Praise God in His Sanctuary
From the beginning people have used #Sanctuary for worship. The very entrance message reads 'Praise God in His Sanctuary - courtesy of a wonderful lady who uses the channel sometimes to just sit and to be at peace. The bots are trained to lead you in Evensong, parts of Compline, provide you with a bible reading or quotation and even to start you off with a few prayers.

Sanctuary Chat
Some of us want to chat - to mull over the bible readings, to work on a problem, or simply to find out what is happening with our friends. This is the place for such musings.

Prayer-Group

This is a room for those prayers you may not with to share with everyone. For quiet 'prayer-storming' and matters of discretion. Maybe even for praying about what is going on in #Sanctuary-Chat. If you are there alone - you don't even have to type a name . To light a candle - simply type !candle !rose !grey - and your candle will appear on the screen in front of you.

To access these channels and to see whether their style suits you, simply Click Here Please

WHAT IS IRC #Sanctuary ? 

Most of what follows was originally part of a message to Heather in which I tried somewhat feebly to explain what Inter Relay Chat is. It still seems to put it in a nutshell

IRC

You know how you can 'chat' on ICQ, sometimes with several people at once.? IRC is set up just exactly like that, but permanently. 

Cairdiuil is a particular network set up to provide 'rooms' where people can meet. So the Sitting Room has a Java chat application which will take people directly onto Cairdiuil and into the room or - as it is known in Internet Relay Chat parlance the Channel. So # means channel, and #sanctuary is a particular channel set aside for people who need someone to talk to. People with Mirc or pirch or one of those programmes can go onto the network and enter #sanctuary from there, or people browsing the angelfire site can wander in from the page. Vickie stays in there, keeping it open nearly all day and half the night too. 

We use specialized 'clients' or programmes to connect to irc usually. I can't use the java chat at all, so vickie always has to test that link for me 
 

TWO OF THE MOST POPULAR IRC 'CLIENTS' ARE MIRC, AND PIRCH.
You can download either of these by clicking on one of the logos below. 
 

It seems that both programmes are now pretty streamlined, and have the Server options in their 'set-up' menu. Earthlights might not be there so if you are using Mirc, you may need to type in your status window on the bottom line the following words, ( copy and paste if you find it difficult) 

/server carina.earthlights.net:6667.

Alternatively you can type /server carina.earthlights.net and press enter. 

Then visit us in #sanctuary by typing /join #sanctuary. 
We'll try to answer any technical questions you may have, and will take it from there. 

HISTORY
 

The words that, in a way, started all this:

It is nice to have the companionship of His presence, but sometimes it is nice to have, like the little boy said, someone with skin on :))

- Heather, 21 January, 1999

We began our Channel Sanctuary life in StarChat.  It was deliberately a quiet channel, though there were times when we had special visitors. The night a young woman dropped in to ask if we minded that she had just registered #Sanctuary on another net, for example. Or our friend Bettina, from Australia. We have no way of contacting her again, or of telling her where we've gone. 
#kindness had an emphasis on our relationship with our companion animals. But it quickly became obvious that the channel was important for other reasons. We had a constant visitor from Hawaii who was concerned for the Native peoples and culture. One night a visitor to #sanctuary said 'I haven't been abused, is it all right to talk ?' 

There were, indeed, themes behind our visitors. Loneliness, ill health, abuse, being out of kilter with the environment, being out of kilter with the assumptions of our civilization. Often Vickie stayed in the channel by herself for hours and even days on end. Sometimes the channel was a place for prayer. Sometimes one would pray while the other attended to what had to be done. There was one day when there were so many deaths that it was almost too much for us. 

There was more than one night when someone came in in an abusive frame of mind. Another when someone asked in a technical 'help' channel if there was anywhere he could just 'talk'. An IRC op suggested #sanctuary, but was asked to stay when the gentleman concerned realized that he was speaking with a woman. These times, these conversations are private. Nothing that is said in them is recorded, logged, re-read or passed on. The details will never be passed around for others to think about or to discuss. 

Then came what was for me a great blow. My removal from irc.starchat.net and the folding of #sanctuary and #kindness, without much idea of how to tell people we had gone, without 'advertising' another net. 

As you already know, a new home was found for us almost before we had lost the old one.  A friend had registered #sanctuary before I even visited the new net. 
 
 

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