I just found out that the Rev. Dr. Peter Toon has had a stroke and that his health is continuing to decline. He is a well known Anglican author and he has been on of the key figures bringing us the new Anglican Prayer Book that was recently published at the start of 2008 (updating the language of the Book of Common Book Prayer for all of us to enjoy in modern English). Here is a letter that Jamie Bennett passed along from Rev. Toon…
I shall be retiring later in 2008 from editing The Mandate (which I have done for 12 years) for The Prayer Book Society of the U.S.A. Further, my term as President of the PBS of the USA and Board membership run out this year. I rejoice to see a team of much younger persons taking the helm at the PBS.
As some of you know, I have had several major setbacks to my bodily health recently. Happily, I am not confined to bed and do seek to work a normal day! But I have not got the physical stamina that I had a year or six months ago. In a few days time, I am due to spend 3 days as an outpatient at Boston University Hospital, at its specialized Amyloidosis Research and Treatment Center. Amyloid is a rogue protein produced by the human body, which seems only to exist in order to seek to injure or destroy primary bodily organs like brain, heart, kidneys and so on. Why, and how, one gets this rare disease, which affects only a minute proportion of the population, is a mystery. (But see what the Service for the Visitation of the Sick in The BCP 1662 has to say about it for a clue as to the why for baptized Christians!)
Specialist centers dealing with it are very few in the U.S.A. and there are none in the Pacific NW, where we live. Thus the visit to Boston on the East Coast is going to where we know the experts are. There is no known cure for this disease, but there are ways of slowing down or stopping its effects in those persons, where it is not already too advanced. Thank you for your interest and attention. In you charity, kindly remember us in your prayers. Goodbye and God bless you.
Please keep him in in your thoughts and prayers over the coming weeks and months.
[HT: James Grant]
