Monk Preston,

I love the new page on the communion table/altar - btw, beautiful picture of you and Monk Linda.  And yes, we all do want to see more pictures of the chapel and to share in your lives even from a distance...thank you for letting us in...thank you for all the work you do in your roles as a teacher and source of inspiration.  Please do add more photos as you feel comfortable.

My personal request would be a nice large jpg of the chapel altar that I could use as desktop background for my PC...that would help remind me to offer my work to the Lord during the day!

Much love,

Monk Karen (New Jersey)

Info. from The Prayer Foundation ™:

• Right-click on that picture (or any other) on our website and click "Save Picture As".
• Save it to your "My Pictures" Folder (or any other Folder of your choice).
• Once in one of your Folders, go to that Folder and right-click photo; click "Set As Desktop".
• Close out of it, and it should now be on your Desktop.
• Note: the picture chosen should be roughly the same shape/proportions as your Desktop or it may appear "stretched" out of shape oddly.

We did this ourselves, and now have the Chapel Altar/Communion Table photo as our own "desktop" (even though the real thing is just in the next room!).  We like to change our computer desktop photo from time to time, but always return to our own personal favorite, the beautiful painting "Venerable Bede Translating John" by J. D. Penrose.

Please subscribe me to the E-Newsletter.

I am so blessed by reading your pages and learning and growing.

Weekly I go to the prayer requests and read and pray over them.

You and The Prayer Foundation are on my personal prayer list.  I am praying and believing that 2008 will be a great year for your ministry.

Brother John

1/25/08__________________________________

Come On Preston!                                                                                          Monk Preston, I commend your desire to get back to the monastic values of the historical church but I think you have erred in some of your representations on your website.  You cite deeply Catholic sources while claiming tenets of various Protestant ideologies.  Luther put down monasticism in his own time and thought it was a scourge of Christianity, yet he is posted on your webpages as a herald of the true faith.                                                                                                          The more I read the sadder the story goes.  Come on, your whole website is filled with historical inaccuracy, I am sincerely grieved.       So, were the monks that you quote Born Again?  They believed in the sacraments, church dogma, the order of church authority as seen through the Bishops.                                                                                  St. Francis is so far removed from what you would call Biblical Christianity, it is laughable.  ...sola sola sola ridiculous!                            I will give you this, you are drawing from some of the best sources that Catholics and Protestants have to offer, but what gives you the right to create a matrix of Christian thought and practice as if I'm watching Martin all over again?                                                                                But you want to rebuild what your Protestant fathers tried to destroy.  Frankly, the Reformers you quote, all but Billy, would see you more as a monastic Anabaptist and have you killed or in the very least uprooted from your home.                                                                                       One more fresh move of God, how boring.                                             (No Name, State, or Country Given)

Comment from The Prayer Foundation ™: Commending our "desire to get back to the monastic values of the historic church"; saying that we are "drawing from some of the best sources that Catholics and Protestants have to offer"; commenting that looking at our ministry is like "watching another Martin (Luther) all over again" (whose shoes, indeed, we are not worthy to unloose); and finally, condemning us as another (albeit "boring") "fresh move of God".  All we can say is (to turn the old phrase upon its head): "With enemies like these, who needs friends?".  Thank you for your most encouraging comments.  And we mean that sincerely.