By Walt Garlington
Diuma among the Mercians;
Budoc in Ireland and Brittany;
Gunthild the servant of the Germans –
Missionaries in the Master’s fields,
Harvesting the ripe grain,
Fertilizing and watering the young shoots,
Clearing the soil of the rocks and weeds
Of idolatry and false teaching,
And sowing the splendid Gospel seed –
This is how you spent your lives,
Sometimes far from home.
In Heaven now, your work has ceased,
But your love has not. So we pray,
“Enlarge your heart, include the South;
Make us also a fertile field
For the Father, stalks glistening
With the dew of holiness.”
Then will we be glad
Like our Orthodox kin of old
For the gifts God has bestowed
Because of your kindness:
Saints of our own, the most Southern
Of Southrons, to stand before the Throne,
Beseeching the mercy of the Lord,
That He increase the Southern family in Heaven,
That the circle would truly be unbroken.
Walt Garlington is a chemical engineer turned writer and editor of the website Confiteri: A Southern Perspective. This longtime Southern Baptist, then Anglican, was united to the Orthodox Church in 2012 and makes his home in Louisiana where he attends a GOA parish.
