Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

During these years of Covid I’ve had lots of opportunity for solitude at home. Lately though I’ve noticed that it’s easy for me to fill up the quiet with music or podcasts or radio and tv programs. I have earbuds so I can seem quiet but inside I am miles away listening to a book or a program. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. However, I am aware that it does keep me from being  PRESENT . I listen to podcasts or a book while I’m getting the dinner ready, and I am entertained by and enjoy the content. However, it does distract me from actively paying full attention to whatever I am engaged with. Peeling  this  carrot or washing  this  dish. Perhaps I have become used to filling up all the spaces.     When I go out for a walk I’ve been listening to books on my phone. Enjoyable for sure but it distracts  me from being present to the walk itself. When I switch off, I can pay attention to the wind on my skin, to the texture of the bark on t...

Recently I have taken up weaving as a kind of hobby. I’ve never been one to be creative with my hands and I figure I’d better learn to do something like that before I get old. That’s a joke, actually, because the fact is that I AM old at age 74, almost. So here I am moving the weft through the warp and seeing emerge a really lovely piece of fabric. What’s best about weaving is that it is done slowly, rhythmically, back and forth, back and forth. It’s like breathing – quiet and beautiful and life-giving. It occurs to me that my weaving experience is like my life as I enter into the last chapter, the one we call “old age.” Each day, each moment comes after the other, creating an image of color and texture that reflects the process in my mind, my emotions, my body.  Each thread is new word or feeling or idea or question about life. It’s a kind of inner journey reflected outside of me.  What are you weaving these days? How do you name the threads?  Mary E...