Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Peggy Ryan, OP and Maura McCarthy, PBVM were privileged to work with the Native people of the Americas until 2010 This is the month that the United States celebrates Columbus Day.   As Dominicans, 2011 is the year we are celebrating our anniversary of arriving in the Americas.   500 years ago, our Dominican brothers arrived from Spain to share God’s word through our charism of preaching and teaching.   The first Dominicans that arrived in the Americas have much to teach us about how to live boldly.   Upon their arrival in what today is The Dominican Republic, these friars immediately began to preach against the treatments of the Native peoples.   They boldly employed uncharted new theologies which claimed the dignity of all persons.   Each human being reflects the face of God. I feel privileged to have been a small part of a huge movement all over the Americas that continues to this day to carry out the mission of first friars in the ...

"Just pay attention, and then patch a few words together, and don't try to make them elaborate. This isn't a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak." – from "Praying" by poet, Mary Oliver When this quote came my way it caught my attention immediately for more reasons that I have space here to explain.   So I will stay with two thoughts. First is the word “doorway.”   In 2 Kings 4:8-37 there is a reference to the Great Woman of Shunem standing in the doorway of the prophet, Elisha.   Doorways are symbolic luminal places where there is much potential and possibilities.   For the poet, Mary Oliver, it is an entrance place to gratitude and silence. Which leads me to my second thought – “silence.”   Often in Spiritual Direction, people talk to me about how hard it is to be silent or to ignore all that goes on in their minds.   I encourage them that sheer will does not bring silence but that the...