Remember, the 16th – THIS Thursday at 5:30 PM Pacific/8:30 Eastern is our fantastic hour-long free workshop, “Make A Hard Choices That Feels Right.” RSVP to join us to learn about the Qualities of Desire and the nature of discernment.

Friends, one gently updated from the archives – one that I think bears repeating in this time when some of us are frustrated at weight gain related to being at home to keep ourselves safe and well. Know that you are welcomed, loved, and celebrated here, whether you are having to work or having to be at home.

I read an article some time ago. It was from the Huffington Post, and it was called “Everything You Know about Obesity Is Wrong.” (https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/ev…)

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 seeker 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 at The Way of the River. 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 out about Health at Every Size; become an ally.

Furthermore, fat people know we’re fat and that there are ways that makes 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.

CW: Strong language regarding President Trump, rape and sexual assault.

Also, please do not forget that Washington, DC was put under martial law on 2 June.

** ** ** ** **

These times, are they a-changin’, as Bob Dylan wrote? Are they?

I don’t know.

What I do know… well, I guess I know a few things, but one of the weird ones is that it’s Pride month. At least where it’s not too hot to host Pride parades and festivals, June is when we celebrate LGBTQIA Pride. (Don’t worry, I see you, Atlanta, and other Southern cities that have to wait until October. I see you and your parades and festivals coming up in the fall, and I look forward to hearing about them!)

So how can I write about Pride in a time like this?

How can I, a white woman, write about anything like Pride in a season of uprising against racist brutality and the unsafe police state in which Black and brown people live in the United States?

Well, in one word, it’s this: Stonewall.

There were several organizations serving lesbian and gay people before the “Stonewall Riots” occurred. So why do so many of us—me included—think of Stonewall as the definitive beginning of what would become the LGBTQIA movement in the United States?

Let me tell you a little bit about Stonewall and why it’s important. First, I’ll begin with what came before Stonewall and the lives of queer people before the uprising in late June of 1969.

Until Stonewall, the lives of gay and lesbian (much less bisexual and trans people!) were marked by shame. They were marked, over and over, by police raids on our bars, by arrests, threats, and, essentially, the necessity to hide whenever possible. And hiding wasn’t possible for some people, but for some it was. Some of “us,” could blend in. Some of us could fade into the suffocating atmosphere of straight culture, and some of us could not.

Drag queens and trans women tended to be arrested and caught up in police raids. Trans men, butches, and drag kings tended to be caught out on the streets, and beaten by the police or had their bodies checked in broad daylight to make sure they had “women’s” underwear on. The “three-article” rule (which never actually existed) was putatively understood to mean that any given person must be wearing at least three articles of clothing of the “proper sex” or they could be arrested. Similarly, 19th-century “masquerading” laws were used to take people into police stations when trans and gender-nonconforming people were discovered on the streets or in bars.

Certainly, activities like dancing in bars was forbidden.

Enter the Mafia.

The Mafia, who was willing to pay off the cops so that they’d look the other way. The Mafia, who extorted people by making them sign their names so that they could be blackmailed if “necessary.” The Mafia, who really didn’t care one way or the other what happened to the people in the bar, but who knew they could make a mint on the place if they made it available.

One night, though, there was a police raid nonetheless, when the alcohol in the place was confiscated.

One night, the police got scared of the people they’d scared into the streets and so they barricaded themselves into the bar!

And they came back.

They came back, and there was no fire exit. There was no other egress. The place was unsafe, barely restored, and not up to code, of course. Why would it be? It was a “private club.”

A gender-nonconforming person assigned female at birth was beaten by police with batons, and said at the top of their lungs, “Do something!” And they did. The people who had hidden in that shady, dim bar, did something. And not just anything, but they fought back. Many of them were taken to jail—a VERY unsafe place for trans men and women, butches and queens.

And they kept fighting back. For days, the uprising went on.

So I had an idea about something to write about today, and it was about ADHD and a method for getting work done. But we’ll come back to time-not-task methods because something else important has come to mind. Look, a chicken! (Little ADHD humor for you, there.)

Instead, I’m writing to you about some of my own history, and the history of hundreds of women around the country. We are all women who have “left the convent,” or left Roman Catholic (or Anglican) “religious life,” as it is called. (The idea that I’ve left religious life is ludicrous, of course, but in Catholic circles, “religious” is used as both an adjective and a noun, as in “she is a religious sister,” or simply, “she is a religious.” It’s a little weird to those who aren’t used to it, but it’s nonetheless the usage.)

So yeah, leaving religious life.

Some of you are reeling first at the idea that I was a candidate for religious life, someone who in my order would formerly have been called a “postulant” (what Maria is in The Sound of Music). Yep. Was. Lived for nearly a year in a convent attached to a church.

(Interestingly for those of you who know that I have a particular devotion to Brigid/Bridget, the church and the convent used to be St. Bridget’s. There’s an image of her behind the altar in mosaic. And there’s another mosaic depicting fire coming from water. Yeah, yeah, it’s by the baptismal font, but I still chuckled, even at the time.)

So I spent four years spending time with a religious congregation, as it was called then, the Sisters of St. Joseph. They are an amazing group of women. Sr. Janet who was the President of the Leadership Council of Women Religious (see there’s that funny usage again) at one point; Sr. Paula, one of the best spiritual directors I ever had; Sr. Mary P, my vocation director and someone I miss very often; Sr. Mary P, who used to be on Romper Room (no lie!) and then worked as a broadcast journalist… so many sisters I could name. So many wonderful people. And Sr. Mary M, whom I will always treasure for introducing me to David Whyte and for telling me I could sing harmony and that it was just in my bones, just to do it.

And I’ve pretty much lost them all. Well, no, not pretty much. I’ve entirely lost all but the occasional Facebook contact with all of them.

It’s not entirely their fault. Neither is it entirely mine. It’s complicated.

On this topic of loss, I can’t help going to those lines, those lines you’ve heard me say or read in Reflections. They have stuck with me in what a good friend would call “my top 5 most memorable chunks of poetry.” They are the lines from the Oliver poem I read at my father’s memorial, from “In Blackwater Woods.”

you must be able to do three things:

to love what is mortal,

to hold it against your bones,

knowing your life depends upon it,

and when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.”

There are times for things to be let go. And we’re not great at marking those times. But if we would be wise, we have to let go. “As in all things in the Household of Earth, / We embrace for a while and then let go.” All things are impermanent, all of us are mortal, and boy, do we know it now.

I mean, sure, we have had funerals and memorial services, but most of us who grew up in Christian hegemony don’t spend time with our dead before they’re committed to Earth in some way. Many of us mummify our dead with formaldehyde and have funeral directors/undertakers do everything in their power to make the dead look like the living and withstand the ravages of decay.

And furthermore, some of us aren’t being able to be with our loved ones who are dying, or dead, or even with others in grief. This grief, my friends, this grief is no small deal. It is going to leave a mark on a generation, and we are that generation. We may not know how or when or why this grief will pop up, but it will – that mark, that bruise on our souls will show up again and again when we least expect it.

Not only that, but Earth wins. She gets the last word. Trying to save our dead from decay doesn’t make them any less dead. Any less gone.

All these losses deserve to be marked. These are losses we have held against our bones, knowing that our lives depended on them. And recognizing that when it was time to let them go, to let them go. We have loved because we are mortal, because on some level we know that time is short—not only for ourselves and our own lives, but for our time together with all that we love.

And we have held all that we love against our bones, we have acknowledged that it is literally true that our lives have been created out of other mortals, out of the choices of millions, even, one could argue, billions of people. Not only our direct ancestors, but all those who have created the world, the communities, the families in which we have lived and moved and been ourselves.

But when is it time to let go? And how does it happen? And how do we ease the passage of grief that runs through us?

In the case of a person dying, we at least try to have some ceremony, most of us. Most of us at least gather some flowers to place on a grave, or scatter ashes, have a memorial or a funeral, say kaddish and burn the yahrzeit candle each year.

But what about other losses? I mean, I know I’m not the first person to come up with this idea – to say that we, as a culture, need to get our collective ceremonial butt in gear and help one another through loss. But I don’t think I have to be the first or even the best to say my piece.

Leaving the Sisters of St. Joseph was painful. Leaving Four Quarters Interfaith Sanctuary was painful. Leaving friendships and other relationships is painful. Even learning about others’ losses is painful.

I suppose I’m just wondering at what level a loss must be for us to acknowledge it—culturally, communally, ritually. When do we care enough about the grief that all our mortal lives hold to mark more of our passages through them? And how can we be as creative as possible in making our ceremonies, marking the times, creating rites of passage when we cannot be physically together in safety?

Handpartings, rituals of divorce, small rites that acknowledge the loss of beloved communities, ceremonies for the loss of friendships, safe and meaningful markings of the deaths of those who have been dear to us or to those we love.

How can we do these things, and do them now? What do you think? What are you doing with your families and communities, congregations and friends?

Blessing, a thousand times blessing –

~Catharine~

Welcome to cloudy Portland. It hasn’t rained quite enough, yet this year, but here I am at home, typing to you…

What does it mean to to you when you hear, “make yourself at home”? What is “at home,” after all?

In addition to the Tarot cards I traditionally read, I’ve been learning a new deck, called The Goddess Tarot, and each card refers to a different goddess. If you’ve been around a bit, you’ve heard or read me refer to Brigid, a goddess from the British Isles (especially Ireland), as a blesser of the house. But there is another goddess on my mind.

This Lady is a Greek goddess, considered to be the oldest (though others like Euroynme were said to be present at Creation, but who cares about time?!). She is one you invoke every time you light your stove or fireplace. You needn’t even say Her name.

But her name is Hestia. You may know Her in her Roman form as Vesta, of the Vestal Virgins who maintained Her eternally burning hearth. And that is what this goddess is known for—the hearth. The center of the home.

The hearth is where food is prepared—thus, Hestia is considered a provider of feasts and repasts for the stranger, the one who is welcomed.

I just mistyped, “hearth” as “heart,” because that’s what I’m thinking of. If our hearts are warm, if we are open to the differences of others, if we are inviting as well as willing to listen and change, if we pay attention to the cues of those who come to us, we can be welcoming.

Many of us in UU and Pagan settings sometimes have trouble with invitation and welcome, especially of those who seem different from “us.” White UUs, for example make assumptions about people of color who come to services. “I bet this is different from anything you’ve seen before,” one white UU said to a Black (lifelong UU) visitor. Oops! Ouch!

Our hearts are the hearths of our beings. They are in many ways, the center of our experience, the figurative center of our emotions, and the literal rhythm of our lives. They allow us to feel empathy. Together with our minds, they help us pay attention to what others need and to make accommodations without breaching boundaries.

So today, I am considering welcome, and considering Hestia.

What is the center of welcome for you? When do you feel welcomed? How might that be similar or different for others?

If you’re a hugger (as especially I’ve observed Pagans often are), you might ask, “Is it okay if I give you a hug?” and mean it. It gives others the opportunity to set and be responsible for their own boundaries. Ask questions, but don’t interrogate. Let people have their own time and space.

Do offer food and drink. Do offer a seat that is appropriate for the person you’re welcoming. (If you’re welcoming me, for example, that means a sturdy sofa or a chair without arms.)

You may not need to know these things. You may be someone whose heart/hearth burns brightly in a way that all of us can see. But then again…

Then again, there are many of us afraid to reach out to the newcomer. Or there are those of us who overwhelm with too much information or too many questions.

It’s a balancing act learned only by practice.

If your congregation, your circle, your community wants to be more welcoming, perhaps Hestia is someOne to turn to, someOne to think about or research. Just a thought as I sit here thinking of chopping vegetables, making guacamole and shaking hands with people I shall meet tomorrow.

Be well, loves, and be welcome here—

~Catharine~

I am thinking about Neil Gaiman’s writing process a lot. Gaiman is the author of American Gods, Stardust, Neverwhere, and my personal favorite, the graphic novel series, Sandman, among other works. He has a very regular, even rigid by some standards, schedule. He has a room in which he writes, and he is there for six (? I think) hours every day. He may get up to make tea or use the rest room. He may stare out the window for as long as he likes. And he may write. Those are the allowable activities.

Staring out the window for as long as he likes is very important.

Ever since I had the “Withhold nothing” revelation, I’ve been wondering about this woolgathering piece. The looking out the window piece. I think of Madeleine L’Engle, of blessed memory, who is most famous for the first in a series of books, A Wrinkle in Time. (The movie by the same name can be burnt to a cinder and sent to Hell for all I care, by the way.)

L’Engle was my favorite author (next to Tolkien) when I was young. In her memoir about writing and creativity, A Circle of Quiet, she writes about how she no longer feels guilty about going out and lying on a star-watching rock. She knew she needed to look up at the sky and watch stars (obvs) or clouds, to bask in the sun, or feel the evening New England chill. She knew it—the “just being,” as she described it—was essential to her spiritual practice, as well as to her creativity and ability to write.

I’m not so good at any of this. I mean, I suppose I contemplate my plants. I touch the fern that, like an unruly cat or toddler, wants to be in the Zoom picture; I marvel at Sabrina the zebrina, and I enjoy so much the wandering of the philodendron-looking-plant-that-is-not-a-philodendron living in water next to Sabrina. I look out the window at the dogwood, the lilac, the scraggly red rhododendron, or the nearly busting-to-bloom peony when I’m trying to find a word or when I’m listening deeply to someone. That’s all good. It is good.

Considering the garden plants and trees—the “Tree of Gondor” dogwood is coming into leaf now and the petals of the gorgeous, rich pink are falling away—is good for me. It is good to notice that the somewhat shadier side has more flowers left than the sunnier side. It is good to see and be in our little courtyard. I can feel it in my bones.

I do these things too rarely. Too unmindfully. With too little skill and too little intention.

What I’m trying to say here is that for those of us of creative or mystical bents, contemplation, pure and intentional, is essential. And I suspect it’s good for all of us, whether we identify with those descriptions or not. Just watching, just listening, just being attentive to the world and especially to the immediate, to the place in which we live. And just being quiet. Quiet.

Not doing two things at once (or more…oh COVID+ADHD brain…). Not claiming that our practice is rich and full when we’re typing or responding to emails while half-hearing a guided meditation in the background. Yes, I’ve done that too.

Can we just… stop?

Soon the lilac blooms will pass and it will be time to prune it. Soon the dogwood will be all over summertime leaves. Soon that scraggly little rhododendron won’t even have the half-dozen big blooms it’s working on. Surely they have things to tell me. Surely I can just look at them and do nothing else. Can’t I?

And not only regarding the outside world, but it is good to read, no? News flash, right? Not only is it good, but it is essential for a full, rich, helpful ministry. And I, particularly in these COVID moments, am finding is very difficult to do. So difficult.

I am hearing similar things from other people. That reading, that solace, that friend of a lifetime, is suddenly too hard. People who have been reading steadily since they were 5, for more or less their entire lives, are so mentally and psychologically exhausted that reading is just too much.

I can read the novel aloud that my wife and I are sharing. And I refer to my spiritual texts that I keep by my computer. But Spying on Whales, I started this winter and haven’t finished. Boswell’s Life of Johnson, a favorite of my father’s, goes unread. And poor, poor Beowulf; my dear Molly and I were reading it together, and we have abandoned him to the part where he tells the tale all over again. Perhaps we will work on it again soon. Perhaps? I both doubt it and hope so.

The sky is blue today, friends, and the high is supposed to be seventy degrees Fahrenheit. I will pay attention. I will marvel at the moss in the courtyard. I will consider even the recycling, compost, and trash cans on the curb. I will watch for clouds and wonder about the pine that had all its street-facing branches cut off; it looks so odd to me. But I will look today.

Will you look with me? Shall we lie on the Star-Watching Rock together?

So much love, friends, so much.

~Catharine~

PS—For those of you who know about Unitarian Universalist ordained ministry, a happy note. I have been welcomed into Full Fellowship (it’s a little bit like tenure in Humanities in academia). I am delighted and amazed, really kind of shocked. Thank you so much for everyone who got me here. You are one of those people.

Two weeks ago, I had an embarrassment of spiritual riches through my business and spiritual support community. Monday, a regular morning call (which begins with meditation and prayer); Tuesday, a meeting with my ministry/business coach; Wednesday, Holly Glaser’s Deep Dive Heart Check-in meditation; Thursday, a delicious meeting with a deep and open client from the other side of the globe; and Friday, a Zoom-enabled Sufi retreat.

A lot. It was beautiful, and combined with my daily practices, it was just…aie, friends, I barely have words for it, but here I am, writing to you about it anyway. It makes me think of Playing by Heart in which Angelina Jolie’s character, Joan, says, “Talking about love is like dancing about architecture.”

Sometimes talking about spiritual experiences is like that, I suppose. And when it leaves you giddy (Old English gidig ‘insane’, literally ‘possessed by a god’) and dizzy (Old English dysig ‘foolish’ from Old High German, “foolish, weak”), well, it makes things even harder. I still feel a little dizzy, weakened, giddy, god-touched. And the powerful sense that I had during the Wednesday meditation, that I could just curl up in the lap of the Divine and be utterly, completely safe, well, that comes and goes.

So what happened? What has made me giddy, dizzy, drowsy?

On Wednesday, during Holly’s Deep Dive, I did indeed “go deep,” as we say. She prayed in Arabic (Holly is Sufi) and gave the participants instructions over the course of about forty-five minutes regarding our bodies, our breathing, our thoughts, the shape of our meditations. She told us to bring our questions to the Source of Love, however we imagine, feel, believe, or experience that Source to be. She talked about how she puts her questions into a sort of great, cloudy Hand of God she imagines emerging from the mist.

For a while, I didn’t know what my question was. And for a while, I didn’t know whether I had a question for me or for others. Whether it was something just for my own heart to hear, or something to share.

But I did eventually, ask, “What should I do next?” Just simple. “What should I do next?” I think I meant it about The Way of the River as a business and a ministry. I think I meant it in that context, but the answer may be much larger than I realized. Time will tell.

“What should I do next?”

“Withhold nothing.” Withhold nothing. Withhold nothing. Withhold nothing.

It rang through my head at first like a whisper, a featherlight kiss on my forehead, and then eventually as a matter-of-fact admonition: Withhold nothing.

Two days later, in the retreat we shared at Heart of Business, one of the Holy Names of God we held was, “Maliku-L-Mulk”—the Ultimate Owner, the Lord of All Worlds. I laughed out loud when I learned it. The Ultimate Owner. That’s surely not me!

Who holds all things? In Sufi theology, of course, it is Allah, the Oneness, the Unity of All Things. And that is not so far off from the theology of my Wiccan practice…that all things emanate from the One and Many—Male, Female, All, and None. One, many, multiplicity, unity… It didn’t matter in those moments.

In those moments of the retreat where I listened and learned about Maliku-L-Mulk, and thought and meditated and prayed, several things came to mind. One that came up very strongly is from the Indigo Girls’ sacred text, the song, “Everything in its Own Time,” which I have quoted above. “We own nothing…”

And there were others, blessings of poverty and giving away everything. St. Francis. St. Clare. The Discalced Carmelites. People from my Catholic past whose stories rose up within me.

But the admonition to withhold nothing is not the same as an admonition to give away everything. I have not suddenly given away all my possessions or sold them and given the money to the poor. For one thing, I’m not Christian, so I don’t experience that as a commandment. But the difference is slight, I’ll own that, it’s slight.

Withhold nothing.

The question of withholding makes me ask, what am I holding back, where and why and how? And some of those answer – ha! – I do withhold from this space right now because they are private. Not secret, but private. They are matters of the heart, the household, they have their own place to be revealed or discussed or prayed about.

It seems unlikely that the admonition, “Withhold nothing,” means give everything away all the time. I think of Naomi Shihab Nye’s reminder to the artist in “The Art of Disappearing:” Walk around feeling like a leaf. / Know you could tumble any second. /Then decide what to do with your time.”

There are things that must be held close with as close as infinite tenderness, infinite gentleness as we can imagine: embers to be blown on gently, birds who little, air-filled bones will break if we clasp them too tightly and which will fly away if we open our hands entirely. We keep some things close so that we can give them more fully later. Yes!

Everything in its own time.

If I own nothing, how can I withhold anything?

Withholding is an illusion, I suppose. One of those pieces of selfness that falls away with Enlightenment, or perfect Presence, or ultimate Union with the Divine.

And maybe that is another lesson. Just to remember that nothing I have is my own. All things I “have” I do because they have been given to me by my ancestors, by the spinning Earth and Her gravity, by bees and their generous work, by methods I have been taught, by ways I have emulated, by the action of galaxies I will never understand…I have created nothing alone. All that I seem to have came from somewhere else, from the vast swirling spirals of connection, the innumerable webs of space and time, the Ten Thousand Blessings that connect me to all the rest that is.

And there it is again, my beloveds, one of the things it always comes back to. We are all part of the Big Picture. We are all in it together. The Big Picture wastes nothing. The great Vultures of the Universe recycle and recycle and recycle. Our matter and energy cannot be generated, nor can they be destroyed. We are eternal, my friends, just not in this beingness we have now.

But here’s a thing not to withhold from you. I don’t think consciousness is recycled. I read Richard Bach saying that the universe recycles everything, so why not consciousness? I just don’t think it happens that way. I do not see the evidence or feel the presence of past lives, though they’re fun to think about.

But the Mighty Dead, the ancestors are close. That much I know. They are close around us, always with us, moving in our movements, speaking through our mouths.

And so that is a bit I do not withhold from you today. I believe that when we die, we die. And that it is okay and right and good to be recycled by the Great Sea of Being into our own new parts of the blessing of the Ten Thousand Things.

May we all be blessings. May we be so today, and each day we are mindful enough to remember.

Love,

~Catharine~

First, a big chunk of thoughts from a voice more eloquent than my own:

“Mary Oliver for Corona”

(Thoughts after the poem “Wild Geese”)

By AdrieKusserow

You do not have to become totally zen,

You do not have to use this isolation to make your marriage better,

your body slimmer, your children more creative.

You do not have to “maximize its benefits”

By using this time to work even more,

write the bestselling Corona Diaries,

Or preach the gospel of ZOOM.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body unlearn

everything capitalism has taught you,

(That you are nothing if not productive,

That consumption equals happiness,

That the most important unit is the single self.

That you are at your best when you resemble an efficient machine).

Tell me about your fictions, the ones you’ve been sold,

the ones you sheepishly sell others,

and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world as we know it is crumbling.

….

Remember, you are allowed to be still as the white birch,

Stunned by what you see,

Uselessly shedding your coils of paper skins

Because it gives you something to do.

Meanwhile, on top of everything else you are facing,

Do not let capitalism coopt this moment,

laying its whistles and train tracks across your weary heart.

Even if your life looks nothing like the Sabbath,

Your stress boa-constricting your chest.

Know that your ancy (sic) kids, your terror, your shifting moods,

Your need for a drink have every right to be here,

And are no less sacred than a yoga class.

Whoever you are, no matter how broken,

the world still has a place for you, calls to you over and over

announcing your place as legit, as forgiven,

even if you fail and fail and fail again.

remind yourself over and over,

all the swells and storms that run through your long tired body

all have their place here, now in this world.

It is your birthright to be held

deeply, warmly in the family of things,

not one cell left in the cold.

Normally, I would not begin with so much of a poem. Normally, I would feel as though my words for you were lacking something if they were prefaced by so many of someone else’s words. Normally, I would worry what you’d think about that. Normally, I’d feel guilty for taking even that one bit out of the middle. Normally, I’d say, “Is it too long?” Probably. “Is it too short because I took that one part out?” No.

But it is not “normal,” my friends. Nothing about this time is normal. You know that. You don’t need me to tell you that.

Except I think that some of you do. Some of you are saying things to me like, “I keep crying and I don’t know why,” “I feel as though I’m moving through molasses,” “I can’t get anything done,” “I can’t focus on what I’m doing,” “The kids are making me crazy,” “ My husband and I keep having these stressed-out spats,” and, most common when I ask how you are, “I haven’t been productive at all today, but…”

Two weeks ago, if you read Reflections, you read, “That Feeling We’re Feeling Is Grief.”

There are lots of places you can read this other pieces now, but I need to say it too, for you, for my platform, for this little corner of the reading universe I have: Don’t expect yourself to be productive. Don’t expect yourself to be a good little cog in the capitalist Machine.

Not the way you may used to have been, as least. Not the way it was when things were “normal,” even if “normal” itself was strange or scary or uncertain, which it so often is, even when we’re not in the middle of a pandemic.

Pandemic is such a strange word. I find that my mind doesn’t really encompass it. There are so many people staying in their homes. And there are so many others going out into a dangerous world to help those who are sick or needing food or meds or other support. And even they, the ones who are in the world, the ones who are the “helpers” Mister Rogers told us to look for, even they/you cannot be as productive as you might expect.

You are strong. You are resilient. I want to tell you you’ll make it through, but I can’t. And that in itself feels strange. Who knows, any day of the week, any time of the year, who of us will make it through? But this is different. This is scarier.

Nevertheless, I think of my dear friends who have cancer right now. Who are having their last rounds of chemotherapy, at least for a while. Who are wondering what their immune systems are doing. And I think of other dear friends with significantly compromised—or even effectively off-line—immune systems.

And nevertheless, it can be okay. It can be okay to be sick. It can be okay for those we love to be sick. It can even be okay to die or for our loved ones to die, from COVID-19 or from something else. There is peace in the attentive, curious, and calm perspective Tara Brach writes about in her book, Radical Acceptance.

But okay doesn’t mean we’re not crying all the time. One of my Facebook friends, and a new comrade of ours over at The Way of the River Community there, told me today that she’s glad she’s been in therapy for a long time because she’s feeling all the feelings. They just keep washing over her. Worry for her 88-year-old mother who’s in an assisted living home far away. If her mother gets sick—frankly, even if she doesn’t!—our comrade will not be able to visit her.

“Okay” doesn’t mean that we won’t or don’t have feelings about what’s happening. I can only imagine what it’s like for those of you who are or have been sick. Or who have been unable to have an in-person shiva or wake or burial or other funerary rites for those you have already lost.

“Okay” doesn’t mean I don’t worry about my mother—she lives in Italy—every day. (I take some ridiculous comfort in the fact that she lives in Tuscany, far south of the worst of the outbreak, up in Lombardy. Better to take comfort in knowing she’s absolutely taking the best, most careful care she can.)

“Okay” just means that those of us who are alive, can get through this. We can take precautions. We can, as our comrade Jonathan says, “Stay the fuck home!” We can also do what we can to be tender with ourselves.

There is it again: Persistent gentleness.

Gentle, gentle, gentle. Whatever you do today, may it be gentle. Even if it’s the wild exertion of a mountain bike ride, let your motive be gentleness. Even if it’s after you’ve raised your voice to your spouse and your kids for the umpteenth time, let there be gentleness for you, forgiveness and compassion, in its wake. (That also makes it more likely you’ll be able to apologize, if necessary.)

Remember what Kusserow said above: Whoever you are, no matter how broken, / the world still has a place for you, / calls to you over and over / announcing your place as legit, as forgiven, / even if you fail and fail and fail again.

Gentle, gentle, gentle. Persistently. Relentlessly. And raggedly, imperfectly and failing so much more than feels okay.

We can be and are and will be gentle, too, even more imperfectly than normal, because none of us is firing on all cylinders.

Blessings of healing, resilience, and love for us all-

~Catharine~

Professional boundaries, personal boundaries, ethical boundaries, boundaries that are set for the benefit of others and those we set for our own benefit. Sometimes they’re about respecting others sovereign rights to their own lives and well-being. And sometimes they’re about doing the same for ourselves. Most often, they serve both purposes.

For example, in my professional organization, the Unitarian Universalist Ministers’ Association (UUMA), we have a Code of Conduct. In that Code, it is crystal that we are to have no sexual or romantic contact with any of those we serve as their minister.

In another example, my sweetie is a big introvert. I am most certainly not. My sweetie needs more quiet and solitude in her life than I do. Alas, I need more words and talking things out to find my thoughts than she does. And so we negotiate and find happy places to rest. Time for me out of the house. Time for her downstairs, writing. Time for me typing and talking with friends. And time for the two of us to talk, share meals, and dissect the content of our days in loving conversation.

Finally, in Stone Circle Wicca, we adhere to a Leadership Code of Conduct, and those who attain the Third Degree (the last level of initiation in our tradition) and who are in leadership, also make the Nine Promises in a time and place set aside for binding and sacred oath-making. Third Degree Initiates, whatever our institutional roles as teachers, pastoral care givers, mentors, etc., are held to higher standards of ethics and self-reflection than others in the Tradition are.

Not only do we promise never to engage in bullying, etc., but we promise to work to prevent it in our community. We hold ourselves to a higher standard than others, set boundaries for behavior, and make proactive promises to hold one another accountable for those boundaries. Our Promises are both institutional and personal.

When it comes to relationships, it’s so easy to take boundaries personally. Whether they are or are not, it’s just so easy to feel attacked, defensive, or to project motives on another that simply are not there. In the first example above, the boundaries are there to protect everyone in the scenario. The minister—especially in a congregational setting—has a kind of pastoral power that the congregant does not. There are imbalances of power in the relationship that are complex and absolutely unwise and potentially criminal to mess with.

It makes sense, then, that keeping to the UUMA’s boundaries, set out in the Code of Conduct, is good for everyone. We should all be on the same team. We want to nurture spiritual health for those the minister is serving. In order to do that, we all need to be aware of our roles in the systems in which we serve and the different kinds of power different people have. That’s part of what being on the same team means.

Similarly, my sweetie asking for what she needs and our negotiating for both of us to get what we need is a bunch of good relationship politics, right there. We know that we are on the same team. We were once asked where, on a scale of 1 to 10, we each landed on the question of how committed we were to making our relationship work. “Oh, ten!” we answered in unison. Same team.

When we’re on the same team, boundaries are about valuing everyone’s well-being. They aren’t about believing one of us is out to get the other. They are about acknowledging power, just relationships, and love.

Sometimes, though, we set boundaries that are indeed personal. They may be for our own good, what some might call, “self-care,” and may indeed be very personal. We ask people to stop treating us in a particular way. We withdraw from relationships. We finally get the hell out of an abusive situation and find a way to be safe. We ask for help from those we trust, and we lay down what we need, making it clear that anything less is a dealbreaker.

Boundaries are hard when you, like me, are someone who genuinely tries to love everyone in your sphere. I tend to stick it out in relationships, even when they’re long past isolated incidents of injury. (In those cases, it may be boundaries + transformative conflict that is called for. More on that in a later missive, I reckon.)

When I have had to ask for space, assert my sense of truth or rights, or strongly disagree about boundaries with someone I’m close to, it’s never been easy. It can be hard to ask for what you need. Nevertheless, not doing so can mean you are not showing up honestly and with integrity. You are hiding what you need and lying by omission. I have made this mistake hundreds of times in the course of my life.

Love doesn’t mean no boundaries. Love means having boundaries, because it means that you are tending both to yourself and to the health of others and your relationships with them.

This principle is similar to something I have written about before: Fierce compassion. That compassion can mean saying no. No to injustice. No to the endangering of those for whom we care. And in the case of boundaries we set that are for our own well-being, but which anger others, saying no to others’ rights to hurt us.

And boundaries don’t mean ignoring persistent gentleness or gentle persistence. They don’t mean cruelty. On the contrary, as I hope I’ve made clear, they can be gentle, yet firm and clear. You deserve gentleness, both from yourself and from others, even and especially when you’re being held accountable. And I encourage you to practice gentle persistence in your own setting of and maintaining boundaries.

So today, I ask you, what boundaries do you set for yourself? Where are you not living up to your ethical obligations and pressing against or even breaking boundaries? Where are you taking advantage of others? Where are you being taken advantage of, or even simply hurt, in relationships?

I encourage us all to take stock. What boundaries will help nourish our creative work, our professional obligations, and our personal relationships?

And then, having taken stock, perhaps we can ask for, insist on, or shore up the boundaries we need to respect or assert. Best of luck, dear hearts. Know that I am thinking of all of you as I take stock and do my best to move forward with integrity and compassion.

Blessings on you and your work—

~Catharine~

Today I want to talk about the practices of equanimity and neutrality.

Let’s take equanimity first. Equanimity is often a good state to be in when you have important decisions to make. It may be brought on by breathing down into the gravity of the Earth that always holds us and embraces us more reliably than anything else ever can. It may be brought on by long, slow exhalations that happen while your feet are on the floor or folded beneath you. It may be brought on by the application of floracita (Florida water) or other “brightening” scents, especially when you put them on your head. It can also come after a really good cry.

Equanimity is an even-tempered state, a centered state. Don’t mistake me –- equanimity doesn’t mean that you need to deny your feelings. Note, I said it can come after a good cry with lots of good breathing. It does, though, mean that you may recognize your feelings, where they’re coming from, and not having them drive the bus.

There are times and places when outrage is called for. When letting grief overtake us is okay and more than okay. When we dance in the streets with euphoria and fall on our knees at the beauty of the moon.

Those are not, however, the places from which to make considered opinions. They have their places, for sure. They provide us information; they are part of living a fully human, fully embodied experience; they are real, important, and not something I would EVER tell you to turn away from.

Equanimity is just another state. And it is a valuable one. It is … how can I say this? Trustworthy? It allows us to access what I was once taught to call, The Watcher, the one who is behind the feelings and sees them and lets them happen and let them move through us. And is conscious.

Equanimity can be present with emotions. It need not be detached from anything. It can still be connected with All That Is. It can still contain multitudes.

I have no big beefs with equanimity.

But let’s talk about neutrality.

Fucking Switzerland.

You can probably see this coming. Neutrality can go to hell. Neutrality is more often the state of “not choosing sides,” than equanimity is, which is to say that neutrality chooses the way things are, the status quo, whatever is happening now.

This—neutrality—is especially damaging when it comes to politics. And it is particularly odious when the status quo includes children sitting in filth in cages. It is absolutely noxious when Fascism is emboldened, when trans women of color are murdered on the street in broad daylight, when citizens of the United States in Puerto Rico are without power or clean water for months and supplies lie stockpiled away from them to enrich the rich, when the climate is changing so fast that storm after storm batters the world and islands disappear underwater, when the Proud Boys gang is allowed to assault people in the streets of my city, when corporations corrupt politics beyond recognition, when, when, when…

Neutrality can be awfully close to apathy, it seems to me.

You needn’t be an extrovert to avoid neutrality. You needn’t cry out or stand out or even “be out,” at least not yet.

You needn’t be thrown off-center by outrage at every moment, enervated by the force of your anger.

You needn’t allow yourself to drown in tears of grief, weakened and left raw and mewling in the corners of your life for months at a time.

You needn’t lock your body to the doors of ICE HQ. Or even go downtown and join the vigils and hold candles. You might do these things. You might go to be a witness to evil. You might also tightly curate your intake of media so that you can cultivate equanimity.

But don’t be neutral, my friends. Even if you don’t know what to do. Even if you’re not sure you can do anything of value – which is not true, but still – you can allow your heart to come away from neutrality.

Neutrality says that whatever is happening doesn’t affect me. Neutrality says, lock up your wealth here, and it will be protected. Neutrality says that the individual—by which we almost always mean the white, wealthy, ruling individual—is the most important “community” there is. Neutrality says that we must avoid taking a stand to keep ourselves from being thrown off-center.

But see above. Equanimity does not demand neutrality.

Sure, let us find peace within ourselves, especially when we’re discerning important choices. Absolutely, let us remain grounded, aware of Earth’s constant gifts. Definitely, let us cultivate equilibrium, equanimity.

But I pray that none of us be neutral.

Not when the chips are down and people are dying. Please don’t choose the status quo. It is the culture of injury, oppression, and death.

And yet flowers bloom. The lilac I see through my window will bring its gorgeous fragrance to life in just a couple of months. I love my wife and she loves me back. My nails are a beautiful fuchsia. I get to write with beautiful fountain pens. I try to bring spirituality and honesty into the center of my own and others’ lives.

Every day, our hearts beat. Every day, the trillions of bacteria who make up the colonies we are for them (try that on for size!) do their little magical jobs that keep us alive.

Every day, poets put pen to paper. Every day, painters look slow and paint fast. Every day, singers open up their faces and sing. Every day, people are moved to dance, hear the rhythm of the Universe, the Music of the Spheres, and move their bodies.

There is so much lovely in the world, and it can be a balm to our grief, a reminder of why we are outraged and also a calming influence on that outrage.

May we work for the beautiful, the good, the true. May we rest our muscles into the deep breath. May we reject neutrality. May we resist.

I love you. You are part of the beauty I’m talking about, and part of what I’m fighting for. Let’s be in this together.

~Catharine~