NO MORE TRACTS FROM TOON TO READ!

For over five years I have sent out tracts, meditations, and short studies; and several thousands of them are stored here and there. Not a few made their way into magazines and parish bulletins; some were sent on to people all over the world, and yet others became the first draft of part of a booklet or book. Happily most of these thousands of 1,000-word pieces are now forgotten.

This will be my last missive into cyber space—i.e., sending out in bulk, via the web, of a short message. I am retiring from this activity, which I have enjoyed and which has kept me alert and busy! There is much going through my mind that I could write about but the time is right now to stop where I have still much to say!

Also I shall be retiring later in 2008 from editing The Mandate (which I have done for 12 years) for The Prayer Book Society of the U.S.A. Further, my term as President of the PBS of the USA and Board membership run out this year. I rejoice to see a team of much younger persons taking the helm at the PBS.

As some of you know, I have had several major setbacks to my bodily health recently. Happily, I am not confined to bed and do seek to work a normal day! But I have not got the physical stamina that I had a year or six months ago.

In a few days time, I am due to spend 3 days as an outpatient at Boston University Hospital, at its specialized Amyloidosis Research and Treatment Center. Amyloid is a rogue protein produced by the human body, which seems only to exist in order to seek to injure or destroy primary bodily organs like brain, heart, kidneys and so on. Why, and how, one gets this rare disease, which affects only a minute proportion of the population, is a mystery. (But see the Service for the Visitation of the Sick in The BCP 1662 for a clue as to the why for baptized Christians!) Specialist centers dealing with it are very few in the U.S.A. and there are none in the Pacific NW, where we live. Thus the visit to Boston on the East Coast is going to where we know the experts are.

There is no known cure for this disease, but there are ways of slowing down or stopping its effects in those persons, where it is not already too advanced.

Thank you for your interest and attention. In your charity, kindly remember us in your prayers.

Goodbye and God bless you.

Peter
drpetertoon@yahoo.com Easter III, 2008