Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

I never wanted to be a religious sister (nun) because I felt I would never be happy.     This calls me to reflect on what is happiness.     Some say that happiness is a feeling.     It is when you feel good and cheerful about something that happened or is happening in your life.     However, I think that true happiness comes from when you make others happy.     After I went out of my way to assist someone and they unexpectedly tell me how much my helping meant to them.     I experience an unexpected warm feeling inside.     True happiness I think is a sense of fulfilment you feel even if what you did was not acknowledged, yet you know that deep down inside you did and gave of your best to help someone without any conscious ulterior motive.     You did it because it was the right and necessary thing to do at the time. Everyone searches for happiness and many know that true happiness cannot be found in things,...

I never imagined that once I joined the Dominicans I would return to my hometown to live. Every place I have been called/sent has been an adventure—Suburbs of big cities, alternative school in Omaha, subsidized housing in Tulsa, Trinidad and Tobago, between black towns and white suburbs in Mississippi.  Each has been a place of learning and caring.  Each place and now Madison has been a place of community.   “Community” sounds like such an ideal place.  And yet It has both blessings and tensions.  We ourselves are blessing and tension.  Learning from each one gives us experience needed to live in a neighborhood, a parish community, a city of challenges, a polarized nation. I am looking at the back yard, where I brought the commercial composter from 3 other places where I lived in Madison. Each place had its challenges and blessings.  Each place had banana peels and vegetable leftovers to compost and turn into nourishm...