Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

I have a cartoon drawing on my desk that serves as my reality check.  A straight black line goes across the paper with A at the starting dot and B at the end.  But also found at the A starting point is a different line with color and texture – one that loops and twists and swoops and crosses and recrosses that nice neat straight line – and when  that  line ends at the B dot  it has spelled out the word “LIFE.”  Why do I persist in thinking all my efforts and prayers and projects and plans can or should only work the straight line way I envision them when I start out at A?  What keeps me from enjoying – or even celebrating --  the loops and swoops and crisscrossing – instead of seeing them as obstacles or unwelcome detours?  This Easter season calls us to see the LIFE of the Risen Christ in our own lifelines. This Easter season reminds us of the call to constant conversion and not immovable certainty - aka a ...

I am standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before me  I am honored by their passion for our liberty  I will stand a little taller, I will work a little longer  And my shoulders will be there to hold the ones who follow me   A few years ago, I would have never have imagined being alive today to see the many challenges of almost these two years.  However, I can still categorically say that I am filled with deep gratitude for the many things in my life, especially for life itself, good health, family, sisters, and friends.  Things and people that I may have previously taken for granted.     The chorus of the above song by  Joyce Johnson Rouse ,  aka “Earth Mama,” beautifully describes the gratitude that I feel for the ones who  have gone before me.  I know that I am alive and well at this challenging time in life for a reason and for a purpose.  I am here to have life and to live it...

Although autumn isn’t happening here in Texas yet, I know that up north fall has come with all its splendid colors.  I have often reflected how trees change their colors from the green of spring and summer to the golds, reds, and browns of fall, then let go of their leaves, one by one.  It’s a beautiful image of our life and death.   Fall is a season of letting go. This last week five of our sisters went home to God.  Each of them, Meg, Jessica, Philip Mary, Dorothea, and Pat, led wonderful lives of prayer and service.  Each of them was unique and reflected God’s image in different ways.  Each of them was loved.   So, as we are now in the process of saying goodbye to each of these lovely sisters, celebrating all the seasons of their lives, we thank God for each of them and rejoice at the many colors of their letting go.   LouAnne Willette, OP Austin, TX

The seed catalogs have arrived!  This sign of Spring never ceased to thrill me as a kid and continues to be exciting even today!  There is a joy in choosing seeds to plant in the earth, believing that by burying them in the dark loam, life and color and fragrance and even food will be the result. Jesus reminds us of that paradoxical truth in an honest, visceral way.  “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain.”  The seed must be planted, must be buried, must face an unknown future to ultimately find the nourishment and energy it needs to break open to the light it seeks.  This metaphor, offered for our reflection on this 5 th Sunday of Lent, never grows stale, never lets us off the hook in our need to reflect on the mystery of dying and rising in our own lives, in our Earth, in our universe.    This past year we have all learned something about dying; now we face new beginnings in a changed landscape.  H...

Last week I experienced two events:  the birth of Taylor and the death of Richard – God was busy that day because BOTH happened on the same day !  Taylor is the first grandchild of my friends Gail and Bill.   Richard was a prisoner in our Restorative Justice circle.  To begin a life, any life, is a miracle.  Both of these lives are extraordinary!  Taylor was born in the morning and Gail is my driver to the prisons I go to.  She is also a prison ministry volunteer, an artist and a teacher.  We were scheduled to go to prison that night but Taylor’s birth took precedence.   Gail always made a point of greeting every man in our circle by name !  When she greeted Richard he would say, “I don’t know if I’ll come back next week.”  She responded, “Then I won’t either!”  At the end of the 12 weeks Richard was both stunned and honored to be chosen by the other men to be their graduation speaker. Ruth Poochigian, O.P. M...

Lately I have been reflecting and reading about death. Some may find this topic somber and even morbid, personally it has not been.   As someone in full-time parish ministry, ever so often I have to celebrate someone's life through a funeral service. This is what we do when someone dies, we focus on their life and what it meant to the relatives, friends and acquaintances left behind. In her book 'Befriending Death', author Michelle O'Rourke states, that Henri Nouwen in his book 'Our Greatest Gift', says, "We have to befriend life and our purpose first, before we can embrace death." As I continue to reflect on my own life and also on the lives of my parents who are growing older, this message rings true to me. When I realize what my purpose is for being in this world and I am able to try to fulfill that purpose, death does not seem so scary. It is when I feel that I have wasted my one life on earth that death becomes scary. A new year means...

An experience I had recently shed light on an experience all of us will have some day.  I experienced the death of one of my classmates.  It was sobering because I suddenly had to face my own mortality!  At the same time it gave me a chance to reflect on that most meaningful encounter of any of our lives:  our readiness to meet God face to face!  What will it be like?  Will I be ready?  Will I be resistant?  Will I be fearful?  Will I be relieved? Spiritual writer Henri Nouwen once wrote, before his own death in 1996,  “ Am I afraid to die? I am every time I let myself be seduced by the noisy voices in my world telling me that my ‘little life’ is all I have and advising me to cling to it with all my might. But when I let these voices move to the background of my life and listen to that small soft voice calling me the Beloved, I know that there is nothing to fear and that dying is the greatest act of love, the act...