Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

My birthday falls on June 14 th —the same day this blog falls due. Our lives are made of up a series of sometimes minor and sometimes significant dates.   Because we’re the conscientious sort, most of us try to attend to the first type of date and pay attention without giving too much significance to the latter.   I keep lists, for example, of things I should get to on any day—from sending an anniversary card to getting to an appointment.   I suppose I consider my birthday among the significant dates.    (I’ve forgotten the dates of my graduations; I’d forget most other dates if I didn’t have them written down.)   My folks always made a minor fuss about our birthdays:   Mom made a cake on that day. Since my birthday fell in June, we often went on a picnic.   I remember that the water was always a bit cold for swimming but I went in anyway. As adults, we may feel that we should put away childish things such as caring about our birthdays....

I enjoy going to the movies and have several friends that do as well.   With each of them I know their movie ‘tastes’ and who to ask to join me depending on the film.   My tastes run from Star Wars (I want to be the first nun in space!) to the most recent one I saw: Loving . Loving is a true story of an interracial couple who decided to get married but living in the state of Virginia in the 1950s, this was seen as a criminal act.   For some, the movie would seem slow moving, but the tension that happens because of the pace and the discipline of the actors playing their parts brings the reality of the horror of how people have been and continue to be treated in our country. The irony is that the film title is the last name of this couple and yet so very fitting for the love they had for each other.   Films like Loving provide much more than mere entertainment.   They are teachable moments of how we are meant to be with each other as c...