Ghost of a Garden

The garden at midnight,
in 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.

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.

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 glorious midnight Mass.”

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,
it 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 the acolytes
the Mission ever had,
all who were ever numbered
with the Mission
or the Greater Congregation.

All the children,
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.

And she might actually hold in her arms
no less than the eternal Christmas Child.
While all the stars of the heavens
gathered of their will for her diadem,
pale in His blinding glory.

— George W. Jones
From the book "Life's Journey".

Photo by Dan Hardison
Hickory Nut Gorge, Western North Carolina

Also available:

Read or print PDF

Book: Life’s Journey

From 1932 until his death in 1952, George W. Jones published The Booklet – a quarterly report of activities at Epiphany Mission in Sherwood, Tennessee. Life's Journey is a collection of essays and poems that appeared in issues of The Booklet.

After the death of his mother in 1939, family and friends tried to encourage him to come home to Georgia to live. “Are not ten years of service in Sherwood and three thousand Masses at those altars enough? Why not come home to your people and the soil you love and grow roses and write story books?” His response was simple, “Lonely without mother! Home to brethren! They so little understand. These Sherwood people, ...these souls growing in God’s Sherwood garden – these are the priest’s mother and his brethren.”

It was through The Booklet that George W. Jones would write about daily life in this small remote area of the Cumberland Mountains, the hardships of living through the Great Depression and World War II, and include his inspirational and spiritual writings. Through his writing, he not only touched the lives of the people at the Mission and in the valley, but also the host of people that comprised the "Greater Congregation" – friends and supporters of the Mission all across the country.

"His were the hands and his was the labor that God used to build Epiphany Mission. His invisible memorial remains in the lives and the hearts of the people of Sherwood." – The Rev. Joseph S. Huske

Life's Journey (Lulu.com, Hardcover, 278 pages) also includes black and white photographs that appeared in issues of The Booklet, and an essay on George W. Jones. All proceeds from the sale of Life's Journey go to Epiphany Mission Episcopal Church.

For more information on Life's Journey and view a preview of the book, visit www.epiphanymission.org/lifes_journey.htm.

The Cathedral

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.

The mountain
squarely west
becomes the high altar
of the cathedral.

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.

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 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 clear,
“Be still. Know God
in the work of His hands.”

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.

All the daylong
the heavenly dome
and all its roof
has declared His glory.

And then day is done
and the shadows of the evening
as the vanguards of night
steal across the sky.

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 open very wide
to man below.

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

The great altar is dark
and it is night.

— George W. Jones
From the book "Life's Journey".

Photo by Dan Hardison
Balsam, North Carolina

Also available:

Read or print PDF

Life’s Journey

I

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 in 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 power,
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.

II

“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 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,
the boats you have made
with ballast and trim
may be small craft,
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 they will weather the storms to be
and make havening harbor
on the shores of the Kingdom of Heaven.

— George W. Jones
From his book "Life's Journey".

Photo by Dan Hardison
Asheville, North Carolina

Also available:
Read or print PDF
Listen or Download MP3


* Robert Louis Stevenson from “Where Go the Boats?”

Seasons of Life

Death draws near to the season
as another cycle of the fruits
of the earth is passing.

Old age is upon the year . . .

Spring time is birth time,

the time of quickening –

summer is the time of growth,

of fullness –

autumn sees maturity,

ripeness, and passing –

and winter is death.

In the Mission’s valley
summer imperceptibly wanes.
The vanguards of autumn grow bolder
and Indian summer is upon the valley.

Hoarding the passing loveliness

of a season ending

and embracing the pleasant promises

of a season to come

is Indian summer.

The skies are the bluest
of the twelve months.
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 springtime 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.

— George W. Jones
From the forthcoming book "Life's Journey".

Photos by Dan Hardison
Fall Creek Falls State Park, Tennessee

Also available:
Read or print PDF
Listen or Download MP3

The Gardener

Lord,

You made me a 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 a rose or violet
persist in growing up
obnoxious weeds.

Lord, I pray,
make all plants in my 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 some good 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.

— George W. Jones
From the forthcoming book "Life's Journey"

Photo by Dan Hardison
Wilmington, North Carolina

Also available:
Read or print PDF
Listen or Download MP3

Promise of the Garden

The garden has been a dormant thing
through weary winter, dull and drab,
and full of shrouds of burlap and straw
entombing plants against the frost.

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 –
pregnant with promise of spring.

When Easter comes to the Garden,
a thousand entombed plants
will be bursting forward and upward
into resurrection.

— George W. Jones
From the forthcoming book "Life's Journey"

Photo by Dan Hardison
Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, Georgia

Also available:
Read or print PDF
Listen or Download MP3