Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

I could never have imagined back in March that here, in August, we would still be sheltering from the virus. A necessity to protect each other.  It has changed how I register time. I used to look at my calendar for the whole week or month. Now I am much more cognizant of each separate day. I am aware of the blessing of life anew each morning-of the challenge to do my best each day - to love in the light of the Gospel and when I fail I ask forgiveness and start afresh with the morning light. FaceTime and Zoom have become necessities, as we stay connected while physically distancing.  The sisters I live within our complex meet formally twice a week on zoom to pray and connect. And right now our annual gathering of the Congregation is being conducted via Zoom.  Not what any of us would have wanted, as we yearn to gather, to greet each other in person. But for now - the little mosaic of zoom squares allows us to see and hear, conne...

I am growing in appreciation of both sacred space to pray alone and sacred time to pray together. Before community prayer each day I walk in the neighborhood.   My Dominican prayer group (three sisters and two associates) meets for prayer each day at 7am. In one part of the prayer, a short current writing from indigenous peoples is read. Those writings have made me more conscious of the carved image, a five-minute walk away on the shore of Lake Monona.  The statue was carved from a storm destroyed hackberry tree in 1991 by Harry Whitehorse of the Ho Chunk people and bronzed by the community to preserve it in 2009. The carving is named “Let the great Spirits soar”.  It is adjacent to another image formed by people 10,000 years ago who gathered by the water and built mounds in the shape of animals in which to place the human remains of their beloved dead.  So in my sacred prayer space along Lake Monona, I have become aware that I am accomp...