Art in the City

What progress our artists have made in three months' time!  Please take the time to look at the beautiful artwork of Sr. Mary Culhane's class.  This week, they completed their pastels and moved on to still life.  (E=mail subscribers, if you do not see photos embedded in your e-mail, please click here.)  We remain grateful to the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth, Convent Station, for their generous grant to fund the art program.

525,600 minutes: How do we measure our year?

This year contained 12 months; 52 weeks; 365 days; 8,760 hours; 525,600 minutes.

It also contained about 1300 visits to the Passaic Neighborhood Center for Women, with October seeing the most visits (208) and January seeing the fewest (40).

The year witnessed about 1200 volunteer hours served by 25 volunteers (including 15 women religious, 8 college students and 2 lay women who were not college students).

During the year, our women had the opportunity to participate in 7 different classes or projects:  English, quilting, art, computer, gardening, ladies' night, and first anniversary preparations.

During any given week of the year, 6 different sections of English classes were taught.

The year saw a truly collaborative first anniversary celebration on September 24.

As we ring in 2015, we are immeasurably grateful to those of you who have made this possible by your love, prayers, service, donations and other contributions.  We wish you innumerable blessings during the new year. 

The times we have said this are too numerous to count, but we cannot say it enough: "Thank you and God bless you."

From Our Family to Yours . . .

Today the church celebrates the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  [Shown above is the Holy Family art project that our women finished last week using their newly-taught pastel skills. (Email subscribers, please click here to view the photo if you do not see a photo above.)]

Just as the Holy Family was created and sustained by God who often conveyed messages in dreams,  the Passaic Neighborhood Center for Women is a family that exists because of God and dreamers.  Led by the dreamers who followed God's call to open a women's center in Passaic, our "holy family" of women, staff, benefactors, religious communities and the Diocese of Paterson has been created and sustained for 15 months. 

As we approach the beginning of 2015, we are grateful for the opportunity to continue to do what we do and we pray for everyone who supports us in this ministry.  From our family to yours:  Thank you and God bless you!

It's beginning to look a lot like . . .

Sister Mary Culhane and our art students are completing their wreath projects today.  Here they are, in various stages of completion (email subscribers click here if you do not see photos below):

We Give Thanks!

On this Thanksgiving 2014, we are grateful for the support of Bishop Serratelli and everyone in the Diocese of Paterson.  We are grateful to the religious communities whose spirit of collaboration and prayerful, material and human resources enable us to open our doors each day.  We are grateful to our staff, whose untiring love of the women of Passaic bears fruit each day.  We are grateful for the women who continue to grow and become empowered at the Passaic Neighborhood Center for Women.  Click here to view a slideshow that gathers together a few recent highlights.

Leaf Lessons from Passaic

This morning in Passaic, it is 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, on November 15, it is 28 degrees outside.  The National Weather Service tells us that the record low for this day, set in 1996, was 20 degrees Fahrenheit, so we're not that far from the record.  There are two trees in the yard that have just this week turned from green to vivid, flaming yellow.  How enjoyable that transformation has been to watch!  However, due to the unseasonably low temperatures this morning, their leaves are dropping like snowflakes -- just hours after they reached their peak colors.  As I watch this happen, listen to the sound of the leaves breaking away and hitting the ground, and feel the leaves as they fall on me, I am struck by the detachment that is a natural part of creation.  That is, it is time for the leaves to fall, so they fall.  Anything else would be unnatural.

What do these trees teach me today?  That God is in charge, that it's OK to let go and that acting as if God were not in charge or that it's not OK to let go would be unnatural.  How appropriate these teachings are for our ministry at the Passaic Neighborhood Center for Women! 

• God is in charge:  There is no way to sustain this ministry without the day-to-day, minute-to minute realization that, in doing this work, we are instruments of God.  We might weather unseasonable highs and lows, joys and sorrows, births and deaths, healing and illness -- and God is in all of it! 
• It's OK to let go: As much as we want to enjoy the flaming yellow leaves a bit longer, we are reminded that God's ways are not our ways and God's time is not our time -- and thank God for that!  The only way that new growth can occur in spring is for leaves to fall in autumn.  Secure in the knowledge that it's OK, we let go of those things that hinder us from personal and communal growth -- the regrets, resentments, stubbornness and arrogance -- and we cling to the hope that new life will emerge from this detachment.
• Acting otherwise would be unnatural:  There would be something very wrong with a tree that is meant to shed its leaves in the fall  failing to do so.  Similarly, attempting to play God or falsely convincing ourselves that attachment is healthy is counterproductive to growth.  We might wish that it were otherwise, but it just wouldn't be natural!

Today, friends, we thank you for sustaining us in this ministry.  We depend on your hours of service, your donations, your words of support and your prayers to do the work of God in Passaic.  In gratitude, we share these photos of our trees with you. Also, we encourage you to bundle up and go outside to enjoy this beautiful day.   (Email subscribers:  If you do not see the photos in your email, click here to view them.)

October!

Wow!  In October we were blessed with 205 visits from our women!  This is 60 more than our previous largest total of visits (June 2014).  We've had over 1,300 visits since opening our doors!  Thank you to our staff, volunteers, benefactors and all who continue to support the Passaic Neighborhood Center for Women.