Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

So now whether we are celebrating Lent, the time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving or Spring the time of green shoots, pussy willow buds and robins, today is our day with its glorious diversity.  It makes me think of change.  The daily paper wrote, “Turn over a new leaf” What do I want to do differently this year?  How can I be more supportive to the people in my life?  How do I respect earth? How can I be a stronger part of movements that call for making our systems more human? How can I turn a business call into a moment in which I acknowledge another human being? I celebrate that I get to be in a multicultural community. The Sinsinawa Dominicans have roots from African countries, from Trinidad and Tobago, from Spanish-speaking countries in Central and South America, from First Nations from Asian countries, the Pacific Islands, and from many European countries. Diversity is Dominican.  We come from and are sent to the diverse world wit...

As we step into the practices and  opportunities of this Lenten season I am aware that a whole year has gone by in our Covid reality. My nature appreciates solitude and my own company, but I do so miss my sisters. Even though I know they are close by and that I have lots of zoom and FaceTime opportunities, like millions all over the world I miss all the in person gatherings. My closest companions these days are the birds that flock to the seeds I put on my balcony. I have Chickadees, Cardinals, Woodpeckers , Juncos, Finches, Sparrows, Mourning Doves and the occasional Bluejay. I have learned  lots from these feathered ones this year.   How to take just what I need. How to share. How to take turns. How to stay  alert. How to just BE.   I think most of all they remind me of my own place in the great scheme of things. Like them I am but one expression of this sacred diversity of life. The birds, the trees, the lake awaken me to my small unique p...

I believe we've been living a COVID Lent for over a year and counting.   Locked down. Restricted. Masked, and socially distant.   After some thought, I realized, we are much like my hardy garden veggies.  Transplanted from garden to pot. Placed in a greenhouse and covered in a mask of cloth.  The subzero temperatures like Covid threaten.  However all they request is to be watered!   Lent is about greening, being watered, replenished. This Lent let's treat ourselves to a good watering. Yes TREAT ourselves. Turning ourselves inside out, to expose our Winter/ Lenten growth. Will Community, friends, church, world see our greening and be changed by our example?   We, like my veggies, are all Covid transplants. Don't forget to water. Treat yourself. Our growth is already visible!   Caroline Sullivan, OP DePere, WI

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...

One member of my Dominican community made a special effort to buy  Pączki  so we could have them for Pączki  Day or Fat Tuesday, the day before the 40 days of fasting we call Lent. My Polish ancestors could have told me how to pronounce Pączki , the delightful Polish filled donuts, but now I had to look it up on the internet. Pączki , but then 40 days!  What should I do for those long 40 days? When I was teaching religion in a school in Tulsa, I encouraged the students to reflect on 40 days of Lent, but I delighted more in telling them to celebrate the 40 days after  Easter. Now I am appreciating that both 40 days are important and go together like vinegar and honey. It’s not all a bowl of cherries.  Community life itself has Pączki  days and searching days.  Days to struggle with knowing how to be intentional in our antiracist actions and days to rejoice when we realize transformation and celebrate all people ...

Photo Credit:  Sheila Yousuf-Abramson/Fred Oskin We often spend time in Lent looking within.  What is getting in the way of our relationship with God?  We focus on fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.  For Dominicans, Lent must also have an outward focus and involve the world in which we live.  How is our relationship with God moving us toward those on the margins, our sisters and brothers?  Recently, Dominican University’s School of Social Work boarded buses at (UGH) 4:30 a.m. to go to our state capital, Springfield, IL.  We participated with other graduate programs in the National Association of Social Work Advocacy Day.  We met with legislators.  We connected policy to programs.  We stood up for our sisters and brothers who are left outside of access to basic human rights.  Lent calls us to this kind of accompaniment.  The wide mercy of God calls us to walk with...

I changed my sheets the other day and I thought I’d flip over the mattress only to realize that my mattress only has one side. So I turned it around instead and put the head down were my feet go. My mattress is a cumbersome thing but as I struggled to turn it around I found myself thinking of our local Lake Wingra and the cyclical turning over of the waters. This happens in Fall and Spring and allows life to continue under the ice in the depths of Winter. In the winter the warmest water sinks to the bottom of the lake. This mixing of waters distributes oxygen and Nutrients to support life under the ice covered lakes. In the Spring, when the ice on the surface melts, the turnover reverses with the warmth and nutrients moving closer to the surface A seasonal miracle, this turning over. What is turning over inside me as we move deeper into the Lenten season? Under the ice cover am I taking the opportunity to seek out nourishment and life in these Lenten depths? When Easte...

Perhaps you are familiar with the poet, Mary Oliver. She died a few months ago and it was only then I found out she lived a few miles north of me in South Florida. On Ash Wednesday I gave a day of reflection in which I include her poem:   The Summer Day .  The last line is:  “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” The title for this blog entry is how I adapted her words as those of us gather as Lent began.  This is the only Lent we have in 2019.  How did those present and how are you, using your one wild and precious Lent? I have long ago stopped using Lent to give up chocolate.  Rather, I am pondering how  wild   (God’s gift of free will) and  precious   (this very moment – every moment) is my life and all life including the earth’s.  I am listening to God’s call to the next action I am to take. Recently, that happened when participating in a congregati...

During this Lenten season this year, I have been focusing on Conversion – turning around, looking at a life situation from a different perspective, moving on.   I’ve seen several different examples, some in surprising circumstances.   For example, I viewed one of my favorite classic movies on TCM network recently – National Velvet .   It is the story of a teenage girl, played by twelve-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, who believed a rogue horse she won in a lottery could win the Grand National.   At the end of the movie, her mother, a very wise woman, told Velvet she was proud of her because she recognized that she had pursued her dream, but now knew it was time to move on.   There is a season.   If you’ve never seen this movie, it’s worth a trip to the local library or Netflix to find the DVD.   There are multiple examples of conversion in the movie. Watching the NCAA tournament this past weekend I realized that 68 teams and coaches began the jou...

Visiting Our Motherhouse Recently With Dominican University Students During this Lenten season, I have spent time in prayer trying to name what makes me privileged.  One huge privilege for me is my ministry.  As a college professor, I hang out all day with young people.  I am so privileged to learn from their ways of looking at life and their openness to our world. Sometimes, my prayer offers me the invitation to get in touch with the privilege that is mine as a white woman.   Whether it is while driving down the suburban streets where I live or trying to buy food at the grocery store or even trying to engage in conversation with someone else in the waiting room, I am so aware that being a white woman offers me privileges.   The students of color with whom I teach and learn from do not experience these opportunities in the same way simply because of the color of their skin. I am praying this Lent to be more aware and to deepen my ...

Potting around in the garden could prove risky if one is not properly attired.   Inevitably, I would return from the garden with a thorn in my finger, more that a few injections of formic acid from ants resulting in swollen fingers.  Not to mention numerous scrapes and scratches from thorny branches. These garden creatures resent my intrusion into their space, and so up comes these various defense mechanisms. So I have taken to wearing gloves and long sleeved shirts and I cover myself with a generous amount of insect repellant, organic if you please! So what's the lesson there you must be saying.  I am just guessing (smile) that it is the same with us in our human relationships!   It helps to wear gloves of forgiveness and compassion, long sleeves of loving kindness and to cover ourselves with a generous amount of patience! The season of Lent is a good time to 'shop' for these if we don't have them already. Have a blessed Lent. Gail Jagr...

Wednesday  was a mixed-bag.  I joked with a colleague that the ashes on my forehead felt apropos for a vowed celibate on Valentine’s Day.   But the day held the truth of paradox on a much deeper level.   I awoke to the distribution of ashes and a special morning prayer with my community—a wonderful way to begin the day in holy communion.  Later, I got to visit with Congresswomen Maloney (CA) and Jayapal (WA) along with Sr. Simone Campbell to thank them for their service and for scoring 100% on NETWORK’s Voting Record.  Both women—testaments to the strength of love-in-action—inspire and demonstrate the “good” that can manifest on the Hill.   Then the news broke about another mass shooting at a school in Florida—17 students killed—and the grieving set-in.  A reminder that evil is also manifested on the Hill in the form of harmful policies, blame, greed, and vitriol.   I’ve never felt more in...

A very wise mentor suggested that as part of my spiritual journey, I might incorporate eating an apple into my prayer life, a metaphorical way of getting to the core of my spirit and the questions that lie there. We use the word ‘core’ more often than we may realize, in phrases and idioms like “getting to the core of the matter”, or the “earth’s core”, or of businesses that use “core competencies” to evaluate their employees. One of our Sinsinawa-sponsored ministries –Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin – has as its motto, “Cor ad Cor Loquitur” - “heart speaks to heart” – a dialogue between souls, based in compassion, leading to understanding. When we are open to prayer that spirals us ever closer to the Sacred Center, we will discover at our core seeds. They are like God’s breadcrumbs, leading us to further questioning, deeper searching, and more profound union with the One who scattered them. I am grateful for this new prayer experience and what it has meant to me thi...

I checked the calendar and yes, it’s true, Lent is just a couple of days away! How do you prepare for it?   I had a dear friend who always said, “I HATE Lent” and I don’t quite think that is the attitude I want!   But Lent can turn into a negative if we focus only on what we can’t do, or shouldn’t eat, or have to “give up.”   This Lent, the Motherhouse community is focusing on two sides of Lenten discipline – fasting AND feasting.    Some examples on the prayer card we each received:   “Fast from wanting more; Feast on being thankful…Fast from anger; Feast on patience…Fast from gossip; Feast on silence…Fast from discouragement; Feast on hope.”    None of these are any easier than before, but by reminding me, challenging me and all of us, to feast as well as fast, I face Lent with a different perspective.   The origin of the word Lent is connected to the word for spring.   Can you make this holy season a spring time experience for...

It's been an unusually dry season so far.  Yet, the bougainvillea plant blooms and it's brilliant flowers delighted all who came here for retreat.  In addition, the trees are shedding their leaves and I have managed to resist raking them all up.  Those I do rake, I compost.  It has been fun over the years watching this apparent waste turn into nutrient rich earth.  A deeper reflection makes me think that there is nothing too dry for God and God can take apparent nothingness and transform it into something good and beautiful and useful.  The retreat house has hosted many groups this lent.  Special among them for me were the students.  For morning prayer I took them around the garden stopping at various 'stations' to reflect and pray with different aspects of nature - the bougainvillea, the trees, the dry leaves, the compost, the water, the vegetables.  The idea being to make them more aware of the need to be grateful, to reverence and car...