Peter- 1st October 1993

THE Apostle Peter gathered tenets and testimony, and pledged to incorporate all in the one body, lest otherwise it corrupt and let go of this world. He went to this one and that, and as a magician spellbinds or a spider sews, he caught the overflow from these now liberated men and collected the sediment from which his beloved Temple stood firm. And it was and was not, all that was hoped for: the ministries, some persimmon, some olive-green and some as pale nectar, delicate and palatable.


There was fury abounding in the wars of the righteous. There were great commissions and assignments from noble saints and martyrs; most of whom went unnoted.
The 'shaking out' of demons from the Globe moved them into untracked hemispheres and into neighboring planes, beneath rock and into primitive domain. The squealing from their condemnation could be heard by each purified man.


The wretched, the dismembered, became as new; for hitherto they had been left to rot though still alive. The inner man was dejected, suffering a poverty of soul in a wasteland of a loveless Humanity. Now by His Pure Example the 'worthless' became sovereigns of that beauteous place promised to the goodly and the confessor, and to the blameless little children that too often were taken unto death.

The Charities, of which there were a perfect dozen, took on employment in purpose by these active men. Arguments profusely stormed, as scholars dictated the text in context and then out again. The moralists, the purists and the archivists, all cleaved to what certainty they could maintain. That the Church be a vestibule for our Father, yes, and likewise the Palace of our Christ, that too, and the holy space wherein Man could broach the Divine - and added to these there were inclinations of anxiety and protectiveness which echoed the original characterization borne by Peter himself. That it was the exact preservation of this, the representation to carry over the centuries from Christ's Ministry to now, that the living Spirit be caught and contained in this manifestation of faith made concrete.


And this was and was not - the preserves held the air of a stale tomb and invited the living men and women to objectify the remnants of their deity.


But that was not all it stood for - as stand it did in a world which trembled and labored with new knowledge. As the shafts of fresh wisdom encompassed the ancient terrains, it was the Church herself which protected the reborn and nurtured the novitiate of character and determination.


Peter believed in the marriage between truth and perpetual reasoning, that the Mission of Christ should be a never-to-end saga invoking His Purpose, by account of His Propriety from the beginning of time (being the notation A.D.).


Peter lost his fingers, the digits one by one were removed due to illness, and these he kept and later gave to separate offices of the extending ministry.


'Heaven on Earth' is not a call to materialize Heaven or even to enslave her in an unholy coupling. May we be as Heaven-like as to call her majesty to us; and be perfect enough to contain her furious Love.