Dear Friends, Parked in the cell phone lot at the Philadelphia International Airport, I listen for a call. Two of the facilitators for Cranaleith’s staff/board “racial healing initiative” weekend retreat are arriving soon from California and Missouri, and I am here to give them a ride to the center. The phone should ring at any second. In the silence of the car’s closed space, I hear the muffled sounds of jet engines, buses, cars, the laughter of four men joking with one another outside my passenger door. It is quiet in here, but my mind is noisy with anticipation and...
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Listen for the Language of Wholeness
All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 4:15 Dear Friends, At last month’s Harvest Festival at Cranaleith, four women from the neighborhood stand in front of the small table where we are giving away for free a few hundred of the native trees and shrubs remaining from the 2500 trees that had already been distributed as part of our partnership with the Keystone 10 Million Tree Partnership initiative. Recent immigrants to Somerton, the women speak no English, only...
October 22nd, 2023: Walking With One Another
Hello from the airplane en route to Philadelphia. Besides feeling cramped from the long flight, I am immensely grateful for all the blessings of this week in Rome to support the Catholic Church’s Synod on Synodality 2023. First of all, I have encountered many wonderful people, each one doing good in the world – for women, for the marginalized, for a Church that is more welcoming and more faithful to the Gospel. It always heartens me to meet others who are “rowing in the same direction.” I am not alone in making the world more merciful. Many other people of...
October 19, 2023: Praying With Pope Francis
Wow! This week is flying! On Tuesday, friends and I had a guided tour of the Gesu, the Jesuit Church of the Holy Name of Jesus, and of the rooms in which St. Ignatius Loyola lived. As you can see, the church was designed in the awesomely garish Baroque style of the sixteenth century. The vision of the Holy Name of Jesus, surrounded by angel choirs covers the ceiling and appears to spill down to us humans on the earth below. I was moved by the painting of Jesuit superior general, Pedro Arrupe at the foot of the cross –...
October 16, 2023: My First Full Day in Rome!
Ciao from Roma to everyone in the Cranaleith community! My first full day here in support of the Synod on Synodality involved travelling to the headquarters of the Christian Brothers, the LaSallian Consulate, to co-facilitate a workshop for young adults studying in Rome. The aim was to give them an experience of the synodal process of deep listening to the Spirit in themselves and in others. (Sounds familiar to all us Cranaleith folks, que no?) Eleven students from Fordham, one from Notre Dame and two from St. John-St. Benedict’s, MN, attended. Cranaleith’s own Maureen O’Connell, who is currently working on...
An Interconnected and Sacred Creation
When Cranaleith first opened our doors as a spiritual center, we had experienced very little rainfall over the Spring and Summer. The pond was nearly dry. The vegetation around the pond was dying, and the surrounding trees were languishing. One of our first visiting groups were women from a Mercy ministry in North Philadelphia who reflected on the pond in the course of their retreat day. They saw it as an image of their own spiritual thirst. They learned that the pond was fed by only one weak stream, flowing through the pond and into the nearby creek. They heard...
Listen to the Space Between
“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10. Dear Friends, At Cranaleith, the crickets chirp loudly in the meadow behind the historic house, in the space we are actively turning “wild,” crisscrossed by winding pathways Fred (core volunteer) has mown into the deep, tall grass. In 1897, Amos Dolbear found that the rate of the crickets’ chirping directly correlates to the ambient temperature of the air. Cold? Slow chirps. Warm? Faster. Try it for yourself. Count the number of chirps in 14 seconds, then add 40 to find the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. You will find that...
A Wellspring of Mercy
Dear Friends, Stepping out barefoot on the warm boards of our back deck, my younger daughter and I crane our necks to watch in amazement as hundreds of black birds, Common Grackles, fly through the trees in our woods, sliding between the branches, wings rustling, forming and reforming in synchronized groupings, swooping across the sky, settling briefly on the branches. We marvel at their silence and occasional soft chattering. My daughter tries to capture it happening on video. She wants others to see it—see what’s happening. At Cranaleith, we are preparing to celebrate Mercy Day on September 24—a day set...
If These Walls Could Talk
Dear Friends, “Negative space” is a term used in art to describe the space surrounding a subject—that essential and important “empty” space surrounding the positive space in a composition. I am thinking about that concept while standing with Sr. Ellen Murray in the impossibly crowded, narrow hallway of Sr. Helen David Brancato’s art studio. Ellen and I are there to preview Helen’s #BlackLivesMatter art exhibit, scheduled to be hosted at Cranaleith this September. Surrounded by the layers of Sr. Helen’s framed paintings, I listen to Helen’s quiet, soft voice as she describes the profound beauty and dignity of every person’s story...
The Deep Springs Within Us
Dear Friends, Members of the staff have been watching closely the water of the pond, worrying about several ropey, green strands of algae. Because the waterfall has been temporarily blocked, the bright orange goldfish gather around the submerged bubblers, gills flashing as they gulp for oxygen. At our staff retreat, Sr. Maria begins by reminding us of the time when Cranaleith’s natural springs were once thought crushed, lost—until those digging the pond uncovered two fresh springs—sudden, gushing geysers of water. She pauses her storytelling and invites each of us to pour water from the clear glass pitcher into the round bowl...