Category: letters from our executive director

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Sunlight streaming through a blossoming tree in a vibrant green field with clear skies and a forestry backdrop.
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Seeing Our Faces in the Light

May 5, 2024 Dear Friends, Photographs lie in neat piles on my desk, but I am stressed because of a tight deadline. Over two hundred people are gathering for dinner to honor Joyce Hadley, Sr. Mary Scullion and our own Sr. Maria DiBello at Cranaleith’s 25th anniversary gala scheduled for May 16, and we have...

A close-up of small white daisies with yellow centers in a lush green field, slightly blurred background, with a 25th-anniversary logo in the corner.
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Shadow and Light

Dear Friends, My husband, youngest daughter and I will be racing to upstate New York this Monday, chasing the solar eclipse. In the Path of Totality, we hope to stand in the moon’s shadow, marvel at the stars revealed in the daytime sky, stand breathless in the darkness and watch in wonder at the radiant...

Sunlit pastoral landscape with lush green fields, a dirt path, trees, and a dynamic sky with clouds, showcasing a stamp for "25 years of deep listening" in the corner.
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The Glimmering Light of Hope

Dear Friends, The tour guide, ten college students and I walk as quickly as we can from the parked bus, down the Spanish Steps, breathing heavily as we hurry under the black night sky along the glittering lights of the streets in Rome, Italy. We race toward the Pantheon, desperate to get into the building...

A number 2 0 2 4 surrounded by christmas decorations.
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A New Journey

Dear Beloved Cranaleith Community, As we stand on the threshold of a new year, all of us at Cranaleith are filled with profound gratitude and anticipation. The journey we’ve collectively traversed in the past year has been one of both challenges and triumphs, growth, and reflection. We find ourselves humbled by the resilience and love...

A red bird sitting on top of a tree branch.
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Listening Deeply: A Profoundly Powerful Act

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...

A wooden table with leaves and berries on it.
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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...

A path through the woods in autumn.
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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...

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