At the beginning of 2008, Martha Gardner of Maplewood, NJ, and Jabez Van Cleef (pictured at left) of Madison, NJ, both Episcopalians in the Diocese of Newark, NJ, engaged in a dialogue about poetry. They were imagining ways that the power of poetry could be harnessed to help the church understand itself better.
They wanted to find people in every parish who would distill their spiritual hopes and aspirations into poetry and post their poems online to create a kind of poetic commons.
They hoped that this effort would help to revive the great and illustrious tradition of spiritual poetry in the Anglican tradition.
They wanted to find in poetry a bridge of understanding between urban and suburban parishes.
They wanted to capture the idealism of youth groups and direct the attention of the people to the church's effort to achieve Millennium Development Goals, to help people who have been marginalized, impoverished, distressed.
They wanted to see and hear poetry from people in every part of the world.
After some thought, Jabez gave this initiative a name, "Love Bade Me Welcome." It is the first line of a poem by George Herbert, an English poet who was, like many another, an Anglican priest.
So here we are, and we now offer Love's welcome to you.
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