now with the exception of two long distance toll stations. Through
all his years in Sherwood when the Mission priest has made or taken a telephone call he has gone a quarter of a
mile from his house to do so. When the priest is called a messenger from tile toll station, delayed by convenience,
eventually reaches him. If he goes to the toll station by the time he gets there the party calling has left the phone
and can not be located. Some years ago the priest had a call from New York on Christmas Eve. He was hearing
confessions. Taking the call involved several trips to the toll station and about two hours out of the fullest day of his
year and the party calling, prompted by kindness, wanted to say that a box of candy had been sent to dear Father
for Christmas! 
In twenty years in Sherwood the priest has had perhaps a half dozen interesting calls and one that was fairly
important. The call of some importance was an SOS from a man, of sterling character, in jail because of a
combination of mistaken identity and war hysteria.
And so Father Jones does not respond to telephone calls and has not for several years. And he is not going to. If a
message is important it will come through. There is the post, and Western Union, and most people like being
messengers. The priest has never been curious about the messages he has never gotten and has never felt slightly
deprived.
THE CRUCIFIX AND CHRISTMAS, at first thought, seem far apart. Good Friday; Nativity. Sorrowing gloom; joyous
gladness. The incarnate engenders gladness, yet the crucifix is the
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epitomizing image of divine love. Divine love, the highest at-
tribute of God, the crux of gladness.
One from another Love's redeeming triumphs can not be
separated; His incarnation, passion, death, resurrection, ascension.
But the central triumph, crucifixion, is the core; there indeed is
manifested the Sacred Heart of Love. The empty cross, the Easter
cross, is a holy cross, but only a pagan gallows tree had he not
consecrated it with His blood and death.
In the mission the crucifix is thought lovely beyond compare
but a visiting priest covered his eyes with his hand when a chas-
uable embroidered with a crucifix was spread and said, "I do not
wish to see that one." A local minister disparaged the crucifix en-
shrined in the Mission churchyard, "It has no business anywhere.
I shall never look at it. It is His shame." A visitor to the hospital
exclaimed of the wall crucifix just inside the entrance, "What a
gruesome thing for the ill and anguished to have to look at!"
A nation's colors baptized in the death blood of a million
sacrificed defenders and dedicated by its witness of carnage and
the death of a million enemy patriots is neither an icon of shame
nor a gruesome thing; it is the all lovely symbol of the nation's
glory.
Of the crucifix ponder rather if you are great enough to
regard supreme beauty in the dignity of sacrificial dying. Whether
the loveliness in your soul can regard as lovely the quivering tor-
tured flesh of God incarnate; the bleeding, dying Son of Mary.
Think rather if you could conceive the adjective lovely as derived
from the act of supreme Love's supreme sacrifice for supreme
triumph.
Rightly Christmas emphasis is on the incarnation, the joyous
gladness, hot as vou contemplate the manger and the Christ Child
and worship and adore lift the not empty cross to your lips re-
membering that there are no contradictions in the wholeness and
the loveliness of Love.
BLESSING given by a priest is of a sacramental nature. When
a priest, acting as God's agent, blesses lie bestows virtue from God
and the object is set apart as especially God's, consecrated, sancti-
fied, holy. Through the formal blessing of persons by a priest
flows an especial gift of God's grace as in the sacramental declara.
tion of absolution and similar to the bestowal of grace in the sacra-
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ment of baptism. Sacerdotal blessing, by grace, bestows God's protection, beneficence, felicity. A lay blessing is an
intercession for divine blessing.
Blessings are salutary and so lovely and their forms are numerous, Regard the simple blessing of one's self with the
holy sign. Remember that Irish intercessory blessing, May God and our Lady protect you and may the blessed
angels and saints with candles light your feet when you walk the dark boreens (byroads, lanes). How exquisite is the
condensation from the Epistle to the Ephesians into the blessing at the end of Holy Baptism and a late Prayer Book
interpolation. And the Prayer Book nuptial blessing is one apart, clothed in usual gracious Prayer Book English.
There is beatitude in the euphony of the Latin, Benedicat te Ornnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus.
Sacramentals like sacraments can not be conferred in absentia. The Mission priest can not send you a sacramental
Christmas blessing by post, but he may ask God's blessing if he can not pronounce it.
So, M A Y Almighty God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost bless you, preserve and succor you according to your
need, warm you with His love, give you a holy Christmas, and grant fulfillment of your wish most dear. Amen.
JANUARY, 1951 Beloved:
The Mission had a good Christmas. For many months Sherwood has suffered undue adversity due to the closing of
its sixty year old lime plant. For that catastrophe Sherwood is somewhat to blame; if the goose that laid the golden
eggs was not killed the old bird certainly was not succored. What ever the cause the effect has been greater
privation and true Christian charity may think the rather universal truth but must not say, "You brought it all on
yourself," especially to defenseless women and children. However, Sweet are the uses of adversity. Sick-the Devil a
monk would be. Many a Christian seems to love God more when stormy weather bows his spiritual and material
being. A background of dire need magnifies even small blessings and edges them with pure gold.
The high point of spiritual things, as it is every Christmas in
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the Mission, was the Midnight Mass which was passing lovely and
holy.
The Mission had a good year in 1950. The Mission priest had a good year. I am commencing 1951 certainly less ill
than I have been in five years. Exactly a year ago I was in a hospital and almost convinced that my labors were
finished. I was definitely told that I was not to conduct a public church service, preach, or write letters for a year. I
am still unable to write for many minutes without tiring. My conversations must be calm and brief, my social
engagements none, and my working day is less than six hours long. But since the first of May I have not missed my
Mass a single morning, I have preached one sermon on Sundays, conducted a few burials, and within the year
baptized 113 persons. (I am ashamed to confess that in four homes in less than 10O yards from the Mission church
live four adults and ten children I have not been able to baptize.)
St. David's Gymnasium has been in constant use. Heating it this cold winter is a terrific financial problem and often
the gym is used without any heat at all. The Community Center grounds have been constantly improved. Nearly all
desired planting has been done with some nursery stock but a great deal more moved in from the woods. Lombardy
poplars and weeping willows have been planted for the near future, maples and sycamores for the end of this
century, and magnolias and oaks for perfection a hundred years hence. The Mission Garden plainly shows that it
has suffered too much zero temperature but doubtless it will be springing into the first glories of resurrection come
Easter.
Twenty years ago the Mission property consisted of the empty church built at a cost of $5,000-0O and a
missionary's dwelling of no real value. Today the Mission is carrying some $60,000.0O in insurance on accumulated
property. The largest item of Mission expenditure, half of which is provided by proceeds from Mission boxes, is about
$500.0O a month to secular employees. Every employee desperately needs his Mission job and some twenty people
live on the wages. Electricity is $25.0O a month. Fuel for December cost $60.0O which is the highest monthly cost
on record. Printing and postage come to a pretty penny. And to help the helpless is one of the Mission's chief
purposes fulfilled at a considerable expenditure. That there are Mission families who do
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not need and have never received financial aid should be re-
membered.
In considering your support remember that the greater the
number of Mission baptisms, the greater the Mission's expansion
in any direction, the greater is its financial liabilities; the greater
the Mission's success the more money is needed to sustain it. Re-
member that the Mission's only sustenance is your gifts and that
the Mission operates on a lower budget than most parishes with
comparable statistics.
A number of Mission friends who for long expressed endiusi-
astic interest in the Mission and gave regularly to sustain its aims
have greatly reduced their offerings and others have stopped
giving anything at all. Of course I shall always be deeply grate-
ful for what you did give of your heart and means but I often
wonder, long and seriously, wherein the Mission has failed to
further merit your love and approval or why it has wearied your
generosity. I am more deeply concerned over the loss of your
regard than I am over the loss of your alms.
May it please God to bless richly this new year for you.
Affectionately yours,
Father Jones
EASTER, 1951
BOXES clothe some who without them would be all but naked
and they supply garments and shoes to the far less desperate and
to some who are scarcely desperate at all. Boxes are food and
drink. Boxes are fuel to give warmth against bitter winter cold.
boxes are life blood in the Mission's veins. Boxes are good currency
equal to coin and exchanged for cash. Look about. What is catch-
ing dust unseen on closet shelves? What has become tiresome or a
bit passe or a hindrance to good housekeeping? Clocks and cloaks.
Dishes and dust rags. Shoes or shotguns, garments or groceries.
Herd the white elephants. Be not dismayed if they are old, de-
crepit, tired. They will find a new life in the Mission. And be not
weary because you have often done it before, or because your first
effort is irksome. You will not see the benefit, but the Mission
thinks God will.
OLLINE says that she has written them so much that she knows
the full names of all the members of the Mission's Greater Con-
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gregation. Peter goes further as he thinks he knows the handwriting of most. Many others have never heard your
names but they have enjoyed the sweet fruits of your blessings. just now Miss Florence, Flossie, Marie, along with
Olline and Toots and Elizabeth together with Damon and Raymond, Ralph and Peter and little Peter send you
greetings and prayerful good wishes for a holy Easter.
THREE EMPTY CROSSES silhouetted against the sky make an Easter symbol that should be most precious to all
humans. The central empty cross the throne of His crucifixion and our salvation. The empty crosses of the thieves
the gallows of sinful men. The three crosses in one whole the symbol of His nearness to sinners, the oneness of
God and man. Even as the east is separated from the west to is the divinity of God separated from the humanity of
man but the three empty crosses of yesterday's Calvary signify God's tangibility to man.
The Resurrection glorifies Christ's empty cross and makes the empty cross the Easter cross. In the last Christmas
Booklet there was a small discourse on The Crucifix and Christmas. A Prayer Book brother-father was moved to
write a letter of comment: "The empty cross is the cross of the Church. The crucifix has no place in our religion. We
do not worship a dead Christ." Could it be this priest is in error? Or is it error to believe that the Prayer Book Holy
Communion cross is the crucifix? The Prayer Book states that the Holy Communion is, The most comfortable
Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ; to be . . . received in remembrance of his meritorious Cross and
Passion; whereby alone we obtain remission of our sins, and are made partakers of the Kingdom of heaven. A
perpetual memory of his precious death and sacrifice. In remembrance of his death and passion. And bids the
faithful, Take and cat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee. Drink this in remembrance that Christ's Blood
was shed for thee. Is it not all good then to lift the eyes to the Holy Communion cross, the crucifix, in all hours of life
to be reminded to perpetually remember His precious death and sacrifice. To remember Christ died for thee. To
remember Christ's Blood was shed for thee.
The empty cross, the Easter cross, is the cross of Christ's triumph wherein we glory. But is Christ's cross of triumph
as
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yet our personal cross? Have we ceased to crucify Him? Do we
no longer need the merits of His passion to obtain remission of
our sins? Have we died and risen? Had we better not cling to
the cross bearing His blood shedding body until we better achieve
His triumph and merit the right to bear the empty cross of His
glory? Is not the crucifix the sinner's cross?
HAVE YOU ever found the protestant aversion to the crucifix
an interesting subject? It does definitely exist you know. It is
so common that perhaps you have experienced the aversion. It
seems that the psychology behind what often has the appearance
of a pathological prejudice to a crucifix could be intriguing. There
is often a skepticism toward the empty cross, as though the emblem
had at least better be approached warily, or best left alone. As
for the crucifix it is certainly no exaggeration that it is often Ye-
garded with honor, surely the same recoiling horror that would
result front contact with a material incarnation of evil the more
abhorrent for very real horns, hoofs and tail. More often of course
a lesser horror such as might be provoked by the sight of a snake.
Or even a milder reaction of definitely the least seen of it the
better. What then underlies this unreasoning repugnance? This
iconoclastic antipathy? What is feared is hated is an axiom. Is
aversion to a crucifix induced by a subconscious intolerance of
Catholicism? Think not that these questions are provoked by a
too critical attitude. Rather there is something behind it all that
is puzzling and perplexing and this approach is purely one of
curiosity and of speculative inquiry.
A REASONABLE LETTER, 690 words long, has come to
the Mission that it would be well to print here in full, but the
letter would cover two full pages. The few sentences quoted are
not a just presentation, but will give die general purport.
I read your payroll figures in just handing out largesse to the
needy. What conditions prevail among Sherwood people that con-
tributions must continue year after year to aid them? Why don't
they get on their feet and support the Mission? Are the people too
cussed to shift for themselves? This should be made clear. I would
prefer to bear through the Booklets why its need is so great in-
stead of pen etchings of various souls. An honest statement of
why it is like it is. Your Booklets convey only the haziest Christmas
card idea of what it is all about.
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Remember Aesop's fable? The one concerning the farmer and his son and their donkey? That fable could be one
answer to this letter. It is perfectly futile to try to please every one. The Booklets endeavor to be neither too vague
nor too heavy with facts and figures. A sincere effort is made to report accurately although briefly on all aspects of
the Mission. Perhaps concrete things should be handled more explicitly. It is difficult to be very explicit about
spiritual things. The Mission could take the attitude that it does the best it can and bid its correspondents acquiesce
or give up interest in and support of the Mission.
However, in spite of more or less good grain in the chaff, it is granted that the Booklets are vague by design, and
even vaguer in the inadequacy of their language. To amend these defections every question of this letter would so
gladly be answered here if it were possible on these small pages. It is quite possible to change the voice of Booklets
to be published in the future if a majority of the Greater Congregation wishes. In sending your alms will you state
your wish for or against less phantasies and more of solid facts and figures. And state what information you most
wish the Booklets to give? Your letter may not be answered in detail, but it will be most gratefully received and
considered.
TO TABULATE the cases where the Mission has tried to help constructively would be a hopeless undertaking
because there have been too many cases and because there is no adequate measure of failure or success. Many a
man or woman will say today, "When I was a child there would have been no Santa Claus-," or, "When I was a child
I suspect I would have starved,-had it not been for the Mission." What wisdom can determine if Santa Claus
mattered? Or, if the world and the speaker would not be better off today had the speaker starved to death in youth?
Nevertheless a peep into the past and the now.
* A BOY less than ten when his definitely underprivileged parents died in early middle age, one of tuberculosis, one
of cancer. The boy left utterly helpless. Fed, clothed, sent to Church schools. Alternately worked and attended state
university. Served through entire way. Since got his degree from major university. Married. Now earning $3,000.0O a
year. Has not been in Sherwood in a long time.
* DAUGHTER of widowed mother. Helped with food, clothing,
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school. Worked and attended business school without help. Today, long removed from Sherwood, successful, living
well, contributing much to her old mother's comfort.
* A YOUTH of family of a then sick mother and a young brother. Helped with more than a thousand dollars through
his early college years. Now far from Sherwood a successful doctor, married, repaying the loan from the Mission.
* A BOY, of a family in direst poverty, given up to die of incurable disease. The Mission did not accept the death
sentence. Through Vanderbilt Hospital healed and later through a large parish aided today the man is well,
independent, successful. But not in Sherwood.
* A WIDOW with some children who can not help her. A cripple for years. Insufficiently aided by welfare agencies.
Lately home from a few weeks as charity patient in hospital. The Mission has long helped her in a small way.
* A MOTHER who a year ago worked and supported her four children. Now for many months in bed with
tuberculosis. Fair promise of recovery. Welfare agencies aid but insufficiently. Mission aids in conjunction with
agencies. Children being kept in high school.
* FARM FAMILY. Widow and eight children. Husband father killed by explosives some months ago. Oldest son still
in teens earns but is married. Family has utterly no means of support. Welfare agencies help but insufficiently.
Mission aids.
* ALTAR SERVER, with two brothers and three sisters. Lives in home with father and mother. Father laborer and
most positively a hard and satisfactory worker when there is work open to him. Definitely is not getting enough work
to support family. Last week the boy barefooted in snow. Mission gave him new shoes for birthday present.
How futile it is to try to catalog the cases through the years and in the present. Multiply these few cases by a
hundred to get a mere minimum of their number. The Mission priest thinks that aid in all cases has been good and
constructive but only God and St. Peter know.
AFTER ALL THE EXPERIENCE of history, especially in these better days when labor enjoys so much richer just
reward and government is so lavishly generous; when opportunity of educa
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tion and affluence, to the lowliest, is golden, it does seem that the
poor should have gotten on their feet and be now supporting
themselves and common betterment instead of being supported.
Unfortunately they have not and are not. Our Lord seems to
have known what He was talking about, as usual, when he said,
Ye have the poor always with you. But why pick on the cursed
poor anyway? In every walk of life failure is colossal.
After hundreds of generations why has not the whole world
gotten on its feet and arrived in Utopia instead of still wondering
where Utopia is? Many a superior people and nation seem to
find it impossibly difficult to get on their feet with all the aid
of a generous America and after one and three quarters cen-
turies of government of the greatest nation in the world one might
hope to see sturdier legs and something less vague and more staple
emanating from America's own Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill may
be on its feet but its feet seem to have become feet of clay. Why
do not institutions and schools and seminaries after all their years
get on their own feet and stop asking help to live? Then, too,
unfortunately misfortune is a stealthy demon that has not as
yet been vanquished. All about are those who yesterday stood
so sturdily on their own feet abounding in security and inde-
pendence but today lie impotent in the dust stricken economically
or bodily or mentally. It seems salutory to remember that all are
fallible, all vulnerable, all to a degree failures. And yet, Ye have
despised the poor.
Doubtless, the Mission, sympathetic and with as much patience
as possible, will keep blundering on with the cursed indigent.
REGARDING WORTHINESS and the worthiness of Mission
folk may the Mission ask if you are worthy? The Booklet quotes
again what might be profitably repeated every day of life, the
searching words Francis Thompson credits to God, The Hound
of Heaven. How hast thou merited-Of all man's dotted clay
the dingiest clot? Alack, thou knowest not how little worthy of
any love thou artl Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, save
Me, save only Me? . . Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest...
ONE GRANDFATHER IN GOD, in semi-privacy where
his lack of dignity will not be regarded, likes to get down on
hands and knees and play with his three year old godgrandson,
whose intelligence the ancient thinks remarkable and his person-
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ality scintillating. To the child the spontaneous games are delightful and certainly to the grandsire they are no less.
Around furniture, even under beds, the child is pursued, occasionally caught and dragged out and pommelled a little
and tactfully allowed to escape that the pursuit may continue. The child's healthy body glories in its exercise and
there is ecstasy in his comely face and his gurgling laughter and his cries in a gentlemanly child's voice, neither
strident nor hoydenish, are as if his baby fingers were gently probing and tickling the old man's heart. And the old
one stifles a yearning to cry, "Love me, love me infant and your love will assuage die sorrow that my youth is long
since dead, and that my maturity is slowly dying."
Sometimes a mighty blinding impulse grips the man who has alreadv lived to enfold in his arms the innocent child
with the very all of life ahead, as yet untouched, and shield him from all the pain of the enigmatical tragedy of life. To
cheat him of perhaps life's one redeeming purpose; suffering, undergoing, overcoming. And the man at the other end
of life, the far end, knows that his impulse is futile and no good. Knows that the child in time must drink the few
sweet and all the bitter drops in life's cup alone, but for God. And if he be spared, from accident and disease and
war, to live, the last few drops will be the knowledge that all the drops have been consumed, the fortune spent, all
the body's once lovely lines shriveled and wrinkled. That quenched is the shine that made eyes as bright as day.
That the once cherub's face has become that of a stricken gargoyle. The knowledge of being half blind, half deaf, half
able, with the mind and body weary beyond the will to live. And yet a last sweet drop in life's cup; resignation;
through the last shortening seasons, the peaceful resignation to disintegration, in saying good night, good night; in
gently closing doors; in slowly dying, dying.
THE MISSION GARDEN is today a drear thing, after its bitterest winter never before so drab and disconsolate. Neap
tide is at its lowest ebb. Even with what crawleth below all has been crucified and has descended into the bowels of
the earth 'till resurrection. So dead now and yet resurrection is so near at hand. So soon spring will restore the
garden's glorious loveliness. Seeing them will seem paradise. And seeing will be forgetting what a simple thing a
garden is. Nothing save gifts of God common to
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all men, accepted, maneuvered, arranged. Little seed sown, small roots transplanted, all nurtured, and behold the
glory of God.
How like unto a garden is a man. Man, a dot of clay impregnated, God's miraculous medium, nucellus of a garden or
barrenness. A seed bed, a bearing tree. Gardens and men subject to ebb tides and flood. Calm and storm. Sunshine
after rain. Bleak winters and gay springs. Deaths and resurrections. And think of the power of one small flower, from
the soil or from the soul, come spring; that the presence of a tangle of brambles will be overlooked to behold one
royal purple violet or one golden daffodil.
OF ALL MISSION PICTURES accumulated through the years Father Jones likes none better than the one on the
cover of this Booklet. On a late March morning in 1938 the Blessed Sacrament was taken near two miles from the
Mission altar to a sick old man. For the greater part of the way the car was used, but it was necessary to walk the
last half mile to the cabin. The morning was coldish and gray with skies overcast and light rain intermittently falling,
hence the priest's cloak and the server's umbrella. In the picture a swollen and turbulent creek is being crossed on a
precarious foot log. The white stole peeping out from the priest's cloak and the server's lace cotta, damp with rain,
are artistic touches.
As a matter of fact the picture is not of the actual crossing of the priest with die Blessed Sacrament. The actuality
was re~ enacted an hour later with David posing as the priest. David, beloved and long since dead. Old John to
whom the Blessed Sacrament was taken went home to God when summer came. Fritz, the server, eventually went
to near-by St. Andrew's School and graduated and Lrricd a St. Andrew's community girl. Fritz and Jin have three
children.
The picture is typical of daily Mission events as is the story of their sequels, a bit of a glimpse, whimsical and
mystical, of the doings of the servants of God.
THE PRESENCE OF GOD, in the person of our Lord, is always with us. The Presence may be never less and never
more. Of that there is no certain knowledge. Perhaps it is. a matter of opened or closed doors of our being. It is
possible we mean by our Lord's especial Presence that grace is given to especially
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discern Him through especial submission or seeking or sacrament. Perhaps He is always especially present and we
refuse die key to loose vision and knowledge. It is possible to go through days and years without consciousness of
the Presence. It is possible to be frequently so conscious of our Lord's proximity that sell passes out of
consciousness. Frequently we seek our Lord, through inner solitude and silence, through meditation, through
sacrament, seek to feel all absorption into the power of His Presence, into the warmth of His personality, to hear
clearly His still, small voice of calm.
Lately, on a Sunday morning, the Mission priest baptized a personal friend. A man of the priest's age, a native of
Sherwood, externally a rugged hillsman, internally endued with Christian gentleness. A man to incite admiration and
respect and to beget affection. A just man and a sinner, an honest bootlegger. Not religious and definitely not
irreligious. The priest's stanch friend for nigh twenty years. And for nigh twenty years many the time the question of
baptism was broached, always with the same conclusion, "I will not disrespect God by being baptized until I can
mend my ways."
Now ill, maybe ill onto death. The priest insisted the time of baptism was at hand. The friend bowed his gray head,
his stiff neck submissive at long last, saying only, "I have waited until I am helpless, but I am a great sinner." And
the priest assured him, "Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just
persons, which need no repentance." In that moment, for the first time in his life, the priest glimpsed a bit of irony in
our Lord's words, as if in the whole world there could possibly be found even nine persons so just that they needed
no repentance.
Tears are a commonplace to a priest but a rugged stalwart's tears jolt any man. As the baptismal water flowed from
the aging brow it mingled with copious tears. And if the priest could not read the office perfectly without the Book his
own blurred eyes would have betrayed hint.
There was indeed the Presence of God in the person of our Lord. Vivid. The consciousness of His warmth. The
awareness of His breath. His Presence more real than mortal witnesses, more real than the baptized. Mary of
Bethany chose the better part
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but how much more often does the action of serving bring Him, and how much more of His fullness, than somewhat
selfish seeking in silence and solitude. Offering the Holy Sacrifice, a baptism, a confession, helping a soul to pass,
even a cup of cold water, keys that open wide all the doors to His eager, sacred Presence.
THIS IS ST. DAVID'S but in Sherwood more commonly called the Gym. So you are in the Gym watching young
people skate. The music coming over the sound system is from records, the tones are clear, the volume a little too
full the way the skaters like it. Playing at the moment is the Beer Barrel Polka especially arranged for skating. Most
of the skaters are proficient as Sherwood youth is in all athletic games.
Take a boy out there on the floor, take any boy. That one? That is Pedro, also known as Axle Grease, (slick, wily).
Handsome, isn't he? Of course he has a good baptismal name, but they call him Pedro. See him skate, now
forward, now backward, now with a girl, now skating circles around her. What poise and grace, like a butterfly. More
like a hummingbird. You see Pedro pull up his trousers. He has no belt else he would tighten it instead because his
stomach is empty, he is hungry. He will not perish, sooner or later he will eat, but in this hour he is starving because
lie is one of a large family, his father can get no employment, and there is no food. Nero fiddled while Rome burned,
but Nero doubtless was replete with food and drink. Pedro pulls up his trousers, lacking a belt to tighten, and skates
like a ballerina to the strains of Beer Barrel Polka while starvation gnaws.
Baptized, confirmed, moderately faithful, Pedro is not exactly saintly. Free on suspended sentence to reform school.
Often unchallenged by authority for fear of his spiteful retaliations. But in St. David's Gym Pedro is angelic.
Sherwood, correctly or incorrectly, has a reputation for toughness. Sometimes some of the boys have been called
incorrigible vandals and some of the girls termagants. The sheriff on occasions has been asked for his presence or
that of a deputy for protection against hoodlums, on even such occasions as school commencement exercises.
Maybe there is an element of youth the world over heedless, belligerent, destructive but that element of Sherwood
youth must be sans equal and beyond compare.
When St. David's was opened a few years ago there were
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some offenses, some brawling, some window panes maliciously
broken, some forced entrances in the nighttime. The young men
acting as curators were tried and their attempts to enforce decorum
antagonized and incited minor rebellion and riot. Believing the
whole world too wordy, from the Mission there were no verbal ad-
monitions to the herd, no pleadings, no preachings, just patience
maybe. And gradually Sherwood youth realized that St. David's
is its own. Through the past summer two boys, sixteen and seven-
teen, have been wholly in charge. Four hour skating periods
three times a week and square dances several Friday evenings.
Buddy and Ralph have had no trouble. Most evenings neither the
priest nor any adult in authority goes near the gym. The Pedros
own St. David's and treat it with respect not accorded their own
homes. It is extraordinary and unbelievable but in the gym the
Pedros are at least subgentlemen and potential angels.
REMEMBER J. C.? Remember how fourteen year old J. C.
Wallace accidentally shot his entire left am off while hunting
squirrels with a shot gun one lovely June morning in 1941? The
forty-second Booklet told you the story at Christmas time nine
years ago asking you to give J. C. an artificial am for a Christmas
gift, and you did. The following summer, at the age of sixteen,
the boy left Sherwood to learn welding in wartime ship construc-
tion. As nine years passed J. C. visited home but few times. He
wrote a bit oftener, once when he was married. Whenever a child
was born he wrote again.
Something of an expert welder now, living in Michigan, J. C.
came home this summer and brought his family. The mother is
a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church but she came with
J. C. to the Mission church and their three comely little daughters
were baptized at the font where their father, as well as their
grandfather and grandmother, were grafted into the body of
Christ Church.
THE GASPING GATE is the main entrance to the Mission
Garden. The gate is of solid oak painted green and set in a
solid wall of masonry. The gate is generally closed and from
outside the garden there is no vision within. Approach to the
gate has deliberately been made to contrast outside and inside.
Outside the gate the ground is covered with crushed stone, there
313



is scarcely any planting, all is neat bareness. A stranger approach.
ing the gate is led to expect nothing.
And then the solid dark green gate swings open, the visitors
step across the threshold and lift surprised, startled eyes. Lift
eyes to a vista some 180 feet long. A stretch of green sod bordered
with hibiscus, dahlias, roses. According to the season flanked with
lilies, irises, tuberoses. Roofed by poplar or willow or mimosa or
chiefly sun kissed skies. At the far end the vista terminates
against a high ivy covered wall at a stone altar beneath a statue
of the Holy Mother of our baby Lord smiling welcome from her
arms. It is a vision, a vision in the sence of actuality seen, a vision
in the sense of a dream of ecstasy because the actuality is so definite-
ly suffused with the rune of holy peace and peaceful holiness.
Surely through the years a thousand visitors have entered the
green gate and broken off speech in mid-sentence to gasp, Ohl
or Ald beholding the beginning of the Garden. How aptly the
young Mission gardeners have long designated the simple portal
as the Gasping Gate.
THE PRECARIOUS SEASON OF FINANCIAL STRAITS
in the Mission is late summer. Of the Greater Congregation many
are absent from home, general lassitude has dulled good inten.
tions and deterred good deeds. Offerings to sustain the Mission
grow few and far between. In August receipt of Boxes sink to a
trickle, all but stopping entirely.
"But in summer," suggest many, "surely your need is less.
What with gardens, food is more abundant and less costly. Clothing
needs are less. There is no fuel expense." All true, but Mission
upkeep continues, summer is the time of most repair work that
everlastingly continues to hold the fabric solidly together, sales of
Box contents provide necessary cash, county schools open in August
and all children need school clothes, and the needs of the needy
know no season.
Larger in scope, serving much larger numbers, than the Mis-
sion church, the Sunday School, St. David's, the Garden, or ought
else is the Mission's Box Business giving material service and com-
fort. Flossie's, where all you send reaches the hancl~ of eager
beneficiaries, is open six days a week and men and women re-
gardless of color or creed flow in seeking to supply their dire
314



needs. On special sales days a score of cars and trucks swell the greater crowd that walks.
This Box Business is yours. Your Boxes are its sale foundation and support. No bountiful Boxes, no blessed
benefits. Without your Boxes many hundreds would be poorer in this little corner of God's kingdom.
* SAINT MINNIE OF BALTIMORE, long since designated saint by the Mission in love and gratitude, has far excelled
any other Mission patron and angel in the contribution of Boxes. In the past fifteen years St. Minnie has filled and
sent to the Mission 536 sizable Boxes. Only God can measure the service and comfort of her offerings. And as it is
not humanly possible for the Mission only God can for her untiring and merciful work bestow adequate reward.
RELIGIOUS ZEAL is prevalent in Sherwood. Maybe the Episcopalians day by day, year in and year out, just keep
their conservative course with little change in temperature. If they work up to no ecstatic heights neither do they sink
into stagnant depths. There was a time when the Mission had a virtual monopoly and the time has passed. It is also
a fact that the Mission priest is doing some sixty percent less teaching and preaching, by word and deed, than he
did through past years because he is not physically able to do more. And the wheel that does not turn and squeak
gets no grease.
The Church of Christ is strong and strengthening. The Church of God has lately built a new church and no longer a
negligible party is at present constant and fervent. The Community Church, for a long period closed, has no minister
but has an active Sunday School. The Roman Catholics are entering their wedge.
Choice of church is influenced by social and intellectual aptitude just as truly as is choice of most things, as for
instance, according to one's social and intellectual taste one reads the New Yorker or the True Story Magazine. The
Sherwood Christian Church offers religion at a comfortable level to most Sherwood people, neither over their heads
nor superior to their tastes. This body will probably grow stronger and certainly be here with the present generations.
The Roman Catholics preached a mission in Sherwood with
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pictures and sound truck the summer of 1950. Another this just
passing summer. Through the intervening year they have met in
various homes perhaps once a fortnight. It seems that they are
renting a dwelling to be used as a mission house and will there
conduct Bible classes and Sunday School and probably offer a Mass
from time to time. As far as the Mission knows they have gained
two converts, both from the Episcopal congregation. The Romans
seldom do things halfheartedly or unwisely spread the butter thin.
They have had at least five fine and capable priests have a go at
Sherwood. The point is that they have recognized the richness of
the Mission's once exclusive field. The Mission predicts that in
time there will be a Roman Catholic church in Sherwood.
Well, in so far as the "Campbellites" or "Holy Rollers" or
"Catholics" please God in the harvesting of souls, all power to
them and His blessing be upon them. The Mission will in a
large measure keep its own and add to its own. But alas, that
the valley was almost predominantly won for "Episcopalians" and
was not because the total efforts of one priest were not enough to
tip the scale.
THE MISSION'S GEHENNA lies behind the Garden, west-
ward. Relatively it covers considerable area for there all the
Mission's refuse is dumped, old cans, broken bottles, useless paper
and cardboard, trimmings from hedges and trees. Trash of various
varieties, garbage, uprooted weeds and discarded useless plants,
sweepings of inevitable litter common to gardens and human hab-
itations. Now and again cans and glass are buried in deep graves
and if consuming, purging, purifying hell fires do not burn con-
tinually they burn frequently and long.
It sometimes happens that from this dump of damned things
something valuable is rescued, something consigned to the Gehenna
of worthless things and total losses after deliberate consideration
and just judgment. Something is salvaged like the steel rods that
reinforce a garden wall, or a rare half pound of imported Roque-
fort a new house boy judged past salvation.
Almost perversely, rimming the Mission's Gehenna, grow
plants and flowers sometimes more choice than the Garden boasts.
Carpets of luxurious mint creep almost to the consuming flames.
This summer the purest white buddleia flourished in the very
breath of incinerating fires. Fair poplars and willows have rooted
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and grown from discarded trimmings. Cleome, petunias and bouncing Bet riot around. Sometimes a rose roots and
lately irises lovelier than any the Garden had were redeemed. It almost seems that these unwanted castaways
discarded along with the cinders and rubbish are most favored by God and angels.
Could be in the great day of judgment of souls surprise will be rife to behold the sovereign sanctity of saints divinely
redeemed from the damnation of human trial and justice.

CHRISTMAS, 1951
Dear Greater Congregation:
I think I have always written the Mission Booklets to you far more with my heart than with my pen. And this year,
just when I have a rather special Christmas Booklet in my mind, my heart has gone and cracked up a little and is
just now out of order. And with my heart my body, mind and soul seem sympathetically a little out of order, too, and
I just can not possibly write you a Booklet now. If you are even one tenth part as sorry as I am you will be quite
grieved enough.
On Sunday, November twenty-fifth, I returned to Sherwood after two weeks' stay in our hospital in Sewanee. I came
home with the knowledge that I had been involved in a not too serious heart ailment which had responded to
treatment and that I probably had years of fair health and reasonable service ahead. If I knew any more than just that
I should gladly share the knowledge with you.
Although I have to be quiet for a while the Mission will go on about as usual. Christmas, with all its great and joyous
blessings will be much the same as those other wondrous ones in years gone by. I am sure that Christmas trees,
Christmas parties, family baskets will lack little. That those usual unusual Christmas gifts here and there so
frightfully needed and according such extraordinary relief and happiness, will all, thanks to you, be given.
There will be no lack of Advent and Christmas Masses. L the Mission priest, am told that if I am generally good I
may celebrate the Midnight Mass-the most precious event of the festival.
Please do not be too impatient with me for periodically cracking up and going to a hospital. You may keep in mind
that
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between my last entrance into the hospital a few weeks ago and my previous discharge from the hospital twenty-two
months ago I baptized 156 souls, presented 55 for confirmation and celebrated the Holy Communion 551 times and I
believe in other efforts similarly advanced the glory of the Kingdom of God.
Of course, I know, that you will in no part fail in your support of the Mission because I am temporarily handicapped.
And I know that you will patiently accept Peter's short little notes of acknowledgment of your generous favors. As for
me I shall be wishing I could sing for each of you a solemn Te Deum in expression of my just personal gratitude.
It is my earnest prayer, and the prayer of the Mission, that for you, God's richest blessings will make this the holiest
Christmas you have ever known.
Affectionately yours, Fr. Jones.
MID-JANUARY, 1952 With outside temperature 76 degrees and all the violets in the garden blooming. Dear Greater
Congregation:
In spite of my decrepitude Christmas was as usual. My largest personal contribution was hearing confessions. Sixty
small cedar trees decked the church as usual. The poor ate goodies and were satisfied. The traditional magic of the
Mission's Christmas trees (always plural) with the abundance of your gifts prevailed. The midnight Mass was the
focal point of all.
I wrote you that I expected to celebrate the midnight Mass. I did not do so although I was in the sanctuary. Father
Spencer, O.H.C., Prior of St. Andrew's, took the midnight Mass as well as the Epiphany Mass and some others.
The Mission was greatly blessed to have a priest and preacher so greatly in demand as Father Spencer. I found it a
precious privilege to worship with the Mission congregation, a priest other than I at the altar. But certainly not the
same privilege as standing at the altar before God for my people or before my people for God.
Last Sunday I celebrated my first Mass in sixty odd days. It was the octave day of the Epiphany and the church was
still decorated, the creche with Magi still alight and enthralling. The
318



church permeated with the scent of cedar gum from the Christmas greens and the scent of incense mingled into the
Mission's especial Christmas-Epiphany perfume.
The congregation last Sunday certainly was not so large as at the midnight Mass but it was reminiscent of last
Easter. It was Father's first Mass in two months and he was wanted back at the altar. No one seemed to remember
that at Father's last Mass two months before there was perhaps the smallest congregation and the fewest number of
communions in twenty years-or to know that it was the last Mass that broke Father's heart and sent him to the
hospital.
Last Sunday when I was resting at such a long last again Peter came, suitably concerned, and whispered, "Now do
not be nervous, Father. Everything will be all right. You have not forgotten how to say Mass." Forgotten how to say
Mass! As if my lips, my hands, my feet - my body, my mind, my soul could forget a word or gesture. The Saturday
Mass of the Blessed Virgin, some of the Requiems, some others, even were I utterly blind I could say word for word
including introits, collects, epistles, gospels, propers. When I forget my right hand will indeed have forgot her
cunning.
I arn afraid that I shall ever be so grateful that I have had the privilege of baptizing 1,00O souls in the Mission in
twenty years that I shall become complacent. For a score of years God has let me baptize one person for every
Sunday I have been present in the Mission. There were exactly 52 baptisms in 1951. Also there were 33
confirmations in 1951 and provided the priest was in Sherwood there was no morning without a Mass until November
12th.
You will remember Sherwood was supported for 60 years by lime manufacturing. The lime plant closed, two, three
years ago. Sherwood always had had an unequal number of unfortunate poor when this misfortune was dumped in
her lap. Men of 40, 50, 60 years who had never worked elsewhere and who would have worked 30, 20, 10 years
longer in the lime plant have found it most difficult and often impossible to find employment elsewhere.
In 1951 many Mission communicants moved away. Many entire families and a greater number of individuals left. But
there certainly is not yet an empty dwelling house in Sherwood and I can not count one single bed that is empty
come go-to-bed time.
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A number of men still live in Sherwood with their families who are employed 25 to 75 or even more miles away. A
greater number live in Sherwood who are not now employed at all.
Some families are helped by federal and state agencies. Red Cross aid helps in some emergencies. The Mission
often helps when neither helps nor helps inadequately. Take ONE emergency among several today, a family of father
and mother and ten children. They never needed help before. Two children are married. Of the other eight none are
employed. The father is ill and will be for a long time. Because of some technicality the Red Cross can not help. It
will be four to six weeks before the family can receive the first county-state-federal check. Yesterday, today, many
tomorrows they definitely have no food except from the Mission.
More than 2,00O visitors came into the Mission Garden last summer. Certainly visitors from most states and Canada
and Mexico. And why not? The garden is a lovely garden and it is so obviously God's. There pervades an
atmosphere so distinctly spiritual.
Heaven knows the Mission does not seem to need any more garden. And yet it does. A garden like our garden is
expensive, especially in this day. But the larger our garden grows, the more expensive it becomes, the nearer
visitors sustain it by their alms and gifts.
Will you make your calendar offering this year for garden enlargement and upkeep? The Mission needs to build more
garden, to keep in prime condition a larger garden at greater expense, to attract more visitors to pay more money to
make the garden self sustaining. But primarily the Mission needs to build and keep more garden to sustain more
workers. Workers in dire need, workers that can earn the price of food rather than beg the food.
Should the Mission be so fortunate as to receive a total of $2,000.0O in response to the cadendars this year the sum
would equal the pay of one unskilled adult laborer for one year. How much more will that sum do herel Our young
men are now skilled gardeners. Raymond and his wife and two children will live. Bill and his crippled mother and
school girl sister will be supported. A score such workers will garden through the year. And many more
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will earn food for a week, or a month, or shoes, or medicine, or a doctor's care.
I ask then your alms for the Mission Garden, your gifts to enhance the glory of God, to enshrine the loveliness of
God, to disburse the mercy of God.
How invalid is an invalid? Just how inadequate, infirm, impotent? I suppose I am a semi-invalid. I still get around. But
every new year sees me more restricted. However, I am told by the guardians of my health that I can reasonably
expect years of restricted service. I take it they mean perhaps a half day's work in a week's time-and of course I
mean a half day's work according to my standards. But if I can prod my people, baptize my children, say my
Masses and my prayers, bury my dead, garden a little withal and write you a Booklet as the seasons change T shall
gladly take the cash and let the credit go and I am not too sure that I shall not accomplish as much in the end as
many a robust contemporary. Hold up my hands with your prayers.
May God richly bless this new year for you. Affectionately yours, Father Jones.
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