Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Last weekend Dominican Sisters from all over the U.S. came together in Chicago to listen deeply to one another and to talks – by Judi Neal ( http://www.edgewalkers.org ) and by Timothy Radcliffe, former Master of the Order (1992-2001). Unfortunately, at the last minute Timothy could not make the trip from England, so his paper was delivered by magnificently as only Ann Willits, O.P. (Sinsinawa) could do it!  And we went on from there. What became clear is that religious have dedicated their lives to making the poor, the marginalized, the voiceless and the invisible better known to the rest of the world! Why? It’s what the Gospel calls us to do – to walk on the edges, where we can be free. “Why aren’t you in the classroom, like you used to be?”  “Why aren’t you teaching our children?”  Why?  Because that was then and this is now.  It’s a new day!  And one of the things we are learning is that many of those skills, honed in classro...

I read something recently that made me sad.  It was a magazine or newspaper article about how the Japanese are growing square watermelons to accommodate limited grocery shelf space.  It made me think of other ways we have manipulated nature and God’s natural order of things:  binding feet to make them smaller, spraying pesticides to eliminate natural pests, blasting our tomatoes to turn them prematurely red. We even manipulate our bodies into girdles or body suits or whatever so that we can squeeze into too small clothes to make people we may not even know think we’re something we’re not. Our manipulations blind us to the beauty of difference.  What makes you different from me fills part of me that my created being isn’t able to fill.  And vice versa.  God made us - all of us - different for a reason.  Difference is holy; difference adds beauty and spice and variety and life to … well, to life.  Let’s embrace it.  I d...