Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

The seed catalogs have arrived!  This sign of Spring never ceased to thrill me as a kid and continues to be exciting even today!  There is a joy in choosing seeds to plant in the earth, believing that by burying them in the dark loam, life and color and fragrance and even food will be the result. Jesus reminds us of that paradoxical truth in an honest, visceral way.  “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain.”  The seed must be planted, must be buried, must face an unknown future to ultimately find the nourishment and energy it needs to break open to the light it seeks.  This metaphor, offered for our reflection on this 5 th Sunday of Lent, never grows stale, never lets us off the hook in our need to reflect on the mystery of dying and rising in our own lives, in our Earth, in our universe.    This past year we have all learned something about dying; now we face new beginnings in a changed landscape.  H...

I never imagined that once I joined the Dominicans I would return to my hometown to live. Every place I have been called/sent has been an adventure—Suburbs of big cities, alternative school in Omaha, subsidized housing in Tulsa, Trinidad and Tobago, between black towns and white suburbs in Mississippi.  Each has been a place of learning and caring.  Each place and now Madison has been a place of community.   “Community” sounds like such an ideal place.  And yet It has both blessings and tensions.  We ourselves are blessing and tension.  Learning from each one gives us experience needed to live in a neighborhood, a parish community, a city of challenges, a polarized nation. I am looking at the back yard, where I brought the commercial composter from 3 other places where I lived in Madison. Each place had its challenges and blessings.  Each place had banana peels and vegetable leftovers to compost and turn into nourishm...