ABSCHRIFT DES INTERVIEWS

Ken Pino

So today we are talking to Cindy Perazzo, the provincial coordinator for the Lay Carmelite office of the PCM Province. Welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Cindy Perazzo

Great to be here. Thank you.

Ken Pino

I guess, first of all, tell us a little bit about what that is, provincial coordinator for the Lay Carmelite office.

Cindy Perazzo

Well, sure. So the provincial coordinator oversees pretty much everything at the Lay Carmelite office. And I say that because our structure, our org chart, so to speak, actually does list a provincial delegate.

For a number of years, normally that has been a friar, although it doesn’t have to be. It could be a lay person. But normally for us, it has been a friar. At one point, I believe it was not Father Carl, but Father Bill Harry was the provincial at the time. I think Father Peter McGarry retired and he said, “Well, you know, I don’t think we’re going to replace that position with a friar. So Cindy, you’re it.”

So as the provincial coordinator, I report directly to the prior provincial. He’s my direct superior as far as the position is concerned.

We have 2,500, give or take, Lay Carmelites, 162 communities. I think it’s about 30 regions and five areas. So we have a lot of layers of Lay Carmelites, and I need to make sure that things are running smoothly.

Ken Pino

I know that to do that and oversee that, you were just recently at the convocation. So you’ve got a staff within your office, although you are a distributed office, and then you also have regionals across. Can you explain a little bit about that structure?

Cindy Perazzo

Sure. Yes, we did have a really—I think it was a really successful convocation. Ken, you were there. It was attended by about 250 Lay Carmelites and friends, and it was a really good experience.

But in order to put something like that on, it required a really big team of people. I’ve been very fortunate. It’s always been something I’ve wanted to do or felt called to do—work with teams—because I’m one person now in the office since Sister Libby retired, and I have to make a lot of decisions. But I also like to make decisions with others. I like to hear the other person’s perspective on things.

I mean, the Lay Carmelites are so vast. We have life experience, job experience, educational backgrounds, men, women, all ages, 18 to 100. So there’s a lot of good perspective there, and as a leader, I like to utilize that for sure.

So we do have a structure. There is a provincial coordinator, which is me. Then Sheri Carioto is our office manager. And now we’ve recently brought on an assistant provincial coordinator, Nancy Bushman. She started with us in July. So that’s the staff.

But we have all kinds of people that are working kind of on the periphery and on the sidelines, so to speak, and we couldn’t do this job without them. I really, really depend on them and really value them.

So let’s just start at the community level. As I said, we have 162 communities. They all have a structure: there’s a director, formation director, and a council—structured very much like the friars’ structure, their infrastructure, I guess I’ll say. So there’s the community level.

Now, we have those 162 communities within about 30 regions, and we have regional leadership. We have regional coordinators and regional formation coordinators. Some of the larger regions have what we call a regional council as well.

The regional teams are responsible for planning and instituting days of recollection, weekend retreats. With today’s day and age, we’ve been going with virtual retreats, virtual days of recollection. They’re in charge of that.

They’re also in charge now, in recent years—this is the second term we’re doing this—of visitations. Since Sister Libby retired, we knew that we were not going to get another sister to help us out with visitation. Sister Libby— I don’t know if you know—was traveling like eight months out of the year. She loved it. She thrived on it. But we don’t have any lay people that are really able or willing to do that, and we knew that we couldn’t depend on the sisters any longer, just like we couldn’t depend on the friars to supply us with a provincial delegate.

So I brought a team of five people together. When I first brought them together, we called them the Provincial Visitation Task Force. We sat down and had a number of meetings over the course of six, eight, nine months: What are we going to do?

The Provincial visitations are crucial to keeping everybody on the same page—that we’re all doing our formation the way we need to do it, that we’re all holding elections the way we need to and when we need to. So how are we going to manage this?

So I sat down with these five people on the task force, and we just discussed it: What can we do? We came up with the solution that the regional teams would actually be the ones that conduct the official provincial visitations, which happen once every three years. So we’re in the second term of doing provincial visitations.

There is paperwork. The directors and the councils have to fill out what’s going on in the community. The regional teams actually make a physical visitation. Most of them are physical, although we have an open region—that is a region that’s all over North America, Canada, and the United States—that is spread out geographically, so some of those visitations are done via Zoom. But for the most part, we do in-person visitations.

And we have an area group. We call them the area coordinators—provincial area coordinators. This just happens to be that task force that I was talking about earlier. They all signed on to continue. I’m so grateful for that because these are really our most experienced Lay Carmelites, both in what they’ve done in leadership for the communities and for their regions, and for their knowledge and experience in everything that’s Carmelite.

So they oversee all of the regional teams. We’ve broken them up geographically. I think each of the areas has about 34 communities in it, 34 to 35 communities.

Doing that is going very well. And I think one reason it’s going very well is because those regional teams have the ability to follow up. They’re much closer geographically to the communities. Sister Libby would make wonderful visitations—giving all of her wealth of advice and experience to the communities—but there was very little time for follow-up after that.

What we’re experiencing now is that we’re noticing things we didn’t notice before. I meet with this group of five area coordinators about every quarter. At this last meeting we had, one of the coordinators was just kind of discouraged, thinking that things weren’t going well. And I said, “No, no, things are going exactly the way we want them to go, because we’re following up and we’re finding out what’s really going on with the communities.”

So I think, in my mind, it’s a system that really puts our finger on the pulse of the communities a lot better.

Ken Pino

And that’s a good point, because I was going to bring up what you mentioned in there: that you are international—United States and Canada—and in 160 communities, 2,500 members. That’s a lot to keep track of, you know, and to maintain that everybody is receiving the resources that they need.

I want to go over with you in a second the resources that the office offers to take care of that part. But you do overall manage basically North America. That’s a vast, huge area in two countries.

Cindy Perazzo

Yes, it is.

Ken Pino

And that you found a good way to manage and streamline that through teamwork.

Cindy Perazzo

Yeah. I couldn’t do it without the team, for sure. More than one team.

Ken Pino

Maybe a little bit about the office—what it offers as far as resources and what it provides out to the members—that piece?

Cindy Perazzo

So the office, according to our statutes, the Lay Carmelite office is in charge of keeping track of all of our members. Of course, we depend on the communities to inform us of changes, such as people that have been received into the Order, people that are in phase one (preparation for reception), phase two (preparation for temporary profession), when they’ve made their final profession, and when Lay Carmelites pass on.

We need all of that information to keep our database updated. And we’re going to offer an online form to fill out so that they don’t have to put it in the mail. They’ll be able to fill that out online. It’ll go into—well, I don’t know; Doug Bushman is the whiz at all of this, so he’s figured it out. But the Lay Carmelite office has finally jumped into the 21st century, and I think that’s the way we’ll be going in the future, for sure.

Ken Pino

Also, as far as resources from a Carmelite spirituality and faith perspective—the spiritual component of formation—the resources: what resources do you now have available? I know they’re all in print, but online?

Cindy Perazzo

So, yeah. I mean, if we’re going to be Lay Carmelites, we have to be authentically Lay Carmelites, correct? Carmelites. That’s always been very important to me, because it’s a beautiful charism. It’s a wonderful 800-plus-year-old history. Lots of structure, lots of tradition. And we need to know that.

We’re actually the bulk of the Carmelites in our province—2,500, you know, that’s a lot. I’m sure the First Order and the Second Order would like to see us Carmelite in an authentic way, yes.

So we have a very—I guess I’ll call it stringent—formation program. It’s a total of six years to become a fully professed Lay Carmelite. We have a year of phase one formation, which is preparation for reception into the Order. It’s all based on 12 lessons. It’s all basic information on Carmelite history, our spirituality, and our structure.

Once they complete that and everybody agrees that this is a good fit, then our candidates are received into the Order. From there, they go into what we call phase two, and that’s further study for 24 months. Currently, we’re using a book and a formator’s guide, and we’re going through all of that history, spirituality, and structure in a deeper way.

Once those 24 months are completed, again, we have a decision to make between the council and the candidate. If all goes well, then our candidates make their temporary profession, and that is for a period of three years. During those three years, before final profession, they’re basically living the life of a Lay Carmelite. They’re living the life of the promises they’ve made as Lay Carmelites, according to their state of life. And then if all goes well, they make their final profession.

Now, as far as the resources you were talking about: we are generating those into online services. We have a phase one candidate workbook and formator’s guide. Phase two, we have a book, as I said, and a formator’s guide. And then after that, there’s not a “phase three,” but ongoing formation. There’s no special book for that or even a set study for that. As I said, we’re just living the life of a Carmelite—a Lay Carmelite.

All of those things are available at the office. They can purchase them if they want a hard copy, but we’re gearing toward, within the next two years, having everything online so that they can have e-books or PDFs, that kind of thing. They can decide what they want to do. And we already have people deciding they want them in all different ways, and that’s fine. We’re offering that.

Another thing we’ve added this year, which I’m really proud of, is that the Order for a long time has really encouraged all Carmelites to get back into Lectio Divina. It’s an ancient practice that was recommended, then it wasn’t emphasized, and now the Church and the Carmelites are really encouraging us to do that.

Within our meeting agenda, we always offered a very small amount of time for Lectio Divina—not nearly enough. It was 15 minutes, and if you’re familiar with Lectio at all, you know that that’s not enough time to sit with Scripture and listen for God to speak to us through His Word. I find that to be the most important element of our meetings, and we were only giving it 15 minutes out of two and a half hours.

So we revised our agenda. Again, I brought another team in, asked another team to join me, and we created a Lectio Divina handbook, which we’re very proud of. We finished it this summer. It’s online. It can also be purchased as a wire-bound, spiral-bound copy or a PDF, three-hole punched to put in a binder. And it’s online as an e-book or PDF—I’m not sure, maybe both.

It’s, number one, a resource that gives people options. I think before we had this handbook, it was assumed that we had to do Lectio one particular way or it was no good. Well, that’s not the truth. There are lots of ways to pray with Scripture.

So the handbook was, first of all, a resource for them to find out about different ways. We have a resource list in the back that gives them further information—different articles and different books on Lectio—and we recommend those.

We encouraged the leaders, the community leadership, to really put Lectio at the forefront of the meeting. We pray the Liturgy of the Hours and then normally go right into Lectio. We decided that, even though it’s still not enough time, we would double the time for Lectio in the community once a month to 30 minutes. And I think we’re more comfortable with that. Of course, we’d like to do more.

But really, to pray Lectio once a month in the community meeting is just the start. What we’re hoping is that it will encourage individuals to pray Lectio every day at some point—every day of their life—in listening and in that quiet prayer time. That’s just an extension of all the other aspects of the charism. It really is.

So it’s working out. I mean, it’s new. We’ve gotten a lot of comments on it, and I’m proud of that accomplishment that we were able to do as a group.

Ken Pino

Wonderful, wonderful. And that is—as I mentioned when you walked through it—obviously you have to have this big administrative structure in place, but the focus always comes back down to promoting Carmel, encouraging Carmel, and supporting that growth in Carmel through the first two pillars—prayer and community—

Cindy Perazzo

That’s right.

Ken Pino

—of the Carmelite Order. So the resources that you have for that, and that community that everybody has, even though you’re such a large, distributed group, you’ve found a way to keep that community component that is such a strong pillar of the Order.

So now we’ve kind of heard how everybody else does. What I’d like to hear now is: how did you come to Carmel, and some of your journey to ending up where you are today?

Cindy Perazzo

Oh, gosh. Okay. So, kind of interesting, I think. I actually stumbled on the Carmelites three different times in younger years.

The first was in the early ’70s. I was actually still in high school. In my hometown, my parish of St. Mary’s, we had a visiting priest that came pretty frequently. He was about 10 miles out from Travis Air Force Base and he was an Air Force chaplain. His name was Father Bill Travers. As it turns out, he was a friar of the St. Elias Province.

I had no clue that he was a Carmelite. I don’t know that he ever wore—well, that was a long time ago, so I have no idea if he wore a habit. But what I did know is that he was this huge personality with an equally huge, booming voice, and he liked to tell jokes. He made an impression on me, for sure. I really, really liked him. The parish really liked him.

I don’t know how long he stayed. I know I had left home shortly after high school, and when I would come back to visit, eventually he had disappeared—he was gone. He’d been reassigned, I’m sure. But that was my first encounter. He was a Carmelite.

Fast forward ten years, and I found myself in Houston, Texas. My husband, Bob, had been transferred there for a job opportunity. I’ll be honest: from a small-town girl in Northern California to the city of Houston in my 20s, I felt like I was on the moon. I really did. It was just so different. Different is not bad, but I was homesick, I guess I’ll say.

We actually landed softly at St. Albert’s Parish, which, as it turns out, is no longer served by Carmelites, but it was at the time. Father Stan Cromer was the pastor. Again, I doubt I had any idea that this was a Carmelite-served parish, but it was a comfortable, soft place to land for me. My son Daniel was born in Houston. He was baptized at St. Albert’s. As much as I could as a brand new mom, we were involved in parish life to a certain extent. It was a good, comfortable time for me.

Fast forward again: in 1993 we were back in Northern California. We got to come back home. We ended up settling in Fairfield, California. There were, and still are, two parishes in Fairfield: Holy Spirit, which is the more traditional Diocesan parish, and Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

When I say “traditional” about Holy Spirit, I mean it had a traditional worship space. There were two or three priests there. The Masses were all very much what I was used to, in a traditional manner. Our Lady of Mount Carmel met in a geodesic dome with folding chairs. So it was very different.

I was being a brat, but when we first got settled I said to Bob, “You know, I think we should go to the real church. We should go to Holy Spirit.” So the first Sunday we were there, we did. We went to Holy Spirit. It was fine. There was nothing remarkable about it, but it was what I was used to.

The second Sunday, I thought, “We really need to be fair. Let’s go ahead and go to Mount Carmel and see what we think.” So we did. And Ken, I’ll tell you: I walked into that dome with the folding chairs and a huge crowd of people, and it was like—it wasn’t a “hit you in the face” kind of thing—but it was like a comfortable exhale: “Gosh, I feel like this is home” kind of space.

Very shortly after, I found out, yes, this was a Carmelite parish, and yes, this was a very Carmelite parish. Our pastor at the time, Father Kevin, just had a real good spirit about him. The charism was very important to him. He actually started a Lay Carmelite community there with a lay woman, Sherry Bauer, who’s a great friend of mine still.

Shortly after we arrived at Mount Carmel, I joined the choir, became a Eucharistic minister—all the things—and I realized there was a Lay Carmelite community there. I saw it in the bulletin and thought, “Oh, what is that?”

So I kind of invited myself to go to one of their meetings, and it’s kind of like the rest is history. I knew I belonged there. I started initial formation and I was received into the Order in 1995. I made my profession—back then it was just one year, two years, and then you were professed—in 1997.

Very shortly after that, I was asked to be the formation director, so I served in that capacity for a year or two. Then there was an election, and I was elected director of the community. I had two terms as director.

At Mount Carmel, we had a lot of visitors. We had a lot of friars come to visit us. We met a number of friars that I still know today and value. Toward the end of my term as director, I got a call from our provincial delegate. We still had a provincial delegate at the time, Father John Benedict Weber. I had met him at Mount Carmel.

He called and said, “You know, we’re going to start a region up above San Francisco—Northern California, Northern Nevada. Would you be interested in helping establish that?” And I said, “Oh, sure. I’m getting ready to end my term as director. I think I would have the time to do that.” We chatted a little bit.

Just as he was hanging up, he said, “Oh, and by the way, we’re having an interprovincial Lay Carmelite Commission meeting in Darien in two weeks. Do you think you can fly out for that?” And I said, “Oh, well, sure, I think I can do that.”

So I was the regional coordinator for the Northern Nevada–Northern California region for two terms. I think it was six years. But I was on that commission for a total of 12 years—2003 to 2015, I think it was. And I needed a break. It’s an advisory board, the interprovincial commission, but we do more than advise. It’s really a working commission, between the two provinces, of course—St. Elias and the PCM.

So I told Sister Mary, “I really need a break. I’ve been on this for 12 years and it’s time for somebody else to have a turn.” So I stepped aside from that, and I had a whole year of a break.

Then I got a call from Father Bill Harry. He was the prior provincial at the time. He said, “I’m going to be in Fairfield. My council and I”—I think they were having a council meeting or something in Fairfield—“are going to be there. Do you think we could meet?”

And I thought, “Uh-oh. What now?” My first thought was actually, “Uh-oh, what have I done?” Because the prior provincial doesn’t just call and say, “I want to meet,” right? So I said, “Sure.”

He came up with a time, and I met with him at the parish office. He said, “Sister Mary’s retiring. I was wondering if you would be interested in thinking about becoming the provincial coordinator. I know you won’t move to Darien, but I think we could probably work something out remotely where you could work from a home office and come to Darien maybe four times a year—be with the staff.” It wasn’t Sherry at the time; we had another office manager. “Why don’t you think about it? Go home, talk to Bob, see if that might work for you.”

I really didn’t need to think about it too much, and Bob’s always been very generous with my activities with the Lay Carmelites. So I said yes. That was in—we met in the fall of 2016. Sister Mary retired in 2017, but I think my first day was April the 3rd of 2017, because Father Bill didn’t want to hire me on April Fools’ Day. So he said, “Okay, we’ll make it the third.” And that was almost nine years ago. And here I am.

Ken Pino

And you’ve seen the office of the Lay Carmelites, and the Lay Carmelite structure, go through quite the transition—from Sister Mary and Father JB, as you mentioned, being kind of running that office and overseeing it, to now, as you mentioned, the Lay Carmelites are really running it completely and fully and overseeing the entire thing.

So that was a pretty significant transition that you’ve successfully brought the office through.

Cindy Perazzo

Well, I have a lot of support. I’ve always felt both prior provincials that I’ve worked for have trusted me. I value that—it’s humbling—and I value their opinion.

I think they know that if I come across something that I feel I shouldn’t or can’t handle, I know that they are always there to listen to me and give me advice. But yet they’ve left me to administer the Lay Carmelites, along with the help of other people, to guide them.

That, to me, is huge. I’m the first layperson to have that kind of responsibility in our province, anyway. And I’m finding, as I’m doing a little more international work—we were in Portugal last February for an international Lay Carmelite meeting—that our province, anyway, is really kind of cutting edge, if you want to put it that way, where the Lay Carmelites are trusted.

We feel very much valued by the First and Second Order, and it’s a good partnership. It could be a good partnership for the future, too.

Ken Pino

If you, as you run into people—be it at church or out and about—who aren’t Lay Carmelites, maybe even haven’t been introduced to Carmel, maybe have or are just kind of on the skirts of Carmel, what do you say to them? If someone is seeking something more, what would you say to help them determine if Carmel—Lay Carmel—might be what they are seeking?

Cindy Perazzo

Well, I find, and I have sensed this for a long time, that there’s a general seeking within the Church and even outside the Church. There’s just this general seeking for something. And of course, we know that “something” is God. But a lot of these people who are looking haven’t found anything that’s quite a good fit.

There are lots of spiritualities in the Church, and they’re all good, I’m sure—but they’re not all Carmelite. They’re all very different from each other, and we’re all individuals. So I think it’s very important—maybe we don’t exactly “find” where we’re supposed to be, but I think we’re led, if we’re willing to listen, to where we’re supposed to be.

So that would be one of my pieces of advice: look at yourself; look at the various spiritualities. There are lots of lay organizations. All of the orders have either oblates or lay people’s organizations. And we all have different charisms.

So do a little research. Look at what the different orders and different organizations offer a lay person. Then think about yourself and how your personality and the way you express your spirituality—how important that is in your life.

Then start looking. I always recommend our website. We have a lot of basic information on the website. I will always recommend that we put them in touch with a regional coordinator in their area and see if we can find a community that they could visit.

And that’s also why we have the long, six-year program—because it’s important to know that you are where God wants you to be. We want you to be where God wants you to be, or it’s not going to work right.

Ken Pino

So much of Carmel came out in there. You said they should listen to where God is trying to lead them. I think that’s kind of the core I hear from everyone, and that you’re embodying in Lay Carmel: that listening component. I heard that several times in what you just said.

Cindy Perazzo

A lot of us—even Lay Carmelites—we want to talk to God more than we want to listen to God, right? And He’s so patient with us. God is so patient with us. But it’s important to listen. It really is.

Ken Pino

You’ve already talked about several things that are in the works as you move the ministry, I guess, into the 21st century—we’ll call it—for how you keep this large family connected. What are any initiatives that are on the horizon that you can discuss?

Cindy Perazzo

Sure. So the past several years, or couple of years, we had two big things. We were completing and asking for approval of our interprovincial statutes so that we could recreate our Carmel’s Call, which is a manual—kind of an all-encompassing manual that has the Rule of St. Albert, the international rule, the provincial statutes, and then all of the “back matter,” I’ll call it—all of the important resource material, ceremonies, and the like.

So we completed that, finally, got those printed out, and they’re available. We have a 12th edition now of Carmel’s Call.

And then the convocation we had this past summer—that was a huge undertaking. Doug and Nancy Bushman were wonderful on-site coordinators. We couldn’t have done it without them. But it was a huge job: finding the speakers, organizing all of that, planning workshops, finding a place to have it. We had it at the Catholic University of America, which was a wonderful place to have our group. It was a good experience for some of us who hadn’t been to college in a long, long time.

So we’ve got that done. Now, we met in the fall as a group—the interprovincial commission met in the fall. We met at Niagara, which was a beautiful place for us to meet. And we made a list of the things that we thought we would need to tackle, because these types of things we do interprovincially. We don’t just do them with the PCM and St. Elias separately; we do them together in partnership.

We’ve known for a long time that our manuals needed updating, because our statutes changed but the manuals that we’re using now have the old references. So we had a few little cheat sheets that some of our members made up and passed along to the office that told people, “This is where it is in the new statutes,” but that was just a stopgap.

So we said, okay, we need to update our community manuals, our phase one material, our phase two material, and the community manual. Those are the three manuals. We decided that the first priority would be our phase two program because the book we’re currently using is out of print. We have about a three-year supply of that book, so we’re on a little bit of a time crunch there, and we knew we needed to put that as our top priority.

Since that meeting in—it was in September—we formed, again, some subcommittees for each of those components, each of those three components. I sent out an email very recently to people that we’ve known and whose names came up at the meeting, asking if they’d be willing to help with these manuals—to help us update them. We’ve gotten a good response so far.

So by the first of the year, the first of 2026, these three subcommittees will start meeting. We’ll start planning the community manual and the phase one manual. We’re basically going to leave those as they are, with the exception of the updates.

The phase two program is probably going to be completely different. That subcommittee will probably take a good two years to complete the work, because we haven’t decided exactly what way we want to go yet. But that will all come in due time, right? So that’s going to be a huge endeavor for the next couple of years.

Of course, we have another convocation on the horizon. I think we’ve decided to have our next convocation in 2028. We don’t have any other details, but we know we want to get back into the schedule of every three-ish years, three to four years. We had a lot longer block between 2019 and 2025 because of the pandemic. So we had to put that off.

But it’s important. We feel like it’s important to have our Lay Carmelites meet at a much bigger level than just the community, to really get that true sense of belonging to an Order. When you get together with a larger group—whether it’s a regional retreat, something like “Into the Land of Carmel,” or a convocation—there’s so much being offered now. Webinars, events, a lot of them are virtual. If you can’t make it to Washington, D.C., you can watch it on a website. So there’s a lot that’s being offered now.

So I would say those two things are probably going to keep us fairly busy for a while. I’m sure there’ll be other things coming on the horizon too—things I don’t know of right now.

Ken Pino

I guess the only other thing—because I think that covers the ministry pretty well—but I always like to ask everyone: how do you feel that the Carmelite spirituality, the pillars of Carmel, being a Lay Carmelite—how does that serve you and how do you apply that and live that? It’s an 800-year-old tradition, but it still actively applies here in the 21st century. How do you live that or experience that?

Cindy Perazzo

Hopefully I don’t get too emotional about that question, because it’s very important. It’s very important to me.

I will have to say that even though I didn’t realize I was a Carmelite my whole life, even remembering as a child, I always kind of had that contemplative stance. I was a little bit on the quiet side. Not that all Carmelites are on the quiet side—we certainly are not—but I was, and still am, really, in a lot of ways.

I kind of tell the story that my parents were very heavily into the charismatic movement. They were very active in that movement. Even as I started as a Carmelite, my mom and dad were constantly trying to convert me to the charismatics. It’s a wonderful movement; it serves many, many people. But it didn’t serve me at all.

I just had to be honest with them and say, “It’s just not me.” I totally respected what they were doing. In the end, I think they were very proud that I followed my own path and that I was able to contribute in any way that I could.

Being a Carmelite, I will say, is like breathing. It’s not anything separate from my life. It’s the way I address my life. It’s the way I address people. It’s the way I interact with others—I hope.

It just becomes something that’s in your fiber; it’s in your DNA. That’s one thing we tell people who are looking into the Carmelites: eventually—maybe not when they first start—but eventually it will become like breathing. It will just be who you are.

It’s a beautiful gift to find that, because as I said earlier, there are a lot of people who are seeking and they just, frankly, never really find it, for whatever reason. But when you do find it, when you’re accepted into a family like the Carmelites, it’s life-changing. It really is.

Ken Pino

I think a common theme I hear in answer to that question—and I think I just heard it from you—is that you don’t learn to be a Carmelite; you discover that you have always been a Carmelite.

Cindy Perazzo

One hundred percent. Exactly. Yeah.

I remember Father Pat McMahon. He did a tape for us, and we still use it for our discussion groups that are groups of people who want to eventually become a Lay Carmelite community. It’s called Nine Themes of Carmelite Spirituality. You’re familiar with that, I’m sure—you’ve copied enough tapes for us. Oh, I date myself, you know, because it’s not tapes anymore, right?

Ken Pino

That’s right. Yes, I still say to my son, “Can we videotape that tonight?”

Cindy Perazzo

Right. No, we can’t.

I’ll never forget—and this is paraphrasing—but he says, “Carmel is an 800-year-old tradition, and you will never change it. But if you’re lucky, it will change you.” And that is the truth.

Ken Pino

Very nice. Very nice. He is—he’s one of the names, Patrick McMahon, Jack Welsh—that will be so missed for that wisdom.

Cindy Perazzo

Huge losses, both of them. But we have their works. That will live on forever. So we’re very fortunate there.

Ken Pino

Yes. All right. Well, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing those stories and the information about the ministry. I certainly will share throughout. I’ll have the website and any resources—how they can get ahold of the office, the Lay Carmelite office in Darien—if they’re interested. And then from the website, of course, they can find local communities and regionals if they’re interested in reaching out.

And, yeah, I think that’s it. Again, thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate you sharing the personal stories. That’s very powerful.

Cindy Perazzo

Well, that’s probably more than anybody ever wanted to know about Cindy Perazzo, but it is my story.

Ken Pino

Yes. No, but I think that’s what people do want to hear. I think they want that, because that is Carmel. The administrative bits have to happen in every Order, and that all has to happen. But hearing—and in everything you said—Carmel being present, I think that’s important for people to hear and see. So, thank you.

Cindy Perazzo

You’re very welcome. Good to see you.

Ken Pino

All right. All right.

Cindy Perazzo

Happy Thanksgiving.

Ken Pino

Happy Thanksgiving. Bye-bye, Cindy.

Cindy Perazzo

Bye-bye.

Ken Pino

Bye.