Spiritual embroidery on everyday themes, with the accent on love
and compassion. Crafton serves as a vicar at Seamen's Church
Institute, a prominent N.Y.C. human-service establishment. Her
claim to fame, however, comes from her status as one of the first
women to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. She writes
often about being a pioneer, most strikingly when describing how a
visit to England, where resistance to women's ordination remains
strong, left her "shaken by culture shock." Hers is a warm,
sensible voice, finding spiritual lessons in quotidian affairs a la
Robert Fulghum, but with less wit and a dash more moral smugness.
"People are what matter," she says - and who could disagree? Many
of her observations, like this one, skirt the edge of platitude or
sentimentality, only to be rescued by her kindness and her ear for
story. Crafton's lessons always come wrapped in anecdote. She and a
gaggle of Girl Scouts dye Easter eggs at a shelter for the mentally
ill, and she cries when a recalcitrant old patient comes out of his
shell; make the right effort, she seems to say, and redemption
comes in the most unexpected ways. Crafton remembers her good
mother, who avoided anything grave or grim; she writes about fear
of death, the precariousness of life ("so you'd better love what
you have while you still have it"), the emotions engendered by
moving out of her childhood home or being called a "girl" in
middle-age ("I'll be one. When I choose to be"); and she complains
about the new math. But the strongest essays are those in which she
confronts real suffering: victims of AIDS looking for love, a
paranoid parishioner who finds a home, memories of her dead child.
Despite the author's priesthood, Christian images are scarce,
although one lovely, atypical piece muses on the benevolence of the
Virgin Mary. Genetic goodwill, in appetizing bites. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Barbara Cawthorne Crafton is among the first women ordained to the
Episcopal priesthood, in which capacity she has ministered in both
the richest and poorest sections of New York City. She is also a
sensitive writer who addresses the human condition with plainspoken
eloquence and bracing moral common sense. Cynthia Ozick writes,
"The Reverend Crafton's purity of insight and pellucid voice
suggest transparencies - one sees straight through them into the
unshielded light of the plainest human truths. A shelf is dusted, a
grandmother's sewing machine is recalled, mothers and fathers are
praised and appraised, a lost child is mourned - and the weave of
our lives is movingly unwound, ribbon by ribbon, until our hands
are filled with rosiness and rue. Upon small moments large mercies
are shed. Barbara Crafton's essays are everyone's heirlooms". These
rich, moving essays will be read again and again.
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