Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

I, along with several other sisters, have been invited to participate in a Study Circle with the newest member of the Congregation.  The next topic for our study is the history of the Congregation.  Study materials for each of our topics have been skillfully prepared by the Relationship for Mission team.  In addition to the prepared materials, the facilitator of the history session suggested each person in the group learn about the experiences of two sisters in the Congregation from their historical points of view – one sister currently alive within the Congregation and one sister who has passed to eternal life.  During my study of the materials providing a “high-level” overview of the history of the Congregation, I could perceive that throughout the nearly 170 years of the Congregation’s history, the sisters have always “set out anew together” responding to the needs of those to be served in each particular time in history.   I again saw this when I studie...

I enjoy my work as a volunteer tutoring an ESL student through the Madison Literacy Network. The Network, a United Way-funded organization, is professionally staffed and run.  So I don’t have to figure out what text to use or where to find resources to help my student with her difficulties in pronunciation, for example.  In retirement, I no longer have the energy or stamina for many of the tasks that I used to accomplish with ease.  Without exhausting me, however, my two-hour a week commitment uses the skills and experience I’ve accumulated over the years.  I enjoy my student’s exclaiming with pleasure that the first hour went so fast that she didn’t notice the time or that others are impressed with the progress she’s made in slightly over a year.  (She is, of course, is bright and hard-working.)  Although we’re supposed to speak English to one another almost exclusively, from time to time I’ll explain something in Spanish.  That limits her frustrat...

I’m someone who loves autumn, who revels in cool temperatures and “jeans and sweater weather,” who savors the deep blue of an October sky and colors of leaves in the changing light of shortening days.  I love autumn because it signals change, and I believe that we need change.   Whether we want to admit it or not, we grow because of change.   Change challenges us, whether it’s colder weather or a new idea.   As autumn changes give us diversity of colors, the gift of ephemeral beauty, so the changes we experience give us opportunities to rethink, re-evaluate,   re-wonder. Life lived in community, with women of shared values but diverse opinions, with those of shared faith but diverse insights, is life lived in the paradox of “stable changes.”     From the thermostat setting to what’s for dinner, to quirky senses of humor and musical tastes, the differences are always there, but layered through all that diversity are the deepest realities...