Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

“Doubt is not the opposite of Faith; Certainty is the opposite of Faith.”  This is one of my favorite axioms and it’s never felt as true as it does this morning.  Like so many other people I fully expected that Clinton would be elected president last night.  I was not enthusiastic about it—she was not my first choice for multiple reasons—but I recognized that it’s the way things needed to be.  Because of her election I anticipated another, protracted wave of division, violence and ugliness in our country—also part of the inevitable outcome of where we’ve found ourselves as a nation.  These were certainties in my mind that I begrudgingly came to accept. This morning I find myself humbled and mystified by the outcome—what was unfathomable to me yesterday is the reality today.  Today I will push aside the feelings of dread, cynicism and fear that are creeping into my mind and I will focus on accepting and embracing my meekness.  God ...

Some days ago, I completed and returned my absentee ballot because I won’t be at home on the day that my state holds its primary elections. Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the continuing barrage of campaign ads and the unending media coverage of primary elections and caucuses leading-up to the July political conventions? The many political action committees and individuals who use enormous wealth to influence campaigns and elections make me wonder whether our “government of the people, by the people, for the people” still exists. My tendency toward cynicism was brought-up short in recent conversations with the two Dominican Sisters from Vietnam with whom I live in community. Both Sisters are college students. One Sister has received course assignments related to our US political parties and current candidates. Discussing an assignment with her, I realized how difficult it must be to understand all this political activity when a person has spent a lifetime in a country that fo...