Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

I am a dawn watcher. I like to get up early, when it’s still dark. I like to sit and watch the sky slowly almost imperceptibly lightening. It’s the quietest part of the day. Everything is waiting on this new dawn.   It’s different every day, every minute. Light hits clouds and color reenters the world. Today the horizon suffuses with oranges and pinks and the few wispy clouds turn violet. Everything is impermanent, in flux. The colors change all the time. The clouds mutate, coalesce, move on, disappear.   At last a deep orange lunette shyly appears and in rising transforms into a full bright circle of orange red light. The new sun sits on the horizon line for the merest few breaths before continuing its’ majestic rise into the sky of the new morning, What a gift.   We have been given the gift of a new day. A fresh start. A new beginning for ourselves, our earth for all living beings.   How will I use this gift of life today? What awaits me as I step out int...

I bet like most people, you appreciate beauty. I have found myself startled by beauty this Fall. I turn the corner and am dazzled by a gloriously red leaved Maple tree. It seems lit up from within. I turn again and my  breathe is taken away by tiny bright yellow leaves hanging on the tips of bare branches and arranged like ornaments.  If we only open our eyes to the magnificence of our natural environment, we can appreciate these manifestations of the Divine and take a moment to appreciate and give thanks for such beauty. The other night I looked up and was stopped in my tracks by the beauty of the crescent moon juxtaposed by Venus, a bright jewel in the dark sky.    And then there is the freshness of dawn, beautifully painted every morning, fleeting but truly glorious. So even though we humans have caused and are causing so much damage to our environment we are still held in mercy and beauty. May we work towards truly appreciating and giving thanks. Doing a bet...

This   is one of my favorite quotes from St. Thomas Aquinas. It is at the heart of my Dominican vocation. As much as I am reluctant to leave my comfortable warm bed when the alarm goes off at 5:30 I do appreciate the quiet freshness of the early morning.  At this time of year, it’s very dark and the moon and bright stars are my companions. I sit and watch in stillness as the sky becomes lighter and a thin sliver of red or orange moves along the horizon, slowly widening to welcome the rising sun.  I drink in the beauty and am grateful for the gift of the new day. As the light dawns, I eat my oatmeal watching as the chickadees, nuthatches, finches, come to my bird feeder. The cardinal and Juncos feed from the seeds that are scattered.   They take only what they need and fly off into the adventure of their day. I too fly off, to catch my shuttle which takes me to Edgewood College where I teach Digital Art and Design to undergraduates in my 8 o’clock class...