Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

  How I love and admire our teacher Nature. She always invites me to insight, change, and integration. I have been preparing my garden for winter’s approach and found myself digging in a much, overgrown area of tangled, immersed Japanese Irises! When was the last time I did this, I asked myself?!     The tangled root system indicated to me that it had been 5, 6, 7? years! Whew! The Iris roots resisted being moved. They were so woven together and tangled they did not take well to my spade and shovel. It was obvious they ‘liked’ being close together and yet I knew that they all did not have the breathing space to bloom. Once broken up I could move some clumps to other spots in my large backyard for future growth. Our Congregation is just beginning preparations for our every 5-year Chapter meeting where we review how God’s Mission has us and how we are responding to this. It is a graced time of paying attention to our growth and opening ourselves up to where the Spirit is le...

I have a beloved twin sister who hates to shop but also knows she needs some new clothes.  She always wants me to go with her and when I ask her what we’re looking for, she answers, “I’ll know what I want when I find it.” How many of us have that experience – maybe not at a shopping mall or online retailer – but in searching for wisdom, insight, a new way to pray, a new challenge in study?  I’m always grateful when someone recommends a new book or article because “It is really mind stretching.”  Like my love/hate relationship with exercise, I could easily stick to my favorite mystery writers and read nothing else or listen only to my favorite podcast, but it’s when I choose to or am encouraged or challenged to search, stretch, push my comfortable boundaries, that I discover that I have found what I truly wanted. It is a choice we must make, in large and small ways, to search for what we truly want, even when we’re not sure what that is! ...