Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

We do not use this word too often. Yet we have a holiday which celebrates this ‘old’ word that describes our more common work. Why have a day to celebrate ‘labor’? Might it be so we might know the dignity associated with what we do?   There is labor at our birth. There is labor when we learn and study. There is labor when we choose to live out and act on our commitments. There is labor when we pray/meditate. What is the Spirit teaching me in these works? There is labor in relationships. What do each of this ‘labors invite you and I to ponder.   Of late the work in relationships has been much on my mind and heart. Sheltering in place during Covid has given me time and opportunity to reflect on how I show up for relationship with others and with myself. In pondering this I have been laboring to know the Holy, the Sacred in others and in myself. I have needed this reflective work of bowing before this Mystery of whom others are and who I am. It is indeed a laboring of being more ...

Where I dwell, I witness Creation's resources being shared. Deer, rabbit, squirrel, sandhill, oriel, frog and me. Turkeys strut. Red wings and mourning doves eat from the same table. Wild flowers, grasses, weeds and trees converse in the wind. Fireflies blink to the starlit sky.  Diversity, thankful for the other's gift, enabling all to live. Together we pray and converse, sharing the collective wisdom. Unknowingly or perhaps knowingly, we weave a tapestry that reveals the Devine's portrait! Without God's presence Eden's Garden in the Cosmic  womb would not exist.   How do you contribute to the Community's tapestry? Will you join the sisterhood?   Caroline Sullivan, OP DePere, WI

I am blessed to live on a beautiful lake in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. These spring days are breathtaking. When I get up in the morning I open my door to a view of the sunrise. The room is flooded with light, a light so bright that it hurts my eyes. I thank God for a new day, a new opportunity to enjoy creation and to share its beauty with the people in my life. If a spring morning on earth is this awesome, what will heaven be like? Our Dominican sister Catherine of Siena tells us that “All the way to heaven is heaven because Christ is the way.” How are you experiencing heaven today? How are you sharing that experience with others?   Mary Ellen Green, OP Woodruff, WI