Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

I am known to NOT be a sports fan.  Just not what captures my imagination – except figure skating, gymnastics and a few other events that only draw interest occasionally. But there are so many other ways to be in the world that capture true gold.  One of the retreat programs that we offer at the Spiritual Center is a day retreat for confirmation students.  My part of the day is the gifts and fruits of the Spirit.  When I speak of these I also share that there are two important gifts/fruits that never made it to these lists: integrity and humility. Watching the summer Olympics (at least until I have to really go to bed) I find I pay attention to the participants’ skills AND how they win or lose.  Is there a sense of those two unspoken fruits: integrity and humility? More importantly, in my own life, how am I trying to live these out as one who follows the ways of Christ within my vowed Dominican life?  Some days are better than others...

When we were kids and suffering from angst about the grades, athletic prowess, or popularity of our friends, my mom, (and probably her mother and grandmother before her) used to tell my sister and me,  “You do other things; you have other gifts.”  Of course, we didn’t understand or believe her.  Mothers say stuff like that. But it was good theology. True, we are all flawed and limited; but to use a biblical metaphor, we are only branches on the vine.    Only God is perfect.  The rest of us are trying.   What was true in my family and in the whole church is true in community.   In fact, I have always liked is that I don’t have to have all the skills or strengths of others in community.   I don’t have to waste energy being everything everyone else is. Particularly as I age and am less able to do all that I used to do, I’m better at just saying, “Thank you.”   The trick is to be comfortable with my own talents.   Thomas Aquinas’s not...