Cranston

It is a peaceful summer day at the lake and I am cherishing the stillness sitting on our deck when loud and clear in my head I hear the word, Cranston.

Why Cranston? There is a city adjacent to Providence, RI named Cranston but I haven’t been there in years. I know some people who came from Cranston and my sister once lived there when her children were small. The hero of an old radio program called “The Shadow” was named Lamont Cranston. These are my only Cranston connections. I have no idea why the word Cranston came to mind so clearly. I busy myself with other thoughts.

Later that day I am reading when I clearly hear again, Cranston! Now this is weird. What does this mean? I share what is happening with my wife Joy.

She is genuinely compassionate to my confused state but of course can offer no satisfactory explanation.

The next morning I am looking for the paperback dictionary. I remembered seeing one somewhere. I ask Joy and she says it is behind the hard covered books on the shelf in the breakfast nook. I reach over those books and pickup the first paperback I feel. It is not the dictionary. I stare in disbelief.

I’m holding in my hand a worn paperback entitled, The Miracle of Lourdes by Ruth Cranston.

I can feel the shivers going down my spine. “Hon. How did this book get here?”

She looks at me with amazement “I don’t know. I remember you bought a stack of books at the church fair one year or maybe someone else left it here.” I vaguely remember buying some books at the church fair but I know I need to read this book now.

Ruth Cranston wrote the book in 1955 “in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of when the Blessed Mother of God appeared to the daughter of a French Miller.”

Ruth Cranston’s book goes beyond documenting many of the miracles at the healing pool at Lourdes, France. The author recounts how many well people annually make the pilgrimage to Lourdes just to serve others who are there waiting and praying for miracle cures.

“The greatest thing at Lourdes is putting God into actual everyday living,” she writes. “It’s a life based on love instead of power-a life of helping one another, serving the weak, sharing strengths. It is another example that the path to happiness is to give not grab.”


Wow, good advice for a man seeking but struggling to include God in his daily life.

I also resonate with these words. “The one way to peace and bliss, every great prophet has told us, is to give yourself away.”

Give myself away-I needed to read that Ms Cranston.

“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. (Matthew 16:25)

R. Malcolm Salter at Cedar Lake,
Sturbridge, Massachusetts