Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

We do not use this word too often. Yet we have a holiday which celebrates this ‘old’ word that describes our more common work. Why have a day to celebrate ‘labor’? Might it be so we might know the dignity associated with what we do?   There is labor at our birth. There is labor when we learn and study. There is labor when we choose to live out and act on our commitments. There is labor when we pray/meditate. What is the Spirit teaching me in these works? There is labor in relationships. What do each of this ‘labors invite you and I to ponder.   Of late the work in relationships has been much on my mind and heart. Sheltering in place during Covid has given me time and opportunity to reflect on how I show up for relationship with others and with myself. In pondering this I have been laboring to know the Holy, the Sacred in others and in myself. I have needed this reflective work of bowing before this Mystery of whom others are and who I am. It is indeed a laboring of being more ...

I’m spending the summer at our Camp WeHaKee in northern Wisconsin, far from my home in Austin, Texas.  The setting is gorgeous, and the camp is full of the laughter and struggles of girls as they navigate new relationships as well as develop new skills in such things as teamwork, arts, music, horseback riding, sailing and archery.  While there are still some Covid protocols in place, we have been able to enjoy seeing one another in person again, sharing meals outside and singing our favorite camp songs.  I am especially impressed with the camp counselors, young women mostly college age, who bring energy, enthusiasm, and many talents they can share with their campers Surely,  This is holy ground; we’re standing on holy ground, For our God is with us, and where God is is holy.   LouAnne Willette Austin, TX

It has been such a strange Lent Everything seems turned on its head. I have been home for four weeks  socially distancing. Privileged to have a home in which to stay safe. I have been out for a solitary walk each day noticing as the signs of Spring begin to show themselves. Robins come to my balcony,  still the juncos and chickadees and woodpeckers and purple finches and nuthatches. I’ve seen green creeping into the tops of trees, buds  barely visible, yet all waiting. I have been trying to focus on what is important.  Staying connected through FaceTime.  Praying with our sisters via Zoom.  Trying to connect with and teach my students online. It’s still surreal.  Watching the liturgies streamed from our mother house Praying for their safety and for all who are working so hard to support us during this pandemic. No end in sight. We wait. We all wait as we move through these holiest of days. We wait in expectation...

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...

That was the big Spring announcement when, as kids, we found the Burpee Seed Catalog in our rural mailbox at the end of winter.   Eager for anything colorful, we poured over those pages - fodder for dreams of garden flowers and foods, for new life and the promise of a new season.   Now, hovering in mid-Lent, my dry soul/garden needs a version of the Burpee Catalog and I realize I have one, we all do   – it’s called the Gospel.   But unlike a package from the seed catalog, we don’t have to wait for it to arrive, we don’t have to be in the best possible condition to plant or harvest.   Because our God doesn’t work that way;     God’s mercy and grace abound even when we feel like we’re in a perpetual February or snowy March.   Gardens of every kind appear everywhere in scripture and the Holy is found there in all times and all seasons.   Take the time to ponder, sit with, and image these words of Catherine of Siena for your...