Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

In a terrifying way, the twin pandemics of Racism and Covid-19 may bring us to the brink of all that could save us as a people. Jan Richardson’s reflection in  Circle of Grace , invites us to see a blessing in this moment. “This Grace That Scorches Us” Here’s one thing you must understand about this blessing: it is not for you alone. It is stubborn about this. Do not even try to lay hold of it if you are by yourself, thinking you can carry it on your own. To bear this blessing, you must first take yourself to a place where everyone does not look like you or think like you, a place where they do not believe precisely as you believe, where their thoughts and ideas and gestures are not exact echoes of your own. Bring your sorrow. Bring your grief. Bring your fear. Bring your weariness, your pain, your disgust at how broken the world is, how fractured, how fragmented by its fighting, its wars, its hungers, its penchant for power, its ceaseless repetition of the his...

A dear parishioner, invited me to bless her home.  She said that she wasn’t sleeping well and she kept misplacing things.  It didn’t help her peace of mind to have been told that a house nearby was reputed to be haunted!  Not withstanding this, or the fact that the woman was in her eighties and lived alone, or even that I showed symptoms of the same ‘maladies’, I gladly consented to her wish.  When I arrived at her home she promptly sat me down and, 2 1/2 hours later, we were still conversing!  The house blessing seemed secondary to the blessing that my presence and companionship brought to her.  In fact, when we did get around to the blessing of the house, it took all of 10 minutes.   The experience got me thinking that to be a blessing isn’t only about what we do for others but also about who we are for them: a presence, a listening ear, a companion, available and willing to go the extra mile.   This dear older woman indic...