Friends of OurJo

After www.stathome.co.uk.co was withdrawn, rather than move to another free web-site, we decided it would be better to purchase a basic web-hosting package and our own permanent domain name. I have therefore paid the princely sum of £32.88 for the domain name and web hosting for the next 2 years. Fr. Roy immediately offered to pay this amount from Parish funds, but I have turned down this generous offer as I am very aware that this web-site will only be used by a small minority of parishioners, and I do not want to be accused, directly or indirectly, of wasting parish funds by people who do not use the internet. While I am quite happy to pay this amount myself for this 2 year period, if anyone wishes to contribute towards this expense I will make them a Friend of Our Jo!!

I am sorry that the benefits of being a Friend are not large ones, but I can offer the following optional benefits

1. You can have your name added to a benefactors list. The amount donated will not be published, although occasionally i will publish the total amount contributed.

2. If you have a favourite prayer, poem, picture, etc then this can be put in the Friends part of the web-site.

3. If you run a business or wish to publicise a local society I can do this on the web-site.

4. Any other ideas?

April 30th 2002 - I am delighted to announce that we have the first friend of OurJo, who has donated the very generous sum of £10. Many thanks to the donor, who wishes to remain anonymous and would like to share this poem with us.

The Ship     By Bishop Brent (1862 - 1929)

What is dying?
I am standing on the sea shore,
a ship sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the ocean.
She is an object of beauty
and I stand watching her
till at last she fades
on the horizon
and someone at my side says
'She is gone'.
Gone. Where?
Gone from my sight - that is all.
She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars
as she was when I saw her,
and just as able to bear her load of living
freight to its destination.
The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me,
not in her;
and just at that moment when someone at my side says,
'She is gone '
there are others who are watching her coming,
and other voices take up a glad shout -
'There she comes!'
- and that is dyin

June 9th 2002 - Ourjo now has two friends, we received a generous donation of £5 yesterday. Thank you to the donor, who also wishes to remain anonymous
While these large donations are extremely welcome it would be very gratifying to receive some smaller donations from more people - £1 would be great - and so would some contributions to the content of the website. Then it would be well on the way to becoming a REAL community web-site.

August 20th 2003 - Nowadays there is a lot said about success but not much about failure. We all of us experience failure in many ways every day of our lives. This little poem written in 1991 by Katherine Charnley may help.

In failure

God is frail.

He finds us 
In failure
And dark.

The more we fail,
The closer
We draw to him.

Failing
Is the hardest gift
Of all.