Until Your Own Dawn

Daybreak: everything in this world is a luminous divine dream

I have spun.

I did not know life was a fabric woven by my soul.

Any form that can appear to you-should I confess this?-

it is something I made.

All roots nurse from me.

God’s art is mine.  I did not want His divine talent.

It simply grew in my heart from

the way I

loved.

Existence is as a young child moving through

a lane at night;

it wanted to

hold my

hand.

Here, dear earth, hold me,

until your own

dawn.

— St. Catherine of Siena, 1347-1380, Dominican Doctor of the Church

Artwork: Mike Karakas

St. Catherine of Siena was devoted to relieving suffering in the world. "Strange," she once said, "that so much suffering is caused because of the misunderstanding of God's true nature. God's heart is more gentle than the Virgin's kiss upon the Christ. And God's forgiveness to all, to any thought or act, is more certain than our own being." At the age of seven years Catherine desired so strongly to wed God that she left home with a loaf of bread and attempted to live alone in a cave. She had a vision, while there, of God telling her how brave she was, but to "let the wedding be later." The next thing she knew she woke up in her own bed. Was it a dream or reality? Later, she took her brother to the cave and asked him to enter and let her know of anything he found there. He brought out two sticks bound in the shape of a cross. Catherine had made this during her stay there with thread torn from the hem of her skirt.

Catherine joined the Dominican Order and lived a life of both deep contemplation and active devotion to the suffering and destitute. She died at the young age of 33. Although completely uneducated, she was highly revered as a theologian, even during her lifetime, and was officially made a Doctor of the Church in 1970. Her book, The Dialogue, can be found here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/catherine/dialog/dialog.html

Grace and Peace of the ever-present New, Peggy _/\_