Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

“Doubt is not the opposite of Faith; Certainty is the opposite of Faith.”  This is one of my favorite axioms and it’s never felt as true as it does this morning.  Like so many other people I fully expected that Clinton would be elected president last night.  I was not enthusiastic about it—she was not my first choice for multiple reasons—but I recognized that it’s the way things needed to be.  Because of her election I anticipated another, protracted wave of division, violence and ugliness in our country—also part of the inevitable outcome of where we’ve found ourselves as a nation.  These were certainties in my mind that I begrudgingly came to accept. This morning I find myself humbled and mystified by the outcome—what was unfathomable to me yesterday is the reality today.  Today I will push aside the feelings of dread, cynicism and fear that are creeping into my mind and I will focus on accepting and embracing my meekness.  God ...

We have been living through a year or more of rancor, fear, accusations, and a certainty that there is only one way to go about life…my way, or your way but certainly not both ways.   We have endured a period where our collective sin is certainty.   I, for one, am tired of it.   But I have to own the fact that if I am not part of a solution, I am at least complicit in the problem.   In the process of researching how non-profits/social enterprises work, I have been struck by the number of people and organizations – in this country and around the world - working bit by bit to make positive change for the common good.   We just seldom hear about them.   To change that, I am creating a Litany of Hope, listing organizations doing great work in sometimes-small ways, sometimes-big ways.   If you want the needle of your internal “Hope-O-Meter” to start ticking upward, take a look at one or more of the following links.   Read about them, support th...