Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

I have been on a diet, some diet, any diet, for most of my adult life – always looking for that elusive hopefully painless way to get rid of my excess fat!  I know there is no such magic, despite the ads and the TV shows and the before and after pictures in magazines that always catch my eye.  It is a task I simply must take on, by myself, with discipline and courage and a willingness to forgive when I fail.  I need to know what I truly hunger for – and devote myself to searching for that instead of “all the things that fail to satisfy.” Living in community, in religious life, in any life, requires the same discipline.   Think of it as a kind of diet – of trying to eliminate the junk, of breaking free of what is unhealthy in my spirit, my life, my relationships, of giving the time and attention to the Source of Life; to feed my deepest hunger – to know God, to know and to search for God together with good companions.   For what are you truly hungering? 

I confess, I use them.  I use hashtags.  Doesn’t everyone? One I use with frequency is:   #IHaveFamilyInIraq.   But when that phrase was first used hashtags weren’t a ‘thing.’   The person who spoke those words was an Iraqi Dominican Sister giving a presentation to Dominican leadership in the US.   She was telling the story of her family (relatives and congregation of Sisters) in her homeland at a time when US political rhetoric was ramping up a plan to invade her country. US Dominicans at that time and since have kept that phrase before ourselves: “ I have family in Iraq” reminding ourselves that our Dominican life stretches beyond a congregation or a country.   We are a global Order in the Church. The phrase also reminds us that we have a particular family in the Order that has been suffering with their people for a very long time.   For us in the US, it reminds us of our need to be vigilant in being informed, to be active in our pursuit of justice and to be contemplatives w