When Dominican Sister of Hope Jo-Ann Iannotti, OP first learned about the 14th-century English mystic Julian of Norwich, she was hooked. Julian was a mystic, a hermitess, and a woman of her time. Her experience of a series of revelations (showings) would revolutionize...
It’s been two years since we at Mariandale welcomed bees onto campus. This July, Dominican Sister of Hope Bette Ann Jaster, OP, master gardener and beekeeper Regina Blakeslee, her husband, Ed Levine, and Mariandale staff member Karen Noreika harvested the bees’ honey...
Today, Sisters and staff gathered with the Westchester Land Trust to walk the land at Mariandale Retreat and Conference Center. Together, the group walked the perimeter of approximately 30 acres that the sisters intend to put into a conservation easement. “We...
We all have different ways that our spirituality has been nudged: Paula D’Arcy’s came quick. In 1975, Paula’s husband and daughter were killed in a drunken driving accident. She was twenty-seven years old and three months pregnant, yet she survived unharmed. Six...
When Mary Jane Miller’s friend proposed that they paint icons in the church basement one Wednesday afternoon, she thought he was crazy. “We don’t know a thing about icons!” she protested. The pair had no formal training –save a one-week iconography class— and Mary...
