The Sewing Room

Uncommon Reflections on Life, Love and Work

In these insightful essays, Barbara Cawthorne Crafton reflects on a broad range of experiences ministering among merchant seafarers, the homeless, the bereaved, AIDS patients, and others in need of personal and spiritual help. She shares honestly her own emotions as she grapples with the harsh realities of the world, while delighting in the humor and joy found in everyday living. Crafton compassionately recounts the unique stories of the men, women, and children she worked with during her service as a port chaplain in New York and New Jersey and as a minister at Trinity Church on Wall Street. In doing so, she weaves together threads of the mundane and the traumatic, the lovely and the ugly, and the down to earth and the holy, creating an original tapestry of the richness of life. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, an Episcopal priest, serves as rector of St. Clement's Church in Manhattan's theatre district. She is the author of Blessed Paradoxes, Living Lent, and Let Every Heart Prepare, all available from Morehouse Publishing.