Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Yesterday I traveled 50 kms by car, 35 kms by train, and more than 8000 kms by plane.  It took me just under 18 hours in fits-and-starts of waiting to board high-speed modes of transportation to arrive in Chicago.  That’s a stark contrast to the last month in which I walked 550 kms in 25 days—just over a half-marathon each day.  I’m struck by how different these experiences of travel were and how poignant the metaphor for moving through life. Each leg of my journey yesterday was meticulously planned based on exact arrival/departure times.  At the airport, I joined the elbow-to-elbow crowds of people waiting in line and avoiding eye-contact or personal interaction.  Airport lines have a way of blending stagnation with rushed anxiety to meet check-in deadlines.   I then spent hours in a tightly packed space moving at inhumanly high speeds to most efficiently arrive at a specific destination.  While flying, the only way to know where you a...

I can honestly say I have never experienced God as a gendered Being. God has always been a mysterious presence, a constant – sometimes loud, sometimes deathly still - powerful, loving presence that I could experience anywhere, everywhere.  Sometimes, I have experienced God as an absent presence, when I have longed to know God as a “being” that could be physically clung to.  Have there been times in your life when you absolutely wanted to physically hug God, to feel God’s tender caress? Have there been times when, truthfully, you just wanted to grab God by the ankles and never let go? Maybe that’s where community steps in – not to fill a void – but to stand in as the physical presence of God.   I am grateful for all of the many types of community into which God has either placed or led me – my family of origin, the four other women with whom I currently live, the broader Sinsinawa Dominican family, and the many people with whom I have worshipped, played and mini...