Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Three years ago I began to journey with a Juneau-ite who was interested in exploring Associate membership in our congregation.  He filled out the initial questionnaire and downloaded the Associate Handbook.  We began meeting on a regular basis to go over the material in each of the chapters. After we finished working with the Handbook I asked him if he would like to begin the application process, but he wasn't ready for that step. Since I am the only Dominican of Sinsinawa he knew I made it a point to introduce him to anyone from our congregation who visited Juneau--at this point he has met 3-4 others.   We continued to meet periodically and had good conversations about the church, his faith life, and spirituality in general. During these conversations he never again brought up the subject of Associate membership, so one day I asked him where he was with a decision. He said he needed more time but to continue to check in with him, so this is what I have been doin...

This October I got a great opportunity to attend a Choice Asia Conference in Hong Kong.  Nowhere in my wildest dreams would I have believed that I would have gotten this fantastic opportunity to represent Choice T&T in Asia.  A few months ago I did not even know that there was Choice in Asia!   The Choice Movement is an international movement that hosts weekend retreats for single young adults between the ages of 18-40 years of age.  These weekends are filled with personal testimonies, spiritual inputs, activities and group sessions all with the intention of creating a space during the weekend that the young adults can do a lot of introspection and reflection with the help of the Holy Spirit on what their vocation maybe. As the spiritual director of Choice T&T, I along with the Gabby the chairperson was able to attend this momentous event in Hong Kong.  The moment we landed in Hong Kong, after twenty-three hours flying and hours spent awaiting t...

“Doubt is not the opposite of Faith; Certainty is the opposite of Faith.”  This is one of my favorite axioms and it’s never felt as true as it does this morning.  Like so many other people I fully expected that Clinton would be elected president last night.  I was not enthusiastic about it—she was not my first choice for multiple reasons—but I recognized that it’s the way things needed to be.  Because of her election I anticipated another, protracted wave of division, violence and ugliness in our country—also part of the inevitable outcome of where we’ve found ourselves as a nation.  These were certainties in my mind that I begrudgingly came to accept. This morning I find myself humbled and mystified by the outcome—what was unfathomable to me yesterday is the reality today.  Today I will push aside the feelings of dread, cynicism and fear that are creeping into my mind and I will focus on accepting and embracing my meekness.  God ...

We have been living through a year or more of rancor, fear, accusations, and a certainty that there is only one way to go about life…my way, or your way but certainly not both ways.   We have endured a period where our collective sin is certainty.   I, for one, am tired of it.   But I have to own the fact that if I am not part of a solution, I am at least complicit in the problem.   In the process of researching how non-profits/social enterprises work, I have been struck by the number of people and organizations – in this country and around the world - working bit by bit to make positive change for the common good.   We just seldom hear about them.   To change that, I am creating a Litany of Hope, listing organizations doing great work in sometimes-small ways, sometimes-big ways.   If you want the needle of your internal “Hope-O-Meter” to start ticking upward, take a look at one or more of the following links.   Read about them, support th...