Yours is a blog, as the song goes, “gentle on my mind”. Simple and without rhetoric, it’s a pleasure to read. I’ve been content to read without comment.

However in the aftermath of this unprdecented disaster, with the relentless telling of death and devastation and its all pervasive doom and gloom, pardon my intrusion. This bunch of prose is much inspired by and adapted from works of a poet long departed:

Mother Earth from whom all mankind proceed
God’s garden planted with yielding seed
While angels witnessed with wonderlit eyes
In whose bowers linger still stray gleams of Paradise.

To crown the dying year
Summer shed her warmest tear
Sacred earth that clothed the form divine
Groaned to spawn fearsome ripples on shores of Time.

Shattered peace of daily life
Exploding grief and harrowing strife
Death riding the foam of troubled waters
Bringing woe for fathers, mothers, sons and daughters.

Primeval source of mysterious energy and continuous birth
Waves of dearth scathing the beauty of Earth
All creation groaned and travailed in pain
Over earthly loss and pain, mortals wailed in vain.

Tens of thousands weep on desolate shore
Relentless the seas roar and waves soar
For miles of bedraggled space is seen
Land and sea merged to one in between.

A whirlwind of sorrow overtaken
The tempest shaken, breath and spirits broken
Mournful echoes of the question – Why?
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding and dying.

Fear not my child the Hand that made
The breeze and sunshine, light and shade
From the organ in the evening calm
Drew forth notes of remembered psalm.

No wail of anguish shall linger
Where he lays his strong and loving finger
Discordant echoes cease
On notes that thrill for peace

Weep to leave us, good Old Year
EMMANUEL looms over transient fears
On twilight’s gathering gloom
To lay the Old Year in the tomb.

yes, i blog about donations of items from POHD as per the links you put up (one is asking for volunteers load the items), but about donations of cash in church, i blog on it much earlier on 30th dec. here:
donation drive

hope that the church collects a lot from these 3 days.