Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Life is a work in progress.  I ask you the question:  What are you working on? In my ministry life, I am working on a Day of Reflection I will give early in June.  The title is:  Loving Your Holy Story .  Actually this will be part 1 – with part 2 in July. Sometimes, in order to love our life story, we need forgiveness - forgiveness of others – and importantly – forgiveness of ourselves.  So the first part of part 1 will focus on forgiveness.  As I am preparing, I am drawn into the very thing I plan to present.  I am finding my spirit contemplating how forgiveness resides in me – or not!  As I notice this current flowing through me, I realize that this is as much a part of the preparation as the ‘formal’ study.  It is necessary in order to be authentic in my presentation.  And I believe it is not accident of the Spirit of Pentecost!  It is Grace abiding and moving within me. You see, I am a work in progres...

Continuously saying yes to God and my call to be a religious sister with the Sinsinawa Dominicans at this time in the twenty- first century, is not something that comes easily to me.  It means blindly saying yes to a future that is unknown and trusting in a God who I cannot see, but who I have experienced constantly. This continuous yes always means a lot of letting go and dying to self.  However, through my continuous yes I have been blessed tremendously in various ways in my life and I have seen myself continue to grow into someone who I think I was meant to become, the real Lystra.  Having to face surgery earlier this month was also blindly trusting in something or someone who I had no control over.  The mere thought of general anesthetic and the cutting of my body totally terrified me.  I felt betrayed by my body, which has been so good to me over the years.  Preparing for surgery was doing a lot of mental and emotional work.  It me...