Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

These days I am so taken up with my studies that finding time to fit in my other responsibilities has been a bit of a stretch.  I seem to be consumed by it.  So much 'dense' literature, which I have to read over and over to really get it!   As demanding as it has been on my time however, I love study and I am grateful for how it has deepened and broadened my perspective on life.  And actually, some of it has been fun and easy reading too.  But I am also very aware of deep truths that I have learned along the way that have come, not from books but from allowing myself to be consumed with life and with life's experiences, taking a long look at them and distilling out of them the essence of what makes for good, meaningful, honest, holy and just living and loving.  From way back St. Dominic saw the importance of study and contemplation so that we, as members of the Order of Preachers can be more credible witnesses to Truth as...

When I walked into our backyard recently, I was delighted to see thriving the Jacob’s Ladder I had planted one year ago!  It was a transplant from my mom’s garden.  My delight remained but inwardly, I felt a strong urge to dig up that plant and take it with me on the next leg of my journey with the Sinsinawa Dominicans. I think religious life, and life in general, can do that to a person now and then.  Things to which we’ve assigned value, as skewed as it may sometimes be, become possessions we hold onto with a vice-like grip.  Maybe we do that simply as a way of holding onto memories; a way to stay in a sort of comfort zone. My time in Madison has been such a gift to me … I can’t begin to express my gratitude to God and to my congregation for allowing me the opportunities to study, to live in community, and to have so many wonderful, wonderful people become part of my life.  They have left seeds of beauty and roots of joy in my heart –...