All the vials of Lavender essential oil are gone from the St Barbara website.
Update on the damaged Lavender crop from the Convent's online newsletter says that many of the 7 year old Lavender plants were too ruined to continue growing. So the nuns must have by now planted a new crop of Lavender, to be ready, presumably for harvesting, in 2019.
Lavender, and the incredibly healing oil it produces, is such a sensitive plant that I take this destruction of the old crop as a sign from Heaven that something is rotten in Santa Paula.
One need look no further than this outrageous book the nuns sell, advertising the with the following shocking remarks :
"A History of the Orthodox Church in America 1917-1934
"This is the first documented research on the most difficult period in the history of Orthodox Christianity in America-the years after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917.Between 1917 and 1934 the Orthodox leadership in America faced the consequences of separation from its Mother Church. Using extensive original documentation, this study describes how the Diocese of North America survived this ordeal and rebuilt its administrative, economic, and canonical structure while remaining true to the ideal of the original missionaries who arrived in Kodiak in 1794, to create a local territorial Orthodox Church in North America."
This is unbelievable that nowhere is the Russian Church Abroad mentioned in these brief remarks. The 2 were combined at that time, though the hierarchs who would later break away from Rocor were doing their utmost to stir up trouble and selfishly separate during the latter part of the years covered by this slavishly pro-MP publication. "Mother Church" ? Goofed to ever leave her ? Repenting later of such a dreadful error ? Well, those were our salad days when we were green in judgment...shucks, anyone can make a mistake"
In fact, there was no other CHOICE available to anyone who was not a Marxist-Leninist, which would have ruled out the entire Russian Orthodox population in the Soviet Union or abroad. The way the nuns describe this publication appalls the non-MP-OCA-indoctrinated reader. Even if Patriarch Tikhon had NOT been able to issue his Ukaz 362, the only correct course when the Devil takes over one's patriarchate, is to establish an independent administration out of the Cheka's reach. That means abroad.
The then-called Metropolia knew this, too, and did not argue in principle until seeds of rebellion were planted, perhaps by egotistical hierarchs who wanted to hog power for themselves, such as Platon of All America and Canada, and Evlogy in Western Europe. Even up to the tragic autocephaly into which the newly renamed OCA entered, the most prominent scholars such as Frs Schmemann and Meyendorf, freely acknowledged that the Moscow Patriarchate was the tool of the Soviet state. Hence, they wrote, the MP should be regarded with a jaundiced eye, not a welcoming one.
Then the KGB and Metropolitan Nikodim [Rotov] started turning up the pressure on the Metropolia's prominent clergy. Perhaps bribes were offered besides the big carrot of legitimizing a very fragile ecclesiastical endeavor, the Metropolia, which no major Orthodox had accepted. It was viewed as almost a quack jurisdiction. Hence, its leaders were desperate for recognition. When the MP offered that in exchange for some statements pledging support for the MP and the Soviet state, the Metropolia cabal were highly tempted. They didn't mind agreeing to sign a paper that they would in essence shut up about criticizing the USSR's persecution of the Soviet church. ANYTHING for worldly honors, power, prestige... maybe money thrown in too ? Suddenly the term "Mother Church" came into vogue.
This is just a cameo glimpse into a long history of unflattering deeds, words, and outright betrayals perpetrated by the OCA. For the ruling clique [ though not for every clergyman or member, many of whom were principled enough to exit for the Russian Church Abroad after the humiliating autocephaly signed March 31, 1970 ] principles were trodden in the mud.
So THIS is the Church that the Sta Paula nuns are so proud of that they are apologizing for the OCA's ever having abandoned that poor, long suffering MP, Stalin's "church" which was charitable enough to welcome them back with open arms ?
And no doubt, gleaming eyes, planning all the infiltatrations of the U.S. These espionage operations, once so difficult due to intensive FBI surveillance on every Soviet operative in the US, would now be conducted with ease via the cooperative OCA at its many venues. What could be more of a coup for Moscow's intelligence agencies ?
So shall we celebrate this slavishly subservient behavior of the OCA to further the goals of the US's Cold War foe ? Or call it out for what it was ? Cowardice, insecurity, vanity, self-aggrandizement at the expense of any kind of principle [ almost sociopathic behavior - or shall one politely call it childish naivete : either way, revealing a complete lack of good judgment ].
Who could possibly join this church - or stay in it - knowing even a smidgeon of its embarrassingly weak historical foundation ? An organization which sold its soul to the highest bidder, Met. Nikodim and the KGb ?