Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Last year’s midwest Winter was long and cold, but this year we’ve begun to experience Spring already.   And with the early daylight savings time upon us it seems even more so.   We’ve already passed the “ides of March” and I find myself asking, “How did THIS happen?” I’m one of those lucky people whose schedule is different everyday, and has been for much of my adulthood.   After teaching in a high school (where every day was nearly the same) I set off on a different path.   Now I have to look at my calendar every day just to see where I’m supposed to be! Needless to say, my calendar is very important – and if I fail to mark something down (as I too often do), well, you can imagine what happens… Our lives are busy!   And the older I get it doesn’t seem to slow down.   How about yours?   Have you fallen into the trap of being “too” busy?   Do you take time for just being ? Ruth Poochigian, O.P. ...

I recently read a great story, which goes like this: A “boatman” comes from the city to camp beside a river near the author’s house, ostensibly to escape from his busy life and enjoy nature.   However, the boatman spends all his time rushing around, angrily fixing his broken boat motor, and then zooming up and down the quiet river all day.   After watching all this, the author observes with great sadness: “he had stayed as remote from the place he had come to as if he had never left the city where he lived… because he could not be still, the place could not exist for him .” (Wendell Berry, “The Nature Consumers”) As a generally busy person living in a culture which prizes busyness and fears stillness, Berry’s words read as a challenge to me.   It makes me wonder… what is it that “cannot exist” for me when I refuse to be still? When I learn to be still, the people and places that creep into my consciousness reveal God to me in new ways, breathing life into the psa...