Home for the Holidays

This month's blog for the Moravian Church BCM December 29 newsletter begins and ends with sea voyages in winter.




In 1735 the second contingent of "Moravians" arrived in Savannah, GA to supplement the mission to the Creek "Indians" there. Accompanying them was John Wesley, sent as a young Anglican Priest to serve the spiritual needs of English Settlers in Savannah.

Although my blogs are titled Coffee with Moravian "Ancestors", I've taken liberties by adding  imagined conversation with those who have opinions about Moravians who influenced them. This coffee conversation provides John Wesley an opportunity to reminisce on his encounters with Moravians in America and in Europe - encounters which influenced the formation of the Methodist Church.

This blog ends with the 1740 arrival of Moravians to the wintery forests and rivers of Pennsylvania. Bethlehem Pennsylvania was named on Christmas Eve by those who would establish a settlement on these newly purchased lands. They were followed by Moravians  called the "Sea Congregation", sent across the Atlantic from rural Germany to the wilderness of America, to establish a base from which indigenous woodland tribes would be educated and, if willing, be converted to the beliefs of the white European.
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My artwork depicts a prayerful departure of these "missionaries" from a European port. I invite you to reflect on Christmas celebration centuries ago when life was no less complicated by the arrival of migrants. I wish you peace, comfort and joy for this season and the new year.

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