Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

It is a cave of sorts. A Global collection of people are crammed together with luggage piled floor to ceiling.  Unlike the donkey, trains were on strike.   All faces glued, to the fine print of the ever changing billboard, announcing arrivals and departures.   People with a mission and a purpose like Mary and Joseph. The door swung in, edging us closer together, and the door swung out, making room for anyone who came knocking.   Are you waiting for an arrival, or for a departure?  Is your purpose being lived?   Here is what I gave birth to, as I waited to depart:   Like Mary and Joseph, we carry a call.   All we know, is something beyond our womb is calling us.   We find ourselves whether male or female pregnant once again!   Do we abort? Do we carry to term?   We worry.  How will we feed this call?   Wakening, we hope all is a dream.   It is a reality.    We've been here before. Over and over throughout our...

My son did a bit of ‘guerrilla gardening’ in Iowa City some years ago, planting a variety of plants and seeds in what was once a trash-strewn concrete slab next to an alley. Acorn squash grew up the chain link fence separating this ‘plot’ from a transforming station. Neighborhood residents and passersby were fed. An older brother had a pumpkin vine growing in a crack between his concrete driveway and the side steps to his house. The vine bore fruit. In New Orleans, I remember seeing beautiful oak trees upheave sidewalks to continue their growth. Today, March 14, signals the end of Catholic Sisters Week, a week highlighting the vocational call to vowed religious life. Honest, intentional discernment in the company of supportive communities may lead a woman to vowed religious life or it may lead her to another vocation, another relationship altogether. Each of us is called to bear good fruit. Discernment is a lifetime call to listen to the voice of God. When we do that with trust and fai...

Three songs describe the discovery of my call to religious life. In grade school: "No, No, a Thousand Times NO!" In high school: "Going My Way?" In college: "You Are My Sunshine." The idea of a religious vocation was always in the back of my mind, but I never "wanted to." Shortly before college graduation, it became "I want to WANT TO."   I had been taught that we should develop whatever talents God has given us. Early in my life, I liked music and mathematics the best.  I enjoyed being able to keep them in my studies.  I attended Catholic schools, taught by Ursuline Nuns (8 years) and Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters (8 years).  Prayer was a daily routine at first but became more important to me as the years progressed.   It will not be the same in someone else's call to serve God. One of our popular hymns these days says it all:  "Will You Come and Follow Me?"   Sr. Rosa Rauth

  In the liturgical calendar, January 25 is the feast for “the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle.”   I always wonder why it’s not called the “Conversion of Saul into Paul”  because he certainly wasn’t a saint at the time he was knocked off his horse on the road to Damascus (though there is dispute about the horse) by a light and a voice that pierced his heart and mind.    That illumination and call reversed everything he thought he knew and believed.   He truly couldn’t be the same person after that encounter.   Our conversions are seldom so dramatic, but the experience of an encounter of the holy, of holy mystery, is life changing.   It might take much more time than it seemed to take Paul; it might take months, years, for us to process our understanding of the call in our lives, of being able to look at the pattern of the holy in our lives and see a path that leads to new insight and above all, change.   And it can be scary because ...

This is my second attempt at blogging and I wish to share today a very special experience I had over the Easter weekend.  My brother, John, is a priest for the Sioux City Diocese and has always worked in small parishes in rural Iowa.  After 46 years of ministry, he will be retiring.  Saturday, I drove to Wall Lake, Iowa where my family gathered to celebrate this occasion.  John and I are less than a year apart in age and we grew up like Irish Twins. There were six children in our family and we were blessed with loving parents and a marvelous education by the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters.  Both John and I began our religious vocations right after high school and I celebrated my final vows at his first Mass. The prayer card that we created for this occasion expressed our hopes. Dark and cold we may be, but this is no winter now. The frozen misery of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move; the thunder is the thunder of the floes, the thaw, the flood, the upst...

I walked into the locker room, my stomach in a tangle of excitement and trepidation.  It was my first swim practice as a high school freshman.  A girl sporting a swim t-shirt and a smile waved to me.  “Hi, I’m Kristin,” she said.  I laughed.  “I am, too!” Kristin and I quickly discovered that we had more in common than our names, and we became good friends.  Eventually we both entered religious life.  She entered a different Dominican congregation, and shortly afterward I came to Sinsinawa.  We gradually fell out of touch. At first glance, our lives look different.  She chose a congregation whose sisters wear full traditional habits all the time; I didn’t.  Her name has changed; mine is still Christin, with a “Sister” before it.  She taught in a Catholic school and is now studying philosophy; I live on a farm and promote care of creation.  To be honest, these differences often made me feel uncomfortable. Recently, our oth...

This past week marked a significant anniversary for me and those who entered with me. On September 7, 1966 I journeyed by train from Minneapolis to Sinsinawa, WI. My life opened to new possibilities and many blessings. The years have flown by! These past 3 weeks my ministry has been with my 97 year old father. He recently was in the hospital and then a rehab center. Now he is at St. Therese Senior Living Community in the “Towers” in his own apartment for the past 20 years. However,” his life is taking a turn as he will now go into assisted living at St. Therese in the “Terraces” right next door. Being a member of the Dominicans of Sinsinawa is truly an on-going blessing. “Leaving home” does not require “leaving family.” I am supported by the Dominican community with love, prayer, and encouragement to be a compassionate presence for my father and my siblings. My heart overflows with gratitude. As I witness Dad I am amazed at his acceptance of the next phase of his long li...

I was able to hear the African Children’s Choir the other night.  They were delightful! There were about twenty of them, from different countries in Africa, and appeared to be about 9 or 10 years old.  As I looked at their faces I could see the face of my grand nephew, Ofori, who lives now in Washington, D.C.  I met him first in Ghana when he was about four years old. Then I went to Columbia Correctional Institution.  It’s a maximum security Wisconsin State Prison for men.  As I sat in that circle and looked at the faces of those men I could imagineaa them as 9 or 10 years old - cute little African-American boys.  Did they sing then?  Were they loved?  What led them to this desolate place?  Are they remembered by others, by their families?  And for what?  That’s the way it is in our lives.  We go places and meet people and create bonds with them.  Then we are able to see them in the faces of others and we are able to...

Last Saturday, the Dominicans Sisters of Sinsinawa and the people of Trinidad and Tobago celebrated the perpetual profession of our Sister, Gail Jagroop, in Curepe, Trinidad. It was a wonderful celebration of Gail's YES to God and to her sisters “even unto death!”  Celebrating Gail's final profession, was also a time of re-commitment for me, and, I suspect, others of our sisters as well.  I both pondered my first YES made many years ago and my desire to continue to make this choice today.  This life to which God has called me has been a great life for me.  My life has been full and meaningful.  I’ve been able to join with others in helping to build a holy and just society and church doing a variety of ministries and  in so many places.  Life in this community has both challenged and supported me in becoming the person God created me to be. Our sister, Kaye Ashe, says it so well: The search – for self, for wisdom, ...

Last weekend I had the privilege of leading a weekend retreat with young people in their twenties and thirties.   It was an emotional time for many of us who had to hear the various heart-wrenching stories of some of these young people and the various ways that they have dealt with these life changing events and still continue to do so.   The weekend was a time for them to take stock of their lives and see if they were satisfied with where they were presently in their lives and if they happy with the person that they were becoming.   I am always amazed by the resilience of the human spirit.   Even though they were going through their own hell, they were still willing and able to try and reach out to others who were also hurting. Due to the magnitude of the hurts some were unable to be able to reach the place of forgiving the perpetrators.   Forgiveness for some is a journey; it is not an overnight event.   Jesus was able to forgive his perpetrators...

I’m sure you’re familiar with Mary Oliver’s question, “Tell me, what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” from her poem,  The Summer Day.   Recently, I've had the privilege of visiting with our sisters in Jacksonville, Florida and Trinidad.  I have been inspired by variety of choices my sisters have made in answering that question.  In Jacksonville, five women live in community and support one another in the ministry for which each has passion.  Maureen, in retirement, is a powerhouse of volunteer activity for peace and justice.   At Divine Mercy House, Priscilla supports young women facing an unplanned pregnancy with little or no help available to them.  Beverly uses her many skills and talents as part of the administrative staff at Holy Rosary Catholic School where she nurtures students in academic excellence, faith development and commitment to service.  Elizabeth, hers...

I’m taking a Vows class at Aquinas this year with one of the topics being on charism.  In Finding the Treasure , Sandra Schneiders calls charism “a grace given for the sake not only of the recipient but also and primarily for the upbuilding of the Church.” In addition to the Dominican charism, rooted in the four pillars of community, prayer, study and ministry, there is one that is more particular to Sinsinawans, summed up in Fr. Samuel’s exhortation, “Let us set out for any place where the work is great and difficult, but where also with the help of the One who sends us, we shall open the way for the Gospel.” I may not encounter the same physical hardships that Fr. Samuel and our founding Sisters did, but the work of opening the way for the Gospel can still be challenging, still often great and difficult.  The way seems key – a channel through which Gospel truths and values flow freely from one person, one group, to another and back; a channel tha...