Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

He said to me, "It's a great day for the race!" "What race?" I responded. "The human race!" And we both continued on, chuckling to ourselves. Usually when I travel I’m alone. I don't mind it. It's a great chance to observe the human race. It's especially when I'm waiting in airports that I like to watch people walking or running by or eating at a table near me. It's really a drama, better than television. Sometimes I ask God to let me see each person with God's eyes. Can I see in each one a beautiful image of the Creator, infused with the Holy Spirit and continuing the loving service of Christ? What a gift it would be if we could always see one another in that way! In fact, we already have that gift. We just have to quiet ourselves and let it bubble up. We, too, each one of us, is God's dearly beloved. Indeed, it is a race and all of us are winners! Mary Ellen Green, OP Sinsinawa, WI

Floating on Lake Michigan   Saint Dominic is known for his dedication to community, prayer, and study.  He is also known for his deep sense of joy.   Joy is a characteristic that both comes naturally and must be cultivated. Especially now!   I believe we have a gospel imperative, a mandate if you will, to be joyful.   And, I don’t mean Pollyanna.   I mean full of humor, with a leaning for fun.   Joy delights and finds goodness all around.   Joy seeks laughter.   It is contagious.     What gives you joy?   Is it a good book?   Is it the company of treasured friends?   Is it a magnificent sunrise?   Is it a delicious treat?   I find joy in anything to do with water.   Some of my happiest moments throughout my life involve swimming, or just being in water.        Being a joyful person allows you to bring joy to others.   This is an ingrained Domi...

Since May I have had the opportunity to visit four places dedicated to the history of African Americans in our country:   National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC, a small and powerful museum in Springfield, IL and finally while traveling back from community days a stop in Montgomery AL to see both The Legacy Museum (From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration) and The National Memorial for Peace & Justice (remembering all those who have been lynched because of the color of their skin). While I could not take pictures inside The Legacy Museum, I could at The Memorial and have included two with this blog.   Each pillar has a state & county on it and the names & dates of those people who were lynched.   In the museum, there is an interactive US map showing where all the known lynchings took place.   While the southern states dominated by numbers there are very few states that have none. Each of these places I have been these past m...

Recently, I visited the grave of a woman who died in 1911 at the age of 90. The cemetery was in Springfield, Illinois.   The woman was one of our earliest Sisters and her life was an interesting journey.   At Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, this “Sister Rachel” is remembered most for encouraging our fragile, young community to “remain together” during a desperate winter in 1849.   Ironically, fifteen years later in 1866, Rachel left us to join another Dominican community at St. Catharine in Kentucky.   She later went on to assist in establishing still another community in Illinois in 1873.   Rachel is considered one of the founding Sisters of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield.   Rachel appears to have opened herself to new possibilities as life’s circumstances unfolded.   I expect these circumstances included both joys and sorrows. Our path may only be apparent when we look back over the steps taken. I hope that Frederick Buechner’s observation was t...

In April I went to my 50 th class reunion at Dominican College of San Rafael in California.   I had a blast!   I stayed with my friend (of 50 years!), Patty, and her husband, Phil. Then in June, because I was a transfer student from then Rosary College, later Dominican University, I also went to their reunion. In between there was a smaller reunion of my classmates from high school.   We celebrated our 50 th reunion in 2014.    And then there is a reunion of parish consultants from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in August, to which I’ll also go. That is a lot of remembering!   Especially when you consider all the 50s in there! What do you remember? Are you willing to go back there? Ruth Poochigian, O.P. Madison, WI 

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...

I love Summer not for the usual reasons we hear proclaimed, but because that is the season of many celebrations of who we are as Dominicans of Sinsinawa: Community Days, Jubilees, Receptions, and Professions.  Community Days is a time we come together as a community to pray, study, plan for the future of our Congregation, and re-connect with one another. This past weekend after having said “goodbye” to the sister friends who live far away from the motherhouse where I am in ministry, as I was sorting through papers that had accumulated in my book bag, I came across a reflection I had composed 9 years ago in preparation for Final Profession.  Quite frankly, I was “blown away” by what I had written.   The Spirit had certainly been with me during the creation of that document.  Among the many thoughts I found in the reflection was a question one of the sisters in my discernment circle had asked me, “What did you learn through your experience of liv...