Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Typically I’ve conceptualized my life as a linear progression of the places I’ve called home—it’s been a convenient way for me to catalogue my experiences and gauge my personal growth.   As I’m wrapping up my first year of Candidacy and preparing to move on to the next steps in my discernment, I’m noticing a subtle shift in that perspective.    A growing awareness of the Sinsinawa Dominican focus on relationship has influenced how I view these various epochs of my life—including this most recent one as a Candidate.   There’s a vast network of relationships associated with each of these places which I’m realizing provides a much richer lens for thinking about my past.   In fact, it was those relationships that actually defined my experiences and led to my personal growth—the geographic locations, as much as I loved them, were just backdrops.  As I contemplate the idea of “itinerancy” as a way of life, I no longer think that the defining factor is ...

The “New World Symphony,” written by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, was one of the first symphonic pieces I enjoyed listening to as a kid. Later I heard “Goin’ Home,” a song based on a movement of that symphony and arranged in the form of a Negro spiritual. I loved it as well. Since becoming a Dominican sister and living in three different cities in ten years (community life, study, ministry), I have been prompted numerous times to reflect on what “going home” means and feels like. Home is no longer simply the city where I grew up. It is also the city I lived in for many years and where I return to spend time with family and old friends. Our Sinsinawa Dominican motherhouse, “the Mound,” has felt like home since my first visit. There are people, scattered throughout this country, who also feel like home to me. Yesterday morning, a Sinsinawa sister-friend passed away and has now ‘gone home’ to God. In life and in song: “…It’s not far, jes’ close by, Through an open door; Wor...

John 14:2-4 In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.   If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?   And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. These passages from John are particularly meaningful to me right now.   Before entering religious life, I had basically lived in one place near my tight-knit family.   In the last 2-1/2 years, I have moved six times… which means I’ve had to say my good-byes, but also my ‘hellos’, at least six times.   As difficult as the good-byes are for me, (and they are very difficult,) I am always surprised at how quickly the next place becomes ‘home’.   Yet the places and people I’ve lived with and loved along the way remain in the deepest part of me, too…..in one of those rooms. I am beginning to understand in a much more profound way that God truly dwells in each of us, in the deepe...

Does that not seem like a simple question?  Yet, each time I am asked, “Where do you live?”  I hesitate.  Currently, my home is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  I love this city!!  And, our Motherhouse, the home of every Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa, is located in the Southwest corner of the state, on County Road Z.  We call it God’s country!! But, the fact that I have two homes is not the real root of my hesitation. For Dominicans, our home is first and foremost in the grace-filled and spacious heart of God.  Wherever we are, with whomever, we strive to be at home.  Home means being deep listeners and faith filled prayers.  Home means being totally open.  Home means deepening our inner awareness.  One place where I feel so at home is in my studies.  I am studying theology.  I study about God.  It is amazing and stretching, eye-opening and mind boggling.  And, of course, a never-ending process!...