Where have all the editors gone....

I have edted the Opening Words i requseted editing help with. Strikthrough text has been deeted, and italicized text has been added. Updated doc is here in this post. Thank you all for your input to date.

Updated Opening Words.

Much very useful comment happened in this post. Thank you all. Following is a much updated doc:( This does set a mood, doesn't it? )

Further comments, editoral or otherwise, are quite welcome. Oh, btw, MS Word insists that the penultimate paragraph, starting "Sacred because...", is a fragment.