Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

So now whether we are celebrating Lent, the time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving or Spring the time of green shoots, pussy willow buds and robins, today is our day with its glorious diversity.  It makes me think of change.  The daily paper wrote, “Turn over a new leaf” What do I want to do differently this year?  How can I be more supportive to the people in my life?  How do I respect earth? How can I be a stronger part of movements that call for making our systems more human? How can I turn a business call into a moment in which I acknowledge another human being? I celebrate that I get to be in a multicultural community. The Sinsinawa Dominicans have roots from African countries, from Trinidad and Tobago, from Spanish-speaking countries in Central and South America, from First Nations from Asian countries, the Pacific Islands, and from many European countries. Diversity is Dominican.  We come from and are sent to the diverse world wit...

Since I was seven years old I’ve worn glasses to correct a severe myopic condition.  I still remember my astonishment when I put on my first pair of glasses.  It was a whole new world! A few years ago I had cataract surgery and again I was astounded at the miracle of sight. For the first time in my life I could wake up and see what time it was without help from my glasses.  At that time I was told that I had “2020 vision.” What a miracle! Now the miracle is that with the past year behind us, ALL of us have 2020 vision! That means we can see things we had never seen before, such as a worldwide human family suffering together the horrors of a pandemic .Now we can see more clearly than ever the dreadfulness of racism and the vileness of a broken political system. On the other hand, we can now see more clearly the generous response of people helping people in need, sharing their resources and comforting the afflicted. Now we can see not only the potential depra...

One of the joys of being in Washington DC is the international diversity.  This diversity includes the men and women religious studying at Catholic University.  I’ve formed an intimate, ad hoc Dominican community of sisters.  We gather periodically to break bread and share about our lives.  Raghad Saeed is an Iraqi Dominican earning her PhD in nanophysics.  Lien Do is a Vietnamese Dominican earning her  Licienciate for Canon Law .  I am a Sinsinawa Dominican lobbying for social justice on Capitol Hill.   Each of us is here without family or other members of our congregation.  Our personal histories are dramatically different.  Our ministries are totally unalike.  We live in very different local community contexts.   In our daily lived experiences we don’t have much in common. But we have a common bond in our Dominican charism and our conversations are rooted in sisterhood.  Each time we gather the conver...

I love Summer not for the usual reasons we hear proclaimed, but because that is the season of many celebrations of who we are as Dominicans of Sinsinawa: Community Days, Jubilees, Receptions, and Professions.  Community Days is a time we come together as a community to pray, study, plan for the future of our Congregation, and re-connect with one another. This past weekend after having said “goodbye” to the sister friends who live far away from the motherhouse where I am in ministry, as I was sorting through papers that had accumulated in my book bag, I came across a reflection I had composed 9 years ago in preparation for Final Profession.  Quite frankly, I was “blown away” by what I had written.   The Spirit had certainly been with me during the creation of that document.  Among the many thoughts I found in the reflection was a question one of the sisters in my discernment circle had asked me, “What did you learn through your experience of liv...

I’m someone who loves autumn, who revels in cool temperatures and “jeans and sweater weather,” who savors the deep blue of an October sky and colors of leaves in the changing light of shortening days.  I love autumn because it signals change, and I believe that we need change.   Whether we want to admit it or not, we grow because of change.   Change challenges us, whether it’s colder weather or a new idea.   As autumn changes give us diversity of colors, the gift of ephemeral beauty, so the changes we experience give us opportunities to rethink, re-evaluate,   re-wonder. Life lived in community, with women of shared values but diverse opinions, with those of shared faith but diverse insights, is life lived in the paradox of “stable changes.”     From the thermostat setting to what’s for dinner, to quirky senses of humor and musical tastes, the differences are always there, but layered through all that diversity are the deepest realities...

During these early August days, we mark the 71 st anniversary of the first and only use of nuclear weapons for warfare.  The two bombings -- Hiroshima (Aug, 6th) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9 th ) -- killed at least 129,000 people in 1945.  I learned only recently that Nagasaki was home to the largest Catholic population in Japan; St. Mary's Urakami Cathedral was used by the bombing crew as its target.  How is it that national identity can “over-rule” our shared identity as followers of Jesus?  Too often, we make national differences more important than being children of the same God and members of the same human family.  How can we nurture a world view that treasures what we have in common as human beings and that celebrates our rich diversity?  Did you watch any of the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio? The gathering in one place of nearly 11,200 athletes from 206 countries gave me some hope for our world. ...