Beloved-

Some of you have been with The Way of the River since the very beginning in 2015, and some just arrived this week! Welcome to all. Here is a slightly updated edition from March of 2018. Enjoy!

I have written about being “nice” at the expense of our own feelings and well-being. (Let me know if you need another copy of that Reflections and I’ll be happy to send it to you personally.)

This week, I’m sort of writing about Cinderella. That is to say, I am writing about what “nice” wishes it could be, what it tries to be, what it impersonates. Nice is the unhappy, grasping sister, but there is another one who is real but kept hidden away, who has been given the glass slipper, and whose foot fits just right.

Graciousness. Grace. That which is given, unearned, whether to do, to be, or to receive.

Grace in religious contexts is generally considered to be an unearned blessing from the Divine. Something that arrives unexpectedly, something like a random act of kindness from the Universe.

There is also the quality of physical grace. When I think of grace, I think not only of the movement of athletes or dancers or actors. I think also of how people walk, hold their bodies when in conversation, what they do with their hands, and how those actions invite people into deeper relationship.

And even more relevant, the movements of someone who makes others feel at ease. The tender pouring of tea for someone who has come in from the cold, and the inclusion of a few cookies/biscuits while you’re at it. The embrace that is welcoming without being an imposition. Speaking clearly and well without taking up all the air in the room.

And then there is simply the grace of human giving. This is the grace that knows that one does not merely say to the grieving, “Tell me if you need anything.” Grace offers, “How about I come over at 6 tomorrow and do some laundry and make you dinner.” Grace in this case may not even take no for an answer, but just show up with the lasagna, a stack of mindless magazines, and a laundry basket.

The quality of grace puts others at ease and lets them know they are loved. Grace lets them know that no part of them makes them unworthy of love.

Nevertheless, grace has the boundaries that niceness lacks. Grace can say no, gently but firmly, and grace can take care of the one who brings it and inhabits it.

Finally, grace is a way of being, and of accepting the gifts that are given to one and sharing those gifts kindly and well with the rest of the world. It is giving without thought of reciprocity, not out of a sense of martyrdom or resentment, but rather because grace comes easily when it comes.

After all, the characteristic of grace par excellence is that it is a gift. It is a quality of personhood that may be practiced and that may grow, but it is ultimately a gift both to the one who shares it and to the ones who receive it.

And yet, as I read this issue of Reflections in 2021, I am so aware of all the people who are practicing grace in this time of pandemic. Who have made a decision to make their lives into gifts. Who are leaving presents of food or toys or clothing on their neighbors’ steps. Who are working in positions that save the world and move the needle of justice, help bend the moral arc of the universe one agonizing click at a time. In this sense, grace is more than a gift, it is a spiritual practice, and one which benefits all who offer it and all who receive it whether they know they’re getting it at all.

I am so aware that this post is only the beginning of a conversation. Please post your thoughts to The Way of the River Facebook Community (and join if you use that platform and aren’t among us already!).

Much love and contemplation-

~Catharine~

2021 PS – I still have room in two daytime spiritual deepening groups. For more information about these supportive, tender, challenging, brave spaces, see my page on the topic, and feel free to schedule a free call to talk about whether or not one might be the right fit for you.

2021 PPS – I mentioned The Way of the River Facebook Community above. I invite those of you who use Facebook to join us, especially for our regular weekly practice of acknowledge our own “beautiful faces and complex natures,” as the writer Annie Dillard has said. It is a powerful and challenging practice, and one I invite you all into.

Dear hearts –

For the last twenty-eight days, I have been on a discernment retreat.

I have thought about The Way of the River, about my life, my ministry, my work in the world. I have considered my hopes for those I love and those I don’t know, and for Earth. And I have pages and page of notes (we always say notes are “copious.” Why is that? Well, these notes are, I suppose, copious.)

In my notes, I’ve realized, I’ve come back, again and again, to the concept of clarity. In my lessons from my business coach who also has a Master’s of Divinity degree and is trained in a Sufi lineage as a master teacher, we talk about some essential things over and over. We talk about the willingness to be surprised by the Divine and what we might be shown or how we might be guided if we are open enough to see/sense/hear/feel/perceive what is being offered. We talk about the importance of asking for what one is trying to perceive or receive. We talk about Love over and over and over. (This topic is, as you might guess, my favorite thing.)

But I mentioned clarity first. Clarity. In Sufism, is believed to be enhanced by the cleaning, the “polishing” of the Jewel of one’s heart. It is also enhanced by removing veils between oneself and the Divine. Practically speaking, this polishing, cleaning, clear-“seeing” state is achieved through prayer, fasting, moderation, silence, reading and copying holy texts, and chanting, among other things.

One could say that clarity is the heart of discernment. At least, it is arguably the center of discernment.

On my retreat, one of the teachers was Buddhist, and one was Christian. The Buddhist teacher—he’s a Zen priest—talked about both clarity and openness as ways forward on the road of discernment, the road of wise thinking and right action.

I have not had much exposure to Buddhist teachings. Not much beyond my “Eastern” religions classes and the occasional Thich Nhat Hahn book. But my teacher in this class brought concepts, practices, and stories forward all of which work toward clarity.

He, like my other teacher, talked about Veils. And he talked about them in terms of the Veils of patterning, of scripting, of bias, and perception. If we are to know the truth of the world, we must learn the truth of ourselves. And as we engage the world with friendly curiosity, we learn about ourselves.

In Zen, of course, one of the main ways to learn about oneself, and especially about the mars on the mirror, the Veils between oneself and truth, is through meditation.

I spent some time thinking about what is meditation for me? What is it? How can I do it? Why do it? Do I do it at all?

I spent further time considering what I do when I “pray”? That is what I call what I do to connect with the truths within me and the truths that are offered to me when I am still and silent after singing or chanting. Still and silent.

I’m still thinking about these questions, but I want to consider more that my teachers offered.

They come from a quotation by Rev. Howard Thurman, in which he admonishes, “Become quiet enough, still enough to hear the sound of the Genuine.”

Rev. Thurman goes on, from his Commencement speech at Spellman College in 1980, describing what he imagines we all ultimately want:

I want to feel that I am thoroughly and completely

understood, so that now and then, I can take my guard

down and look out around me and not feel that I will be

destroyed with my defenses down. I want to feel

completely vulnerable, completely name. Completely

exposed and absolutely secure.

Thurman is describing the desire for the Genuine. For our own genuine selves, for the deep truths of the world, for the Divine. What is most essential. After all, the Genuine, the Real, the True, can also be called God. The Holy. Goddess. Ultimate. Goddex. Sacred.

In the first quotation above, Rev. Thurman notes quiet and stillness as essential characteristics of “hearing” the Genuine. I want us to notice the noise of our lives. The constant, unrelenting noise of the world and of our own activities. My chair squeaks. My typing is like a Gatling gun. (I never took typing, but I was a piano major, and so my typing always wears the letters off the keys in no time flat.) My own breath and sigh and groan. The crack of my ankle as I turn it gently where it aches or my back when I do “Cat Cow” yoga in my seat.

Can I notice these things without judgment? Without aversion? Just noticing and accepting that they are here. I am here. My body is here. I am breathing, my heart is beating.

I also want to notice the movement of my life—what is not still. And even my resistance to stillness. “Find a stillness…Let the stillness carry me.” The words from the Unitarian Universalist grey hymnal come to mind right away, especially, “carry me.” Stillness. Stillness. Stillness. I find as I type that I long for stillness.

I long for…

I long for silence, is what it is. Quiet that is beyond the ceasing of noise. Stillness that is beyond ceasing movement. Silence.

Eventually, I have been told, silence becomes a buoyant friend. Like someone who holds us, carries us, enfolds us. And when we are with that silence, then we can see what arises within us and simply regard it, behold it, realize and name that it is. Without critical judgment or meanness of any kind, simply acknowledging and breathing and being in the silence. Being in the silence and allowing ourselves to perceive without veils more and more of what is patterned or scripted or habitual in our lives.

What is perception and what is interpretation?

If my hope is – and it is – to be as genuinely myself as possible in any given moment, then I need to let the stillness carry me, let the silence enfold me and comfort me and be my friend.

If my hope is – and it is – to be as present as possible, as truly and deeply here in every unique moment as I can, then I need to learn to see where my patterning, my pre-determined wiring shows up, rather than my deep Presence.

If my hope is – and by now you know I’m going to say that it is – to be as loving as possible, then I need that Presence I just wrote about. And to find that Presence, I need to “incline the ear of my heart,” as Benedict of Nursia wrote, incline the ear of my heart to what I find most genuine, real, good, and true.

And it seems likely, given the wisdom I have received these last weeks and at other times, that quiet, stillness, and a deep silence of the heart, an opening and waiting, is one way to learn to be Real. (More on The Velveteen Rabbit later, for those of you who are interested. )

I want to be Real. Authentic. True.

Genuine.

And I reckon you do too. So perhaps consider slowing down enough that you can hear (and even see) the noise around you. And then be still in it. Be still. Just breathe and feel the pressure, speed, and sound of the breath. And find the silence within you. The silence that is friendly, buoyant, loving.

Blessings, my friends –

Catharine

Already know you want more information about Going into the Dark? More info lies here.

Dear hearts –

Here we are, the week of United States Thanksgiving, or perhaps Thanks-Grieving, or perhaps ThanksGaia. Or perhaps this holiday is not one you celebrate at all. For others, it is the most important family holiday of the year.

That importance certainly shows in the number of people who travel for the holiday. More, even, than for secular or religious Christmas.

And this year, the question of whether or not to travel makes a holiday that is already fraught even more so. How safe it is to travel, to spend time indoors, to hug those we have been longing to be close to for months? How safe do we think we need to be for other loved ones, for our communities, for ourselves, and for the most vulnerable among us? And how much do we long to be together with our nearest and dearest, our truly beloved ones, our Families of Blood, Choice, or Spirit?

I pray for your good health and whatever peace or disquiet your heart requires.

There is another holiday, though, one coming soon, that is both very dear and very clearly full of love, light-and-dark lessons, peace, and tenderness.

While in years past and in contemporary witchy circles, it is known as Yule – just as one might say, “Yuletide” to mean the whole time around the solstice through the secular new year – we can also just acknowledge it as the moment, the time when Earth/Gaia passes closest to the sun/Sol, and when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted furthest away.

Every year on the solstice, the only electric lights my wife and I have in the house are the twinkly lights of the season. Otherwise, we light the house with candles and lanterns. Sometimes we make cookies – and oh, in the morning, do we lament that we have no dogs anymore and Julie cleans the kitchen floor herself! We pay attention to the setting of the sun, and we read Tarot cards for our celebration of the new year together. We honor what has passed with celebration, lamentation, or merely observance, and we watch the light diminish.

And there is something else that happens for the solstice. Five times it has happened, five years in a row, and now we are onto the sixth turn around the sun.

On the Saturday before the solstice—this year, that Saturday is the 19th of December—The Way of the River folks gather on Zoom for Going into the Dark, a day of peace and tenderness. (Yes, it has been on Zoom for the last six years. This is no Johnny-come-lately Zoom event, though it does intentionally have no bells and whistles.) We gather in our pyjamas. We gather and knit in rocking chairs. We gather from our beds. We gather with our video off. We gather lounging on sofas. We gather from our offices. We gather together to feel together, connected, tenderly held, and whole.

Especially in this year when so many of us yearn for connection, long for the company of people whose company we cannot have, pine for the touch of beloved family, especially now we need this event.

At least I do. Do you?

Going into the Dark is a retreat during which we explore what it means to move through the darkness (both metaphorical and physical), to prepare for the solstice, to make a journey in which we learn to see in the dark. In the Charge of the Star Goddess, She says, “Seek me in the Light that is in the Darkness, and seek me in the Darkness itself,” and so some do that. Some of us seek encounter with the holy. Others prepare to mark the holiday of the shortest day as “the reason for the season.”

Others of us just desperately need to feel held, safe as we can be among other tender minds and hearts, comforted (even in challenge), and in the presence of magic.

Meister Eckhardt said that if the spiritual life is a journey at all, it is a quarter inch long and a mile deep. That is the approach of Going into the Dark. To spend time with our own hearts going deep, deep into unexplored territory, and yet to go while being held in a loving, careful, caring “container,” if you will.

That container is built and maintained by the care I take with setting up the calls for the event. Not only that care, but also the tenderness of those who share the retreat with you, all of you together.

We will come together and inhabit four calls (It is my sincerest hope that our time is neither spent, nor wasted, nor killed, but rather, “inhabited.”) over the course of Saturday the 19th. We begin at 11 am Eastern and end around 6:30 or 7 pm Eastern. Each call is accompanied by an (entirely optional) PDF with journal prompts, images, and queries based on the content of the call just previous. Some people really enjoy using the PDFs to continue the work of retreat time, to journal, write, draw, go for a walk, or take a nap. And yes, taking a nap can be an absolutely perfect way to integrate material. <smile>

However you integrate the material can be perfect because Going into the Dark is, as I like to say, “an empowerment-based event.” What do I mean by that?

I mean that your participation need be led by your heart. Dip in and out. Spend time between calls taking care of family responsibilities that really need doing.

Or maybe you can find a way for someone else to take the kids for the day, let the dogs out, make lunch, so that you can give yourself the gift of a spiraling day of reflection and care.

Empowerment-based retreat also means that even if I pose a question to the group, you are free to say that you would rather pass. It also means that you are always free to ask for what you need, though I cannot promise I can fulfill that need, I will always listen.

That said, every year, Going into the Dark goes deeply into our hearts. This year will be no different. This year, though, we do not go to the center of a horizontal labyrinth. This year we will not discover the secret magic enclosed by a copse of trees in a cemetery. This year, we follow a traveler from the third millennium BCE, on her quest to know, to learn, to find her realm and her tools.

This year, we will encounter both threats and assistance.

This year, we will relinquish what we grasp until there remains so, so little left that we can gather all we need.

All that said, I invite you, as Rev. Deanna Vandiver says, “No matter what your calendar tell you,” to come to Going into the Dark. Join us. Join me. Join our 5000-year-old friend as we travel so far that when we make our way home, we can know it for the first time (Thank you, T.S. Eliot, for that lovely turn of phrase.)

Come and learn to see in the close and holy darkness.

Come and learn just a bit about the miles-deep spiritual life.

Come and go into the dark with me.

If you’d like to know more about the “flagship event” of The Way of the River, simply click on Going into the Dark, and then if you have questions, you can always contact me directly.

Blessings of the close and holy darkness, my friends, blessings.

~Catharine~

Dear hearts –

As they’d say in the nineteenth century, “I fear you have the advantage of me,” but then again, you may not. I write to you from November 4th, when the United States Presidential election remains undecided, runoffs and litigation and recounts abound. Trump supporters yelling outside a polling place, “Stop the vote! Stop the vote! Stop the vote!” from other Republicans saying, “We must make sure to count every vote.” Biden saying that he has run as a Democrat, but if elected, will govern as an American. Just all kinds of stuff running around.

There are times, my friends, there are times, when all a girl can do is look at the blinking cursor and feel the ache in her hips from having sat in her office chair too long.

There are times, beloved, when all I can do is curse my poor, aching, sprained knee for hurting in my unbelievably unergonomic seating arrangement.

There are times, when snickerdoodles seem like the snack of champions, because, hello, millions of Americans apparently think my marriage is meaningless, the lives of people of color don’t matter, police freedom to kill matters more than the lives lost, and transgender youth deserve to suffer as they look toward an adulthood marked by danger and exclusion. Children being taken from their families, children who should be in arms, as a deterrent to asylum-seeking, that’s okay.

No matter who wins (has won?) the Presidential election, these things are true. So snickerdoodles are the snack of champions, friends, and that’s all there is to it. My lovely wife has said over and over that food has no moral valance, and for once, I’m going to choose to believe her and just have a cookie. She’s also reminded that we don’t yet know where things are, so I’m going to drink this ginger beer, and look forward to this email appearing in my own Inbox, and things being different by then.

Oh, and the other thing I’m going to do?

I’m going to the Going into the Dark webpage just to look at how pretty it is!

https://thewayoftheriver.com/going-into-the-dark-2020

Enjoy, my friends, and may the lure of introspection and healing time together be of some solace.

Phoning it in with love –

Catharine

Dearests-

Okay, yes, here we are. It’s the day before the United States official Election Day, the last day US citizens can cast our ballots. I, happily, live in a state that has had mail-in or drop-off voting for some time now (Oregon), and so I received notice of when my ballot had been received from it’s box AND when it had been counted. Ahhhhhhhhhhh…. A sigh of relief. I have done the harm reduction I can do by voting, and that not only that, but I have the relative sense of security of my vote being counted.

I mention all of this even though I know that many of you are not in the States. Because the United States elections up and down the ticket matter to the world. The Presidential election, for sure, but the Senate and House races, down-ticket races in states that are “purple” (Go, Peter Buck!—my dear brother who is running for the state house in Pennsylvania, an essential swing state.), all the way to city councils, mayoral races, school boards and other local votes and referenda. Remember, local officials decide all kinds of things about land use, clean water, construction, education, hell, they make it so that there are enough sidewalks (with curb cuts, thank you very much!) and bus lines to go around.

All that said, that’s not really what I want to talk to you about. Yes, do your harm reduction and VOTE, but that’s done, right? You know what you’re going to do, or you’re watching the election with interest from elsewhere. ‘Nuff said.

I want to talk with you about something related to my Very Exciting News!

The Way of the River has entirely new, entirely revamped, ENTIRELY new look and content. Not only is the color brown only in the images of actual forest rivers (which I do love), and nowhere in the rest of the images or the theme, but the whole feel and look and content is different. I am using lessons I have learned from The Heart of Business, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.

That said, I invite you to visit, and especially to visit the “Is This You?” page. (If you want to see some truly priceless photos of me from the ‘90s, the middle of the About Catharine page is fun too, but not required, by any means.)

The “Is This You?” page speaks about those of us who have hunted for a place where we can really find “the More” of spiritual depth. It’s about those of us who have a religious home but want a more profound experience of spirit. It’s about those of us who are neurodivergent or genderfluid, trans, or non-binary. It’s about those of us who are ambivalent about or alienated from traditional religion.

And so I’m going to share come copy from that page because I want to celebrate those of us who find ourselves reflected among this group. Not everyone I work with is isolated from beloved religious community – certainly, you don’t have to be, to be a part of The Way of the River – but many of us know what that particular pain feels like. And so in celebration, joy, and invitation, I give you, “Is This You?”

• Maybe you were deeply involved with a religious community, but have since been alienated, isolated, or rejected by that community, Despite loving that community, the feelings you had, or the sense of Divine connection you felt, you now feel utterly unwelcome to return and long for someplace to be safe and seen in your spirituality.
• Maybe you are a trans, genderfluid, or gender non-binary person who doesn’t feel at home–perhaps not even physically and emotionally safe in a religious congregation or community. Still, you have a deep longing for spiritual connection. Maybe other people’s prejudices have worn down your soul, so that you feel like looking for connection to the Sacred is a losing proposition altogether.
• Maybe you’re a religious leader yourself, but you’ve discovered the sad and frustrating thing about leading a religious community: you came to this work because you loved congregational life, but now you have no place to be ministered to, instead of always doing the ministering.
• Maybe you find it difficult to explain how deeply you long for the Divine. Maybe it even feels a little embarrassing to try, because you can’t imagine that anyone else will understand. Do words like yearning, longing, or seeking speak to you?
• Maybe you’re a committed member of a religious community because it really nourishes parts of who you are, because you love the community there, and because it’s comforting to go someplace each week where people know parts of you and your life. You find, though, that you long for a “deep dive” into the waters of spirituality, something More, something that maybe you can’t quite imagine, but are drawn to anyway.
• Maybe you identify as a freak–someone in the kink community, a modern primitive, a fire dancer and burner, someone who has always felt a little “out-of-bounds”– and so maybe you find it difficult to fully show up in spiritual communities. They feel like places you cannot bring your whole self to the table, where you are sure you will be judged, misunderstood, or rejected.
• Maybe you’re a neurodivergent person and you find it difficult to do the things that religious communities often demand–being in loud, crowded places; sitting still; making eye contact; and touching people to greet them. Maybe you need different things from what some other people need, and one of those needs is the compassionate touch of the Divine.
• There just doesn’t seem to be anywhere where you can be truly seen and heard in your longing for intimacy with the Infinite. And though you go back again and again, hoping it will be different, you find yourself disappointed each time.​​

You may be drawn to work with me if you

• are committed to your own authenticity — nothing fake or put on because a religious (or any other) group says it has to be;
• believe in the value of your own personal spiritual experience;
• are willing to put in the time it takes to develop a deeper relationship with Spirit;
• and know that when your spiritual life and practice is in order, the rest of your life feels better, clearer, deeper, and more joyful.

And so, dear friends, if any of this sounds like you, if any of this resonates with you, I invite you to a beat. To take a breath. And then consider whether you might like to work in a small group with other people who will understand where you’re coming from, other people who will know what you’re about, where you’ve been and how you’re doing.

And then simply email me for an assessment, a consultation call to talk about where you are and where you’d like to be spiritually, and maybe we can find a place to work together fruitfully, whether in a group, class, or individually. When so much is uncertain, so much is worrisome, having a companion along the way can be just the thing. And I’d love just to get to know you, in any case!

In these unsettled times, I offer you blessings, blessings, blessings.

Rev. Catharine

PS – Want to see the new website in all its glory: https://thewayoftheriver.com!

PPS – Going into the Dark is coming!! The annual winter solstice retreat will be on your doorstep before you know it!

Two Thursdays from now, on October 29th, we will attend to and embody the complicated web of ancestry. We will raise our glasses to those who have gone before us and, by extension, think on those who come after. Do join us for a party for our Dead, those who are wise and bright and bless us by their example…and let us remember both them and those whose lives have been cautionary tales. Let us have mirth and reverence together and offer Toast to the Ancestors.

Oh my dears –

Warning: this letter is stuh-ressed right OUT.

Heard at the Clarenbach house: <<sigh>> “I am so overwhelmed.”

“I just don’t know what to do next, I’m so tired.”

“I can’t think straight. Everything I have to do is filling me with dread, and I don’t know where to start.”

Hmmmmmm…

Do you think I might be overwhelmed?

So many of us are.

My God, parents. Parents. (And teachers too!)

Y’all, you get all the sparkle points in the book from me this week. I don’t know that I have any wisdom for you because you are parents 24/7, and I don’t ever want you to think that I’ve forgotten about you – I just pray for you, and if you need short-term spiritual accompaniment, please let me know.

In my case, overwhelm on the level I’m experiencing it is a part of depression, so I have to be super careful to keep an eye on it. And I know I’m not the only one.

Here’s the thing:

Overwhelm says, I have to push harder. I have to get more done. I have to meet the deadline.

According to Okun and Jones’s work on the culture of white supremacy, part of what we deal with every day are a false sense of urgency and unreasonable, inhumane deadlines and expectations. These expectations are often based on profit for a few at the expense of the quality of life, and even life span, of many.

Stress is real, friends. It is real, and it is eating us alive.

The Rapist-in-Chief is still – as of this writing – telling people not to worry about COVID-19. And yet it hangs over our every decision about whether or not to go shopping, to order take-out, to visit with friends and loved ones, to dare to go to the ER if something seems wrong.

COVID-19 is stressful.

We will see, come that fateful Tuesday in November, or in the days that follow, just how broken our democracy is. Will our votes be counted? Will the people with the most to lose be able to get to the polls? Will the Rapist-in-Chief – AGAIN – steal an election with the help of foreign powers?

Thinking about voting is stressful.

And the deadlines we’ve placed on ourselves or those who work with and for us, in employed work, in volunteer work, in church work…we make arbitrary decisions that cause a false sense of urgency that lead us to feel as though we have no choice but to plunge ahead, no matter how stressed out we are!

Thinking about work is stressful.

Our surge capacity is depleted – our ability is manage short-term threats is basically gone, friends, it’s gone. How the hell can we manage our lives? How ARE we managing our lives? And if we’re reading this letter, I am reminded as I write it, we’re likely to be pretty far up the status ladder of our culture. We know only the slightest bit of the damage being done…

But if you’re like me, your first instinct in all these cases is to push.

Push through the fear.

Don’t let anxiety about A FUCKING GLOBAL PANDEMIC “dominate you.”

Push through your work and come hell or high water, do everything you can to meet the deadlines, do the work, wear yourself threadbare and burn that candle at both ends.

But you know.

You know the way through.

Overwhelm is a sense of isolation, of broken connection from ourselves and from those who might help us. Overwhelm leaves us looking at the whole mess of everything before us, unable to choose one thing, just one thing, to pick up and put into its rightful place. Overwhelm is drowning in a sea of details… so what’s to do?

The key to that instinct to push, push, push is to resist pushing wherever you possibly can.

Renegotiate deadlines based on human capacity and flourishing, rather than what calendars call for at any given moment.

Cancel what is unnecessary. And be pretty darn ruthless about what is unnecessary.

Remember “No, I’m sorry, I just can’t,” is an acceptable answer.

And most important, dear friends, connect. Connect with friends. Connect with helpers.

And connect with that deep place within yourself that remembers who you are. A Child of Earth and Starry Heaven, A Child of the Universe. adequate for the situation at hand, given the help you need.

Connect with Divine, Beloved. Connect with the Divine. Just take five minutes – in the bathroom, if you have to, in the car, in a closet if necessary – and pause. Five minutes just to breathe. Just to breathe. Just to breathe. And then let your heart unfold, soft as owl’s feathers, tender as a newborn’s skin—so tender you can hardly feel it—open like a door welcoming the Divine to come in. Breathe, remember, to breathe, and remember, it’s just five minutes. You can do it. You can come to yourself. You can find the wherewithal to do what needs to happen in the next hour or two. You can. That’s all.

I know you can do it. Just try, try to be gentle with your hearts, in the midst of the chaos and the din and the noise of the news and the noise of the kids and the noise of our own worries. And try to surrender to the stillness that is under the noise, just for five minutes. And if you can’t do that, then try two and half minutes, and we’ll call it good. Remember, bathrooms and closets count.

On which note of gentleness, I tell you that I’m going to take lots more than five minutes. I’m going to take nearly a whole week off and try to re-member my own self. I took two and half days for Beltane in May, but that’s all the planned time off this year, friends, since New Year’s. And that’s just ridiculous and untenable for a brain and body like mine. So there will be no Reflections next week, and I shall be unavailable until the 19th. Trying to undo the overwhelm. Trying to rest, renew, read (trashy novel and then maybe something “edifying” and we’ll call it study leave? NO! Time OFF, you!)… see, I’m not so good at this either.

The prospect of time off is really scary for me. Even the five minutes I’ve prescribed for you are sometimes hard for me. But I know that when I pray, when I unfold the veils from around my heart and turn to the Wellspring of Love, there is always a drink for me there. Always a drink available. My life is always better when I go, go to the water.

I will still find false urgency painful and I will still have to work at finding ways to connect, but She Whose body encircles the Universe… The Goddess Whose love is poured forth upon the Earth… The One Who is the Source of Love and the Creator of Life… the God Whose gifts of solace and compassion are always available…

And it is all there, available, waiting for you. As the Sufis say, take ten steps toward the One and the One will take ten steps toward you.

Blessings of peace to your hearts, my loves –

Catharine

PS. For some lightness in your schedule, and an opening to both the fun and the gravity of the ancestors’ holidays, don’t forget to help us raise our glasses on the 29th.

The post How the Hell Can We Even Do Anything appeared first on The Way of the River.

Don’t forget our Toast to the Ancestors on October 29th. More information below!

Dearests:

This edition of Reflections is written in honor of Rev. Judy Clymer Welles, who joined the Wise and Bright Mighty Dead on September 28, 2020, just as she wanted. She went with love, clarity, a brilliant autumn day, family members around her, finishing her obituary and several letters. Oh, and badgering her husband to get a puppy.

In part, because she did not get to vote yet here in Oregon, she wrote from her deathbed to friends in the Purple Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, reminding them to vote, reminding them that because she could not, they’d damned well better. This letter is inspired by her spirit and her admonitions to follow her example: care for the environment, care for her family and friends, and a deep and abiding tenderness for her faith tradition.

So it seems to me that in this season of bananapants – it has not been so long since the first Presidential “debate” in the US, the smoke of the West, and the fires continue – there are a couple of things that folks in the US (and maybe even elsewhere, frankly) might consider doing. And yes, this edition is about politics.

The first thing I wholeheartedly recommend is to curate your media intake very carefully. I know that I read more news that is strictly wholesome for my heart and mind. The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, the BBC, perhaps an article from The Atlantic my well-informed wife remarks on. She pays attention to BIPOC, feminist, sex-worker, and progressive activist Twitter in a way that I cannot imagine doing fruitfully. But she gets information from the people she trusts and she shares that information with me.

And that is the thing. Who to trust? I know that I am in the Facebook bubble much of the time, supporting an industrial giant about whom I have terribly mixed feelings. And yet I also know that Facebook is one of the platforms from which I have to offer what I think is important and useful. And if I have a platform, I feel obliged to use it.

Nevertheless, the project I bring to you today, one of them, is to rest from some of the national news. Look to your local news, and learn more. But rest today from national news, I dare you. (I’m going to try it too!)

Which brings me to the other side of my coin. This may not be your coin, you may not even have the coin to turn, but this is mine.

The Senate. Senate races in Texas, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan, to name a few, are places where Democrats with enough support, could win and help flip the balance of power. Furthermore, supporting their campaigns influences the Presidential race.

Also on this side of the coin, and in some ways most important is this: Learn about your local races and support candidates you believe in. The way the Religious “Right” came to power in the 1980’s was through the influence of school boards. And we are paying the price to this day in Creationism-supporting textbooks, lack of comprehensive sexuality education, and limited funding for public schools. Furthermore, those people who served on school board and local Commissions are now the people in your state assemblies, or even on the national stage.

Who is running for mayor in your city? For school board? For county commissioner? For the board of supervisors? Think about the appointments and influence these people have over day-to-day life. “Down ticket races,” as they are called, are hugely important. They determine land and water use, construction, city planning, the rights of corporations within some jurisdictions, and the welcome and safety of many marginalized people. These races matter.

So yes, I’m saying, let’s be alert, folks. Let’s pay attention to more than the bullying of the Rapist-in-Chief or the gaffes of the former Vice-President. AND I’m saying, let us take care of ourselves. I do not watch the Rapist-in-Chief talk. I cannot, without feeling as though I should double over with nausea. As one of our comrades said, I did not watch the debate in part because it’s not Biden’s strong suit, and in part because I do not watch his opponent.

Give money, time, postcards, and phone calls to races where it matters to you. But please, friends, do not wrap yourselves in the iron maiden of so much news that you cannot help despairing. Talk with your friends, but, as Fr. John O’Donohue reminded us in Reflections of two weeks ago, make it a habit not to stir one another up, but rather to be people of equanimity.

Resist and keep resisting. Do what you can. Throw sand into the gears. And support the people who are daring to wade into the political mess of the US right now. Remember the thousands of career federal employees who are trying their best at NIH and the CDC and NIMH, and OSHA to get their work done under the scrutiny of an administration that is headed by someone I cannot begin to diagnose or understand. Remember them, pray for them, help them when they ask for help.

Know that I love you. Just do your best – turtles and snails move slowly, but they move, and sometimes that’s all we can do or hope for.

Blessings of clear discernment to your hearts –

Catharine

PS – It feels so strange, after this love letter, to mention our upcoming party, A Toast for the Ancestors, but nonetheless, it’s coming up, and it’s going to be fun! During these times, we can think on our Dead, those who go before us through the veil from our Families of Blood, Choice, and Spirit. On October 29th, 5:30 Pacific time. We will gather to consider the mixed legacy of ancestry, the examples of love and care and the cautionary tales too. With both mirth and reverence, we will make toasts to those we miss, those we didn’t know, and those whose lives are lost in the mists of time.

Feel free to dress up – Hallowe’en is only two days later, after all – and, most important, bring a drink of your choice in a cup filled up to the very top so we can all share in the festivities. Register here!

The post We Need both Rest and Resistance appeared first on The Way of the River.

My dears –

Today, I offer you the second half of the poem by John O’Donohue, “gone too soon,” as we say, in 2008. The whole of the poem, which you can hear me reading below, includes some description at length what it is like to be exhausted.

But we know what it is to be exhausted, don’t we? And so I include here the parts of the poem that remind us—forcefully, even—of what cares for us when we are exhausted. What can we actually (not) do?

We know how it feels to be helpless, and, if we are lucky, to remember our own souls, to remember our “first, last, and only refuge.” O’Donohue helps us remember. O’Donohue is a master of writing about beauty, friendship, and truth – matters too often ignored these days, I think. And here, he reminds me about friendship with myself.

He reminds us, as Derek Walcott does in “Love after Love,” (a poem many of you have heard me read before and that I may read again soon in our group) that we have just forgotten ourselves. That we are not altogether lost, and that it is we ourselves who can find ourselves.

Do note, of course, “Be excessively gentle with yourself.” O’Donohue goes even further than “persistently gentle” to “excessively gentle.” The other day, I misremembered the line as, “obsessively gentle,” and it got me through a day of substantial physical pain. Excessive. Obsessive, at the very, very least, persistent.

The other piece that stands out to me is this: “Learn to linger around someone of ease / Who feels they have all the time in the world.”

Can we learn not only to draw alongside of such people, but then to become such people? We do have all the time in the world; we have all the time the world will give us, each of us, and that’s all there is. In my world, staying clear of those vexed in spirit means avoiding images, sounds, or videos of the Rapist-in-Chief, as well as just minding my own relationships.

But as the West burns and the South floods and smoke travels across the country, it is hard, friends; it is hard not to be vexed in spirit. Let us help one another become people to linger around. Let us help one another imitate stone and twilight and things that are both sturdy and soft.

And then we, like the Prodigal Children, may come home to ourselves. Home, home, home with our souls. To a place from which the ease of spirit we have allows the Spirit of love to flow through and touch everyone we touch.

So much love,

Catharine

“You have travelled too fast over false ground; Now your soul has come to take you back. Take refuge in your senses, open up To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight, Taking time to open the well of color That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone Until its calmness can claim you. Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit. Learn to linger around someone of ease Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself, Having learned a new respect for your heart And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

From Benedictus: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue

PS—clear your calendars!! Thursday night, 8:30 Eastern, October 29th to PARTAY with the Mighty Dead. Look for more information soon on A Toast for the Ancestors!

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Beloveds –

Today, differently from last week, I am considering the way in which I do not have privilege, the ways in which I am in what is called below, an identity of struggle. Last week was about white skin privilege. This week, bringing in some thoughts of intersectionality, is about what feels like everything else.

Yes, I have white skin privilege, the great and enduring problem of unearned power built on the backs of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Yes, I have cisgender privilege, the ease of moving through life with the easy grace of someone who knows that her gender is unlikely to be misread, except in extraordinary circumstances, and the knowledge that people will use the pronouns I find appropriate to my gender as I understand it. I also carry educational privilege, not only for the degrees I have, but for the academic family out of which I came. That family gave me explicit understandings of some class pretensions that didn’t come from our socioeconomic status, but from our academic environment and our family history.

Then again, there are other things going on. If you are a regular reader of Reflections, then you know that I carry lots of other identities. I carry the trauma, however much it fades at times, of being sexually assaulted more than once. I have largely invisible, largely managed mental illness, the kind that a dear friend who shares my diagnosis, calls “batshit crazy.” I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, (ADHD), and I include the “h” because while my body is not hyperactive, my mind certainly is. I am a woman, and I was a girl, taught how to cross my legs, not to let people see the underwear beneath my skirts as I nonetheless climbed trees and jungle gyms, or how to speak at parties. I am very fat—probably the fattest person you know—and I have as recently as last year, been harassed on the street just for the crime of Walking While Fat. Chairs often don’t fit me comfortably, safely, or at all. In some regards related to that (though not entirely so) I am physically disabled and walk with a cane when in public. Physical disability, mental illness, neurodivergence, fat, trauma. There’s a lot going on in the hand I have been dealt, and sometimes I forget that.

It’s a lot. And I can sometimes forget that when I’m talking only about white privilege. One of my favorite writers, adrienne maree brown, herself a disciple – that is to say, a “follower” – of Octavia Butler, has a list of things to remember on her blog of March 12, 2018. Thoughts. Facts. Shifts. And what she calls a mantra:

“Mantra: Where we are born into privilege, we are charged with dismantling any myth of supremacy. Where we are born into struggle, we are charged with claiming our dignity, joy and liberation.”

As I wrote last week, those of us with privilege—being temporarily able-bodied, having white skin privilege, being thin or athletic or both, for example—have the obligation to go beyond our fragility and even our understanding of our fragility and move to dismantle myths of supremacy. Not just acknowledge them while we continue to benefit from them, but to relinquish power, to center others, to take apart the supremacy we and others equally undeserving, have been given.

Today, though, I write about the second piece: “Where we are born into struggle, we are charged with claiming our dignity, joy, and liberation.” I would add that it is not only those places where we are born into struggle, but also those places where identities of struggle come upon us later. When I was assaulted, I moved from innocence to victimhood to surviving to largely thriving. When my bipolar disorder began to really come on strong in my adolescence – and yes, maybe I was born with it, but I think it’s more likely I had a predilection, something that was triggered, as the study of Adverse Childhood Experiences suggests – I moved from someone with deliciously happy memories of an early childhood to someone who struggled every damn day against the voices in her head telling her if she had any guts, any sense of duty, any reason, she’d kill herself as soon as she could get to something really good and sharp. Certainly, growing very fat, partly as a result of genetics, and later on, a result of reactions to psychiatric medications, partly as a result of a sedentary time brought about by life-threatening illness, and Goddess only knows what-all else…. Certainly that has been very hard and seems likely to steal joy, no? Steal joy and make me wonder whether I have right to be here at all!

So.

The question becomes, then, according to brown, how do I “claim…dignity, joy, and liberation”?

The first thing, I think, is just to name it. To name that I have the right to live with joy and the reality that I DO. What a concept to have to name. Is it okay to name that I sometimes delight in the softness of my skin, the roundness of my cheeks? That even as I do struggle with my left knee’s protests and the difficulty I have in standing up straight (my lower back and belly sometimes feel as though they’re at war), I still can, enjoy the movement of my body through water or pedaling at my underdesk “bike”?

Am I joyful, ever, in my ADHD, which causes so many difficulties for me? ADHD makes some things that others find easy, obvious, and necessary very difficult, obscure, and needless for me. Am I joyful, ever, when I have to deal with such things? Or given that I have what is considered to be a “severe” mental illness – “bipolar type 1 with psychotic features” (I love that they call them “features” when I definitely think they’re “bugs!”)?

Do I dare to be joyful?

Damn right I do. I am joyful in my work. I am joyful right now, writing to you. I am joyful in my marriage, in my multitude of friends, in my family, in the feeling of this red dress I’m wearing, and certainly in my coloring my hair bright purple.

So there’s that. But what about dignity. What is dignified about being really, most sincerely fat? What is dignified about having visible and invisible disabilities? What is dignified about walking with a cane? What is dignified about daring to be femme in a fat body – don’t I just look like a pig with lipstick on, as Sarah Palin once famously said?

Dignity is harder than joy. Joy I can identify immediately. Dignity, especially when people are seeing me, or worse, seeing me when I’m having a hard time walking, or even worse yet, when I’m snappish or confused or need help doing something… am I worthy of dignity then?

brown says yes. brown says that not only do I have dignity in the struggle, but that I must claim it for my own. Here we are, then, I’m telling you I’m trying to do it. Just as I am practicing receiving “no,” as regular readers may remember, I’m now going to practice the art of claiming my own dignity in the face of society’s insistence that I focus only on its lack.

Finally, adrienne maree brown says that we—those with identities of struggle—says that we must claim our own liberation.

It is clear to me that we can only claim liberation once we’ve claimed dignity, and even a farther reach for some of us, joy. (For me, as you’ve seen, it is the other direction that is hard, but I know that for me, joy is the elusive piece.) Liberation only comes out of difficult wrestling with those with privilege.

Because those of you with privilege, relative to these things I have named – using myself just as an example – need to let go. You need to relinquish your hold on the wand of power and the right to that power. Otherwise, you risk having it wrenched from you by the furious and indignant people you (whether intentionally or unintentionally) crush toward the ground.

So I suppose claiming my liberation is a process too. A process that proceeds from the growth of joy and dignity.

Will you practice with me, those of you who have identities of struggle? Will you acknowledge the ways struggle and privilege tango and tangle? Will you let go where you need to loosen your grip and claim and reach even through conflict what is yours by right?

I’m going to try to. I invite you to join me.

Blessings on you and on your house –

~Catharine~

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Dear ones –

I was blessed to participate in a “Deep Heart Check-In” with Holly Glaser this past week. In the business coaching group of which I am a part, we often say, “Check in with your heart.” “Take a minute to check in with your heart.” “Let’s take a breath and try to check in with our hearts.”

But hello, what does that mean? It can be really frustrating when you can’t really “drop into” a heart-centered space, if you’ve never had that feeling, or even thought before about different ways of knowing.

In my tradition, I teach about the Three Cauldrons, or three ways of knowing. The belly (bodily response), heart (intuition), and head (parsing data). A body scan, as I call it, is one way to learn how your body responds to different kinds of stimuli – your choices, other people’s ways of speaking, your own fears, etc. the head mind benefits from crossword puzzles, good conversation, and reading books.

So what is it, this thing we call, for lack of a better word, the Heart Cauldron? What is knowledge from the heart?

The heart is that part of you that is most deeply connected to intuition. To a sense of things that will lead you past your “ego,” as it were, and into what you most hope for. The Heart Cauldron, is also the Cauldron that is most easily filled by Divine inspiration.

Today, we spent forty-five minutes in Holly’s Deep Heart Check-in engaging in an imaginative journey. One on which we flew a magic carpet, rode an unerring elevator, went slowly down a set of stairs, step by step, further and further into the close and holy darkness of heart knowing.

Throughout the call, Holly guided us, reminded us gently here and there, of what we were doing, the knowledge we were seeking. Sometimes she prayed or chanted in Arabic, and sometimes we just took our magic conveyances deeper into the wilderness that the heart space can be.

After about 35 minutes into the call, I was dizzy and trancey, soft-eyed and quiet, and then I received a gift. “Your heart is trustworthy,” came the knowledge, clear and sure and quiet and gentle.

Your heart is trustworthy. What a lovely gift to have received. The trick, I realize, is GETTING to my heart, through the noise, through what I think I most want or what I think I should most desire, and not only that, but asking the right questions.

Today, I was asking about my upcoming website changes (yay!). I am nervous about them. I want you to like them. I want to like them myself. I want the design, as well as the copy, to express who I am, more clearly and honestly than the green-and-brown of the theme I use now. I mean, it goes beautifully with many photos of rivers and forests, which I love.

But come on, if you’ve met me – and I recognize many of you haven’t… but whether you’ve met me or have never met me, you’ve never seen me wear brown. How do I know? Because there’s not one single piece of brown clothing in my cubbies. Come to that, there’s nothing green either, though long ago, I owned a pair of dark green pants. But I digress.

The point is that I’m afraid to put myself out there, yet again, in an even deeper way that I do every week. I’m afraid that you won’t like me anymore. I’m afraid that if people really knew me, they’d run screaming away.

Taking a page from Rebecca Liston’s most recent email for Las Peregrinas, it feels important to say that the art of my new site is going to make me even more open, vulnerable and visible than my writing and podcasts already do. And also taking another page from Rebecca – sorry, love, you words were just too trenchant not to use – it is sharing vulnerability like my fears about my website that makes The Way of the River stronger. Vulnerability is in the psychic bricks and mortar of the The Way of the River. It is why and how this place has been built. Why and how and with whom? With you.

My heart is trustworthy? My heart is trustworthy? I have things to say that come from the heart that people find useful or at least help them feel connected in the world. It’s hard for me to believe it.

But, it seems like somewhere around 500 people like the freaky, religiously polyglot, spiritually mystical, fat, mentally ill and neurodivergent cis queer woman who’s writing this, or you probably wouldn’t be here. It just feels scary to try to dig as deeply as I can, be as relentlessly truthful as I can about the people I serve and what I have to offer you. It’s just scary to find new ways to be so visible.

Then again, Catharine, isn’t the whole point of a website to help you be visible? You have a point. And hearing, “Your heart is trustworthy” is a big relief. But it reminds me that I have to do the work of finding that heart wisdom as I approach the copy and design of this site I hope to share with you in six weeks, if not before.

There will be more editions of Reflections between now and then, and I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about my agonizing over this process, if only because I want those of you who are also anxious about being seen to know that you’re not alone. You’re so not alone.

So so so so much love, a thousand times love –

~Catharine~

PS – Folks who have worked with me 1:1 and in small groups: You’ll be receiving an important email from me this week, so make sure to check out your inboxes the next time you see a note from me. Blessings to you and to your houses.

The post My Heart is Trustworthy appeared first on The Way of the River.

Dear Friends –

Today, I share with you the last seven lines of a poem, “Prayer Is An Egg,” interpreted by Coleman Barks from a translation of Mevlana Rumi. I will simply share some thoughts that have emerged as I’ve read the poem most recently. The version I have comes out of Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Inspiration, edited by Roger Housden.

The early part of the poem refers to someone who has died and is facing the Creator and being asked to account for their life on Earth and how they have spent their time with the gifts they have been given. The person realizes that there is no one to help them. They feel utterly alone. But the poem goes on:

‘Then you pray the prayer that is the essence / of every ritual, “God, / I have no hope. I am torn to shreds. You are my first and / last and only refuge.” / Don’t do daily prayers like a bird pecking, moving its head / up and down. Prayer is an egg. / Hatch out the total helplessness inside.’

Whoa.

“Hatch out the total helplessness inside.”

Before I continue, let me remind you: This is an interpretation of Rumi by Barks. It comes from others’ translations, and while it is obviously important to me (or I wouldn’t be writing about it to you), I want to make it crystal clear that it is more Barks than Rumi, almost certainly.

But to continue, how does, “Hatch out the total helplessness inside” land for you?

Many of our comrades and many of my other friends and colleagues are either Pagan or UU or both. In both circles, helplessness is not something you hear a lot about. Even humility, which is one of the important places this piece is pointing toward, is not a common trait we hold up as a value.

And humility and connectedness are where this poem leads me. And it also leads to my felt sense that is it the Divine from which all arises and to which all returns.

So humility. Humility, like humus…earth-ly. Close to the ground. Close to the sacred Earth. Close to the depths.

Several months ago, I was working with the Sufi practices of connecting in Remembrance/zikr to one of the 99 names of God. The Name was the Name of the One Who Abases. Pushed to the ground? Pushed to prostration? And I was shocked and appalled and even repelled. Abased? The One Who Causes Surrender. Causing Surrender?

And this idea of surrender reminds me of a quotation I saw today from someone who really bugs the shit out of me a lot of the time, but who has some good things to say, Byron Katie. “If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life live you. It does anyway.” Reality only wins 100% of the time.

Furthermore, that surrender, even abasement or prostration is a practice of many spiritual leaders and seekers. Buddhist monks walking around shrines again and again, prostrating themselves with every step. The Poor Clares, religious sisters prostrating themselves before the Blessed Sacrament as they go to receive Communion. Priests being ordained lying face down before the altar.

Prostration is the acknowledgement that of helplessness, or put another way, of our deep neediness.

Acknowledging neediness requires humility. Humility, the acknowledgement of neediness, lets us reckon with existence – that we do nothing alone. We are nothing alone. We are the result of uncountable years of life—and much more than just human life–converging into who we are, living through us, living in us, expressing itself in and on Earth.

We are needy. It is an essential part of all life. We are needy because we are connected to all that is. ALL that is. Nothing we hold is entirely our own – it all came in great measure from somewhere else.

As I, taught by one of our comrades, often say, “We are part of the Big Picture. Alive or dead, we are part of the Big Picture.” It is that Big Picture, the Universe, that created us as we are and will receive us again as we die.

So when you pray, if you pray, if you want to learn how to pray, simply acknowledge that you are needy. Humble yourself and bow to reality. Let your head and heart and body (if it can) bow to reality. Acknowledge your ignorance, your Earthy-ness, your needs. Turn toward the Source of Life and hold nothing back. Withhold nothing.

Hatch out the total helplessness inside.

You can do nothing alone. You need do nothing alone. You are never alone.

Blessings on you and on your house –

~Catharine~

The post Prayer Is An Egg appeared first on The Way of the River.

How’s your “praising receiving the No” project going? So far, I’m finding it pretty liberating. It’s still saying no that’s being hard for me. But gentle persistence will get me there.

Dear hearts –

Benedict of Nursia, founder of one of the greatest Christian monastic traditions, said, “Keep death daily before your eyes.”

Wow, you might be thinking, she’s really jumping in this morning. And I am. Keep death daily before your eyes. Or perhaps you’d prefer the famous image of the Buddhist monastic contemplating a skull.

I think of this concept quite often. Nearly every morning, in fact. But I don’t tend to think of it in terms of a skull or of the stereotypical image of the ascetic monk.

I think of it as I watch the roses in my garden every day at breakfast.

We have roses in every stage right now, from leaves just starting to turn up toward one another; little Grinch-headed buds; hippier and more swollen Grinch heads; the buds where the flower petals beneath are just beginning to show; the opening buds I watch with fascination each day, waiting for the ur-roses that emerge (the very Platonic image of a rose in half bloom, smelling sweetly and looking “perfectly” alive); the blousy and gracious flowers in repose; and the blown roses where when the wind picks up, petals fly a bit and land on the ground, slowly playing their own game of “he loves me-he loves me not.”

At our house, the roses have been deadheaded through their first two rounds of blooms, and they’ll probably get through at least one more round. But what I love about where they are is that there are so many different kinds of buds and blooms. The flowers are going through their whole cycle right before my eyes. And I love them in every season of their lives. Probably in the later fall, we’ll let them go to rose hips, but not now, not yet. Rose hips take as much as ten times the energy to produce that rose blooms do, but they make for yummy tea and food for birds. So we’ll see.

In Wicca, this entire season of the year is about relinquishment and ultimately about the observance of death and the ancestors we honor at Samhain (October 31). Lammas, the holiday we celebrated August 1-2, is the first harvest festival and the small, sneaky beginnings of fall. (The leaves on my lilac and dogwood are just just just here and there beginning to turn.)

That festival, Lammas, one of the great Celtic fire festivals, is when we celebrate the grain harvest and make bread, but few of us are farmers now. It is more an observance of voluntary relinquishment. It is the festival of “laying down the Wand,” or the scepter, rod, or staff of office and leadership. It is the first of the eight holidays on the Wheel of the Year to honor relinquishment.

As the Wheel turns toward Samhain, we come to the time of the relinquishment that comes for us all. Being born is our death sentence, after all.

For now, though, both life and death are before my eyes in the turning of our roses, the roses just outside the window. Nearly every day I remark on them. They make me so happy.

It’s not only those roses that are the perfect, juicily petaled flowers I love. My favorites are the roses in repose, the ones that will soon turn to passing and letting go. They look like beautiful silk skirts, more transparent than in their earlier stages, and more ready to let go of all that they have been to make room for the fruit to come. I watch them for that moment of letting go, of “dying,” though the plants themselves are still strong and healthy.

What is your favorite stage of your favorite flower, if you have one? Is it the lilac before the buds really open? Is it the lavender when its fragrance is sweetest? Is it the lily bud just before the flower bursts out one morning all of a sudden? The spring forsythia or the fall aster? The tropical hibiscus in its brilliant glory or the “minor” periwinkle that creeps across the ground?

And when do you love them?

When do you love them? Can you appreciate them in every stage of their lives, and in so doing, appreciate the stages of your own life? The Wheel turns, and one day, we too will lay down all that we have into the recycling power of Earth.

For now, though, I invite you just to consider where you are in life. How do you feel? Whom do you love and on whose love can you depend? Yes, of course, what have you done—but more than that, who have you been? And who, most important, are you now?

Blessings of the rose upon you, in every stage from birth to death, every blessing.

~Catharine~

PS – Heartfelt thanks to Rev. Madelyn Campbell who has been so meticulously documenting the stages of her garden.

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Dear ones–

Some of you have heard me talk about gentle persistence and persistent gentleness for years. Sometimes I forget that not everyone knows what I mean when I talk about them, nor why they are so important to me.

My “tagline,” if you will is “Change arises from gentle persistence and persistent gentleness.” Or even just, “Gentle persistence, persistent gentleness…” Let us move through the world with gentle persistence and persistent gentleness.

What do I mean?

On the face of it, I’m inclined to do something unskillful, something I did twenty years ago when I was asked, “How do you pray?” I said, “Well, you just do it.” I had been praying for so long and in so many ways that I had never bothered to break it down. Totally unhelpful, and I don’t know whether my wife has forgiven me to this day. At least, 18 months or so after that conversation, she married me, so that’s a good sign.

And so with gentle persistence and persistent gentleness.

Gentle persistence is related to discipline. Not discipline as we generally think of it, though. Not something punitive. Not something rigid — Goddess, no! But didn’t I just say,”discipline”?

Discipline is related to the word “disciple.” Does that help?

For many of us, I suspect not! So many of us and our comrades have been wounded by religious language that we are thinking, “disciple”?! How is that about anything gentle?!

Discipline means something that you follow. The word comes from “to follow.” Thus, we see Jesus’s followers. We see followers of Islam. We see people following all kinds of institutions, structures, and ways of engaging spiritually (or physically, financially, or educationally, for example).

There is some truth, for example, in the expression, “Discipline is doing what you really want.” And THAT is where gentle persistence comes in.

Gentleness is allowing yourself compassion. Self-compassion is the root of both gentle persistence and persistent gentleness. So “what you really want” comes from gentleness, comes from saying to yourself, what do I really, in my heart of hearts, long for. What is the outcome here that I most truly desire?

And when we are clear about what we really want, then we can say, All right, I can try, l can try to follow my heart and follow my desire, and if I cannot accomplish this thing before me, it is okay. I am okay. Making this attempt is what I can do, following my heart is what I can do, and if I miss the mark, then I can forgive myself.

And sometimes, when something seems insurmountable, just awful, terrible, and too big, gentle persistence is kind of magical. When you know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that you will forgive yourself because you know you’ve done your best, sometimes you can do more than you expected.

And if you can’t, no matter how persistent you have been, no matter how hard you have tried to follow whatever regimen, teaching, desire, work, parenting style…whatever… you can know that self-compassion, forgiveness, gentleness can always be there.

So what about persistent gentleness? Well I just kind of explained that, right?

Persistent gentleness means that I am in bed writing this to you right now. I fell this past weekend and hurt my knees. I want to be up and about. I want NOT to have to do what I need to heal. I want to be more helpful in my household than I can be right now. It sucks.

And yet, persistent gentleness encourages me to, “Forgive [myself] for everything every day,” as my Dragontree planner said last year. Forgive yourself for everything every day.

You fucked up. Humanness.

You injured your body through carelessness, recklessness, or thoughtlessness. Humanness.

You are habitually hard on yourself. Humanness.

You fall into spirals of shame when you make mistakes. Humanness.

These are all clarion calls, true klaxons from your heart asking for kindness, grace, mercy, forgiveness…for gentleness.

Over and over and over, gentleness. Over and over and over, gentleness.

Persistent, even relentless gentleness allows change to arise in me. Why? Because I find that I can do things I didn’t think I could do. Something hard and sharp-edged and afraid inside of me softens as I am gentle. And the gentleness, offered over and over again without exception (except, well, human, so not always, not without exception…but as much as we can manage) allows the persistence to come into play.

Do you see?

Persistence, by itself, may become punitive. Or harsh. Some kind of self-flagellation. Nothing is helpful there. All of that is rooted in shame, and shame is not the way to transformation into compassionate selves. Shame is not the way. It’s just not.

Gentleness by itself is beautiful. But there are other things that can masquerade as gentleness. The kind of things that seem soft and helpful, but that keep us from accomplishing our hopes. They are usually blocks, pieces of depression or shame. So gentleness can never be applied too much, but it is important to be on the lookout for those things that remind me of spiritual bypass. Getting to the gentleness without the persistence, without the grit of giving it a try. Really digging in and doing everything you can to get up when you’ve fallen.

And if you fall down and find you can’t get up, you get help. And you forgive yourself, for the fall, for the trying and failing, and for the asking and getting help.

You apply gentle persistence in the trying and trying again. And persistent gentleness, grace, in admitting that you need help.

Gentle, gentle, gentle, my love. Keep trying, keep growing, keep giving it all you have. And when that is not enough, loosen the grip that shame has on you, and be gentle.

I love you

~Catharine~

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There’s still time, but not much, to register for Making Hard Choices: The Art of Discernment. If you want to gain more decision-making skills for the future or are facing down an important choice now, please click the link and see whether you’d like to join us August 3rd.

Hello, dear friends and comrades –

Those of you who have been around the Reflections block for a while will recognize much that is in the stories below. But for newer folks, I realized there are some fundamental things about me and about The Way of the River that need to be said again and again. Here we are. A new angle on some old stories.

This week, I have begun a series of podcast recordings on different shows with various hosts. (Check out the Facebook Community Group to see whether I’ve put anything up there. If I think my first foray out into the podcast world in some time is worth sharing, it’ll be linked there.) The process of putting myself out there in a new way—not least as a really, most sincerely fat woman—is a little scary. Nevertheless, I’ve realized I can handle it. I can make it work. I can look at my face (asymmetrical), my lipstick (rarely the EXACT right color I’d like), my arms (bigger than anyone’s I know), my neck (arguably the part of my body I’m most self-conscious about).

I can see all those things, and I can see more. I can hear my laugh—on my first podcast, someone commented on how much they enjoyed my laugh and how much joy I brought to the show. I can watch my hands and the way I use them to illustrate what I’m talking about. (Just like my father – if you’d tied up his hands, there’s no way that award-winning professor could have taught one line of poetry!) I can listen to my voice and the way it resonates tenderly, gently, and sometimes more forcefully. And I can hear the content of what I’m talking about, and that it’s solid, that I know what I’m talking about. (Though every time I get recorded of late, I make at least one misstep—see the PS in this edition.)

What I’m trying to say here is that I really believe podcasts are going to give me the opportunity to practice my watchwords. At least that first one did. What are the watchwords? Some of you who’ve been around the block with me for a few times already know what I’m going to say, but some of you haven’t heard these yet.

There are two things I try to put into practice every day, and they are the children of the Spirit of Love as I understand it. They are gentle persistence (daring to be recorded for audiences outside you lovelies) and persistent gentleness (offering myself the compassion I’d give to anyone else, the benefit of the doubt, the joy in nice things, and delighting in talking about things I love). So you are welcome, if you are in our Facebook Community Group or in the Making Hard Choices: The Art of Discernment class, welcome always to remind me sweetly that gentle persistence and persistent gentleness are the ways I’ve discovered change can arise.

But back to the podcasts.

One of the podcasts with whom I am likely to do an interview is called The Liminal Podcast. They provided me with a long questionnaire as part of our getting to know one another. They are interested in the hero’s journey, as they see it and as it is often described, and particularly in the sense of going into the belly of the beast and being reborn. In the rebirth set of questions, they began to ask things in terms of the phoenix – what has arisen, maybe even more than once, from the ashes of things burnt down around me? I thought I’d share a piece of what my answer about what has endured throughout my life and has, in some ways, never changed.

“As a Unitarian Universalist minister and Wiccan priestess, spirituality is STILL at the center of my life. When I was studying to become a religious sister, it was at the center of my life. When I was a nice Catholic girl, it was at the center of my life, and it still is.

Whether I’m preaching or making ceremony, teaching Wicca 101 for the Tradition of Stone Circle Wicca (USA) or teaching discernment or meditation, accompanying a client or helping someone prepare for their ministerial credentialing interview, the Spirit of Love is the egg, the fledgling, the glorious bird of fire that is carried by and comes through my heart.

Up or down, well or ill, broke (and evicted and defaulted and arrested) or comfortable, I have always been tethered to this life by Love. The Love of the many-faced Divine Who is One and Many, Male, Female, Both, All, or None. The Love of my beloved spouse. The Love of my communities. The Love of my dear friends and other family. And the Love of people whose names I don’t know and whose faces I may never see. And I love them, I love you, all of you, in one way or another, however distant or strange it may seem from here.

Gently, persistently, I work to bring more Love into the world, because I know it is Love that saved me when I most needed saving.”

Don’t mistake me – when I say, “saved,” I don’t mean an abstract, detached love or conventionally Christian born-again experience. I mean pulled from the jaws of death-dealing depression and psychosis. I mean someone holding me after I had intentionally hurt myself for the first time, age 16, and holding me and holding me as the snow fell, saying, “I feel like you’re a little kid who just dodged a bullet and I don’t know whether I want to hug you and hug you or to shake you and tell you not to ever do any such thing again.”

I mean someone making me flowers out of construction paper and drinking straws and putting them in a vase of an Arizona iced tea bottle painted to look like a stage with open curtains. These flowers, this vase were given to me to celebrate that day in the snow, the day I didn’t die, the day I decided to go ahead and live, at least for a while.

I mean my ex-lovers and their lovers coming to my rescue when I got kicked out of my apartment on Imbolc. I mean an apartment couch to crash on when I had no place of my own. I mean the apartment “dining room” floor where I lived for a summer.

And I mean being shipwrecked by my life, absolutely shipwrecked, no longer knowing what I believed, why I was alive, or where along the way the Spirit of Love had left me. I mean being shipwrecked and then discovering as I picked up my head that I had landed on the Island of Love that became the garden for the most important relationship of my life. That relationship, that love, that marriage, that brilliant woman to whom I made the earth-shaking promise one day that I will never—not from that day forward—try in any way to kill myself.

Some of you are like, yeah, what’s the big deal. You can’t think killing yourself is a good idea. Well, I suppose not. In fact, I had a good friend recently try to rationally explain why it isn’t. I laughed a lot in that conversation. For someone who heard voices for over twenty years, voices that became steadily more and more persecutory, telling me over and over and over every single day to kill myself that I was a coward if I didn’t kill myself that everyone would be so much better if I’d only… you get the idea. Hearing that every day, all day does something to your neural pathways.

And only one thing has ever given me the hope that there might be something on the other side of those voices. Only one thing has ever given me the sense-feeling-perception that I was worth something when I couldn’t believe it on my own. Only one thing has ever done the heavy lifting of teaching me that moving those neural pathways is worth it, to gently but persistently keep trying, day by day, to remember that I am allowed to be here with you.

As I heard recently, from a much more benevolent, quieter, not-crazy voice, “Darling, it was Love all along.”

Darling, it was Love all along.

Blessings for you –

~Catharine~

PS – I mentioned it in passing, but Making Hard Choices: The Art of Discernment still has a few spots left. (Before we max out our registration at 24). I invite you to check out the link above if you have any bit of piqued curiosity about the fine and venerable art of decision making. We will have a good group of folks as it is, but there are still a few spots remaining, and I’d love to have a full house! How much fun would that be? Look over the page and the ask yourself, “Do I feel a wholehearted YES to the idea of a self-paced, but supportive environment of accountability in which to learn?”

Questions: Check the link above, and then if you still have questions, just go ahead and reply to this email.

So much love for you. Love and peace and all good things.

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Beloveds – today, I take us down a stroll through the archives of Reflections to a piece I wrote three years ago this spring. It’s about welcome, and so I ask you: What is welcoming for you? When you enter a space, what tells you that it was designed with you in mind? Think about all the people who get left out of these questions all the time, and maybe make some changes in your places of worship or spaces where you make ritual. Consider how you “welcome the strangers” into your midst, and let’s see what I had to say in 2017!

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Today’s Reflections is really just musings. Just the fruit of the wool-gathering I talked about last week. Definitely not anything and a bag of chips, but maybe a window into how I make thoughts? Something like that. It ends more confused than it begins, and I’m leaving it that way, just for fun. Let us begin!

Lately, I have been considering qualities that aren’t often talked about in Unitarian Universalism or Wicca: mercy, grace, sin, redemption, evil, virtue, and the like. Today, I am thinking of mercy and forgiveness. Trying to parse them out. Trying to distinguish them, if they can be distinguished.

Perhaps it is because my business community is also wrapped in Sufi practice, so several times a week, I hear, “In the name of the One most compassionate, most merciful, most kind…” that I am thinking of mercy. What is it, who offers it, who asks for me and under what circumstances…these are the kind of things I’m musing on as I consider the half-leaved dogwood.

Many Unitarian Universalists and practitioners of Wicca would say that mercy, especially Divine mercy, is an unnecessary idea. Like sin, mercy is irrelevant to our theologies, such as they are, our various theologies and philosophies.

For my Sufi teachers and friends, mercy is a divine quality that can be moved through human beings into action. Sure, God is merciful, but does that really matter if we’re not showing one another mercy? As Teresa of Avila said, “God has no hands but ours…” and she’s right.

That protean statement, paraphrased by many, often attributed to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, Jr., begun by Rev. Theodore Parker, the 19th-century Unitarian preacher and abolitionist, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

If that arc is to bend, it is we who must do the bending, no?

Similarly, mercy has no hands, no mouths, no hearts but ours. And mercy, like forgiveness, like grace, is unearned. It is a gift that emerges from largesse of heart. We hope for mercy when we know when we have wronged someone (or SomeOne) by our actions or speech, and especially we hope for forgiveness when we have wronged someone who is in a position of greater power than we have. Mercy lightens the heart of the one who receives it, and it broadens the heart of the one who gives it.

That most familiar English poet and dramatist, William Shakespeare, thought about mercy a lot. For example, we read in The Merchant of Venice:

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​It’s a difficult and strange time. Do you feel as though your spiritual life is suffering, your practice is hard or nonexistent, you don’t have the community you need? Perhaps having a dedicated companion along the way would help. Consider my individual spiritual accompaniment, a monthly deep dive into what most matters to you. Would love to have a free consultation to see whether it’s something that would work for you. ​

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​We own nothing. Nothing is ours.

Not even love so fierce it burns like baby stars.

But this poverty is our greatest gift:

The weightlessness of us as things around begin to shift.

Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls, from “Everything in its Own Time”

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Dear ones –

I want to say, “I have not been well,” but I am as well in body as I ever am. So do not panic when I say that!

I have had another time of difficulties of the mind. And, combined with the stresses the pandemic is putting on all of us, even those of us who are well, it has not been an easy time. But I am doing much, much better, and so I find I am able to write to you. Feeling called to invite you to lean in, to rest, to reach out and receive my reaching out to you.

I have missed you!

And really, this is going to be a very short missive because I want you to hear me very clearly, and yes, I am using the microphone (but gently):

We need one another now.

We need one another now.

We need one another now.

Got it?

So what does that mean for those of us at The Way of the River. First of all, it means that if you use Facebook, I strongly (and cordially) invite you to join us there at The Way of the River Community. We share together, ask for help and support, and generally just stay in touch. It’s a good thing.

Furthermore, I have small groups opening in April and May – one for queer/neurodivergent folks (those having ADHD and PTSD, as well as autistic people) and one that is non-identity-based, but still welcoming of people who are neurodivergent. You’ll hear more about that tomorrow – watch your inbox!

I’m also really inviting you to consider individual spiritual accompaniment and to schedule an appointment just to have a free consultation. It’s strange, strange times, friends, and having the anchor of a once-a-month check-in time can make all the difference in the world between feeling isolated and feeling deeply connected to yourself and others.

So I’ll keep this short and sweet, because I want to include a week video this week!

Blessings and love, as ever –

Catharine

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My dear friends and comrades –  

Do you ever have that sense that if you just could do just a little bit more, you’d really be where you need to be? That if you just could get your to-do list to behave itself, you’d finally relax and be able to rest? 

For my part, I spend a lot of time worrying about and fretting over not doing as much as I think I ought to be doing or should be doing and would be doing if I were a “normal” person, instead of someone with chronic health conditions and past unresolved illnesses and injuries and blah blah blah. 

Now I know that some of you do, in fact, have astonishing constitutions, and can beat your to-do lists to a pulp when you put your minds to it. And I know that some of you are younger than I (I just turned 47, thank you very much. Happy birthday to me!), and you can do feats which once were easy for me but are no longer. 

So what I’m writing about today will not apply equally across the board (as though it ever does!). It applies for some of us, though, and maybe even most of us.  

I want to do more. Do. Do. Do. 

I have this belief – thank you, Calvinist-instilled, capitalist-enforced – that if I could only DO more, I’d somehow …. What? Win the prize for the most productive? The biggest producer of… of what, exactly? 

Well, especially given the nature of my work, I suppose I’d be turning out spiritually centered people by the hundreds. 

It’s laughable. Of course it is.  

The thing is that it’s more often the case than not that a sense of urgency, especially for those of us who are in ministry or other spiritual leadership, or who own our own businesses, is in fact not an invitation to do more. It feels like a command to do more. It feels like a demand, a necessity, a way toward Salvation-with-a-capital-S, for heaven’s sake.  

There is a Sufi saying I have learned today, “Be careful of hating what is good for you and loving what is bad for you.”  

So why do we resist allowing ourselves downtime? 

Of course, we need to take care of children and other family members. Of course we need to keep a roof over our and our family’s heads. Of course, we need to pay the bills. But even that latter – we must pay the bills – if we are in any way in charge of our own schedule – can be an urgency trap.  

Is the question really, “If I don’t hurry up and do more and more and more around the house/in the garage/at work/at church, I won’t be able to pay the bills!”? I doubt it. If it is, in fact, a general sense that if we don’t do more, it’s not about paying the bills, it’s about something else. 

Friends, if we desire fruitfulness, generativity, the sap-sweet taste of the apple matured on the tree, then we have to rest.  

I’m not prescribing a certain amount of sleep per twenty-four hours or some nonsense. Different people require different amounts of sleep to feel rested and refreshed. But please do note that I said, “rested and refreshed.” 

Not only that, but it is healthful and wholesome to have down time, which is different from sleep. Restful, playful, or merely watching a grasshopper in the grass (thank you, Mary Oliver), idleness is a virtue.  

I think, really, idleness is a good in and of itself. Certainly, exertion that is pleasant and healthy is a great. Certainly, working enough that we have what we need is common for most of us, at least until we all have a guaranteed income.  

But I wonder whether you’re resting enough to truly find that fruitfulness, that generativity I mentioned. The sap that becomes the nectar and the flower that falls to make room for the fruit – these happen in temperate climates with varying seasons because the peach, the apple, the cranberry, the blackberry all rest.  

They rest, each in their season. Human beings are not quite so seasonal, even when we try to stay in tune with what is happening in the natural world of which we are a part. Our downtime needs to be more consistent, not so often in a “burst of inactivity,” but more often in a regular routine of idleness and play and maybe even a vacation of some sort along the way. 

Understand that, as usual, I am writing to myself. While I sleep more than most people do, I know that sleep does not obviate the need for downtime.  

Just sleeping is not the same thing as delighting in fun for fun’s sake. Merely getting enough sleep—and mind you, most people in the United States don’t even do that—is not the same thing as idle fun. But sleep, that engine of mental organization, inspiration, memory, and insight, is just where we start. So first, go to bed. First, get some deep rest. First, sleep. Seriously, put it in your planner and sleep, so we can get to the good stuff. 

But don’t you dare think that we’re stopping there. Oh no, John Calvin, we’ve further to go down this road of virtuous perdition.  

Merely sleeping is not the necessary and beautiful idleness I’m talking about. This idleness is staying up with a beloved novel simply because you love it (and knowing that you’ve made the time to sleep in!). It is planting the flowers you bought for the pots out front, even though you knew they were extravagant. It is reading a book out loud to your spouse of an evening, each of you cozy beneath blankets with steaming cups of tea. It is emulating Madeleine L’Engle, who made a practice of lying out on her Star-Watching Rock. 

And rest, renewal, downtime, vacation—for me, they all really do lead to one thing: creativity. When my mind is clear and refreshed, my memory better than usual (not that it’s ever great, ahem), and my body limber and languorous, I am more likely to have something to give you when you need it. If I have allowed myself to receive simply, openly, without guilt or shame or watching the clock, then rest assured (ha!) I will have something to put out into the world sooner rather than later. 

That’s really all I have to say. And even reading this newsletter is probably feeling like taking a vitamin! I want us all to do more than just what is pressed upon us to be productive; I want us to have fun, for pity’s sake! 

So go! Watch the sun go down, my friends, and do not think of me. Think only of the colors, the textures, the vision. Breathe, and be joyful, for you are alive to feel it. 

I love you— 

~Catharine~ 

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Today, let’s consider an essential quality of a healthy relationship: Boundaries.

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Last week’s Reflections was a very intense thing, both to write and to read, by all accounts. Some people called it “bad ass,” others couldn’t finish reading it (totally okay), and some people probably thought it was unnecessary or alarmist or whatever, but they didn’t say anything to me, so I don’t know! And that’s fine.

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Oh my dears –

Reflections is not usually ferocious, or even fierce. While I have written about “dismantling myths of supremacy,” as adrienne maree brown has said, I have never written before about political figures in the United States. Today is different. Today, I am driven by current events—the impeachment and “trial” of Donald Trump, the mess of the Iowa caucuses, the award given to Rush Limbaugh <<shudder>>, and the State of the Union address—to write honestly about some very painful political topics.

There is fierceness here, because I believe fierce compassion, not neutrality, not ignoring one’s gut feelings, not putting aside one’s better angels, is what is called for. Fierce compassion.

And maybe there is some ferocity here too. I love the land where I grew up. I love the land where I live now, and I love people across the United States and the world. I love them ferociously.

I believe that we must be ferocious in our fight for justice—and not just inclusion, not just “diversity policies” that make white people feel better about themselves—and that ferocity means that we must find ways to force tyranny to concede its power. More on that to come.

The following is an expanded response to a good friend—a comrade—writing a post about having concerns about Rep. Pelosi’s tearing her copy of Trump’s speech in half.

I do not believe that Rep. Pelosi tore her pages in half out of frustration or a fleeting moment of pique. I believe that she knew exactly what she was doing and why she was doing it. I believe she was visually, metaphorically, and materially expressing the kind of action that is necessary at this moment in United States politics. Letting go of preconceived notions of what is possible, and beginning anew. We must rid ourselves of the toxic tyrant currently in the office of the President.

This is about my growing literal horror at what is happening in the US. It was the middle of the night when I wrote this post originally, and my thoughts may not have been well-organized, but they are the kind of thoughts that are important to keep expressing, keep saying, keep insisting on, keep using to remind ourselves to resist.

The level of civility that legislators like Pelosi are being forced into right now is part of the undermining of democracy. The fact that loyal, patriotic civil servants are forbidden to speak about what is happening in places like the detention centers all over the country is, in fact, a tool of white supremacy, of heteropatriarchy, of the kyriarchy that keeps the violently, sickeningly wealthy wealthier while the poor starve and suffer and die for lack of access to healthcare.

We learned when the time for the Inauguration came and the change of power took place how much of our practices in the US were done by custom, not by statute. President Trump rolled over decades, even generations of practice. And if you watch videos from that time, until now, you can see a steady mental decline, even in his gross motor skills. Not only is he a criminal—more on that to come—but he is a man in decline, a man who is significantly unwell.

Furthermore, people should be rioting in the streets over what’s going on with the impeachment trial and Iowa. The idea that Pelosi’s tearing two sets of paper in half is disrespectful or problematic…we are way past that. We are so far past that I can’t even see it from here.

The French have been striking for two months over proposed pension changes by Macron. Our senior leader is a racist, xenophobic, transphobic rapist. There are several credible allegations of rape against him—one of which was reported in Vogue—that show that his sense of entitlement to anything he wants doesn’t stop at gold plated toilets.

No. Listen. Stop. I believe that he is a rapist. I believe that he has paid women to have abortions and then to sign ironclad non-disclosure pacts. We’ve known he was a rapist for years, and he is the President. He is the fucking, goddam President, and he has been for years now.

Does anyone see that even before Ukraine and Russia and all the rest of it, that even Mitt Romney acknowledges he is guilty of, he was, in point of fact, a criminal and a well-armed, decorated, high-ranking soldier in the fight against women?

I come back to it again and again. How are (especially) women and femmes in general not being transformed into the bacchantes and raging in the streets? Throwing our bodies against the White House gates? I know why I haven’t been, but I’m wondering more and more whether just doing what seems like “my part” is enough. I’m wondering whether I’m underestimating my own strength. Whether we all are.

What is enough?

I was hospitalized some months after the inauguration in part because of the sheer overwhelming pain of cognitive dissonance. Donald Trump is the President. My president?!?! Donald Trump?!? Are you SURE?!? Are you fucking KIDDING ME right now?!?

And he and his rapist compadre Kavanagh and the rest of the misogynists he’s put in power will never ever be held to account for their crimes, not really.

American white people do not have the political will to challenge the horrors he is wreaking. Are you reading me, friends? I am saying that American white people voted 57% to put this horrorshow into the highest office available. This multiply bankrupt, reality tv show host who has defrauded hundreds, if not thousands of people out of their wages, is now the President of the United States?!

Yes, thank you, white friends. It is precisely this kind of behavior, this kind of electoral choices that make me weep, even now.

I know I’m super-duper-extra-double-plus late to the party.

I know that I may be screaming into the void that is created when people are lulled into apathy. But people criticizing Nancy Pelosi for tearing some paper has somehow pushed me over the edge.

Let it sink in. Just take a breath, put your feet on the floor, ground yourself in your own body and your own safety, and take it in. This man is not only the President, but he is likely to stay the President past November 2020. How d’ye like them apples?

No politician is perfect. Senator Elizabeth Warren, whom I admire tremendously, has voted for military spending that I find ludicrous and immoral. Bernie Sanders, whose proposed policies, granted, do not differ wildly from Warren’s, has ill-conceived ideas about intersectional politics. He seems to believe that the solution for all things are reducible to class and that even issues like environmental injustice (climate change affects communities of color dramatically more often than it does white communities) or reproductive justice are reducible to a class analysis. None of the Democratic candidates are perfect.

But do we have any evidence that they are criminals on the order of the man who is currently occupying the seat of the President of the United States? People KNEW, friends, so many people – especially cis women and trans people of color – KNEW.

Here’s a thing to make one cower in shame at being a supporter of the US systems in play (I learned this from our comrade, Rev. Theresa Soto): Do you know that young Latinx femmes in detention centers are tearing up their clothes to make flowers to put in their hair? So they can have one thing of beauty, one shred of something that reminds them of love?

How does that not bring a tear to your eye? There are still children in cages in this country. And immigration issues don’t end at the southern border. A man was pulled out of the shattered window of his truck in Washington state not two weeks ago by Border Patrol Agents, and then “lost” in the system.

Donald Trump and his supporters, it pains me to say, are doubling down on the worst of what I shall call, for lack of a better word, the American Way.

Please, friends, please, if you love someone queer – and I guarantee you do… Especially fi you love someone trans…If you care about children having safe drinking water… If you believe that rural and inner-city communities alike deserve better than being ignored and having public education systems that are hanging by a thread… If you know that the climate crisis is upon us…

Do SOMETHING. Write. Call. Think, but don’t spend so much time thinking that you never speak up. Take the risk of being wrong or going too far. Take a risk.

Friends, HOW can we give – how can we HAVE GIVEN — over our country (those of us from the US) to these criminals? Can we please, please, please not do it again? Can we work together to dismantle the myths of supremacy? Can we at least try to make some progress? Will you join me in trying to find a way through? As it is, power-mongering is the order of the day.

As Galadriel says in the opening to The Fellowship of the Ring, the film, “Nine rings were given to the race of men, who above all, desire power.” (emphasis mine)

These are the kind of men who are running the country. Ones who above all desire power. And Frederick Douglass reminds us of something essential in this fight:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

Bring your words, friends. Bring your bodies. Bring your voices. Bring your hearts.

There may or may not be hope, but there is plenty to fight for, and we are obliged, not to finish the work of justice, but to continue its tasks, nonetheless.

With all my love and care –

~Catharine~

The post Really, Friends, How Do We End This Tyranny? appeared first on The Way of the River.

Darlings –

So here’s a thing…

You know the expression, “Physician, heal thyself?”

There’s a similar one.

“Preacher, hear thyself.”

When I wrote to you last week, I felt as though I was at the end of my rope, burned out, knowing I wasn’t giving you my best work, but pushing through to try to do the best I could.

I was trying dig deep, find something meaningful, remind people of something helpful, something that would nourish your spiritual lives, something concrete and actionable.

I told you that sleep was essential to creativity. I told you that Americans are chronically underslept. I told you that deep rest is one of the “magic bullets,” along with enough water and movement, that can keep us well in body, mind, and spirit.

And then, dear friends, a week later, I realized that I had worked 18 days in a row.

18.

I was working flat-out on new projects, on responding to people, on offering new aspects of ministry, on writing, on letting people know what I’m up to. The work was good.

But eighteen days? Really?!

I didn’t even KNOW when I sent that video and love letter that I was really writing to myself.

How is it that we get into these “Do what I say, not what I do” moments? How is it that we can become such hypocrites?

That’s how I feel right now. Like a big hypocrite.

Then again, human. Human I am, and I know I’m not the only one among us who’s overworking and/or missing our own messages.

So this week’s Reflections is unusually short.

Why?

Because I’m going to spend the rest of the day lounging, playing with my fountain pens, writing letters to friends and family, and perhaps taking TWO naps. I might read about whales. Or even dig into the new novel my wife has been telling me about. Or listen to a podcast or two – something not directly related to my ministry.

I love you. AND I need to fill the well and listen to my own words.

I do have one exciting thing I want to share, though, before I sign off. This week, February1-2, is the fire feast of Imbolc, sacred to the Goddess Brighid, and one of my favorites. Some of you have asked that I offer something for the holiday. Not just the usual short video, but something a little more substantive.

I decided that I still don’t have the energy to write and coordinate a whole ritual this year. My apologies if you were hoping for that.

BUT!

I’m going to try something new…So do watch your Inbox this coming Friday or Saturday for something a little “meatier” or, as we in Stone Circle Wicca say for those of us who are vegetarian, something with a little more avocado.

Love you so much.

Signing off for a nap –

~Catharine~

The post Hypocritical Preacher appeared first on The Way of the River.

Dear ones –

There are few magic bullets in this life. But enough water, some movement done regularly, and enough sleep will do an awful lot for a person.

Today, I’m focused on enough sleep. I could tell you about pink salt and lemon in water (yum, natural Gatorade!) or about my new underdesk bike, but nope, it’s sleepy time.

Are you getting the sleep you need? I sincerely doubt it. Nevertheless, it’s really the core of persistent gentleness and gentle persistence. And if you’ve read any of my Reflections before, you’ve probably seen that phrase.

I don’t want you just to be persistently gentle. I want you to be RELENTLESSLY gentle with yourself on this point.

Some of you are what one doctor called a comrade of ours, “efficient sleepers.” You simply don’t need as much sleep as others.
Some of you are middle-of-the-road sleepers, and do fine with 7-9 hours of sleep a night and work, remember, and even create.
And some of you, like me, are nappers. We snag a little extra bit when we can.

Study after study after study show that Americans are chronically underslept. And study after study also show that we remember things better, we have better word recall, and are safer behind the wheel of a car when we’ve had enough sleep.

The thing for me, though, is that I find sleep magical.
Seriously. I have an half-baked idea, right? I have some crack-brained, little thread of something.
If I sleep on it, thinking of it consciously before bed for three nights in a row, more often than not, I wake up after the third night with a whole new plan.
I wake up not with the linear, “baked” version of my original idea, but with a whole new one, something I could never had imagined if I were just trying to think it up.

I know many of you spend a lot of your time creating things. You are artists, poets, writers, preachers, potters…
Can you get some more sleep?

And hey, if you’re having trouble, just come visit Portland – the weather will knock you right out for hours!

All my love—

~Catharine~

The post Do You Need Some Sleep? appeared first on The Way of the River.

”Maybe there’s a way out of the cage where you live. 

Maybe one of these days you can let the light in. 

Show me 

How big your brave is!” 

~Sara Bareilles~ 

Good day, dearest!

As you might surmise from the above, I have been listening to a lot of Sara Bareilles lately, and the above is the song I listen to first thing every morning when I put my headset on and get ready to talk to you.

I think of a time I desperately wanted to be brave, but I couldn’t figure out how. I was living in the convent, trying desperately to figure out what to do next. I couldn’t stay, I didn’t know where to go, and I didn’t know what I would do if I did so. These lines haunted me, spoken by Grima Wormtongue to Eowyn, niece of King Theoden:  “When the walls of your bower around you begin to shrink, / a cage to trammel some wild thing in.”

I would hear those words, any of the ten or so times I watched that movie in the theater, and I would cry every time.

I knew that fear was the cage trammeling the wild thing in my chest.

For a while after I left the convent, during the run of The Two Towers and then The Return of the King, I was just still. Sometimes I would paint. The first painting I ever painted in my adult life was of a great, white-hot star unfurling its light to shine on the surface of the ocean. Running along the line of starlight was a naked woman with butterfly wings. The light traveled all the way to the end of the canvas, leading into an unknown destination.

The second painting I made had mountain cliffs on the left and right of the canvas, with one large mountain in the middle of the picture. Great owl’s wings were spread from left to right, each the height of half the central mountain, and stretching from the center all the way to the cliffs. Beneath each wing was a woman curled up in peaceful sleep. But above the peace of “I fear no dangers of the night, sleeping under God’s wings” was a being of fire, that same white-yellow, and blue that the star had been in the first painting.

I knew I was made of fire, fueled by fire, I knew I was touched gently by the softness of the Divine, and pushed forward by the fire in my belly.

But I was also wounded. I had spent four years with a community that, while beautiful, powerful, and helpful in so many ways, could not be a long-term home for me. I needed time to rest. To try to integrate what had happened to me, what I had chosen. What I needed to shed.

And it would take years for all that to happen, the integration, healing, shedding, and understanding. It would take years of waiting, taking jobs that weren’t where I wanted to be, slowly reinventing myself, slowly waking back up from the strange dream I had been in. Eventually, though, I realizes that my path continued to be one of spiritual leadership. I was sure that meant I would become a minister of a congregation. I was just positive of it. With my skills in management, preaching, writing, fundraising and meeting facilitation, I had a lot to bring to the table that many ofher new ministers lack.

Once I had done all the work, jumped through all the hoops, and written the hundreds of essays to become an ordained minister I could enter search for a congregation. As it turned out, I had what is called, “a failed search.” It was clear, talking to some of the search committees that represented congregations, that we were not a good fit for one another. Others revealed themselves to me in such a way that I knew I really didn’t want to be their minister. And a couple of them decided that we weren’t a good fit, though I really liked them. And some of them just plain didn’t want a fat minister.

Back to the drawing board, it seemed. The sting of my “failure” followed me. Years of injuries and illnesses. More rest. More healing. And then after a bit, I started blogging again. And I remembered the cage that had trammeled that wild thing in. I remembered—and felt all over again—the terror that I would say something wrong, something alienating, that people wouldn’t like me.

But the encouragement came pouring in. You might even say, the “en-courage-ment.”

“Thank you for telling the stories of hearing voices commanding suicide for twenty-five years, even as you managed to hold down jobs.”

“Thank you for telling the stories of ceremonies, rituals that you built with teams of people for thousands of other people.”

“Thank you telling the stories of being a sexradical in college and being told, as a result, that you were not a feminist.”

“Thank you for telling the stories of dating butches who turned out not to be butches at all, but to be men coming into their own understanding of themselves as trans men or as non-binary.”

“Thank you for telling stories of strange love, sex, Spirit, and for showing me that it’s okay to be who I am.”

And thus The Way of the River was born. Because you helped me be brave. You helped me recognize that my studies in spiritual direction, my years of building transformative ceremony, my seminary work, my work in congregations, my experiences as a fat woman, and my healing from physical and mental illnesses were all worth sharing.

You asked me to do more. To help you study for the Ministerial Fellowship Committee I had myself seen just a couple of years before. To help you learn how to be a minister with managed mental illness. To accompany you on your intimate journey with the Source of Love and Spirit of Life.

“Tell your story. You never know who needs to hear it, or who will find themselves somewhere in it.” I don’t remember who said that, but I have learned that it is true. I have learned it from you. At the moment, I am especially appreciating those who responded to last week’s Reflections and let me know how we came together and asked that I pull a card for you—that offer is still open.

I cannot be brave while a lone ranger. Community helps make me brave.

Does this community help you be brave? How can I help you be brave? If you haven’t already, I invite you to join our Facebook Group, The Way of the River Community. Come on in, visit, and see what having the loving support of a community can do for you and your brave heart.

With faith in you –

~Catharine~

The post Who Makes You Brave? appeared first on The Way of the River.

This week’s Reflections focuses on the Christian tradition of Epiphany, how we might understand this myth, put ourselves into the story, and see what we learn. I wrote it in 2017, and I offer it to you now as a love note for 2020 while I take a bit of a break. 

Dear ones~

This past week included the Christian celebration of Epiphany, or the Feast of the Magi. [2020 note: Today is in fact the Feast of the Epiphany.]

Epiphany is the day when many Christians celebrate the arrival of three people from different parts of the world traveling to meet the one they believed heralded a new world. They were said to have followed a star—they are described in such a way that they would probably have qualified as astrologers, watching the heavens for portents.

It is written that the visitors brought gifts symbolizing sovereignty (gold), divinity (frankincense), and mortality (myrrh). Frankincense was (and still is) a resin used to offer prayers to the divine. Myrrh (now often paired with frankincense), was one of the sweet-smelling resins used in wrapping and preparing the dead for burial.

There is also a line in the story (lots more backstory I’ll preserve you from here), “They went home by another way.”

The story is highly mythic, by which I mean there are many ways you can unpack it to reveal more and more. Which is interesting since “epiphany,” means “revelation.” People still use “epiphany” like this when they mean, “a flash of insight.” A revelation.

Who are we, the Magi?

And so there are many things in the story reveal and are revealed. For one thing, these magi, these wise people, these magicians or astrologers from other parts of the world, thought this baby was important.

Their gifts are precious, all of them, and they can remind each of us that we are precious (gold), divine (frankincense), and mortal (myrrh).

They have come a long way, as we do on our journeys toward wisdom and Divine Communion.

They follow a star, a natural phenomenon seeming to act in unexpected ways. Things we expect to behave in familiar ways shift and change and slip when we’re on a spiritual journey.

We are all magicians.

We are all the squalling baby, new to the world every day, beginning again if we will let ourselves.

Once we have experienced the communion of the heart that is the sense of the Spirit’s closeness, we cannot help going another way. We cannot help it. There is no going back along known pathways. Those pathways no longer draw us, no longer appeal, no matter how familiar they are.

These are a few of my thoughts about Epiphany.

My epiphany

And now for the inspiration (the epiphany?) that I could write about this holiday:

A minister friend of mine, Heidi, does something that apparently many progressive Christian churches do as they celebrate Epiphany. She passes out big, silver stars to congregants young and old. On each star is a word. The star carries a message, guidance, something that may change your direction.

If you read last week’s Reflections, you may recall that I said my word for the year—a word I chose for myself—was “Juicy.” But there is something beautiful and different about having a word chosen by chance, by Spirit, by the minister, however you see it. There is something about being given a word we did not choose, for which we have not built scaffolds of expectations in our minds…

There is something about being given a word—Beloved, Discernment, Wonder, Joy, Grief, Empathy, Gentleness—that is powerful. It is the power of the Tarot, of the Runes, of Ifa or the I Ching…it is we who are shuffled, not just the cards.

And so I make you an offer. I have a deck of cards to my right, and each has a word on it. Some are “friendly” on the face of them, like, “Pleasure,” “Love,” “Delight.” Others are more difficult, like “Martyrdom,” “Abandonment,” “Betrayal.” My cards are not the cards of the Christian Epiphany. But they give guidance, nonetheless.

My offer is this: Reply to this email, and tell me—even if you think I know—how you got connected with Reflections and The Way of the River. In return, I will pull a card for you with a word for you to reflect on, a word to take into the year, a word that is just for you, offered by the Universe.

Blessings of revelation and insight to you!

~Catharine~

Connections All Around

I’ve had some lovely exchanges recently, via both email and Zoom, with folks I had not previously had the chance to get to know. Might you be one of the people who next reaches out?

Maybe you’ve been reading Reflections for a while, and you’re just curious about who I am and what else I do. Maybe you’ve heard me talk about spiritual direction, but you still don’t really know what it is, and you’d like to know. Maybe you know you need support and challenge in your spiritual life, and you’re wondering whether we’re a good fit.

Or maybe you’d just like to talk for half an hour with this purple-haired priestess “in person,” via videoconference or phone.

Any of these is a good reason to reach out. Let’s chat! Simply click that link to schedule a free half-hour conversation with me. I’m looking forward to it!

The post Go Home A Different Way appeared first on The Way of the River.

Beloved –

Today’s love letter is inspired by encouragement from one of our comrades, Karly, who asked me to write about what is born in the dark.

I am thinking of Hanukkah, the days of fear, even despair that light would go out, but instead being offered a miracle of faithfulness and trust in turning toward the Oneness the Jewish people honored in their restored Temple. (It’s a relatively minor holiday in the course of the Jewish calendar, but it comes to mind in these days of darkness and secular-Christmas, nonetheless.)

I am thinking of Yule, the winter solstice, when we can feel as though hope alone is what brings the sun back—although even in despondence, we know that Earth will keep turning, that we can trust the sun to return, even if slowly.

I am thinking about Christmas, when of all the people in all the world, a largely unremarkable child is brought to birth by a couple shut out of every shelter and so a young mother labors in a stable (with or without the help of St. Bridget, depending on how you read your Irish lore), laid in the animals’ feeding place, and becomes a refugee, fleeing from his birthplace because of brutal threats. Yet stories of his life would turn the world on its head in part because he was killed for arguing against Empire and for a world order of love and peace and care for the poor.

These are stories of courage, of persistence in the face of sure destruction.

“Do not be afraid,” over and over again we hear in the Abrahamic religions, God or the angels saying to Hagar, to Mary the mother of Jesus, to lowlife shepherds, to Mary of Magdala. But how can we follow that maxim

Do not be afraid?

Do not be afraid in the face of the rising tide of Fascism in the world?

Do not be afraid of the climate crisis the Anthropocene Era has brought us through our own and our ancestors’ actions?

Do not be afraid when a rapist is appointed to the highest court in the United States?

Do not be afraid when Black trans women are killed over and over in the streets of cities around the country?

It seems the answer is yes.

After all, when the angel came to Hagar, Hagar had been sent into the desert to die and feared for the life of her tiny son.

When Gabriel came to Mary and said she would have a child not fathered by her husband, but by the Most High, the young woman (before she sings her triumphant and prophetic song, the Magnificat) must have been terrified of being punished, even killed for adultery.

When darkness got deeper and deeper and darker, and days and nights passed in darkness for the people of the frozen North, how could one avoid the creeping fear that darkness would never end?

When the women among Jesus’ followers came to his tomb with spices and fine linen to do that most holy of unclean actions—to tend to a corpse, someone who can never pay back the gift—and they were met by a person blindingly radiant, what were they to think, in their grief and fear?

Love in the moment we have

Of course we’re afraid. People have always been afraid. Empire has always been oppressive. We enslave one another. We rape one another. We torture one another. And of course, we murder one another.

And, horrifyingly, we always have.

But, as Joanna Macy, the brilliant and kind Buddhist environmentalist says of our fear for the future, we can love one another now.

Now is the only moment we have. Now is the only time we know. This is the moment I have to think and write and to know that my words may matter only to a very few, but that I can be faithful to those few.

We must not allow few to stop us in our tracks, my loves. We must now. Empire is stronger in most ways than it ever has been, but its destruction looms as surely as the fall of the Roman edifices of power did.

The birth throes of hope, though, are found in the words of an autistic teenager from Scandinavia, Greta Thunberg. Who is she to have begun a simmering revolution among young people, simply by sitting outside her school every Friday?

The travails of a new birth are found in the often-despised young, public-service attorneys who fight and fight and fight to hold corporations accountable for their astonishing lack of care for Earth.

The Mother of All the Gods is laboring with us to save our habitat, our selves, and our souls.

So let us not be afraid, my friends. Or at least let us not allow fear to have the last word. After all, the sun will return, the myths tell us over and over again that we are not Alone on this Earth. They tell us that in small places, in low places, in the mouths of young people and the tireless work of civil servants, we may find inspiration for our own courage.

Can we can find ways to be kind? Small ways that matter though no one knows you have done them? Can we can find ways to interrupt the harm done by racist, ableist, classist policies, commentary, and environments? If we’re privileged by birth, education, wealth, or all three, can we risk our own comfort, riches, and supremacy by working to dismantle the very systems that have put us in our high place?

The December holidays, you see, can en-courage us to dismantle systems of supremacy. They discourage supporting Empire. They demand persistence and fortitude.

We need not be afraid, but we must love one another (including loving Earth) now if we are to have any hope for our imagined world of justice and peace.

We must love courageously. Love fiercely. Love boldly. Love loudly. Love justly.

Blessings friends, and for those of you who are celebrating, may the gifts of the midwinter holidays shower you with love.

~Catharine~

The post Love One Another Now appeared first on The Way of the River.

“Within our darkest night / You give us the fire that never dies away” 

Taizé chant

Dear hearts –

Above, you see the lines to the chant I offer you today. It is simple, to the point, and reminds us that we contain within us “the fire that never dies away, that never dies away.”

Our light of worth and dignity is inextinguishable.

But it can feel as though it has gone out, and as though we must be different from whoever we are in order to be worthy of love. But we are Beloved, now. And we can love one another now, as Joanna Macy says of our responses to the climate crisis.

Furthermore, Carl Rogers reminds us, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.” I don’t try to control a sunset.”

And while I wrote last week about perfection, this week is about imperfection.

Self-Compassion Now, the Key to Fulfilled Hope

It is compassion for ourselves in our imperfection that allows us to slowly shift our patterns, to be gently persistent in our aspirations, and yet to love ourselves all along the way.

People used to admire my voice. I went to church five times each year for Christmas because I was singing, playing handbells or the piano, or directing a children’s choir. I sang for Pope John Paul II and all over Italy when I was young.

But several things have happened in my life that have ravaged my voice, not least of which were four pulmonary emboli I had in 2014, emboli which scarred my lungs. Sleep apnea and just years of singing hard and long and not resting my voice enough.

I became ashamed of my voice.

I hated the sound of it.

I sang for no one.

I never gave my singing voice to anyone anymore.

Slowly, though, music snuck back to me. I found that I missed it terribly, though I knew (or thought I knew) that I’d never sing for anyone ever again. It came back to me in the form of calling out in desperation for Love.

Imperfection as Spiritual Practice

Singing crept into my spiritual practice. I was asked to call out to the Divine through the open doorway of my heart, and music came naturally to me. “Ageless Beloved! Ageless Beloved! Ageless!” I sang over and over again, with tears streaming down my cheeks (which did nothing for the sound of my voice, I can tell you.)

I realized that where spiritual practice is concerned, it is the gift of it that is important, not its perfection. It is the routine of it, the dailiness of it that shifts our hearts, hones our intuition, and melts unnecessary iron-hard walls that we have put up against the world. (Note I say, “unnecessary.” It is not to say that veils to protect the tender places of our hearts—or even the well-being of our bodies are not necessary.)

So today I have shared with you a slice of my wintertime practice. I have recorded a little video, part of which is my singing as it is now, important, middle-aged, never again what it once was. Then again, none of us are what we once were; rather, we are what we are and we are becoming what we will become. Just as the name of God in Exodus is said to mean – I am what I am; I will be what I will be.

So both I and my voice are what they are, and I give them to you. I give them in hope that you, too, will allow your imperfections to show to the world, to be gifts to yourself and to others.

You needn’t sing to share the gift of practice. You need only have that practice yourself.

Afraid of writing? Feel like it has to be perfect all the time? Get thee to the page!

Sad about the sound of your voice? Use it to reach out to the Divine?

Don’t know how to pray? Just sit with compassion for yourself and ask for help having compassion for others too.

Enjoy exercise but find its repetition boring? Allow the movements, over and over, to become a mantra of love, the shapes your body makes shapes of daily, holy contemplation.

Today, I hope for you that in this complicated season, you will find a practice that nourishes you. Not as some kind of New Year’s resolution, but rather as a way of expressing your perfect imperfections. Not as a means of self-improvement, but as a way to reach out from isolation to love.

Love, such as I offer you today.

Blessings, Beloved, blessings and a thousand blessings –

~Catharine~

The post Forget Your Perfect Offering appeared first on The Way of the River.

Beloveds~

First, and last – Going into the Dark is this very week! If you have any single question, please ask me – we only have five days of registration left!

Second, if you’re new here, welcome! Take a few minutes to read what is below and feel free to reply if you like with whatever this correspondence surfaces in your heart that you’d like to share. 

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Onward!

What follows is a bit of a reprise of a 2017 post, updated for this week. (I mention this because many of you will be sure to notice that Paul and Mary are no longer the judges of the Great British Baking Show! They are, of course, Paul and Prue. Still those piercing blue eyes and uncompromising posture of Paul Hollywood, but new and fabulous jewelry on his counterpart!)

As many of us are going to continue to be among family this month, I have been thinking, as I often do, about perfection, perfectionism, and excellence. Not all of us associate these things with family, but many of us do.

I have been thinking about how some of us have families where we’ve felt we could never measure up, could never make parents happy, live up to other siblings’ accomplishments or praise, or are constantly criticized.

Either our grades were never good enough—or we believed they weren’t… Or our bodies aren’t healthy enough—or we believe they aren’t… Or our families didn’t support us enough—or we have believed they haven’t.

In other words, we’ve grown, or tried to grow, in environments where things have felt impossible. After all, perfection is not possible—or is it?—in this life.

It all depends on what you mean by perfection.

So what is perfection, anyway?

I’ve been watching The Great British Baking Show, and there’s a lot of talk about perfection on that show. “We need to see a perfect rise,” “We need to see perfect layers,” “It must be absolute perfection.” Paul and Mary, the judges, must say the word “perfection” more than they do any other word, besides “bake.”

But what is perfection?

Is it uniformity?  The “perfect” arrangement of little bubbles in the bread? The cookies (biscuits!) all the same color, with all the same snap or crunch? Maybe in baking, but in life? Boooooooooooring.

Is it conformity to an ideal? Maybe in Plato’s Cave, but in everyday life? Nope.

One person’s perfection is another person’s sterility. One person’s ideal is another person’s horror.

I’m here to tell you that there is no perfect student. (Every one of us has wanted to do better at some time.) There is no perfect body. (Take that in—the ideal you’re been striving for or hope to find in 2020 does not exist.) There isn’t even any perfect love. (Every parent, even the most loving one, has fallen down on the job at some point. I’m not talking about abuse or neglect. Just garden variety imperfection.)

And then there’s perfectionism. Perfectionism is a plague upon the earth, I’m convinced.

Sure, I do strive for excellence. Excellent writing, excellent ritual, excellent cooking (even baking on occasion—2019’s cranberry pie is calling my name), excellent preaching…there are things that really matter to me, and for which I stretch myself to attain my “personal best.”

Sometimes I miss. Sometimes, for example, I send an email that strikes a strange chord and some of you are good enough to tell me. And so I try harder next time. Or sometimes Reflections doesn’t go out at all because I just can’t get there. I just can’t find the “genius,” as the Romans would say, the spirit of inspiration, to dare to send something out to all of you. (In other words, sometimes I let fear get the better of me…but we’ll come to that.)

Sometimes I have a spiritual accompaniment session that feels not quite right, that I have not listened with the depth and empathy that I hope to bring to every meeting. And so I endeavor to settle myself, to perceive the presence of the Spirit moving in our lives, and to listen better next time.

Still striving for authenticity, integrity, compassion, wisdom, and love. Often missing the mark, but not giving up.

Guess what! It’s about gentle persistence! (How do I always get here??) It’s about not letting fear get the better of us. It’s about humility. It’s about recognizing that nothing we have is our very own. Nothing. Everything we have has been grown in us by an irreducibly complex web of interdependence.

So how are excellence and perfection different? For one thing, of course, it’s about gentleness.

For the other, I can only answer from my own experience. If you know a parable, a story from real or mythic life, I’d LOVE to hear it; please reply and let me know.

The answer to perfectionism is attending to joy. When do we feel joy in the things that we want to be truly excellent? When do we experience in our bones that we’re doing something we’re supposed to be doing? How can we look at things differently so that joy comes from what we’re doing?

Joy that is humble, persistent, and does not think of itself, but is simply immersed in the work. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “Joy is an infallible sign of the presence of God,” and I believe him, so I seek joy wherever I can find it. I often find it in “flow.”

There is delight in achieving flow, the state in which one is “invisible to oneself,” while making rituals, preaching, writing, running, cycling, baking, cleaning. There is a kind of ease—even when it leads to exhaustion—that comes when we are doing something well, something we love, something that stretches our abilities.

There is nothing wrong with doing things well. There is nothing wrong with practicing for hours and hours and hours to hone talent into skill. I have read that to achieve true virtuosity, true mastery, it takes 10,000 hours of practice. And not every one of those hours will be one of joy, certainly, but I find it helps if joy is what underlies how we spend the time we have.

What pains me to see is punishment for not being perfect. Punishment of our children. Our peers. Ourselves. And undue criticism is unkind, harsh, and punitive.

Punishment is implicit in perfectionism. If it (whatever “it” is) isn’t perfect (whatever “perfect” is), then the “performer” is less than perfect themselves. And that, my dears, is the big lie.

The only thing we need to be is human. Just as a tree, however it is shaped or “misshapen” by the elements and its environment, only has the task of being a tree, so we need to be human. Just as a mountain is a mountain or a honeybee a member of its hive, we are simply, perfectly human.

Thanks to Rev. Theresa Soto (Note: check out their new book of poetic meditations, Spilling the Light from Skinner House Press!), I am learning this lesson more and more all the time. The only thing you need to be is human. Therefore, you are already just as perfect as you need to be.

No matter how strong or quick you are. No matter what your body looks like or can or can’t do. No matter what your ostensible “intelligence quotient” is (just a bogus measure, anyway!). No matter how well you did in a competition or a ritual.

You have been called into this life to be human. You are doing that. You are perfectly human. Perfectly, gloriously human.

I believe that’s what is meant in the Psalm, “O, I am wondrously, fearfully made…” We are indeed made in the image of God/dess, as we also make Them in our own images.

Wondrous. Fearsome. Perfect.

Congratulations, you improbably wondrous, powerfully fearsome, gloriously perfect being!

Beauty!

~Catharine~

PS – If the holidays are a season of delight for you, even if your glittering tree is already up and giving you joy, I invite you to come with us into the dark this coming Saturday, 14 December. Going into the Dark will be for those of us who love the dark time of the year, as well as for those of us who find it difficult or even wrenching. We will support one another with tenderness. Find our gifts in where the light shines in the darkness, and seek them in the darkness itself. And we will have a simply lovely time. I invite you to join us, and to respond to this email if you have any questions at all – at all – about the event.

See you there!

The post You Perfect Human! appeared first on The Way of the River.

Dear “Amandas,” which is to say, “Dear ones who ought to be loved:”

As the headline reads, today’s subject is how I left a convent. Out of a convent, and out of the process of studying to become a Roman Catholic religious sister.

I don’t just mean walking out of a house and onto the porch and kissing the woman I would eventually marry.

I don’t just mean packing up my books, my little altar with its cards and statues, my sheet music, and my CDs and their stereo.

I don’t even just mean putting those worldly possessions into the backs of two Honda Civics.

Rather than just these things, this letter is about how I came to leave a house I shared with four other women in Our Lady of the Alleghenies convent, one of the eastern “outposts” of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden. Baden, that little suburb west of Pittsburgh, where the Motherhouse is by far the largest building.

Some of you are still reeling from learning that I ever landed in a convent to begin with, but that’s a story for another day. And some of you want every detail of how I ended up there, especially since I never gave being a witch or a priestess. Alas, alack, that too is a story for another day.

Today is for a Sister of St. Joseph inadvertently leaving me absolutely convinced that I needed to leave her own community. That no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to reconcile the beauty of Catholicism with its sins, its blessings (and progressive religious sisters are certainly among them) and its rejection of sexuality, the leadership of woman, and ultimately, my own Paganism.

I was unsettled for months. My heart was not peaceful. (Those of you who have studied with me know that I learned from these very sisters that peace is the sign of a well-discerned decision.)

Six months into at Our Lady of the Alleghenies, I knew my heart was anything but peaceful. It would be another four months before I left, but it was the deep of winter when my heart’s unease began to make itself unavoidable.

That feeling rattled my bones when Sr. Mary Meyers gave me a cd by David Whyte called, The Poetry of Self-Compassion. Just his reading of Fleur Adcock’s line, “Because happy is how I look,” and his hilarious rendition of Mary Oliver’s most famous poem, “Wild Geese” are worth the price of admission.

It was neither of these things that captured my imagination, however. It was his reminder that we must not be “full moon people,” those who insist on showing only our happy, “chronically put together” faces. (Thank you, dear anonymous comrade for that expression.) On the contrary, we must dare to know and share the other parts of ourselves—our shadows, our darknesses, the depth of our lives.

After l had listened, rapt, to The Poetry of Self-Compassion while driving in a blinding snowstorm (perhaps not the safest combination, now I think on it), Sr. Mary recommended a book of Whyte’s, called The House of Belonging. I was so in love with his Welsh voice, his own poems, and the way he treated other poets’ work with such care and respect, that I would have paid good money for a scrap of paper with one of his lines on it. As it was, the book cost me less than $20.

In The House of Belonging, there is a poem called, “Sweet Darkness.” Many of you know how important this poem is to me. You just have not known the story of how I came to read it.

It took me months to read the book. It took me months after the snowbound days that followed that frightening drive. Months, even, after I received it. Months after I remembered having bought it.

It took me a good while to get to it.

In any event, I did finally read the thing, and I read it like a woman falling onto the edge of an oasis after long, thirsty, dust-filled days.

I read it at the top of one of the Allegheny mountains in the convent where I lived, and having gotten to a particular poem, I threw the book across the room in frustration. Frustration, and knowing that this poem was right, right and good, and right on for me.

Some lines:

“Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.”

Ah. There it was, in black and white.

Was it time, as he wrote, to go into the dark?

And what was this darkness calling me?

I decided that I needed a special time for that darkness calling me toward peace.

I decided as though I were Inanna, hung on the wall in her sister’s Underworld…

I decided as though I were Jesus, killed as a criminal of the state and wrapped lovingly with spices in a tomb…

I decided as though I were the moon, turning Her face away every month…

I decided that I needed three days and three nights to consider my intentions and my plan.

So I spent three days and three nights largely in silence.

I went on walks at night.

I looked at stars and places between the stars.

I looked at the moon, and She was kind of enough to show me part of Her bright face, while my own heart was turned inward, toward its own darkness.

You think you know the end of this story, the part where I came out of the darkness into understanding.

I left the convent. I fell deeply in love. I got married.

But the end of the story is really a question: Is it time for you to go into the dark?

The world, as Mary Oliver writes in that famous poem, “offers itself to your imagination.” In the Northern Hemisphere, the world offers the darkest time of the year.

Do the trees, black shadows at the early dusk, offer themselves? Does the chilling wind? Do the winter rains or the snows? Does your own heart long for peace, and stillness?

Does the dark itself offer itself to your imagination? Is it time to go into, not just endure, the dark?

If you find these questions beckon you toward your own innermost self, I invite you to explore them further with me this December 14th. That Saturday will be our fifth annual online retreat, Going into the Dark.

I’ll not include all the details here, but I invite you into the dark with some comrades. Click the link. See what you find. And perhaps join us.

Blessings on your days and on your nights.

~Catharine~

PS – If you have questions about Going into the Dark, simply reply to this email, and I’ll be more than happy to answer them. More than happy to hear what your heart has to say.

The post Leaving the Convent appeared first on The Way of the River.

Hello, Beloved –

Pre-script – don’t forget to read the post-script!

Today, I write about one aspect of what is sometimes called, “The Witches’ Pyramid.” It is a set of four ways of being, each associated with a different Cardinal Direction, and also, in some ways, with a different season.

The side of the Pyramid of which I write today is, interestingly, “To keep silent.”

In the Witches’ Pyramid, “to be silent” is generally thought of as keeping the secrets of a Mystery Tradition. And that is important indeed, for example, in the tradition of Stone Circle Wicca of which I am a part. The experience of Mystery, of revelation (more closely translated from the Greek as apocaplypse), or permanent and radical change, then the Mystery must be a gift. And like many gifts it comes wrapped. In the case of the Mysteries of a tradition, that wrapping is secrecy, and that secrecy is right and good.

Secrecy can certainly be a tool of oppression. A way to lord it over others. A way to say, “Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah. I know and youuuuuuuuu don’t!” But that is not what a witch’s secrecy should be for. It must be a condition maintained in love and for love and in the service of giving the gift of learning or Mystery.

There is more, these days, about keeping silence than only the practices of Mystery traditions and their initiates’ practice.

It’s an interesting thing to choose for a letter, I suppose, this idea of keeping silent.

You might think, in these days when silence is rarely called for, that “keeping silent ” is always the opposite of what we need.

Keeping silent might even seem to be the action of cowardice, especially when speaking out against injustice is essential. When calling in beloved colleagues and friends who are making mistakes and hurting people is invaluable in the service of love. When speaking truth to power is becoming harder and harder and therefore more and more necessary.

There is another position, though, that is necessary. Especially for those of us with privilege – and, I would argue, especially for those of us with white skin privilege. That position is one of listening. Simply cocking our heads to one side (at least, that’s what I sometimes do when I am listening closely; sometimes I just look directly ahead and wait), and listening to those who live on the margins. Whether they live on the margins because of skin color or immigration status, because of gender identity or expression, because of disability or divergence, or because of their body’s shape or size.

Let us listen.

Let us listen to those on the margins, and then let us listen to the responses of our own hearts, and then let us talk with people we trust who may understand more than we do and who share identities with us, and then let us decide how to respond.

Sometimes this process can happen quite quickly. Sometimes it’s happened enough times that we can act quickly and decisively and without fear. We can interrupt harm because we know what harm is and we will not allow it to go unchallenged.

But first, we have to have listened. In order to learn how to respond, we have to listen. And we need to listen to people we have come to know at some level—whether by reading their words or hearing them speak or looking deeply into their eyes and holding their hands.

And in order to listen, friends, we must be silent. We must keep our traps shut. We must listen when we’re uncomfortable. We must not confuse discomfort with harm or damage to our hearts and souls. We must recognize that conflict can lead to transformation. Not only to resolution, to the end of a conflict, but to transformation, true change of the hearts involved in the fight. But for that to happen, there must be listening.

And I am saying we need more white people to listen to more Indigenous and other People of Color. I am saying that especially Boomer-aged white men need to sit down and be quiet for longer than is comfortable. I am saying that I need to be still and silent and listen and wait for longer than is comfortable for me.

As a white extrovert brought up in an academic household, I am sometimes prone to entering the fray too rapidly. I am sometimes inclined to type in the middle of the night when my mind and heart are not fully engaged and responsive, rather than reactive. When I’m not shut down by the fear that comes with being nice, I’ll speak before I think in mixed gatherings, even.

I need to pay attention. I need to listen. I need to keep still and keep silent.

Do you? Or do you need to claim your place at the center?

Sometimes that’s what I need to do too! It’s not a zero-sum game. And many, if not most of us are not middle-aged, slender and able-bodied, neurotypical, straight, white, cis men. Many of us carry multiple identities. And so sometimes we need to take the risk to be at the center.

And the Witches’ Pyramid speaks to that too, when it reminds us, “to dare.” We all need to dare more than is comfortable, but sometimes that daring is daring to let our voices be absent from a conversation. Sometimes it is daring to speak, but sometimes it is daring to let the space where we have been open up for someone else, and for what they need to say.

May we all be committed to learning, to listening, to love.

A thousand blessings –

~Catharine~

The post Witches’ Advice appeared first on The Way of the River.

Dear one—

Oh my but some days it’s just hard to get up in the morning.

Sometimes you feel the age in your body, the disease or dis-ease (or both), and it just feels like too much. Sometimes you wake up, you’re still queer, fat, trans, Black, still a person the world says isn’t worth anything.

Some nights I dream that I’m not fat, that it’s all been a bad dream, all the bullying, all the jobs I didn’t get, all the people who looked at me and saw only an affront to their ideals of health and beauty. Of all the people with more power than I who kept me from living in the fullness of my dignity and joy and liberation. I think none of that has ever happened.

And then I wake up.

I wake up and it’s the nightmare all over again. It’s being the brunt of knowing that, especially at my weight, my insistence on Health at Every Size, and even no one owing their health to anyone else is seen as “glorifying obesity,” or “ignoring my health.”

Sometimes I dream that gender is understood to be a construct, something to play with. I dream of femme disconnected from womanhood—the two coming together, or not—and not just for some compulsory response to a male gaze, but for self-expression. For delight. For joy. I dream of having been a boy, as Dar Williams sings in her brilliant song, “When I Was A Boy.” I remember—and this part did happen—riding my bicycle, age 11, with my shirt off.

And then I wake up.

I wake up and remember how a neighbor mom that very day told me to put a shirt on, what was I thinking?! The adult to the child who was free and happy and living in joy.

Sometimes I dream of lush forests that go on for miles and miles and miles, having never been disturbed by loggers. That the ridges where I grew up were never clear-cut and a primordial, full of old-growth oaks and maples, sycamores and birches. When Penn-sylvania (Penn’s Woods, for those who aren’t from that part of the world) was first seen by William Penn, when that Quaker man first was introduced to that lush land where people had lived for generations, it was just an unbroken sea of forest on the ridges and the Laurel Highlands, the Appalachian Plateau. And then I wake up and I remember that those ridges, lovely as they are, just aren’t what they were in the centuries before I was born. Even the old trees aren’t that old, all things considered.

Now I dream waking. And my dreams are wishes. And we all know that if wishes were horses, everyone could have one and afford to take care of them and be able to spend time with a beautiful, loving, warm, giant friend.

I watch Madam Secretary on Netflix and feel how eerily prescient it was. How she talks about what it’s like to live under tyranny, and what it could mean for refugees and those seeking asylum in the United States, and I dream of a way to stop what is happening in my country, in the UK, all of the over. I dream of not abandoning thousands of Kurdish people to murder, rape, and really, genocide. I dream of not having concentration camps, private “detention centers”—bah, call them what they are, and that’s concentration camps—in which people are dying in squalor every day.

I dream of a time—am I sounding like I’m trying to be the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., because I’m not, I assure you—when we love one another’s traditions, do not steal them, but share their beauty in love and care.

I am dreaming today.

Last night, I dreamt of being on the street, talking to myself, having no permanent home.

Why did I dream that one?

Friends, I dreamt it because it happened to me. It happened to me in my hometown, where my parents lived. It didn’t happen for long, though.

And why?

Because my family did live there. Because I did have friends to help me. And because I had fucking health insurance.

What if I didn’t have those things? What if I have been left to the ravages of bipolar disorder and the voices that came along for the ride, telling me every day that if I didn’t kill myself, it was only because I was a selfish coward. That I should “start over,” begin again, or at least make space for someone else to. That I deserved to die. Every day without fail. Every day those voices.

And I think, in daylight, of how I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30 years old because medical professionals wouldn’t listen to me. They wouldn’t listen because they had the power and I was fat. And because I was fat, my problems weren’t that I was crazy as a shit-house rat, which I was (and yes, I think I can say that, sorry). Rather, they decided I should live on 1000 calories a day—I am not making that up—and get diagnosed with PTSD from abuse that I couldn’t remember. Abuse I couldn’t remember because it never fucking happened.

Power, people. Power does terrible things sometimes. And remember what Frederick Douglass said, that power concedes nothing without a fight. Without words or arms, he said. And while I am genuinely in favor of the words method, I do fret. And my dreams are, in fact, disturbed.

What do you dream in joy? Do you dream of flight, as I did as a child?

Do you dream of love?

Do you dream of freedom, of true liberation?

Write to me. Tell me what you dream, what you hope, what you wish, and what has been lost. Write to me, and if you like, I’ll share it with our comrades at The Way of the River. Or just write to me.

Put it out into the aether, and let it breathe.

Just as we all need to breathe, friends, as we all need to breathe, and live to fight another day.

Blessings on our sleeping and our waking –

~Catharine~

PS – One of the things that happens is that we often dream in the dark times, and our dreams are disturbed. But there is beauty in the dark, as well, and my upcoming online retreat, Going into the Dark, is just over a month away! Come into the close and holy darkness in a safe, tender space of care, and see what is there for you, what light, what knowledge, what peace. I look forward to seeing you!

The post Disturbed Dreams appeared first on The Way of the River.

Beloved –

One day in seminary, I was lamenting to a friend, Asha – praise, petition, lament, we do a lot of that sort of thing in seminary – about my ill-spent youth and how I regretted being so fat and having been so sexually active when I was younger and having such money problems and still not understanding what it meant to “be an adult.” (Or as we might say now, “to adult.”)

She stopped me in my tracks.

She told me it sounded like I was saying I had to attain some status of virtue or experience or way of being that was other from the way I was—and am—in the world before I could move forward into the work God was calling me to. She said, “God didn’t call some slim Catharine. God called you. Just like God didn’t call Asha who wasn’t a mom. God’s calling me.”

Now, that might not be language you’re using, and that’s fine.

The point, as Asha got to, was that our whole lives point toward the moment we’re in now. Everything that has ever happened to us has led to this moment.

This place.

Even if we’re not sure what “this place” is or what we’re doing here or where we’re going, we are not alone. Not only are we accompanied by our own pasts, our own failures and shortcomings, our own hearts…

Not only are we accompanied by those who know and love us even though we are flawed and have sometimes had to feel our ways through, when we could not perceive what our next move should be…

Not only are we accompanied by the other creatures, from persistent viruses to the great blue whale, who share this gorgeous planet with us…

We are accompanied by the very Spirit that gives life to all of that. We are accompanied by the Source –that is, it is always available – of Love that always has more and more and more for us.

But if you’ve been around for a while, you’ve heard me say these things.

You’ve heard me talk about how we are all part of the Big Picture. How we are linked in beautiful chains of light and energy to all other things, an inexpressible, impossibly complex web; you’ve heard it all before.

I am still fat. And nowadays I have mobility challenges to boot, things I’m shy about, ways that make being in public really hard to manage, physically and emotionally hard.

I still find money hard to manage. I still want to spend money when I want to spend money! Darn it, money may not buy happiness, but sometimes I think if I just had one more bottle of pretty ink for my fountain pens…

I’m snippy. I’m defensive. I’m moody. I forget things – boy, howdy, do I forget things! – and I lose things (which is really just forgetting where they are).

But see, what Asha said to me is that all of that, all of every single little thing – every slight I have endured, every time I have been unkind, every unloving thing I have ever done, every way I have not taken care – these are as much a part of me as the rest.

And all of it, all of it, she said, is part of my testimony.

Testimony.

Our testimony is simply the story of how we came to understand ourselves in relationship with the Source of Love. How did I get here? What am I doing now? How am I striving and failing and trying again?

Testimony is no less than the story of your life, with all its confusions and mistakes and glories and delights.

And it is the story of a call. A call to be exactly yourself. Not to wait until you’re some kind of perfect version of an imagined self. But the self you are.  And even the self you have been, you know that one you don’t really want people to know about?

The saying from Frederich Beuchner, so often repeated among vocation directors and ministers and seminary professors is that our vocation, our call, what we are alluringly drawn to be in this world is just this: Where our own deep joy meets the needs of the world.

It’s not that we have to tackle every single need of the world. We don’t have to have a savior complex. It’s not all ours to be. It’s also what brings us deep joy. And that deep joy comes from knowing ourselves well, from understanding our own joys and sorrows, what our secret happinesses and hopes are.

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,”

Those lines of Mary Oliver’s stay with me. Whoever you are. Not the perfect version you find yourself hoping or waiting for. You have a work to do in this world, a beingness that is yours and yours alone, and you may see it reflected in the world around you, in the world with all its “forms most beautiful,” offering itself to you and your discerning mind.

Blessings to you and to your testimony, my loves. And may the days of the ancestors have been good to you –

~Catharine~

PS – Oh! Before I forget! (Remember, I said I forget things!) December 14^th, that Saturday before the winter solstice, we will observe the fifth annual Going into the Dark event. There is an Early Bird bonus for signing up on the front end, and I think we’re going to have a tremendous group this year! So check out the Going into the Dark registration link, or the email you got from me last week, and let’s get ready for the close and holy darkness!

The post Testimony! appeared first on The Way of the River.

Beloved—

Sometimes in our discernment, there is no clear way forward. We know that we cannot stay as we have been, and yet we are unclear as to how to proceed. We just know that something inside us has changed and our current circumstances feel constraining or like they’re twisting us into something we don’t want to be; they feel intolerable.

At least in moments.

We want out. We want to do something different.

But Way does not seem to open.

We have begun the discernment process, we have the unsettled feeling that can lead to wise decision making. We know that where we are is not right.

“The unhatched chick 

Does not know how or even what it is to fly.  

She does not have vision or know what it is to see  

The world from above. 

She does not even know what it is to have 

Feathers, dry, soft, carrying her aloft on wide wings. 

She has only two things: 

One tooth, 

And the clear knowledge that where she is 

Is too small for her.” 

David Whyte says something similar in his poem, “Sweet Darkness” when he writes, “The world was made to be free in. / Give up all the worlds / except the one to which you belong. / Sometimes it takes darkness and / the sweet confinement of your aloneness / to learn / anything or anyone / that does not bring you alive / is too small for you.”

But how do we give up the world when we don’t know where to go next?

Ignatian disciplines suggest, “Don’t just do something; stay there,” or, if you prefer, “stand there.” That is to say, the Ignatian way of thinking about discernment suggests that it is not enough to escape where we are. We have to have some sense of moving forward. Not simply away, but toward.

It may be toward freedom.

It may be toward opening our wings.

It may be toward a new understanding of ourselves that is only just growing within us.

But in general, it should not simply be “away.” Let me be clear: I am not arguing that anyone must or even should stay in abusive situations. But even then, it is important to have a safer place to go. One cannot merely take oneself and one’s children into the snow, at least under most circumstances, no?

In general, if Way seems not to have opened, if we have not yet realized that there are possibilities outside the shell, then we don’t yet need our one tooth.

In general, if we can’t imagine that there’s something on the other side of the shell, then we’re not ready to start. We don’t have that inkling, that inchoate knowing that there is More, Deeper, Truer on the other side of where we are now.

When we know that there’s More, then we start scratching. Then we start pushing. Then we start pecking and stretching. Then we give up the worlds we have been trying to inhabit and we move towards the world that is ours. The one world, as Whyte says, to which we belong.

I think that too often, we try to belong to many worlds, many ways, many faces, many personae at once.

To what world do I belong?

Who am I?

What am I built to do?

These are central questions of discernment. How can we live into the Good Life, as ancient philosophers would say? How can we be virtuous people—according to the virtues our hearts and minds demand?

Love is the central virtue of my life, followed closely by four that proceed from it: Authenticity, Integrity, Compassion, and Wisdom. They are what I strive for, and figuring out what I’m doing and whether it’s the right thing is often helped by its being held up against those virtues. Is what I’m doing in keeping with my heart’s demands for who I want to be.

After all, who we are can be expressed in any circumstance. (See Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl, about the camps of the Second World War. Aie, even mentioning them makes me think of the concentration camps at the US southern border.)

What are the central virtues that you hope to guide your life?

What are the virtues that are not guiding you, but that you wish for?

These questions are worth writing about. And they will help you get to What’s Next.

Don’t just do something, stay there.

Hold still.

Wait.

Attend.

Pray.

Wait.

Listen.

Pray.

Wait

Watch.

Pray.

Wait.

Feel.

Sometimes it doesn’t take all this. Sometimes Way opens and we are given amazing gifts by the Source of Life that we can hardly believe. Synchronicity opens up and the next step ahead is just what we need.

Maybe the next place is only a waystation, a jumping-off point, and that’s okay. But resist, my friends, resist the impulse only to move away from what you don’t or what feels distasteful.

Resist simple escape.

You don’t have to know what to do next. But the truth of “wherever you go, there you are,” is indeed inescapable. You bring yourself and all your questions, all your concerns, all your worries with you no matter where you go.

“Give up all the other worlds,” says David Whyte. What do you have to give up in order to find the Way? What are the sacrifices we are called upon to make?

I think of the time I precipitously quit a job because I was uncomfortable and afraid of being fired. In quitting my job, I dropped our household income by a third, I didn’t get unemployment or severance, and I injured our financial life for years afterward.

I had no going toward, just the compulsion I found impossible to resist at that time, to get OUT.

Eventually, I found my way stumbling through, and happily, my wife didn’t divorce me. I was younger than I am now, but still a grown-ass adult. And wouldn’t it have been nice if I had recognized the opportunity for discernment, instead of just jumping out of the fear that was governing my actions?

And that is the lesson, isn’t it?

Let us not be governed only by fear, but rather by possibility. By openness to the world. As Mary Oliver says, “The world offers itself to your imagination, / Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, / Announcing your place in the family of things.”

Where are you today in the family of things? Where would you like to be? Do you need to wait and listen, pray to perceive the next step? Or is it time to use that one tooth because you know your world has become too small for you and the possibilities outside are endless?

So much love –

~Catharine~

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Beloved—

Oh my Beloved, there is so much I want to tell you. There is so much bubbling up at The Way of the River. So much.

I have put in some small notes in PS-es of late, but I wanted to take some time and tell you what’s up and where you might able to “plug into” some of what’s happening around here. Things are going on that are different from my ongoing spiritual accompaniment ministry. That ministry is always available to you, and you can find information about it on The Way of the River site. I love my 1:1 work, and I am delighted every time I receive a new client into that work.

But there’s even more happening than is on the site! More going on! More that is moving and shaking and changing the face of The Way of the River ministries!

Small Group Spiritual Deepening Ministry

First, I have opened a group of monthly, online, small groups to do intentional accompaniment together – only 4-6 people per group – once a month. One of the groups is for queer and neurodivergent people only, and as of this writing has ONE spot left. The group will begin meeting on October 13. Yes! So soon! And so WONDERFUL!

There are two other groups that are not identity-based, but to which queer and neurodivergent people are particularly invited.

One will also begin in October, and it is on the third Sunday of the month.

The other will begin in January and will be on the third Tuesday of the month.

Why am I offering these groups? Well, for one thing, WE NEED THEM! My people need them!. People who are like me, who want to spending some time really listening deeply, sharing bravely, and learning profoundly, need space and time to do that. And some of us find that we do it more easily in groups that we do 1:1. For one thing, there are more hearts “in the room,” as it were.

I am inviting folks to make a six-month commitment to the group they’re in, and if there’s not room in the group you’re interested in, I’ll keeping a waitlist, never fear!

Furthermore, if you’re an existing client of mine, or if you want to work 1:1, but you think the small group might be good for you as well, feel free! The options are not mutually exclusive. The Spiritual Deepening group sign-up does not include support between meetings, but you are welcome to sign up for 1:1 accompaniment added to a group membership. Contact me for more information about this option.

Wraparound Spiritual Accompaniment

Some of us are finding ourselves really desiring… not a monastic experience, exactly, that’s not what I mean… What is it? A deeper, more consistent spiritual focus, a way to connect1:1 and to curiously, honestly, bravely discuss matters of the heart and soul.

When I was asked, “How do you think you could best serve your clients?” the answer came to me immediately. When I thought of the deep, seeking, thoughtful people, I serve, I knew immediately what I should offer. I knew immediately what I would want, were I in the shoes of someone seeking spiritual accompaniment and depth work in my life.

The best way I can serve folks who are the mystics among us is by what I am calling Wraparound. And not even just the mystics, but the seminarians among us who are in discernment, those of us trying to decide what to do next, and those of us who know that our awareness of Spirit has been missing from our lives. We are thirsty for the Water of the Limitless Well, and we really want to take a deep drink.

Wraparound folks meet with me 1:1 twice a month, and also share email and Messenger contact with me in between times.

This is an opportunity for really deep work, work where you can feel held in all our complexity, where I will hold you close to my heart with unconditional positive regard, and where we can move together into the Land of Spirit together in a deep way. Again, find me and we’ll talk about this option if it feels like something you can use.

MFC Coaching

I remain committed, absolutely committed, to helping Unitarian Universalist Candidates for ministry get to the other side of their Ministerial Fellowship Committee interviews. Despite other changes, I love my MFC coaching so much, it gives me so much joy, I love watching my clients succeed and grow into their ministries.

While I cannot ever promise that anyone will “get a particular number,” or pass with a certain kind of commentary, I can in all honesty say this:  My clients, every one of them, have done well with the MFC. Now, there is of course, some self-selection there. My clients have time, energy, financial resources, and focus for their work on the MFC packets. I acknowledge that. But I also like to think that I have something to do with their success, as well.

My website is clear. It says, “My mission is to provide you, the MFC candidate, with a safe container in which you come to know yourself better: to understand and articulate your strengths, vulnerabilities, and growing edges, so you can minister as well as possible and reduce the anxiety that is often inherent in the process of preparing for the MFC.”

You can do it. You can get through the MFC to the other side, to Preliminary Fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association, ready for a fuller expression of your ministry. I am here to support you, so please do be in touch at any phase of your preparation and we’ll talk about it!

Whew!

That’s a lot.

I feel a little tired, just having written it all out! How do you feel? Even if you’re not in a place where you heart is called to connect with any of these ministries, perhaps you know someone who might need one of them. Feel free to share my email: magic@thewayoftheriver.com or send people to the Contact Page on The Way of the River site to schedule a chat with me about who they are, who I am, and whether we might connect more deeply.

I’d love to meet you, if we haven’t met before. I’d love to talk, face to face, to learn about you, your hopes and dreams, the desires of your heart, and how I might be able to help you.

In the meantime, keep your peeled on this space for more updates and exciting news as we shake things over and find ourselves navigating the rapids on The Way of the River.

So much love and care –

~Catharine~

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Dear ones –

I write to you under the azure sky of a sunny autumn afternoon. These days are beautiful in the Pacific Northwest, when the rains have begun but aren’t yet constant. The dogwood in the courtyard is turning the most lovely and unexpected russety red. We have put new lilies into the ground, lilies named after our comrade Judy Welles’s mother, in fact. The bulbs are going in. The annuals coming out. More deadheading, a third round of roses blooming, “God’s in His Heaven, and all’s right with the world.”

At least, that’s how it feels to me, with the sun streaming in at its autumnal slant, shining on the plants above my workspace where they are overseen by a statue of Aphrodite as a mermaid braiding her hair.

This is what I see every day. I am so blessed.

And I realize how happy this vision makes me. How I have written to you, over and over again about how beautiful the lilac has been, how astonishing the roses—rose after rose after rose after the one crimson rose just in front of the kitchen sink window—the clematis, the lavender… How we bought too many annuals in the spring and ended up with them everydamnwhere.

I was reminded today that plants, especially flowers, make me happy.

They just make me happy.

Like the aforementioned Rev. Judy Welles, I love to have flowers on my dining room table, on the side tables, in my workspace.

Flowers say celebration to me. When I was a little girl, one of the things I imagined about my wedding—you know, as some young children do—is that there would be lots of flowers.

So when the time came, I went to the florist. I went to a florist recommended by friends, a place in downtown DC owned by two aging gay men who had run the place for thirty years and more. Well. The gentleman with whom I spoke was appalled that I was wearing a BLACK underdress. Never mind that the corset I was wearing over it was fuchsia dupioni silk shot with gold; black was unacceptable. So there was that. And THEN there was the vast expense. Holy guacamole, friends! Flowers from a florist in downtown DC.

Let’s just say, my pocketbook doesn’t recommend it.

So plan B.

Plan B was that we would give friends some money to go to the Eastern Market the day of our wedding (we were being married at 8:30 that evening), and buy as many flowers of as many different kinds as they could with the money we gave them. I’m certain they contributed to the cause, because they came back with a car STUFFED with flowers. I mean, it was stuffed. They had five-gallon buckets of flowers!

And flowers of all kinds. It was high summer and there were just all kinds of cut flowers growing. Roses, of course, but hydrangea, the late-bulb lilies, statice and other amaranths…just everything of every color. Forget, “My colors, Mama, are Blush and Bashful.” Our colors became every color imaginable.

And we had pitchers and candleholders and tall glasses, and oh yes, vases too. And where there weren’t lanterns or twinkly lights or torches… where there were window sills or tables… where there were the heads of our oh-so-indulgent attendants (one for each of the Four Directions)…in all these places there were flowers.

I had gotten my little girl’s dream. Flowers. Flowers. Flowers everywhere, and a gorgeous display on our altar. All put together by our comrade from The Way of the River, Ingrid Parsons. All of it. Poor thing; by the end of the day, all she wanted was a gin and tonic and never to see another flower again!

But I got my dream. My racous-color-loving wife was happy, and I was over the moon.

That was a special night. One of the most special of my entire life, for certain. (I know people say that all the time, but it’s true!)

And I’m telling you this story in such detail because I want you to think.

What makes you happy?

What makes you happy? 

Is it blueberries for breakfast, as it is for our comrade Kerry Pitt?

Is it paint chips of every imaginable color? (Yep, that’s Julie again.  )

Is it the taste of real whipped cream with not too much sugar, but whipped, thick, fluffy, and delicious? I won’t call it decadent or bad or sinful, no, because all that implies that anything about this delectable stuff is bad or wrong or associated with the fall of the Roman Empire. Does it make you happy?

What makes you happy? 

And yes, I’m talking about a special happy.

But for you, is it the kind when you’ve accomplished something that’s been put off for a long time, and you get to stand back and say, yep, that wall is orange and it has art on it: I did it.

Is it when you put that altar to rights? You set up the tools and the images, the statues and the offerings. You made it look the way you’ve so desperately wanted it to look since you moved there.

Is it that little candle that smells like home in the wintertime?

Is it someone rubbing your feet, your back, your hands with aromatic oil?

What makes you happy? 

I’m asking, because I’m encouraging you to do something for yourself that makes you happy. Not out of “self-care.” Not because you need something to soothe the violence of the status quo out of you. Not because justice will be accomplished if you get your nails done. Not because a feeling of abundance will bring abundance to all the world…

Not because any of this will be undone.

But because every one of us deserves a bit of celebration just for being here. Just for making it through.

We are resilient. We have made it through 100% of the days that have come our way so far. And one day, we won’t, but today, we have. And for that, I am grateful. I am grateful for you.

And gratitude is the thing. Celebration that emerges out of gratitude is just beautiful. So what have you to be grateful for today? How can you celebrate that thing, those people, that accomplishment, that beauty you’ve created?

For my part, I’m getting some flowers. (And maybe a new fountain pen.  ) Some really pretty ones, with a rose and some statice tucked in there. Yeah, baby. Bring on the flowers! Bring on the gratitude! Bring on the celebration!

So much love—

~Catharine~

PS – I still have room in my spiritual deepening group that will meet on the second Tuesday of each month at 8 pm Eastern. Interested in learning more? Email me at magic@thewayoftheriver.com and we’ll set up a time to talk!

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Dear hearts –

Today, as I say in my video, is all about the light.

It’s all about the middle of autumn, the height, or the midst, if you will, of the light’s dimming. Of the light’s slanting, here in the Northern Hemisphere where, even as we grow closer to Sol, our yellow star, our sun, the light grows flatter, more golden, less bright.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, the rains have returned. The flowers that are left are the varieties of coxcomb, aster, statice, some daisies (the ones on my table are, as you can see, a bit sad), and the remnants of alyssum, coleus, and the other flowers we planted what seems so long ago in our whiskey half-barrels.

The light is shifting, my friends.

We have just had the climate strike day, and even all this week, some folks who are able to “take the hit,” as it were, are striking, following youth all over the world, led by Greta Thunberg, that gorgeous, tiny, autistic prophet. We are demanding that those in power do better, that, as Greta said, they “try harder,” and “listen to science.”

The light is shifting.

What will the Dark, the close and holy darkness, bring for you this year?

What nuts are you hiding away to get you through, like the squirrel digging into what’s left of my petunia’s, hiding away her giant, green acorn?

How will you meet the slanting of the light?

Blessings of the dimming light to you, blessings of the feast of Michael and All Angels, Michaelmas, that marker of the season of autumn in full swing.

Blessing, blessings, and blessings on all of us, that we may be blessings to Earth, our only home, the only Eden we will ever know…

~Catharine~

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My dear comrades –  

Today’s tiny, short video includes a song written by our own comrade, Eldritch, many years ago. It was also sung at the Stones Family Gathering over Labor Day weekend, a festival to raise a 3-ton trilithon gate on the land at Stone Song Center in Flintstone, Maryland. Roles, ropes, sledges, winches, pulleys, and lots of hard work pulled those Stones and raised them. No tractors. No trucks. Just many people working together to pull and pull and pull together.  

The song included in the video goes like this: 

Come and be one. 

Become one. 

Become. 

Be. 

It is a reminder for us all to remember that in order to do the hard work of life, we need to be where we are, each of us with our own comrades. Each of us working toward a better world, pulling together. Each of us in our own becoming, our own evolution. Each of us exactly where we are, with whom we are, and who we are this moment. 

Let us take a breath… 

Let us just be. 

I love you –  

~Catharine~ 

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Dear friends –

Sometimes, let’s face it, we all get overwhelmed. We just beat our fists into the air or against our legs or into a wall and we just feel like we can’t take it.

Sometimes, we want to be anywhere but just where we are. Sometimes we’re in a place that just isn’t another place. Another place where we feel or believe that we’d rather be.

Sometimes, we feel behind, as though everyone in our cohort, our class, our age, has passed on by, and we are trudging along, having so much trouble getting traction, getting what we hope for, getting even what we need.

I am not here to tell you not to need what you need, nor even, nor certainly, not to tell you to want what you want.

Your wants and needs are your own, and they are here, present, real. They are part of you, part of your makeup right now. And as such, they are sacred. They are sacred because they are part of you and you are sacred in every molecule, in every inch, in every ounce.

But sometimes, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find myself just feeling so hemmed in by needing to be someplace else.

Maybe your ministry, however you serve the world, isn’t where you’d like it to be. Or you’re not making the money you’d like to be helping support your household. Or you’re struggling in your relationship. Or someone you love is dying. Or you yourself are actively dying, facing the end of your life, and facing the question, “Has mine been a life well-lived?” And wondering, when you get the answer(s) to that question, what to do between now and the end.

There is always someplace else we could be.

But we are here now, my friends, and in a very real way, we are together. My fingers type on this keyboard made by hands and minds and people with hopes and hearts that are not mine. But they are inextricably bound up with me because it is through them—all of them—that I come to be here writing to you.

And you, yes you, the one whose name I do not know, who either has been reading these Reflections off and on for some time or is new to our group of comrades… to you, I especially say, I am with you.

We are caught up together. We are bound together by these words, by not only my heart and my thoughts, but also by all the decisions you made to bring you to read these words in your own way, with your own thoughts, with your own unique understanding.

The words I write are not the words you read. Most certainly not. They are your words.

Any preacher can tell you that! Preacher friends, am I right?

But our words, our thoughts, our reading and being read to, all of these bind us together. Any one of you is part of me, and we are all part of one another – and yes, I mean in the existence way, sure. In the way that my dear friend meant when he first said, “Being is the only game in town. And it is a team sport.” The universe is that town. There is no way to be alone because all of us are connected in that “garment of mutuality” the Rev. Dr. King made famous.

But you are not alone in many other ways. There are people you know and people you don’t, people who are thinking of you right now—I know you think, some of you, at least one of you, that it’s not true, but I guarantee you it is. I guarantee you they are. And it is in part because you are reading these words at this moment, at this place, at this time, and you are gathered together with everyone else who is reading these words at this time and in this place, this virtual space.

You could be doing something else, for sure. But instead, we are here together, you and I and all of us.

I say all of this to say this: Of course you could be someplace else. And you will be in moments, in hours, in days, in years…nothing of you will be lost. We are all worm food, my beloveds, and Earth will one day have Her way with us, no matter how embalmed we are.

So I ask you to turn toward your heart. I ask you to turn your heart toward that which is the Source of All Blessing, the Source of All Love, the Limitless Well. Whatever that is for you, however you call it. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Nuit, Aphrodite Urania, and the Star Goddess Whose body encircles the universe. But that’s just me. However you call on that Source that can be Male, Female, All, or None, I invite you to turn toward it and simply ask a question.

What is it in this moment now, that I need? What is the lesson or the feeling or the intimation or the sense of priority that I need now? If you, if we, need it now, then there is no other time we could have had it. Only this moment carries the unique gifts of now.

Do you understand what I’m saying?

There is something for you here. There is something for me.

I came to this page deeply unsettled. Deeply ashamed for not making my dearest ones as happy as I think I can—as they think I can. Deeply worried and anxious and feeling pretty terrible about myself. Deeply wounded.

But I realized that I am not alone in those feelings. And that by giving a small, tender voice to those feelings, maybe someone, maybe you, might feel less alone.

You are doing your best, my love.

It is a new day – or it will be when I send this out to you – and the moments of this day are filled with possibility. Even the moments of the evening when I typed these words were filled with possibility. Even now. Even now. Even now.

Even if all you can do is rest, it is enough.

If all you can do is admit that you’re frustrated and sad and afraid and angry—as I had to do today—that’s enough.

If all you can do is love someone in the silence of the deep sanctuary of your heart, it is enough.

So yes, maybe we feel as though others have “passed” us somehow. But they are always and only in there own “here” too. They have their own hurts and terrors of which we can only dream or speculate – and we really oughtn’t speculate, eh?

What is here now? What can you be shown that is here in this moment? This very one? What is most pulling on your heart to do? Can you do it, and do it with goodness and kindness? Really, can you?

Then by all means, go do so. Because these moments pass quickly, my friends. They pass all too quickly.

A thousand blessings—

~Catharine~

PS – This edition of Reflections is in memory of Penn Ronson Weis, who was a friendly acquaintance of mine and a good friend to several of my friends. He died in his sleep this past week at the age of 41, leaving behind all manner of family. He was, as Odysseus is described in the opening of The Odyssey, a complicated man, a man of many turns. Beloved of some. Broken and whole. Making good choices and bad ones.

Penn spoke deeply with me a few months ago, “Because, Catharine, you know about God.” (Oh help! I thought, Oh help!) He spoke to me because he needed to tell someone how he had met God and spoken with Him. And how God had encouraged him, Penn, to do better in this life. And that Penn had determined he was going to do so. For the sake of the holy conversation he had, and for the sake of the generations after him, he would try to do better. I hope he knew that the Source of Love was with him in that encouragement, somehow.

Requiescat in pace et lux perpetua luceat ei.

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Friends, I am in a mood. I am in a mood and I’m going to write—yes again, now sit down!—about niceness, about yes and no, and about seduction, persuasion, cajoling, coercion, and assault. Yepper, that’s what’s on the menu today.

I write for the nice ones among us, and I write for those who have not always heard or attended to the words behind the words of nice people.

Not only am I writing this, but it’s something I wrote about not even that long ago. But I have heard, loud and clear, that it is something I must write about again. There is apparently always more, always more to the dangers of niceness and to anything less than yeses that mean yes and nos that mean no.

I wrote about niceness some time ago, and I received some lovely and important notes back. One of those, from our comrade the Rev. Judy Welles, reminded me that “No is a complete sentence.” And someone else reminded me that someone can be saying no by saying, “I don’t want to…” “I’m not going to…” or “I can’t…” Or even by saying, “I’m not sure…”

This is not news. This is nothing to bellow from the rooftops of Southwest Portland, to yell and shout my “barbaric yawp” about.

Except it kinda is. And not only for those of us who do these things, who fall back into niceness.

It’s also news for some of us, those of us who would un-build the patriarchy, brick by brick, even when we benefit from it. It’s also news for those of us who need to learn to check in, to see whether something we’re not clear about is an attempt to set a boundary or just to plain say no.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that everyone who receives Reflections in our inboxes is an adult. And adults are responsible for using our words, yes, and for being clear. And for setting our own boundaries so that others know what those boundaries are and have the chance, at least, to respect them.

I have the obligation to say no when I mean no.

And that obligation is wrapped up in years and decades of training that tell people, tell me and often other (though not exclusively) people assigned female at birth, that we must never say no when someone else wants something. Anything, really. Time. Energy. Bodies. Life force. Expertise. Money.

I have the obligation to try as hard as I can to unlearn all of this.

To unlearn what our comrade Molly was indicating toward when they said that “maybe” more often than not really means, in our heart of hearts, “no.”

And what is THAT about?! I mean, really?!

I do it. I say, “maybe” when I should say “no.” I say that I “can’t” have a social engagement, rather than, “I really don’t feel like it.” I feel as though I have to explain myself when I just want time with myself or time with my wife or unscheduled time or I just. don’t. feel. like. it.

I don’t have to explain myself, friends, and neither do you.

Oh, and then there’s the kind of no that is so easily overruled: the “no” of the intoxicated. The “I really don’t think this is a good idea,” which means, “I’m ambivalent,” which means “I’m not sure,” which really, friends, at the very least should be a yellow light, if not a red one. A time to stop, to check in—is this person, this one saying, “I really don’t think this is a good idea…”—are they conscious enough to make a good decision on their own behalf.

Are they conscious enough to offer a good decision on your behalf.

What on earth does that mean?

It means, Beloved, that some of us have committed assault. It means if someone’s not offering you a yes that is clearly a YES, you must consider whether they can give it to you.

Some of us reading this right now have ignored “no,” and ploughed ahead, and that’s just plain, clear as the nose on your face, rape, yes it is. Some of us. Some of us. Some of us.

We all know people who have committed rape. I would venture to say that we’re probably all friends with someone who has committed rape. There are people reading this right now who have committed rape. Rape, which is to say, having sex with someone who did not or could not give their consent.

Beyond that, some of us have also taken advantage, have ignored what would be clear if we had bothered to read the body language of the person we were with. And some of us have just pushed and pushed and coerced and cajoled until “I’m not going to…” or “I don’t want to…” turned into a giving over because it was more trouble to keep trying to tell us no than it was to just get it over with.

Yes, some of us here, have assaulted or been party to the assault of another human being. I mean, this list is over 400 people long. I cannot help thinking of the numbers. One in three women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime, and one in six men. And if I could guess, I’d say that a whooooooole lot of trans people are sexually assaulted over their lifetimes. (Given how many trans women, especially, are murdered each year, it just makes a terrible kind of sense.)

That’s a lot of people, and there are people doing the assaulting, not listening or watching or attending or caring about the “no” that comes in so many forms.

We need to learn to let our no be no and our yes be yes, that is true. That is absolutely true. And yet, that admonition does not justify so much that is justified by the press, by the courts, or by the courts of popular opinion.

Because what about when one is intoxicated or exhausted or drugged, then what?

Then there may be only the ineffectual pushing away. The attempts to cover oneself. The being frozen by fear. The “I don’t know,” or the “I don’t think this is a good idea.” Or the one that makes my throat tighten and my hands feel cold, the plain old being passed out.

Here’s some news for you, friends: If in a sexual situation, if it’s anything less than a yes, you are pulling some shit. If you’re with someone you love and it’s been a long time and so you can badger them into it and you know it, it’s manipulation, at best. If you’re dating someone and they want to slow down in the middle of things and you say, “Come on, baby, it’s okay,” it’s not okay.

Both sets of these things are true. Adults need to let our yes be yes and our no be no.

And shouldn’t even taking the risk that you might be demanding sexual attention from someone who doesn’t want to, doesn’t feel like it, is too tired to care…shouldn’t that be enough to stop you in your tracks? And if it doesn’t, if you have some fucked-up idea about “conjugal rights” or some shit, then you need to stop right now and think about what you’re doing.

I say these things because both the trans and cis women as well as the non-binary people I know have put up with some serious shit and it needs to stop.

Rape at knife point.

Multiple rapes while too intoxicated to say yes or no.

Multiple counts of statutory rape.

Too many instances of in-relationship coercion for me to even imagine or count.

And let me tell you, on that that last one in particular, am I sure I have always listened? Always paid attention? Always watched or asked or checked in? No. I am not sure.

Where do seduction, persuasion, cajoling, coercion, and assault blend into one another?

I am not sure. And that does stop me in my tracks. Because they do blur and blend, let’s be real.

But there are some lines, and those of us who are on the … the “pursuing” end of things … we need to be paying closer attention to where those lines are.

So let’s all of us, all of us here at The Way of the River, whatever our pasts may be, let’s make a pact. For one thing, let’s practice our no being our no and our yes being our yes. Yep. Let’s do that. And let us also never, ever ignore our sexual partners, whether they are the people we are closest to in body for just one night, or closest over years in heart and soul. Let us never ignore what might be a no in favor of our own desires telling us, “Oh, it’s fine.”

Pinky swear? Yeah, friend, pinky swear.

Because it’s not fine, dude. It’s not fine.

This cranky lecture brought to you by me, who loves you, yes, all of you.

~Catharine~

PS – After all this, all this pent-up outrage and frustration and desire for change, sometimes it can feel as though the life of the Spirit just doesn’t hardly matter at all. But it does. Turning toward Love always matters. Turning toward the One Who is Many, who is all genders and none and any individual—that turning always matters. And I always welcome the chance to help you make that turn.

So please know, especially if you are part of what our comrade Rhodes Perry calls the “Rainbow Family,” but which I generally identify as the queer community…. Please know most especially if you are a trans or non-binary or gender non-conforming person, I am here for you. I am here for you and for the depth of the spiritual feeling that is in you that you cannot even describe.

I am here for you, you who yearn for Something or Someone, but who don’t feel as though there’s any space or place that’s safe enough to explore that yearning.

Check me out on this page, and then set up a time. We’ll talk.

Thanks.

~Rev. C~

The post WE Need to Read This Again appeared first on The Way of the River.

This edition of Reflections is an update of one I sent in the spring of 2016, when things seemed very different from the way they seem today, somehow. Still, the message to care for one another and ourselves seems more and more important. 

Dear ones—

I hope this day finds you well and aware of blessing. What has gone right today so far? I have found that I needed to ask myself that question today. I’ve been tired and inclined to forget how many beautiful things have gone right to bring me to this moment, this page, this writing to wonderful YOU!

So thank you, Universe, for all the blessings you are showering on me at every moment. I so appreciate them!

I want to write to you today about self-care and self-compassion. About what it is, who are the “selves” we’re caring for, and how we do it.

“Self” is a slippery word. There are ways in which we have no “self” at all. Rather, we are part of the Great Sea of Being, entirely undifferentiated from any other thing in the Universe. And they, in turn, are undifferentiated from us.

But we have this thing called consciousness, and the other thing called ego, and they help us maintain boundaries around ourselves. Those boundaries are not bad, per se, but they can be difficult to manage in healthy, skillful ways.

It is the boundaried Self that I suggest today we care for.

So how do we do it?

I’m realizing as I write this, that I could write article after article on just this subject, so forgive me if there is much I leave behind at the moment.

How do we do it?

For one thing, I think it’s important to identify those parts of ourselves that make up a life: Platonic relationships, physical well-being, romantic and/or sexual relationships, spiritual connection, mental health, emotional centeredness, right livelihood, etc. What are the parts that feel solid, where you feel as though you are giving yourself the nourishment you need?

And where are the parts where you feel you have your work cut out for you? Where do you feel a longing, a lack, or a sense of brokenness or void?

Don’t worry, I’m not going to throw you into the deep end and suggest that you address all the hard parts at once, especially if conscious self-care is not something you’re used to.

Nonetheless, and I quote this Black, lesbian warrior poet with all respect, Audre Lorde said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

Especially for those of us who are marginalized due to various identities, and most of all, for those of us who are Black, Indigenous, or other People of Color Lorde’s quotation is super-important and a call to action on our own behalf. By “political warfare,” I believe she means first of all, that the culture will not take care of us, that the culture, in fact never meant us to survive (to paraphrase another poem of Lorde’s). Late-stage capitalism is not the habit of taking care of anyone but the most privileged. We need to care for one another and for ourselves, both.

Second of all, caring for ourselves is rooted in self-compassion. Self-compassion is the fine art of forgiving ourselves for being human. For messing up. For needing to apologize. For not being able to keep all the balls in the air. According to Dr. Kristin Neff, self-compassion is much more effective at building a positive self-image than are efforts to take “Self-esteem” head-on.

Self-compassion makes us more able to work for a just culture, a place where all of us, those who are privileged and those who are not, can work toward what the Rev. Dr. King called Beloved Community. Self-compassion helps us work for and care for that culture, to demand the revolution that will bring it about. Ultimately to live together in a way that “self-care” will not only be the province of the privileged.

Self-compassion gives us the power, energy, and vitality to do the things we most want to do, and one of the things I most want to do is make the world a more just and kind place for all people, including, and sometimes starting with those who are most oppressed in our society.

Self-compassion allows us the energy to foment revolution, if that’s our inclination, because it teaches us that we can learn from our mistakes, heal from our wounds, and try again.

As Parker Palmer says, caring for ourselves is not only caring for ourselves. It can mean caring for the world. If we don’t stop with ourselves, if we bring the same compassion we learn for ourselves into the rest of the world, we become agents of transformation.

Furthermore, the very acts of changing the culture mean that those of us with privilege will think less about whether we need a spa day and more time leaning into creating and maintaining just culture that takes care of everyone. Where we have child care, roads and bridges, education, safe housing, and health care because people who love one another, people who care for one another, people who build a culture together care that we all have these things.

The culture needs to change such that where we have privilege, as adrienne maree brown says, we will “dismantle any myths of privilege,” and where we struggle, we will “claim our own joy, dignity, and liberation.”

So all that said, I ask you again, where do you need some special care and compassion? Where will routine help you and keep you well? You think you can’t do routine; you think it’s boring or useless?

Well, first, I ask you this: forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for everything every day. Just start there.

And then, I challenge you. I challenge you to find some routine that is life-giving and that you can practice for some number of days. Maybe as few as 7 days:  A week of breakfast at the same time every day, a week of journaling first thing every morning, or a week of every day working in the coffee shop so you can be around people if that is nourishing to you. Or a week of carefully curating your social media, or even taking the week off from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (I so need to do this, and it terrifies me!) Or a week of spending five minutes, sitting at the edge of your bed each morning, just breathing.

Something small with enough days that you can see how you feel after.

And then decide what you want to keep. What is nourishing? What made you say, “why have I not been doing this all my life?” Something tiny. Something the reminds you of the beauty of the world – and maybe that’s it, simply writing five things from the day past for which you are grateful.

Whatever it is, I’d love to hear about it. Simply reply to this email, or if you received this from a friend, write to magic@thewayoftheriver.com and I’d love to get back to you.

So much love. So much love,

~Catharine~

The post Self-Compassion and Revolution appeared first on The Way of the River.

Beloved friends— 
I know what it is like to NEED to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  

That is to say, I was living in a convent, and I couldn’t, just couldn’t do the juggling act anymore that was my attempt to reclaim and restore and reengage my relationship with the Roman Catholic church. Some things are too far gone for us, in whatever state we are in, in whatever moment we are in, for us to keep claiming them.  

Nowadays, my spirituality—that is to say, the personal practice that shapes my mornings and evenings—involves sitting at my altar, Casting a Circle, and singing. Or doing a version of the Sufi practice of Remembrance that I have learned from my teacher, Mark Silver. It involves writing. And reading. And sometimes morning prayer or ceremony with other people. Those are the pieces of my spirituality.  

My religions, on the other hand, are Unitarian Universalism and Stone Circle Wicca. They inform and give shape to my communal and personal practice, but they are not the same thing as my personal practice, my spirituality. 

So what is this all about? 

I’m thinking about how much ground we spiritual and religious progressives have ceded. And yes, I know I’m late to this particular party, but I mean it. What the hell? The ground we too often cede is the moral high ground. 

The right wing of religious life with its focus on purity, avoiding sin (especially ones related to sex), and keeping gender roles arbitrarily clear, claims the moral high ground all the time. It’s practically their favorite activity, as far as I can tell. (Yes, I am wound up this evening.) 

Meanwhile, families are detained and separated at the border.  

Meanwhile, 220-some residents of the US are wounded and 73 have been killed in less than two months. And those are just the ones I’ve read about. 

Meanwhile, transwomen are more likely to be murdered than ever.  

Meanwhile, reproductive justice becomes less and less evident across the country.  

Meanwhile, waterways become polluted with the fire retardants used in the wildfires of summer. 

Meanwhile, floods and land subsidence erode the landscape and entire islands are slowly being covered by water that is melting from the protective ice at the—not our—planet’s poles. 

Meanwhile, the vast majority of people with physical and developmental disabilities will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. 

Meanwhile, roughly 1 percent of people worldwide control nearly half of all the wealth in the world. 

These are moral issues, friends. These are moral issues.  

And they are moral issues that people can take firm positions on based on their religious obligations. 

For those of us who are Unitarian Universalists, the very foundation of the two traditions that flowed together to make us who we are is love. Love among members of congregations. Loving accountability among congregations. Love for neighbor. Belief in a God so loving that He (yeah, well…) would never leave anyone behind for the fires of perdition.  

Love is the basis of our faith. Take it or leave it, the basis is not logic or civil disagreement or hyperrationalism. Our history shows us clearly that the moral foundation of our tradition(s) as UU’s is love. 

And yet, if you look at our Seven Principles, we affirm and promote various good, ethical precepts; love is not among them.  

In our Six Sources, we give a passing mention to our Jewish and Christian heritage and its reminder to love our neighbor.  

But most people who attend Unitarian Universalist congregations have never even heard of the Six Sources. Most of them only know the First Principle, the worth and dignity of every person, and maybe the Seventh, pertaining to “respect for the interconnected web of existence.” Not love of or care for, but respect for. 

Love is the foundation, UU friends, and love is, in my book, the ultimate moral high ground. 

Let me tell you a secret about my other religion. In Stone Circle Wicca, we have four virtues, and each one corresponds to one of the Cardinal Directions. In my heart and in my life, there is only one virtue that can bind them all together and make them active, effective, real. It lives in the Cauldron at the Center of the Circle, and its name is love. “For my law is love until all beings,” as the Goddess says in her Charge. 

Love is the Center, Wiccan friends. And love is, in my book, the ultimate moral high ground. 

So take it! Take it, lay yourself upon on it and declare your right to share it, to be there, to be clear in a justice-seeking life that is based on love.  

I’m not saying lord it over other people. I’m not saying declare that those with whom you disagree are worth less as human beings than you or we are. I’m not saying any of that.  

But I am saying to stop being afraid of your religious, moral, and spiritual values. 

Rev. William Barber II, one of the founders of the Moral Mondays movement and the contemporary Poor People’s Campaign (originally founded by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), reminds us consistently, from his Christian perspective, that the issues of this day are moral issues that religious progressives should feel obliged to address, based on their religious values. 

And those of us who do not espouse any particular religion, what are our obligations? What are our values? 

Whatever our religious affiliation, it is true that each of us is responsible for the discernment of our own hearts. And that’s true for those of us who do not adhere or practice any religion, just as it is for those who do. 

Still, friends, I urge you, as you have heard me quote before, to do as the Buddhist teacher, Joanna Macy urges us. She knows that we may be running ourselves into a new Stone Age with our disregard for the climate crisis. And yet she says, whatever is coming, whatever may happen, “We can love one another now.” 

Call it duty. Call it obligation. Call it humanism. Call it the right thing to do.  

I call it love. And in my world, love is not withheld from anyone. Love, as in the mercy Shylock asks to be shown in The Merchant of Venice, can pour out upon Earth, transforming everything it touches: 

“The quality of mercy is not strained. 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” 

So just for today, let us try to be unfailingly merciful, honestly kind, wisely charitable, fiercely compassionate… let us love one another now. 

And while we’re at it, let us remember that love IS the moral high ground, and leaves no one behind to suffer. 

Love does not abandon children and families. 

Love does not abandon trans and non-binary and gender non-conforming folks.  

Love does not abandon polyamorous families.  

Love does not abandon single parents raising their children.  

Love does not abandon Earth and Her creatures, systems, and people.  

Love not only does not abandon anyone, but love stays, love rests with, love suffers with, love abides with. 

Love stays, friends, especially when things are at their hardest. Love never gives up. 

My position is this: If you have a tradition that calls upon love as the center of its values, then please live out of those values. If you have no tradition that you call your own, but you practice some kind of personal spirituality, ask yourself how love factors into that practice, and if you find it wanting, do something about that. And if you do not practice or believe or adhere or join, then I’m asking you, join me.  

Join me in love. 

As ever, 

~Catharine~ 

The post Join Me in Love appeared first on The Way of the River.

Beloved— 

This issue of Reflections gets an honest-to-goodness content warning. I have written some home truths about dieting, the dieting industry, and the nature of self-compassion. But there’s some hard stuff in here, and if you are someone who struggles with your weight, food, or your body, and you’re just not feeling like going there right now, slide on by, comrade, and with my blessing. 

One of our comrades at The Way of the River, Kerry, was speaking with me this week about commercial advertisements in late-stage capitalism. How much of an assault they are. How we both have to mute them (or, if they’re recorded, fly by), because listening to them is, as I said, an assault on the senses. 

I can’t watch much commercial television for precisely the reason that television advertising nauseates me. It’s too loud. Too fast. And too much of a lie, but it’s so easy to take it in, anyway. 

One of the things that Kerry pointed out in her conversation with me is that it all seems to stem from the fear of death, and the belief that if we just have the right things, live the right way, and consume the right products (and don’t consume others, ah ah AH!) we’ll be okay. And being okay means not dying. 

Fear of death has fueled many human preoccupations throughout history.  

One cannot help thinking of the Pharaohs, those mighty kings who—like other wealthy people around the planet—were buried with many of their household objects and other signs of their wealth and power. I think, too, of the Celtic woman we know was wealthy and free when she died because of the torc that was around her neck in her tomb. And I think of the baseball (softball? No, baseball, I think) that we buried with my grandfather because, as one of my aunts said, “He might like to play once he gets there.” 

But there is no “getting there.” Not in that sense. I just don’t believe there is. My grandfather is not somewhere playing baseball.  

Because I don’t believe that we can outrun death. 

And commercial advertising, much of it, is about trying to outrun death. Medicines for every conceivable ailment, skin regimens, cars that feel big and safe, and, of course, diets.  

The diet industry was worth 72 billion dollars at the start of 2019, according to an article in Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway online magazine. 

Let me say that again, in case the citation was lost on you:  The diet industry is worth 72 BILLION DOLLARS in 2019. (Note: if it worked, it wouldn’t be worth that much money, but onward…) 

Not only that, but according to a website supporting people who want to buy franchises in various industries, the weight-loss industry is, “…fraught with misinformation. False claims about potential results and benefits run rampant. In the last decade alone the Federal Trade Commission has brought more than 80 law enforcement actions against companies making deceptive weight-loss claims.” 

Most studies that claim to track, “long-term” weight loss success and that have the highest rates of “success”—success being described as keeping between 5 and 10% of their original body weight off—only study up to a year or two. That’s long term?!  

It’s not. An article in Slate by Harriet Brown, puts it like this: 

“You’ll likely lose weight in the short term, but your chance of keeping if off for five years or more is about the same as your chance of surviving metastatic lung cancer: 5 percent. And when you do gain back the weight, everyone will blame you. Including you.” 

“This isn’t breaking news; doctors know the holy trinity of obesity treatments—diet, exercise, and medication—don’t work. They know yo-yo dieting is linked to heart disease, insulin resistance, higher blood pressure, inflammation, and, ironically, long-term weight gain.” 

Let me zero in on a couple of things here. First, “They know yo-yo dieting is linked to [a bunch of awful stuff].” And we know that the likelihood for at least 40% of people is that they will gain back more than they originally lost each time they diet, which is how yo-yo dieting leads to weight gain.  

But what is more on my mind is this quotation: “And when you do gain back the weight, everyone will blame you. Including you.” 

A-fucking-men, my sisters and brothers. Amen.  

We blame ourselves. All current science shows that willpower alone does essentially nothing in the war against our bodies (poor bodies, with so many of us always at war against them…), and yet everyone, including us, blames us. 

The most famous, wealthy, powerful people among us blame ourselves. In her magazine O, Oprah describes sitting at the Emmy Awards ceremony and going so far as to pray to lose to her talk-show rival, Phil Donahue: “I wouldn’t have to embarrass myself by rolling my fat butt out of my seat and walking down the aisle to the stage.” 

What?! 

How does this make any sense?! 

How does such deep, abiding shame about taking up more space in the world, and maybe, maybe lowering one’s risk of certain disorders and diseases, come to be? There are all kinds of things floating around in here, right? Beauty myths and standards or attractiveness. Healthism—the belief that health is the highest and most important virtue. The belief that thinness equals health and that, “If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.” 

My. God.  

“If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.” Have you ever heard such a ridiculous statement at any other time in your entire life?! Your relationships. Your joy. Your skills. Your gifts. Your superpowers. Your capacity for love and the ability to change the world for the better. 

Nope. Nope. Nope. 

If you don’t have your health—and what do we mean by “health,” anyway?!—you don’t have anything. And if this elusive “health” is somehow marked on your body by obesity, then not only are you radically impoverished, it’s your own fault. You are both a medical and a moral failure. 

The diet industry tells us that we can outrun death. That obesity is the leading cause of the death in the United States. Furthermore, it sells us the idea that if we just… if we only… if we could… be other than we are, comrades, we would be thin. And because we were thin, we would be healthy. And because we would be healthy, we would be valuable. Worthy. Lovable. 

It’s a crock of shit, I’m here to tell you. 

I could talk about my actual weight (appalling, especially to me—I’m not immune to this shame game). I could talk about my “numbers” for thyroid and glucose and all that I got from my last blood draws (really good). My blood pressure (fine). My stamina or ability to walk more than half a block (shitty). I could talk about the effects of pulmonary emboli (horrific). I could talk about my healing from cellulitis (slow). I could share with you the charming story of how I became dangerously anemic (gross). I could paint a picture for you of how I came to be the size I am with the health strengths and vulnerabilities that I have. 

And you might draw a picture of me. Because of “my non-weight numbers,” as well as my commitment to aquatic physical therapy, you might think I’m what some people call a “good fattie.” “She’s doing what she can…” And that might make me a more moral person in your eyes, whether you’d like to admit it or not. It’s certainly true that I imagine some idealized version of myself in which I’m no longer fat and so I am therefore morally more upright. 

Or you might look at my lack of stamina and my actual size… You might see me scanning a waiting room to find a chair… You might look at my history of getting bigger, and trying to lose weight, and getting bigger still, and trying to lose weight, and getting bigger still… 

And you might draw other conclusions. But I want to practice not drawing any conclusions about people’s character—my own or anyone else’s—based on the size of their bellies, asses, thighs, or any other parts. Not whether they’re thin or fat, small or big, “normal” or “morbidly obese.” 

I want to practice love. Love that I offer myself and that I return to myself when I forget. And love for you, love to which I return when I forget. 

Friends, let us love one another. Let us love one another now, not in some imagined future in which we are all healthy and take up the “right” amount of space and can do the “right” number of laps across the pool.  

As Joanna Macy says, “We can be in love with one another now.” Whatever is going to happen in the future, thanks to cancer, traumatic brain injury, heart attack, stroke, or slow decline, none of us is getting out of here alive. None of us. 

It’s not impressive to me when friends of mine who can buy their clothes at Target are obsessing on their weight and spending their HUGE POWER and AMAZING ENERGY trying to get smaller, to take up less space, and to have disappointing effects on their lives. That is to say, sure, get stronger. Sure, dance. Sure, swim. Sure, do something really physically hard for you and realize you can do it and feel the beautiful power of muscles moving over bone and the delightful soreness that can come the day after some physical work. 

Or not.  

I love you anyway. You don’t owe me your health, beloved. You don’t owe it to anyone. We’re all going to die, and whether I have you for only this one day or whether I beat you to the grave, I love you.  

Always- 

~Catharine~ 

The post You Don’t Owe Me appeared first on The Way of the River.

Beloved—

First, you should know that as I finished proofing and editing this love letter, my hands shook, there were butterflies in my belly, my feet were squirming, and I had to remind myself to breathe. This is not bullshit, friends. What I am writing is real for me right now, and I hope it is real for you.

Second, I promise I’m not going to talk about the Roman Catholic church for this entire love letter. If you really can’t stand anything about any of all that, skip down to where it says, “So let’s go to someone else.” Seriously. Don’t worry about it. Just skip on down.

One of the most important maxims I have ever learned about discernment is one that I have had to translate into my own theology. The statement is attributed to the Spanish theologian, Ignatius of Loyola, also the founder of the Jesuit order:

“The will of God is written in the deepest desires of our hearts.” The will of God is written in the deepest desires of our hearts.”

The will of God, you say?

Okay, how about your own most profound truth, your own Highest Will, your own best self, your own true calling, how about one of those? Better?

Is written in my own desires?

Yes. That’s what I’m saying, and it is one of the founding principles of the Jesuits, the Sisters of St. Joseph, and many other religious orders.

Now, the Jesuit Pope Francis I (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, from Argentina) may be doing a lot of things that one certainly wouldn’t have expected of, say, his predecessor. Nonetheless, if he said, “Consult the deepest desires of your heart to find the truth of what you’re meant to do,” I think a lot of people would be surprised. Most of us don’t generally think of Popes as encouraging us to attend to desire.

Nonetheless, our own most profound truth, what some of us magical types call our Highest Will, what we are most meant to be doing in this world, is findable.

You can know it. You can find it.  

So let’s go to someone else. Let’s see what another powerful leader, this one from the Black church tradition, has to say.

Let’s go to the theologian, Howard Thurman. In 1944, the Rev. Dr. Thurman founded the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. People’s Church was super important (at its founding and today) because it was the first major, interdenominational, multiracial, multicultural church in the United States. In Rev. Dr. Thurman’s work, Jesus and the Disinherited, he outlines a theology of liberation for all people with those most on the margins centered as he believed they were for Jesus.

And the Rev. Dr. Thurman also famously said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

But again, we struggle with this maxim, this wise aphorism, because we have no idea what makes us come alive. Many of us feel such a lack of life, such apathy and despair in the face of the evils being done around us—even, and maybe, so sadly, especially those evils being done in our name—that we cannot name what brings us alive. We are, some of us, afraid to be alive.

Where life is concerned, or, if you will, vitality, the white dancer Martha Graham did not mince words:

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.” (emphasis mine)

Please let our quickening, our action not be lost. The world needs it. The world needs YOU.

These writers and thinkers, all of them, as well as the Quaker teacher Parker Palmer, public servant Janet Reno, anonymous writer of the Gospel of Thomas, and ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle all agree with Ignatius and Francis, Howard, and Martha up there.

What we do matters. What we don’t do matters. What we allow matters.

Who we are and how we are matters.

You matter, my dear one. You matter.

I made a video early last week about these very issues. About how vitally important I think it is that we pay attention to what is given to us. What are our gifts? What are our strengths? Where do we need help, and how do we ask for it?

And yes, friends, I want my class, Making Hard Choices, or its sister class, Tarot for Discernment, to help you understand your heart, to help you hear your life speak, to bring forth what is within you. I want to help.

And why?

Because I believe that teaching and learning and listening and hoping and dreaming and attending are all part of the ministry I am called to do.

And also because discernment is a lifelong activity that calls us again and again to attend to the choices we’re making or permitting to be made for us.

And also of course because my ministry is part of the livelihood of my household.

And also because I can imagine a movement of people who are committed, whose previously comfortable hearts have been afflicted into speaking truth to those in power, who have claimed their dignity and liberation, who are dismantling myths of oppression (thank you, adrienne maree brown, for that formulation), and who are saving our habitat so that we stop killing one another and the other beings on this planet.

I can imagine that movement because I know what it’s like to find one’s comfortable heart afflicted, or as my Pentecostal and Baptist friends might say, “convicted.” I can imagine that movement because I know that when enough people know that they’ve got to do something, that something can be accomplished.

I know that when enough people know that something is worth not just dying for, but living for, appointing their lives for, that something will happen.

Friends, I want us to stop killing one another.

I want the concentration camps (“detention centers”) in the United States to be closed and the people currently in them taken care of as befit their human dignity.

I want not to see the animals and plants who share this beautiful, glorious home of ours, this Earth of Whom we are an expression, continue to be destroyed and utterly lost from Earth’s beautiful face.

I want barriers to the full inclusion of people with disabilities to come down and for us to learn how to honor and welcome each and every one of us.

I want people to use our bodies, our souls, and all the strength we can find for the highest, deepest good we can find. And we can find that strength through the open door of our hearts, as the Sufis say.

I want a movement to grow up with people like Greta Thurnberg (teenage environmentalist), Rev. William Barber (Protestant minister and founder of Moral Mondays), adrienne maree brown (writer and community organizer), Rev. Theresa Soto (Unitarian Universalist minister, intersectional activist, and poet), Mark Silver (Sufi teacher and business educator), and Rev. Eric Eldritch (Wiccan priest and interfaith activist).

These are people, while they are as fallible as the rest of us, who listen to their hearts. To their heads, to their studies, to their experience, to their bodies, yes, and to. their. hearts.

“The will of God is written in the deepest desires of our hearts.”

Friends, I’m not saying that I can give you all the answers to your questions, or even ANY of the answers. What I can give you is my experience of a powerful periscope that allowed me to see up out of the muck of my life and into a new life I love.

What I will say is that I have some tools that have helped me when I have used them. I will say that they are tools that have saved my life.

I will say that these tools are, I am reminded again and again, necessary for my well-being and the well-being of my ministry.

So perhaps, if you attend to your heart right now, or over the course of this week, you will decide to join our small band of comrades in the work of August’s course, Making Hard Choices. Or perhaps this is not the right time.

But what if it is the right time?

Making Hard Choices registration will be open through this Saturday (11:59 Pacific Daylight Time). If your heart longs for comrades in the journey, if you want to work hard to learn what is yours, if you want to know how to move forward, then consider joining us.

And if you already know what you are called to do, then please do it. Please, please, please move against the fear, and do it.

Please move one more inch toward your fear, and help us love one another now. Help us act together now. Help us save one another now.

I love you.

~Catharine~

PS – Not only is Making Hard Choices open, but so is its friend, Tarot for Discernment, and registration for that course will be open all month. Whatever you decide, know that I am always here, Beloved, waiting to hear from you, waiting to see you in The Way of the River Facebook Community Group, or at magic@thewayoftheriver.com, waiting to know more of who and how you are.

The post Come Be Frightened appeared first on The Way of the River.

Hello, Beloved –

Today, I share some words for you that have come to my mind, and one word in particular, that I wrote about at the beginning of 2018.

These words are about the importance of saying NO. Saying NO to overwhelm. Saying NO to beating ourselves up, yes.

But especially, right now, right here, in this place and time, to saying NO to how the United States government is behaving. How the “speed of the machine” is entirely too slow, and people are dying – from climate crisis, to deaths caused by police, and most on my mind these days, from the overcrowded and entirely inhumane conditions of refugees and undocumented migrant people at our southern border.

This seems like a perfect time to promote Making Hard Choices, doesn’t it? But that’s not why I’m including the message below. I’m including it because we are a little way over halfway through a year, and I need to be reminded of the compassionate NO. The compassion that says, This injustice must STOP. Overwhelming greed and pride and the “personhood” of destructive corporate consumption must stop.

I know that I am called to speak with, engage with, talk with those in my community who are in relationship with me, whom I trust and who trust me. And so I am writing to you, I have written to you, and I will continue to write to you. And write to me, please. Tell me what you’re doing, what you’re feeling called toward, what you need to do or have to do in order to do what you are most called to. And let us all get together to enact our callings—together, each doing our part, each coming together, ALL together, to make the United States a safer place to be for all of our residents and citizens.

Blessings, and may you enjoy the words below, the reminder that we need to say NO.

I love you

*****

I want to comment a bit on a spiritual practice of mine I have engaged for the upcoming year. I have allowed a word to surface, to emerge through discernment and waiting, to be a guide, an aspiration, or a reminder.

Last year’s word was “Juicy.” I spent some time explaining why I chose it and what it meant. What I don’t think I told you is that a little over half the year, the word “Radiance” also emerged. I heard myself called “radiant” by others, I wrote about it in my journal, and it became clear that it was part of my identity.

Not only part of my identity, but something I wanted to cultivate. Juiciness, yes—the richness of the ripened pomegranate pip; the slurpy, messy joy of a new summer peach; the slide and delight of lovemaking—these were important images.

Radiance, now, that was something else again. It wasn’t something I thought up. It was something that surfaced, that emerged and was reflected in the language and understanding of others.

So.

This year I thought I might choose, “vitality” for my word. Energy. Life. Mobility. All things I want to encourage in myself, yes. I did say, though, that I knew it was provisional. I knew I had “thought it up,” as I mentioned above. It’s a good word, “vitality,” and definitely does go with “radiance.”

But it’s not the word that’s been given.

The word that has been give to me for this year is “no.”

I am a yes-sayer.

I want to take on All the Things, even knowing, if I take even a moment’s reflection, that I cannot.

I want to make everyone happy, especially people whose judgment I fear.

I want to do everything perfectly, and berate myself when I fall short.

I know I am not alone in these matters, friends. I know that there are those of you who do similar things.

There’s an expression, “No is a complete sentence.” This phrase, this sentence, has always terrified, attracted, and repelled me. All at once. How can I say, “No” by itself? Or even just “No, thank you,” when someone asks me to do something extra, or when I get an idea myself to which I need to say no?

Here’s another one: “No means no.” It is most commonly used to refer to sexual assault and abuse. As a survivor of multiple rounds of assault and harassment, I learned that “no” did not always succeed in being what I meant. Whether I said it with words or said it with my terrified, rigid body, “no” didn’t always get me very far.

Finally, there’s the idea of compulsive niceness. I am a kind person. Compassion and kindness, real, radiant loving kindness are things I value about myself. But sometimes, as you’ve read here before, compassion must put up the hand that says “no.” Sometimes, kindness is teaching someone else about boundaries. Sometimes kindness to myself or even to others is setting a simple boundary: No, I cannot do that. No I’m not free for that meeting. No, my schedule is already full that day.

I share all of this with you not just to give myself accountability (though doubtless that is part of the picture), but also to encourage you in your New Year’s ponderings. What are your hopes, your aspirations? What is reflected to you in the language of those you love and whose opinion you value?

I know I’ve been hearing loud and clear that I don’t need to do everything that is offered to me. That my life runs much better, my relationships are closer and more fulfilling, that my mind is clearer when sometimes I say, “No.”

One last thing about this word, in case it’s not clear. I don’t WANT it to be my word for 2018. It’s making me very uncomfortable. I feel a bit like a toddler stomping around, even though underneath all the stomping and the griping there is an essential peace. A peaceful knowledge that this word, “no,” can help me, teach me, see me through.

What is leading you? Where do you feel at peace in your discernment? How does the Divine bloom in your heart this season, reflected to you in others’ words and the stirrings of your own deep, wise Self?

I’d love to hear. There’s a thread on The Way of the River Facebook Group on this very topic. Feel free to join, or to send me a note about your musings. And remember, of course, that nothing here is set in stone. The year moves on and so do we. We learn and grow, and our sense of ourselves and the things around us changes. Don’t be afraid to choose, just to let something gently emerge.

You don’t have to get it right.

There is no wrong answer.

I love you

~Catharine~

The post Time to Say No appeared first on The Way of the River.

Dear ones—

May your week be fruitful, and may we all bring all of ourselves to our being this week. Enjoy the video! See you ‘round the Facebook Group.

Love-
Catharine

The post What Are We Doing? appeared first on The Way of the River.