Red leaves on a frosty tree

Stories about

Community Living

Community: a place for sharing, love, acceptance, support. A place to be challenged, to be strengthened. For Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, living in community and being part of a larger spiritual community are integral to life. Are you seeking community? Become a Sister of Providence. Or join the larger community as a Providence Associate.

Clothed in simplicity

Standing here at this used clothing exchange rack, it all suddenly makes sense. THIS is how it happened. A group of sisters in the United States in the 1960s looks down at what they are wearing and ask, why are we wearing this? Oh, yeah, it’s because we’ve been passing these clothes around for years and years and years.

A reflection on simplicity and sharing that never goes out of fashion.

String pulled on the Ginkgo tree this week

My favorite tree – and I have hundreds to choose from here at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods – is the huge Ginkgo tree in front of Corbe House, where I live.

The tree is huge! Sister Rose Ann Eaton and I just went out to measure the circumference of the trunk – 205 inches! While engaged in this pursuit, Rose told me a story she had heard from Sister Marceline Mattingly now in her nineties. Marceline remembers when the Ginkgo tree had only a single trunk. A storm broke the tree down near its base. As the tree regrew, it developed the multiple trunks very evident today. The tree’s shaggy bark, many trunks melding into one another and the sheer width of the branches lend distinctiveness, character and interest to “my” tree.