Dear Friends, For our staff retreat on Monday, I hurry to the boardroom, gripping two heavy boxes of mirrors that nearly slip from my hands. In the room, I ask everyone to lift the mirrors in front of them and invite them to gaze into their own eyes for 5 minutes. It’s a contemplative practice,...
Dear Friends, Elizabeth (Director of Hosted Groups) and I kneel on the rough planks of the front porch of the Knowlton Mansion trying to fix the frame of a canvas backdrop. Inside, Carolyn dangles delicate earrings on an acrylic stand for the auction table, propping Sr. Helen David’s original painting on a golden easel. Maryanne...
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...
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...
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...
“May the God of hope fill you will all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13 Dear Friends, At the staff/volunteer luncheon, Mark (our much-loved volunteer) shows me the video on his phone of a large storm drain...
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...
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...
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...
“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...
