Welcome, ExRanger!

Please join me in extending a very hearty WELCOME to our new author here at The Rosemary Tree, Rod Alton, also known as ExRanger, who has his own fine blog over at WTF! This is not the lifestyle I was planning on.

(Dear Readers, please feel free to welcome Rod and also put in your 2 cents worth on any of the posts here any time. )

Introducing Gabriel Stanford Espedal

Getting ready for Christmas has us all busy, so I am tardy in posting our new blogger's biography, my apologies. Introducing my friend Stanford, in his own words:

QUOTE I am from Honolulu, Hawaii (born November 1, 1951). I grew up in a non-churchgoing family. My parents were of protestant background but did not practice.

I began exploring the mysteries of life as a hippie in late 1966. LSD became my sacrament and marijuana my food for meditation. Thinking myself on the fast track to Buddhahood, I realized this path led to the deadest of dead ends. I quit drugs and was initiated into Transcendental Meditation. From TM I graduated to Zen Buddhism and became a member of the Diamond Sangha of Hawaii.
I first became a Christian on June 3, 1972. I met an evangelist named Cleo at a Jesus People coffeehouse in Waikiki, and after a four-hour conversation decided to receive Christ and be baptized. The baptism took place in the Pacific Ocean.After a study of different churches and their doctrines I decided to become a Lutheran. I also decided to study for the ministry (I was then 21). After finishing a pre-theology course at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minnesota, I went to Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary in Mequon, Wisconsin, graduating with a Masters in Divinity in 1982.

In July of that year I was ordained a pastor in Wichita Falls, Texas, and served as a Circuit Rider for two missions and several preaching stations.I met my wife Dawn after graduation from seminary; I was home for a month and she was on vacation in Hawaii, and we met in church. We were married on May 11, 1983, and have six children.

I was a Lutheran pastor for nine years. Six of those years were spent in an independent mission in El Cajon, California. But as I continued to study theology and church history from outside of a Lutheran confessional perspective it became clear that there was a major discontinuity between ancient Christianity and the Reformation.

I had long been interested in Eastern Orthodoxy. After several years of reading and discussion with an Orthodox priest friend, I was ready to convert. I was chrismated in the Orthodox Church in July 1991.In 1997 I came to see that the full reality of apostolic Christianity could only be where PETER is, and became a Catholic of the Byzantine Rite.

I expect that some of my writing on the Rosemary Tree will be on the relations of the Orthodox Churches and the Catholic Church. UNQUOTE
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New Blogger Coming To The Rosemary Tree

Dear Readers,

Please join me in welcoming new blogger Gabriel Stanford Espedal to The Rosemary Tree. Hooray! In adding a new voice I hope to deepen the content here and provide materials to support fellow truth-seekers, both Catholic and otherwise, in their walk through these troubled times. We are here in service to Our Lord and Lady, and our fellow man.

Please comment and add your ideas and suggestions to our posts.

Gabriel is someone I've "known" online on several traditional Catholic forums over the past two years. He is a fine writer, a devout and articulate fellow Melkite, and a family man with a wife and six children. He will start his blogging tomorrow, on the Feast of Saint Nicholas, Wonderworker of Myra.

Welcome to The Rosemary Tree, Gabriel!