Today, when nobody was looking, The Deacon’s Bench clocked visitor number 500,000.

I did a little Googling and found that’s almost the population of Las Vegas.

Wow.

Thank you all for making that possible — and for keeping this little engine chugging along, post by post, page by page, for just over a year now. I started this more or less as a lark, as a place to dump my homilies and scratch my chin and comment on oddities in the news. Then, to my astonishment, I discovered that people were actually reading this stuff. And here we are.

I know not all of you planned on being here. According to my sitemeter, I get a lot of wayward hobbyists and carpenters who are just looking for information on how to build a deacon’s bench. I suspect this wasn’t exactly what they had in mind.

Well, whatever brought you here — curiosity or Yahoo, Google or the Holy Spirit — I’m delighted you made the trip. And I hope you’ll keep coming back. There’s always more room. And I’m always happy to hear what you think. Drop me a line. Leave a comment. Sit a while and watch the paint peel and ponder What It All Means.

I remain profoundly thankful. To you. And, of course, to Him.

In my breviary, I have a folded index card on which I’ve scrawled various prayer intentions, so I never forget. I add and subtract and rewrite and scribble. Some are smudged, some barely legible. But at the top is an intention that never changes. It says “All blog readers.” That means you. I can only add to that the simple wish of an abbot I know, who closes his letters with these words: “Let us hold one another in prayer.”

Amen.

With a happy and grateful heart,
Deacon Greg

“To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us — and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him.” – Thomas Merton