Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

This poem by Mary Oliver speaks to me of the call to Dominican life and mission.   She says it so well….. When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. What amazing you?   Have you taken the world into your arms?   Or are you just visiting this world? Mary Ann Nelson, OP Madison, Wisconsin

At one time I was sent to teach in an alternative school in Omaha Nebraska.   Most students were Baptist, Pentecostal or no particular faith tradition, and so I became a Young Life Leader in order to share faith with each of them.   Since most of the students did not have their own or their parents' transportation, I would   round them up in a van and we would go off to our Young Life meetings which consisted of other leaders, mostly college age students,   and high school students of many Christian traditions and some of no tradition.   We sang lively songs, saw a fun skit, listened to one of the leaders give a witness talk about Jesus in his/her life,   prayed that we might understand God's love and call in our life, and then sent each other out to another week in high school life.   One of the songs   came back to me this week as I thought of last week's Gospel. "Go where I send you How will I send you? I'm going to send you...