Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

    “I am fighting the world and the devil by myself.”   “Community ends isolation.”   “…Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil... and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.” These quotes are from, respectively, a recent conversation with a woman in a homeless shelter, as she struggled with issues most of us handle routinely and without thought; the philosophy of Earthlinks, a Denver-based social enterprise providing safe space and community for people experiencing homelessness and poverty (earthlinks-colorado.org); and from Matthew 4:1-11 – the Gospel for the 1 st Sunday in Lent.   What, if anything, do they have in common? I think they represent a progression – from a place of ‘being stuck’ in self-reliance and individualism, (in this case born out of despair), to a recognition that we are relational beings created in the image and likeness of our loving and relational God, to a fullness of life...

A thought has been consistently pestering me, filling me with awe for quite some time, particularly over the last few years.  Although difficult for me to articulate well, I am consistently reminded how ordinary and extraordinary, how significant and insignificant we all are. I have met many people from all walks of life since joining the Sinsinawa Dominicans five short years ago, and many more people before that.   Incredibly gifted yet incredibly ordinary people, doing incredibly good yet incredibly ordinary works.   Each one uniquely created yet each created in the image and likeness of God.   But 5-1/2 years ago I was not aware of their existence, and vice versa. Imagine!   I guess what I’m trying to say is that we are surrounded by incredible stories that we may never hear, stories of people we may never meet – whose lives, like our own, are filled with passion and sorrow, hopes and fears, doubt and deep faith and stumbling faith.   Stories ...