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Connie Newton Celebrates 25 Years in Loretto

Posted on July 1, 2016, by Loretto Community

By Connie Newton

Connie Newton
Connie Newton

In truth, home is where the heart is. That’s Loretto for me …and the Community has many beautiful mobile homes. Because Jesus said something like, “Whoever loves me and keeps my word, my Father will love, too, and we’ll come and make our home there,” I’ve enjoyed and shared some unusual holy hospitality.

I think of the first time I met Gordie Albi in the late ‘80s. We spoke of our shared interest and journeys in Central America. She invited me to go the next night with her and other Loretto members to a sleep-in at the Colorado governor’s office. (President Reagan had ordered all governors to send their states’ National Guard units to Central America where he said the communists were taking over.) I’d never been to a protest before, but I’d been working with Central American refugees, and each had a story of the poverty and violence that drove them out. So, I went with Gordie and spent the night listening to why Anna Koop, Martha Crawley, Cecily Jones, Mary Ann Cunningham and Amelie Starkey were there, too. While I was somewhat confused and fearful, they were clear and powerful truth tellers about the injustice and oppression being perpetrated by Central American dictators and their more invisible supporters in the United States. I watched Cecily and Mary Ann with wit and wisdom tell Gov. Dick Lamm exactly why he shouldn’t send the Guard. That’s when I decided that if that was the House of Loretto, then I wanted to live there, too.

Soon after, Pat McCormick took me along with her to Community events, including my first Loretto Assembly. There Pat Kenoyer taught us a Ghanean folk song and dance. (Lorettines seem to manifest both at mobile home parks and itinerant Airstream trailers.) They can sing and dance, too!

Since those early years, Loretto and I are no longer new to one another. We’re home together. Thanks to Loretto’s support, I have had increasing freedom to work, travel and live in Central America. Protest was a prelude to more work with the Latin America/Caribbean Committee, the Guatemala Sister Community and the accompaniment project founded by Gordie as a part of solidarity networks protecting the lives of local change agents, particularly in Guatemala. I’ve learned so much from Guatemalans while working in a micro-lending project, doing informal adult education, and (with my friend, Fran Early) writing a newly published book, entitled Doing Good …Says Who?: Stories from Volunteers, Nonprofits, Donors and Those They Want to Help.

In October 2015 my stateside home shifted from Denver to Panajachel, Guatemala. Here I live amid a symphony of green leaves, flowers, and bird songs. You are invited to visit and join this mobile home park, too. Meanwhile, blessings to all our homes in this adaptation from the Earth Prayers book: Blessed is the spot, the home, the place, the heart, the mountain, the refuge, the cave, the valley, the land, the meadow and the sea where God lives and is glorified.

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