The Healing Focus for Heart of Business this week is about Visibility. It is about allowing ourselves to be seen as who we are and as having the gifts we bring. The challenge after the Remembrance (a kind of Sufi meditation Heart of Business folks often share) was to write about our gifts and strengths in a larger audience than only telling them to ourselves or to one other person.

Just as we share Beloved Selfies in The Way of the River Facebook group, sharing our gifts “out loud,” as it were, helps us see ourselves as the Divine sees us:  Beloved, beloved, beloved, cherished with grace, mercy, compassion, and so much impossible love. Certainly, we are flawed, often struggling, and (I hope) trying to do better by the kind with whom we share this tiny, vulnerable planet.

Flawed, yes, and also able to be great shining lights in the sky of the murk of the world’s need… also able to be express our own deep joy.

And so that, expressing deep joy, is where I begin. 

One of my strengths is that I have disabilities–among them mental illness, especially bipolar illness and attention deficit disorder (which I think needs a new name, but that’s another story). How do these afflictions constitute strength, when they so clearly are also weaknesses?

For one thing, they make me who I am, and I am beloved upon Earth.

But that’s true of all our strengths, weaknesses, and problems. So what makes these different.

For one thing, as Carrie Fisher said (may her memory be a blessing, as my Jewish friends say), every moment, every day that we live with this disease (bipolar illness) is a triumph. It takes courage to claim life and face the world, and somehow I’ve done it 100% of the time so far. How that is possible, I don’t know. I really don’t know. Divine grace and native stubbornness, I suppose?

Another gift that has emerged from having these conditions, and further, from being a sexual assault survivor, and from being fat, is that I have a great deal of empathy for people who’ve had a hard hand dealt to them in life.

I can listen to people very different from me, people with different life experiences, and help them know that their feelings about the world are valid, that they are not only beloved but needed, and ultimately that they are incredibly gifted.

Not only that, but something that people have told me over the years, something I didn’t really know about myself, is that I have a great capacity for that deep joy I mentioned above. Sometimes what looks like joy can tumble over into “taking up all the air in the room,” and so I have to be mindful of that, especially in pastoral situations. Even joyful enthusiasm can be tedious if not minded carefully.

But joy also both stems from and creates gratitude. And gratitude is a great grounding force. There are so many reasons people in Twelve Step programs are encouraged to make gratitude lists or to attend gratitude-focused meetings. And one of them is that hearing about other people’s gratitude reminds us of our own and brings us our own joy.

Which brings me to the last of the gifts I have to share and which I would be remiss in not mentioning. I am a fat femme. Not just a femme, not just a queer woman who likes makeup (though I am that, for certain!). But a fat femme, and a really fat one at that. Why does this identity, this so-called strength, matter?

For a few reasons. One, my very being as a fat cis-woman, and as a chunky girl before that, called into question the possibility of femininity in my life. I was sort of neutered, in high school. “One of the boys.” And I was in some ways most accepted by queer men in college. So any feminine identity besides “Earth mama” (which, to be fair, has its own strength) felt beyond my reach.

But at heart, I am femme. I am femme with my fat, lumpy, unshaven legs. And I am femme with my passion for lipstick. I am femme with my nails cut short for the piano I’m getting. And I am femme with those nails painted. I am femme with my unbelievably epic ass. And I am femme with my turquoise, blue, and violet hair.

I push the boundaries of what people expect femme to be. I’m not thin, I don’t wear high heels, and I love my hair to be a crazy mess. I’m lumpy and bumpy, and at the moment I have a mad case of hives. I walk with a cane and I can’t get enough of flowers.

And femme is about joy for me, the “joy of self-expression,” as Belleruth Naperstek says. The joy of making my insides match my outsides. And yes, thanks to the trans, non-binary/gender-nonconforming people, and drag queens I have known for teaching me how to do it! How to claim that inside-outside match. Because in some ways, I think that is the beginning of wisdom: know thyself and then find brave places within yourself and out in the world where that self can be witnessed with love.

So that, dear comrades, is my answer to the Heart of Business challenge for the week.

Can you take it up, this challenge? Can you pick up a piece of yourself, a gift, warm and smooth and just fitted to the shape of you, perhaps something you’ve held close for years, an ember you blow on to keep alive? Can you open a space and let us see? Can you encourage us by encouraging yourself?

I welcome to The Way of the River Facebook group, or to the comments below. What is a gift of yours that blesses the world? How, as Rev. Rebecca Parker admonishes us, do you bless the world?

The post A Challenge: Let’s Share Our Gifts! appeared first on The Way of the River.

(Not in the mood for more painful things this week? By all means scroll down…)

I find it difficult to write to you this week, not because there are not things to write about, but because I am unsure how to write about them. I am unsure how to broach the topic that is the elephant in the room, the topic that is uppermost in my mind, the topic about which I want to say nothing.

As you probably know, I am active on Facebook, and much of my ministry for The Way of the River happens in that medium. And last week, Facebook seemed to me a boiling cauldron of people’s feelings and opinions. The Kavanaugh hearings, and Dr. Ford’s testimony, in particular, brought out tremendous tenderness, fury, numbness, and sadness all over the place. Some people chose to watch the hearings, or even felt that they must. Others didn’t. Others read about them, or watched clips of them, but didn’t watch the hearings in full.

I think there are good reasons for all those choices. I know I was on a swinging pendulum from outrage and fury to numbness and disbelief.

Images, in particular, were difficult for me to take in in manageable ways. The images of Kavanagh’s rage–what, in a woman, would certainly have been called hysteria–to a stylized image of what the Devil’s Triangle really is… each time I saw one of these things, it felt…it felt not as though I was being revictimized in ways I had in the past, but as some new injury. Something terrible. A yawning maw, full of teeth, threatening to devour my faith in the goodness of men, even the ones I know. Even the ones I love. That faith, that love was threatened.

And, of course, so many of the people with whom I work, comrades at The Way of the River, Ministerial Fellowship Candidates, friends, the children of friends, so many people were going through retraumatization.

Trauma is not Banal

The word “trauma” is so common now that I think people may be forgetting what it means. Or they may not have ever known, and are only able to piece together an image that they get from hearing the word over and over.

Trauma is violation. It is stealing away a part of a person’s self. That’s why both survivors of seual assault and veterans show similar symptoms of trauma. In both cases, something has been stolen from them, something that can never be returned or regrown.

Trauma affects your sense of time and sequence, your memory, your sense of safety alone or in company, your ability of concentrate, and sometimes the overall “thickness of your skin.” Trauma survivors develop all kinds of coping mechanisms from armor to breakdown, and we’ve seen them all over the place in these last weeks.

We know that trauma–this theft, violation, assault–lives in the body. The Body Keeps the Score is a brilliant, if often difficult to read, account of how the physiology of trauma works. And it lives in the body, long after the traumatic event has ended.

A therapist friend of mine said that she had not seen one single client in a week who did not mention the hearings. They mentioned them in different ways, but they all mentioned them. Anyone of her acquaintance who knew about the hearings was affected by them in one way or another. I think that’s true for me too.

And we want to turn away from it.

We want to turn away from the fact that it is entirely likely another Supreme Court Justice of the United States will have been shown to be a sexual predator and a perjurer. We want to turn away from the fact that people of every gender, but especially women, moving down the street in every city, are concerned for their safety. Not just their physical safety, but the safety of their souls, that is, the safety of their sense of self.

Can We Look at It?

There are a few, though, and I read some work by one of them this week, who are looking straight into that chasm of horrifying reality, and not looking away. There are a few brave, fierce, clear-eyed souls who are doing it. And I hope those of us who can, will follow their example.

And I hope that those of us who feel the weight of it all is too much, who look away, who don’t ask, who don’t respond, or who don’t watch…I don’t dare hope that we will become “that strength which once we were.” What I hope for us is that we can find spaces where we can feel brave.

Not “safe spaces,” ‘cause really, in this life, what is that?! But “brave spaces,” spaces where we find we can move one bit of ourselves further toward wholeness, whatever that means for each of us.

May we each move more and more toward alignment with our deepest, wisest selves. These are the selves that care for ourselves and care for others with persistence, with gentleness, yes, and with determination, resistance, and courage.

May we each find our way through the morass to our wisest selves. May we find one another in love and care. May all our hearts be well.

All my love-

~Catharine~

And, though of this is going on, I also want to include an announcement that is much more fun, more joy-giving that all of the above. Many things exist at once…

The Happy Phantoms of Hallowe’en

I’m thinking of the old song by Tori Amos about the Happy Phantom. Her delighted little (in that song) voice, singing, “I’ll be a happy phantom” was an anthem of sorts for friends of mine when it came out. It reminded us of a playful vision of the dead, and appealed to our near-Goth aesthetic. It was macabre, sure, but allowed for smiles and playfulness.

Sometimes, those of us who celebrate Samhain forget that it’s not only the last gasp of harvest, a time to consider the winter coming on fast, and somber silence as we eat with our Mighty Dead. Our own personal phantoms… It’s also the time of dancing skeletons, people at least as dedicated to Hallowe’en decorations as others are to Yuletide festooned trees, and most of all, Trick of Treat! (For that matter, it’s also, in Mexican traditions, the time of marigolds and sugar skulls, of another kind of party.)

But Trick or Treat underline that in some mysterious way, we know that ancestors and descendants are inextricably linked. That the children who come dressed as fairy princesses, superheroes, and imaginary friends are the youngest leaders in the procession. Behind them are adults who follow with their own bacchanalian diversions. The drag queens living it up on stage. The partiers. The zombies driving by, the truly scary haunted houses, and the horror movie marathons.

And then behind all of us, through the veil, come dancing the dead, sometimes as authors have imagined them on their silvery horses with shadowy pennants. Sometimes in our dreams or waking thoughts. And sometimes we just welcome to the party!

So on the 28th of October, 7 pm Eastern/4 pm Pacific, we welcome all of us, living, dead, and not yet come into this world, to the party. We will meet in the nearly leafless grove made by hands clasped through the ether, on a Zoom call. The ceremony is still taking shape, but I know that anyone who comes with a mask or a painted face (think liquid eyeliner, if that’s what you’ve got!) gets extra bonus sparkle points!

The post The False Banality of Trauma appeared first on The Way of the River.

Dear hearts, welcome to the season of harvests and angels.

This week gives us the feasts of the Archangels (also called Michaelmas), the Guardian Angel, and St. Francis of Assisi. And it’s just been fall equinox and the inevitable turn toward winter. Quite a collection of “minor holidays.”

Mabon–one of the names for the fall equinox–is the celebration of the fruit harvest. It’s the time for apples and grapes, the fruits of the Dionysian life, the intoxicating fruits of cider and wine.

It’s also the time when in many parts of the northern hemisphere, deciduous trees’ leaves start to turn new colors and if we’re lucky, we see the trees as though for the first time. And soon enough, we will see their skeletons.

For Now and What Is Coming

For now, though, in Portland, Oregon, the ivies and the maples, the tulip poplar, the berry trees and their kind, are all changing. It’s still warm–80 degrees Fahrenheit, or so–but the light has definitely changed. It slants across the landscape and turns everything bronze in the late afternoon. And that change, that slant, that angle the brings less light to the leaves has everything to do with why the changes happen.

Nearly every year, if I am blessed to be in a place with turning leaves, I think, “What genius thought this up?” This glorious display of totally profligate beauty at the end of the year always takes my breath away.

A dear friend and colleague, one of our comrades, told a story about changing leaves recently. She is facing some difficult health challenges, the kind that really confront you with mortality, limitation, medical decisions, and priorities. It was she who taught me (and who learned it from another colleague) a hidden truth about the turning leaves.

Chloroplasts, those little tiny mechanisms in the interior of plant cells, are the generators of chlorophyll in leaves. The chloroplasts are responsible for the transmutation of sunlight into energy (a process I still find miraculous!), and the process turns the leaves green.

So where do the colors come from? The ones Percy Bysshe Shelley called, “Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red” in his glorious poem, “Ode to the West Wind.” Why does the limiting of light bring out new colors in the leaves?

Revelation

The answer, I learned, is that it doesn’t.

What it does, rather, is limit the action of those greening, energy-producing miracles, the chloroplasts. The slanting, waning sun reveals what was already there all along, masked by the green.

How flippin’ cool is that?!

The glory of “yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red” was there all along. It is in the essential character of the leaves, the essential color. I imagine it’s a bit like imagining how our blood looks when it doesn’t have the oxygen that turns it red. Yes, it’s a limitation, a relinquishing of energy and vitality, and it is brightly brilliant gorgeous high autumn.

And then soon enough, here in the Pacific Northwest, the rains will come. The rains will come and knock the loosely connected leaves from their branches and leave only the compelling bleak skeletons behind. Another relinquishing, but relinquishment into sleep.The sap will settle and the trees will wait. I will wait to see what they look like when the light returns in spring.

Relinquishment only into sleep. Maybe that’s the story of a life well lived. Relinquishment that reveals our essential character–one we may earnestly pray is one whose colors are worth seeing and admiring. And then relinquishment into sleep, into transformation, into the long change of death.

That is what equinox says to me. That, should we live long enough, we will all turn this corner from leaply greening leaves into the revelation–”apocalypse,” in Greek, remember!–of more and more of ourselves until all that is left is that most essential character. Until all that is left are a separated spirit and body and a history we hope blesses the world.

Today, as Rev. Rebecca Ann Parker says, let us choose to bless the world. Bless the world so that when we are left, compellingly stark against the winter sky, the legacy of our long legacy will continue to do our work.

Blessings of mid-autumn to you, my friends. Blessings upon blessing.

Your Presence Is Necessary

As we observe the “Trick or Treat” of Hallowe’en and Samhain, I’m hoping that several of you will come to our observance on Sunday the 28th at 4 pm Pacific, 7 pm Eastern.

Come with a mask. Come with spirals of eyeliner drawn on your face. Come with a glass of something your ancestors, however recent, liked to drink. Come with just yourself, ready to acknowledge that we all come from somewhere, and that tricks and treats, both, are part of the deal. Come thinking on the interdependent web of which we are all a part.

And, if you are so inclined, help this femme out and step into the Circle with me. I need one or two more people to make everything as delicious as I’m hoping for it to be.

Thanks and Encouragement

Thanks so much to everyone who so enthusiastically participates in the sharing of ourselves, our lives, and our faces on the Beloved Selfies thead each Monday (and following) in community Facebook group for The Way of the River.

If you are a Facebook user, I invite you to come and get to know some of your comrades better, to share what feels good to share, and to soak up some good, community juiciness.

Just pop on over to https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheWayoftheRiver/

Give us a chance to come to know one another better, spend some time lurking around the edges, and then answer a Be Nourished prompt, offer a Beloved Selfie, ask for help, or share something you think your comrades might like.

As ever you are welcome. YOU are welcome.

The post Minor Feasts and Revelations appeared first on The Way of the River.

The following is my Reflections love letter from 24 September. If you’re looking for the third installment of “Invincible,” it’s the next one down.

 

Oh dear ones, this is not the love letter I thought I’d write this week. I find that I am driven–perhaps, if I may be so bold, as Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness in Mark 1–to write about something I read this week. Except I was driven by someone else’s writing. It was an article from the Huffington Post called, “Everything You Know about Obesity Is Wrong.” I am very nearly willing to get down on both my recently sprained knees and beg you to read it. It’s imperfect. It lacks some of what I might love to see in it. But it is SO important. Just as I know that Unitarian Universalists and Pagans are well-represented among our comrades, so too, do I know that big, fat, round people are. A new spiritual direction client said to me this week, “It is such a relief to see someone who looks like me and like my spouse.” I know that my being visible online has brought more fat people into our circle than might otherwise be here. We are ALL welcome here. No matter our size, shape, or weight. Thin, fat, in-between, fit, in various states of dis/ability or health… And because we are all welcome, I want those of you who are not fat to consider what you can do to make the lives of the fat people in your life, whether nearby or at the edges, easier. How can you be an ally? You can make sure that there are big, armless chairs or benches in the places where you work. If you go into a waiting room where there are only smallish chairs with arms, you might say something gentle to your provider. Perhaps, “Have you thought of having some other seating available in your waiting room? I know that my larger friends would have trouble with just that one kind of chair.” You can consider, when making dinner dates with fat people, whether the chairs in the restaurant have arms or whether the booths have tables that move. You can do that labor so your fat friends don’t have to. You can begin to decouple thinness from health. They are not the same thing. There are healthy fat people, unhealthy thin people, unhealthy fat people, healthy thin people… and ALL of us, no matter our health status or how it came to be, deserve the respect due all fellow humans of worth and dignity. No one owes you their health. And say so. When people say they’re going on restrictive diets for their health, learn how to challenge that idea. Do some research. Learn about Health at Every Size; become an ally. Furthermore, fat people know we’re fat and that there are ways that make our lives difficult. Please stop telling us, no matter how “worried” you are for our health. And a final, oh-so-important admonition for all of us—especially those of us who spend time with children–please be kind to yourself about your own body. The number one indicator of the kinds of weight bias that lead to eating disorders in children is how their parents talk about themselves and other people where bodies are concerned. Be kind, loves, be kind. Allies, fat people, everyone, be kind. My brother is fond of saying that he has never regretted being kind. Remember that you, too, are worth the freedom of kindness. Be kind to you. You–you in the body you have now, whether it is considered an occasion for privilege or oppression–are worth kindness. Even now, even today, when you didn’t wear, because you felt self-conscious about wearing them, sleeveless tops and shorts this summer. You are worth kindness. Even now, even today, when you know that you have already been unkind about yourself, your children, and other people. You are worth kindness. Even now, even today, when you remember bullying fat children or sitting idly as they were bullied. Or as you remember the bullying you endured (fat children are bullied more than any other group in schools). Especially when you remember these things. Especially when you need forgiveness or tenderness. You are worth kindness, my loves. Blessings – Catharine P.S. Here’s the article again. Please read. (https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/)

 

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When last you left the intrepid adventurers, they stood on the bank of Sideling Hill Creek, just past the Fairy Cairn with its glittering adornments and offerings, on the bank of Stoneledge Hole.

Patrick, a good 6’3” and thin as rail, stood there next to my fat 5’9” frame. We were both clothed in our traditional black–Patrick’s more traditional than mine. I did actually wear color at that time in my life; it was just rare.

But very soon, the color or even presence of our clothes became irrelevant. Our safety. The fact that no one else knew where we were. All irrelevant. 

Irrelevant because at just about the same moment, we were talking our clothes off. There was snow on the ground, but the creek had no ice in it and was moving along at a gentle, but not insignificant, pace. We were taking our clothes off and then we found ourselves standing side-by-side.

Irrelevant and Essential

I had to get into that water. I needed it. I needed to be washing clean of the sadness, the bleakness, the grime of daily life. I needed to find a way to ritually claim myself, my life, my adulthood. And I was convinced the water held that power.

And then Patrick, the bank, safety (already WAY in the back of my mind, if I had even considered it at all) were gone. There was a great splash as I launched myself into the water, went under, and then up and taking the biggest breath of my life. And another. And another.

And then I laughed–the barking sound of joy my father always used to make–and dove under again. And again with the emerging, the impossible breath, and I was in Sideling Hill Creek in January.

It was madness, maybe I thought. But if I did, I didn’t really mean “madness.” I just meant off the hook. Off the chain. And I was elated.

Still breathing hard. Still aware of my heart desperately trying to beat warmth into my body, I decided just to let the current take me a bit. To look up at the sky and allow myself to spin in its endlessness.

And then, over the course of what was probably less than a minute, I realized I’d been up a long time. It was late. I’d been working all day. I was tired.

Why not take a nap?

I could just turn gently to the side and kind of pillow my arms. My body is buoyant (really buoyant) and the 

water would hold me. If I had known the poem “First Lesson” then, I would have thought, “Lie back, daughter / and the creek will hold you.”

And just as I began to turn, I heard something.

Something in the corner of my mind still very much awake..

Something that came from that weird, front-and-left part of my brain (ye, it really felt that way, in those days.)

A voice.

A voice as clear as a bell, cutting through the joy, the spinning world, the growing sleepiness and desire for Union. 

Sometimes Divine Madness is Pragmatic

“It’s not sleepiness, dumbass. It’s hypothermia.”

And all of a sudden, with the sure knowledge that I was going to die unless got myself out of this water, I turned and looked at the shore…

…which was, of course, many meters farther away than it had been when I first had thrown myself into the little river’s welcome.

I tried to swim freestyle. To pull my arms out of the water and over my head. To breathe in cycles. To pull over toward the rocks and get my hands around them.

I couldn’t.

I tried to swim a coherent breastroke, but somehow, my limbs seemed to be doing less and less as moments went by.

I wasn’t panicked, just sleepily aware of how much I wanted to stop and how much that voice was right. I. Must. Not. Stop.

And there was Patrick, mother-naked on the bank, waiting for me.

My legs are a lot stronger than my arms, and were just working better. It was like they had more air. I could kick out strongly, looking at Patrick, just sort of reaching my arms forward and trying to do something with my numbed hands.

I reached the bank. I can hardly believe it now. And I grabbed Patrick with all my might, and he grabbed me, and we stood there, newly born of the water, freezing and shivering, and with feet like very painful blocks of wood.

I had been baptized. Made new in the searing cold. Stripped of everything but wonder. Besides the wooden feet and the cold air, my mind was filled with a galaxy of connections.

Myself in the water, almost slipping into unconsciousness (some part of me wanted to go back and try and see whether it would have worked, if I could have napped, if I might not have sputtered or drowned.). The Star Goddess, whose body is the spiral the universe dances. My connection to all things. All things bright and beautiful. There was no place within me for anything I could call ugly. I was scrubbed pink and blue and white and I was in awe of the glory of creation.

I looked up, and the trees looked lit from within. How much time had passed? I had no idea. Were there still stars and a moon, or had the sun begun to rise? We could so one another, and the world sparkled with life, so I assume it was becoming morning in earnest, but mostly the light came from behind my eyes.

Mostly the light was from the water. From the cold. From my body’s insistence on living. From that clear, no-nonsense voice.

And did I mention the cold?

Did we have towels?

No.

Did we have a fire?

No.

But we had our dry clothes.

And, thank everything holy, we had a car. A car with heat.

And so we hobbled on our wooden feet to the car where we fell into what Patrick calls to this day, “the Death Nap,” because the heat of the car put us so firmly into sleep. I have no idea how long we slept, only that when I woke, it was definitely morning, I was definitely warm, and I was certainly alive.

There is more to this story–a quiet meeting in the Farmhouse with someone who would later become my good friend; the drive home; my ignorance of the danger we had been in; the dawning realization that took years that we really were in danger. There is, though, really no moral of the story.

It was beautiful.

The swimming, the impossible breaths, the shivering together on the shore. The body of bodies. The slick slide of our arms over one another in an entirely desperate embrace that had nothing to do with sex and yet everything to do with survival.

And the life of the world, the Light of the World, shining through the leaves. The sparkle of madness that lit up a life.

The post Invincible: Part 3 appeared first on The Way of the River.

I can’t be silent about what has been happening in the US. And I have been in the hospital this week, so I give you words that are not my own. I ESPECIALLY exhort you to take the time to read the article. (It needs an editor, but the content is brilliant.)

The following article speaks directly to the heart of what is happening in the United States today, and that is the rise of evil. The blatancy and shamelessness of evil. The United States has always treated immigrants abominably, put indigenous children into Indian Schools away from their parts, sent Japanese-Americans to internment camps, separated Chinese-Americans from their families… this is not new, but it is evil, and needs to be understood as evil. Not as being misled, not as miunderstanding, not as lack of education or information, but as evil. And what is evil? Well,that’s part of what the article explores. Please, please read it.

Trump and America’s Evil by Ed Simon

The remark below, along with the article to which I’ve linked, are the most important things I’ve read this week. They are not my own work, but they speak directly to my concerns right now. This is a paraphrase of the original statement.

My fellow citizens,

The rise of this blusterous man bewilders the educated among us, conjoins opposing politicians, agonizes our international allies, threatens minorities, spits on the disabled, and touches the hearts of those who just don’t know any better.

Let us stop propounding how mad this all is, but instead, do something.

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