We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

Photos

Blessings of the Backpacks in 2019

This was our first separate backpack service, a chance for a more informal service in the late afternoon before school begins the next day. We had one family with 4 eager children ready to go back to school. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon with mild temperatures for Aug. 11.

Everyone showed off their new backpacks with all the gear. The service was a shortened communion service with a reading from Deuteronomy, Chapter 6, Verses 4-8 and Luke Chapter 2, Verses 41-52, Jesus as a student

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1. Story

2. More Photos

3. Bulletin

Butterflies in July

July is often called the butterfly month, and with good reason. They seem to be more visible. At St. Peter’s we have swallow tails, monarchs and this one taken in 2022. There are about 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. About 700 inhabit North America.
Great Spangled Fritillary

A Collection of Day lilies

Luke 12:27 ESV “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”


Friday, June 17, 2022

Autumnal Tints

Shortly before his death, Henry David Thoreau finished an extraordinary ode to autumn in his essay, “Autumnal Tints.” Enjoy the entire essay here – and read on for a few of its highlights, with Thoreau’s lovely prose laid out as poems for your reading pleasure.

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October is the month of painted leaves.
Their rich glow now flashes round the world.
As fruits and leaves and the day itself
acquire a bright tint just before they fall,
so the year near its setting.
October is its sunset sky;
November the later twilight.

+++++

It is pleasant to walk over the beds
of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves.
How beautifully they go to their graves!
How gently lay themselves down
and turn to mould!
Painted of a thousand hues, and fit
to make the beds of us living.
So they troop to their last resting place,
light and frisky. They put on no weeds,
but merrily they go scampering over the earth,
selecting the spot,
choosing a lot,
ordering no iron fence…
How many flutterings
before they rest quietly in their graves!
They that soared so loftily, how contentedly
they return to dust again, and are laid low,
resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree,
and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind,
as well as to flutter on high!
They teach us how to die.

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Let your walks now be a little more adventurous;
ascend the hills. If, about the last of October,
you ascend any hill in the outskirts of our town,
and probably of yours, and look over the forest,
you may see well, what I have endeavored to describe.
All this you surely will see, and much more,
if you are prepared to see it,—if you look for it…
Objects are concealed from our view,
not so much because they are out of the course
of our visual ray as because we do not bring
our minds and eyes to bear on them;
for there is no power to see in the eye itself,
any more than in any other jelly.
We do not realize how far and widely,
or how near and narrowly, we are to look.
The greater part of the phenomena of Nature
are for this reason concealed from us all our lives.
The gardener sees only the gardener’s garden…
There is just as much beauty
visible to us in the landscape
as we are prepared to appreciate,
—not a grain more.

+ Henry David Thoreau

Fall, 2013

October

BY ROBERT FROST
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

  (full size gallery)

Early Fall, Oct, 2015

Early fall, Oct. 4, 2015 (full size gallery)

Fall is a wonderful time to pause and look at nature all around you. You have to take the time and not think of the minutes. The time before church is my time to let nature envelop me.

The effect of fall is magnified after a rain. Add another plus for leaves beginning to fall around you in all their color. It’s the sound of the crunching of leaves beneath your fee. It’s a time to look at those small things along the ground- small flowers, water pellets on leaves. It’s time to lookup to see fall advancing in our trees.  So many things we never notice or take the time to see.

Water is life giving – and destructive. The effect of rain was seen this week along the gravestones, often with leaves falling around.  The wet leaves along the ground reflect up at you. Then over the river to see the water rushing along as I am trying to be still.

Fall is a time to get out Robert Frost for yet another fall.

October
By Robert Frost

“O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall”