Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

John 14:2-4 In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.   If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?   And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. These passages from John are particularly meaningful to me right now.   Before entering religious life, I had basically lived in one place near my tight-knit family.   In the last 2-1/2 years, I have moved six times… which means I’ve had to say my good-byes, but also my ‘hellos’, at least six times.   As difficult as the good-byes are for me, (and they are very difficult,) I am always surprised at how quickly the next place becomes ‘home’.   Yet the places and people I’ve lived with and loved along the way remain in the deepest part of me, too…..in one of those rooms. I am beginning to understand in a much more profound way that God truly dwells in each of us, in the deepe...

Mary Oliver’s poems so often speak to my heart at the time that I need it most.   On this Labor Day, a s I ponder the violence, injustice and oppression that are so rampant in our world, this poem speaks to my heart of my hope.   Song of the Builders On a summer morning I sat down on a hillside to think about God - a worthy pastime. Near me, I saw a single cricket; it was moving the grains of the hillside this way and that way. How great was its energy, how humble its effort. Let us hope it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe. Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early (2004) What speaks to your heart ? What is it you hope for? Mary Ann Nelson, OP Madison, WI