Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

In the Northwoods where I live it is starting to be the season of Fall – my favorite season. I love the chill in the air and the crisp leaves on the ground, but most of all I love the colors of the trees as they change from green to brilliant red or yellow. Often, as I’m driving along a wooded area I see green, green, green, and then a splash of red. Only one branch has turned red on an otherwise green tree. How does this happen? This phenomenon speaks to me of Mother Nature’s sense of humor and sensitivity to our human appreciation of surprises. People can be like trees, too. We can rub shoulders with someone day after day and never really notice their gifts until, all of a sudden, they do something or say something that is so thoughtful that it leaves us almost breathless – like a splash of red in the midst of green. I am challenged to pay attention to these otherwise ordinary moments and let my mind and heart be open to the new story that I’m being told. What or who has surprised yo...

When I was a child fall/autumn was my least favorite season.     It was too cold to go swimming and too warm to go ice skating—my two favorite activities.     Now as an adult, I love fall.     It tells me so much about life.     The trees are radiant with reds, oranges, yellows and browns.     Then they graciously drop those leaves, and give them back to the soil.     In these days of change and challenge, we, too, are asked to drop our radiant adornment, to let go of what would not survive the winter so we can be transformed in the spring.     It’s a perfect season for long walks, of enjoying the colors of October, then the letting go of November.     What will you be challenged to let go of this fall?     LouAnne Willette, OP Austin, TX

Our act of perpetual profession of vows, made to God, to our prioress and her successors, ends with the words, “even unto death”. We make profession publicly. By the same token, we live publicly – regardless of our particular ministry, our age, or our time in the congregation. We are called to live our vows in the daily-ness of life – even unto death. Recently, one of our dear 60 th  Jubilarians at St. Elizabeth Manor – Sr. Mary Louis “Louie” Russley, died a mere days after her Diamond Jubilee. Louie was a quiet, steady spark in our community at the end of her life, just as she was a force in education, science and law earlier in her life. Despite a decline in memory, Louie engaged everyone, was kind to everyone, daily marveled at the awesomeness of Creation, and loved unconditionally. It was our privilege to know her and to witness how she lived her vows, even unto death and into the arms of Mystery.  

Preparing to leave water in the desert for travelers   How do we live today as citizens of our global village?  How do our decisions and choices create or hinder a future for others?  Some of our state governments have decided that our newly arrived brothers and sisters can be treated like chattel and loaded on buses or planes to be dropped off in cities all over the country.       What are Dominicans called to do when we witness injustice?     Can we use our voices to bring the oppressive practices to light, such as writing editorials to local papers or joining GET OUT THE VOTE campaigns?     Can we join with others to eliminate suffering?     Can we offer time and energy as volunteers at respite sites?     How will this suffering of our brothers and sisters enter into our prayer?     We have a line in our Constitution:   “Present to God’s people whose hopes and sufferings are our own, w...

On Labor Day I labored to create more useful spaces in my bedroom.     The box containing books “saved to read” had been covered with a colorful afghan and many items     “To read some time” were stacked on top. Now the box is gone and “the books to read”     face me with their inviting titles visible. I found out the day after Labor Day is called “National read a book day” What a great coincidence!     I am reminded that an essential element of Dominican life is STUDY. I pledge to create a sustainable study time in my day, my week, my life. Now I am studying methods of forgiveness proposed by Robert Enright. In addition, I am reading  No Future without Forgiveness  by Desmond Tutu.  Even my fun book (light reading before bed) is  All the Forgivenesses , a novel by Elizabeth Hardinger.  All this study is helping to prepare some input time for the religious leader caucus of MOSES (Madison Organizing in Strength, E...

We do not use this word too often. Yet we have a holiday which celebrates this ‘old’ word that describes our more common work. Why have a day to celebrate ‘labor’? Might it be so we might know the dignity associated with what we do?   There is labor at our birth. There is labor when we learn and study. There is labor when we choose to live out and act on our commitments. There is labor when we pray/meditate. What is the Spirit teaching me in these works? There is labor in relationships. What do each of this ‘labors invite you and I to ponder.   Of late the work in relationships has been much on my mind and heart. Sheltering in place during Covid has given me time and opportunity to reflect on how I show up for relationship with others and with myself. In pondering this I have been laboring to know the Holy, the Sacred in others and in myself. I have needed this reflective work of bowing before this Mystery of whom others are and who I am. It is indeed a laboring of being more ...

I’m sure you, like me, can tell by the change in the air, the amount of sunlight, that summer is leaving us again.  This ease into autumn is a gift that triggers reflection on change, on time, on journeys ended and begun.     I’m reading a memoir by Kathryn Schulz entitled   Lost & Found .     She divides her small book into three sections:   “Lost” – “Found” – “And.”     I relish those divisions, especially the last one.     How much of our lives is filled with “and” – we think we are headed one way and then we realize we need to rethink; we are absolutely sure we are right about an issue or a plan and then something reaches our mindset and we realize we need to rethink.     I hear echoes of the Gospels in these three words…how many encounters of Jesus embrace “lost, found, and” – choices laid out before cured lepers and rich young people and sophisticated Pharisees and those possessed by the evils of their day. ...