Happy Thanksgiving!

A group of writers calling themselves the Pearloafers has been coming to the monastery every fall for the last sixteen years. Several of them used to come to writers retreats facilitated by Madeline L'Engle (1918-2007) before that. Their first visit as the Pearloafers occurred only three days after Nine Eleven.

When they are here, the Pearloafers assign themselves writing exercises. This year they wrote first about strangers, which turned out to all be very personal stories of encounters with strangers. Their second assignment was to write a story where each line begins with the successive letters of the alphabet.

Susy Murphy's meditation (found below) captures the essence of what the Pearloafers, both individually and as a group, treasure about their time at Holy Cross each year.

Some of the Pearloafers who were here in October.

One footnote. On 9/11, a classmate of Suzy's son's, Zoe Falkenberg, aged 9, perished along with her 3 year old sister and parents Leslie and Charlie, on the flight that hit the Pentagon. They were supposed to be en route to a sabbatical teaching assignment for her mom in Australia. Many of our group knew Zoe and her family.

We are grateful for all our guests, friends, relatives and Associates. Have a blessed Thanksgiving!

Meditation on Being at Holy Cross

A renewal of spirit.

Beginning with breathing.

Calm.

Deeply inhaling, holding my breath like a delicate egg.

Exhaling very slowly, releasing everything that has been pent up.

Feeling the release of tension deep in the sinews of my body.

Gratitude, flooding in to replace pain, hurt, despair.

Holding onto this moment of peace gently, so it will last.

Irritability melting away.

Just gone—poof!

Kindness and an open heart replacing it.

Like magic.

More than magic.

No, what happens at Holy Cross is the deepest magic I know of.

Organically here in the light, the sounds and the smells.

Present in every nook.

Quiet, sacred places thrum with it.

Rest here.

So that you, too, can feel its power.

Time to go?

Understanding that we must each take the gift of this sacred place and bring it back into our daily lives.

Validate the truth of it in the real world.

Worlds.

eXamine the challenge to live wholly, deeply and with open hearts, every day.

Yesterday, tomorrow, today—we hold the promise and the power of each one.

Zoe, and her family, would have wanted us to live this way.

©Susy Elder Murphy, Pearloafers, October 2017