Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

I'm just finishing a six month internship followed by a year-long residency in CPE (that is Clinical Pastoral Education - which means basically a program which educates pastoral ministers, in this case, at the bedside) in a hospital setting. It was a surprisingly intense experience - and I loved it! I had no idea when I began that I would find myself engaged with so much learning, with so many different people, with so much pain, with so many memories, experiences and with my own faith. I had lots of transferrable skills from my years of ministry, but it was important for me to enter into the mystery of this learning experience with a spirit of unknowing. My friends will also confirm that along the way I broke my ankle and so my CPE experience also included a few weeks of being a recipient of both medical and spiritual care. Did I mention I learned a lot?! Why am I surprised? I'm a Dominican after all. Seeking truth is a characteristic of our common life. That means we can n...

Did you notice the new slideshow? It has pictures from Krissie's Koll's "welcome" as a candidate and from the first profession of Gail Jagroop and the final profession of Tanya Williams. These celebrations came at the end of our Community Days, a yearly time when about 400 of us gathered at Sinsinawa, "the Mound," to pray, study, enter into dialogue and deepen the bonds of our affection. In the context of our remembering our founding father, St. Dominic, on his feast, we welcomed these women to the journey with us. The celebrations were spirit-filled, joyful and unifying! It's very hopeful to know that together with these good companions "we enter a process of change that carries our past into the promise of the unknown future." Mary Ann Nelson, OP Madison, WI