Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

These are challenging and disturbing times to say the least.     Perhaps you have felt concerned and overwhelmed by all that is happening in our world.     The list is long:     too many wars on many fronts, our planet is in critical condition, so many immigrants needing a new place to call home, frightening virulent health issues worldwide and government disruptions in countless countries.     Here at home, we have our democracy teetering and people of various faiths strongly critical of each other.   Recently I was introduced to a ‘new’ song by our Dominican brother, Jim Marchionda, OP entitled ‘Become What We Pray’ and all of this angst began to settle, and I felt an inkling of hope.  It is a beautiful song, and you can go on  You Tube  to listen to it.  There are several hopeful phrases.  ‘When Believers truly practice what we pray’, is one of the lines that spoke to me.  I again realize t...

One of my favorite spiritual writers is Dorothee Soelle.   Thinking about winter, weather, the cold, the angst and suffering in our world, I came across a line from her book,   The Silent Cry.     In this work she writes that amazement includes ‘a bleak side of terror   and   hope’. She muses that: ‘This ability for wonderment brings about consenting to amazement and is a way of praising.’ These juxtapositions move me outside of the ‘gray’ and invite me to really hear longing to be part of the whole from an immigrant knocking at the door of our border.  I hear awe and wonder in the yearning with the call for voting rights for all in our nation and in our countries as well.   One small Washington town received three feet of snow in one day this month. What a climate change statement! Those who came to help dig this village out brought their hunger to serve and their shovels were praising!  What amazes you these days? What m...

“God is the newest thing there is, the youngest thing there is. God is the beginning and if we are united to God we become new again.”     (Meister Eckhart) It has been another tough year!  Disparities in healthcare continue as we struggle still with a worldwide pandemic.  Our political scene shows no sign of rendering collaboration with justice anytime soon.  Voting rights, women’s rights, immigration, the death penalty, services for the homeless and hungry – so much is an uphill battle right now.  How do we not start 2022 exhausted, full of fatigue, and lacking compassion??? I think my answer is God.  The ancient, Dominican mystic, Meister Eckhart, called God the beginning and when we are connected to God, we get to start anew too.  I will sit with God each day.  I will soak in God’s goodness.  I will try to listen to God. I am full of hope and energy for 2022.  I trust in God’s love and jus...

The cherry tomatoes on my sister Molly’s plant make my mouth water!     The first two tomatoes I pick are so beautiful; I do not want to eat them.     The Saturday morning farmer’s market during these last weeks of August is an experience in abundance.  Each fruit and vegetable demonstrates the mystery of sunlight and rain, of earth and air.  Hidden seeds become luscious food. As Dominicans, we are called to praise and to bless.  The taste of a crunchy cucumber, the tartness of a blueberry, or the drippy sweetness of a slice of watermelon make it so easy to exclaim God’s goodness. This past Sunday’s second reading from the Letter of James says, “Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you…” Even as this pandemic rages forward and the international scene speaks of injustice and oppression, James reminds us that we are called to be the harvest of God wherever we are, in any way possible.  The harvest of God’s love, mercy...

This week the university where I minister is celebrating graduation.     And, it is also the week in which the United States celebrates Mother’s Day.     I saw so many ties between these two events in the past few days.  Students remembering and praising their mothers (and fathers and other family members) for the love and support they received.   Gratitude, study, and the sharing of life with another are examples of what we are called to as followers of Christ.  It is dates like graduation and Mother’s Day that remind us of the gift and privilege that is ours when we pass on what we receive.   When we allow the hope and grace and goodness that we are filled with to overflow onto and into the lives of those around us.  The Catholic Worker Founder, Dorothy Day, said, “the best things to do with the best things in life is to give them away.”   This past week I saw such great examples of what our lives can...

Recent Scripture readings have alluded to Jesus’ intensity and how he excited and sometimes rankled people. His notoriety had a worrisome effect on his family. Recall last Saturday’s gospel:    “Jesus came with his disciples into the house. Again the crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat. When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’ “(Mark 2:20-21)   This kind of effect on one’s family is not foreign to us. We know the topics that are likely to raise the temperature in the room when someone brings up a political or religious opinion that is not universally shared. We have experienced how it sets teeth on edge and changes the mood. With a little luck, someone redirects the conversation and normalcy returns. But we learn the perils of being the perpetrator of such a scene.   How can we have meaningful conversations with our families and others without causing a meltdown? We have just lived throu...

When I was a child I loved the song that began “All I want for Christmas,” and the answer was “my two front teeth…so I could wish you merry Christmas.” This got me to thinking, what do I really want for Christmas this year, this year that has been so challenging for everybody, a year that has called for patience, for reconciliation, for hope, for new ways of imagining being together.    I guess what I really want is what is on the front of the cards I am sending:  Peace—inner peace, peace in families, in our country and in our world.   May God’s peace surround all of us, despite the difficulties. LouAnne Willette, OP Austin, TX  

In these times of chaos and uncertainty, where hatred and violence seem to run rampant, I am comforted by our Orderly God and the Fibonacci Sequence. I am no mathematician by  any  stretch of the imagination. Math gives me a headache, it makes me hyperventilate. I can’t really explain the Fibonacci sequence except that each number is the sum of the two numbers preceding it. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. and that it has many scientific and mathematical applications. But it has also been used in music, poker, and the financial trades, among others.  The point is that the application of the sequence came  only  after its discovery, found everywhere in Nature. The pattern existed first, perhaps God’s way of scattering crumbs to help us find our way, letting us know that while we are not in control neither are we alone. That there is Order amidst the chaos and uncertainty. How beautiful; how hopeful!   Seeing beauty and working to dismantle systems of injustice...

I am a star gazer.  There is nothing more stirring than the summer night sky full of stars.   I relish in those rare opportunities offered to see the sky without artificial light.  Peering into the night’s sky, I am moved to wonder.   As Dominicans, God’s creation, at any time of year, calls us to reflect upon our vision.  How wide is my own understanding of God?   The American theologian, Ilia Delio, asked in her book,  Emergent Christ (2011) , “How deep is the divine mystery for us? (138)  Am I open to the interrelatedness creation invites?  Being willing to participate in the furthering of truth, beauty, and goodness, is co-creating with God.  Even in the midst of a pandemic, when we are locked down and missing so much, each day offers us a number of opportunities to share in and spread the generous giftedness through which all flourishes and grows.  We can actually turn ...

“I love the dark hours of my being.”  Rainer Maria Rilke These uncharted times have shown a light on some new self-learning. Like many of you, I have less face-to-face contact with family, friends, colleagues. Even while I have managed to find good healthy activities (i.e. daily exercising, letter writing, phone calls, gardening) I have found this an inwardly quiet time.  Have sorted out my drawers and closets and papers, I find this a time for a new ‘self-awareness’.   I’ve taken to pause with poetry.  I remember in new ways pieces of my family history.  I recall special moments of ministry and service.  And I find myself seeing them in new ways, with a fresh perspective. In a word, I have new HOPE.  This has allowed me to have a new openness, curiosity and wonder.   How is this time deepening your self-understanding?  What are you learning ‘new’ about yourself and your history? What ...

Sequestered, quarantined, moving our ministries and relationships to digital realities, and keeping a social distance in all that we do has not encumbered the Resurrection of Christ.     Nothing could ever impede God’s unending love.     Nothing ever will.     We see Resurrection in our movement from outside to inside, opening up the opportunity to deepen our relationship with the Risen Christ. We see Resurrection out the window and on our daily walks or bike rides as we witness spring happening everywhere, even with some Easter snow.   We see Resurrection in the indomitable courage and strength of the hospital workers and first responders who are bringing healing and hope.  We see Resurrection in the community spirit that fills balconies and porches every night to applaud these heroes and heroines of goodness. We see Resurrection in the naming of long-term disparities and the sin of racism behind them, which this global crisis ...

These February days in Wisconsin are pretty cold!  I imagine it was just as cold during February nearly 170 years ago when a small group of young women made a decision with significant implications.  They decided to remain together in their small, fledgling community. They were all novices: Sisters who had not yet made vows. They were young: the oldest was 32 years of age; the youngest, 17 years.  Seven months after their fateful decision, four of this group remained to make their first vows together. These four young women, Margaret, Mary, Judith and Ellen, took new names and became our “cornerstone” Sisters: Clara, Ignatia, Josephine and Rachel. The word, “cornerstone”, means a feature on which a particular thing depends or is based.   Together with the Dominican priest who founded our Sinsinawa Congregation, Samuel Mazzuchelli OP, these women launched a project that continues today.    The qualities that we recognize in these Cornerstones are ...

Sixteen years ago, on September 11, 2001, I was in New York City with several of our Sinsinawa Sisters.   Four of us were attending a meeting at the United Nations and we were staying at our convent in Manhattan.   Beginning with that Tuesday morning in New York, we navigated together through the devastating and frightening days that followed the attacks on the World Trade Center.   This terrible event that we remember as “9/11” marks for me a catastrophic shift in our understanding of ourselves and of our world.   For many, “security” seems to be the reality that trumps many values that have been essential to the fabric of our nation.   Seeing the “other” as a potential threat rather than as an opportunity to encounter Jesus is a view that seems pervasive.    Each year when the anniversary of “9/11” occurs, I find myself reflecting about how this event continues to shape us.   In these days of many disasters at home and around the worl...

During these Easter days, the lectionary offers stories of Jesus’ followers after His resurrection.  In the Acts of the Apostles, we hear about apostles who gave witness.  I have reflected on this word after a conversation with a friend who saw a shooting on Chicago’s South Side where she is in ministry. A “witness” is one who courageously speaks spiritual truth.   A “witness” – in the legal sense – is someone who sees a crime happen and gives testimony.   After hearing my friend describe her experience, and as I reflect on my own ministry with immigrants, I wonder if these definitions of “witness” aren’t mutually exclusive.   If we seek to be in authentic relationship and accompany those on the margins, we will hear personal accounts of violence, or we may even see acts of violence with our own eyes.      With our feet firmly planted on the ground of this real-world injustice, we aspire – like the early Jesus-followers – speak truth an...

It’s come around again, that lovely liturgical season called Advent.   It is the time when, amidst all the activity of our lives, we strive to contemplate the meaning of waiting, the meaning of time itself, the meaning of the once and always arrival of the Christ into our world, into our lives. I had never really given Advent a second thought before I joined the community; it was simply what I checked off before Christmas finally came.   Only within this Dominican frame of reference did I learn to sit with the dark days of December, to ask myself what was worth waiting for, to open myself to the Spirit of expectancy, of hope, of the mystery of “inbreaking.” Years ago I was given these lines from a play by Christopher Fry which I use every Advent to focus my prayer awaiting the Word.   I invite you to wait with it too. The human heart can go the lengths of God...  Thank God our time is now when wrong comes up to face us everywhere, never to leave us...

We have been living through a year or more of rancor, fear, accusations, and a certainty that there is only one way to go about life…my way, or your way but certainly not both ways.   We have endured a period where our collective sin is certainty.   I, for one, am tired of it.   But I have to own the fact that if I am not part of a solution, I am at least complicit in the problem.   In the process of researching how non-profits/social enterprises work, I have been struck by the number of people and organizations – in this country and around the world - working bit by bit to make positive change for the common good.   We just seldom hear about them.   To change that, I am creating a Litany of Hope, listing organizations doing great work in sometimes-small ways, sometimes-big ways.   If you want the needle of your internal “Hope-O-Meter” to start ticking upward, take a look at one or more of the following links.   Read about them, support th...