My dear friends –

My father—many of you have read me write about him quite a lot–was a biblical scholar. He taught in the English Department, and so he taught the Bible as literature. A fan of the poets Milton, Hopkins, Pope, and Donne, among others, he was interested in the ways in which the Bible informed the development of English literature over time. (He loved the Divine Comedy, as well, Dante’s masterwork. That, of course, is in Italian, and a story for another day.)

He studied the Bible—the parts of it that seemed relevant (as far as he was concerned) to the development of English literature—vigorously. Ezra and Nehemiah, for example, important books in their own right, got no play in my father’s classes. While they are essential to understanding the development of Judaism, he did not believe they were fundamental for the allusive development of English literature.

The Fourth Gospel, that of John the Divine, or John of Patmos, he went over and over and over, deciding how and where to put it in the syllabus. Where would it be most effective and affecting? How could he show the ways in which that mystical text had been used throughout the history of English literature, after the development of the King James Version of the Bible.

Why King James? Why not a “better,” “more faithful,” translation, or one that paid more attention to, say, gender inclusion. Or one like The Message, that is clearly a paraphrase, but gets the point across?

But why? Why King James? (And it wasn’t just because James was trying to get the bishops off his back for being queer, though that’s true too.)

Because he wanted to know about the influence of the Bible, and the version that has had the most influence in the life of English literature, and probably in the lives of most non-Christians, even, is the King James Version. Try this on for size:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…” Those opening words at so many memorial services? Straight out of the King James Version. My former senior pastor at All Souls in Washington, DC, the Rev. Rob Hardies, tells a story about how early in his career, he read a more contemporary version. It went over like a lead balloon. And his mentor told him afterwards what a mistake he’d made. The comfort of the King James version of the 23rd Psalm brings, even to people who are not believers, cannot be overstated.

And speaking of non-believers…my father kindasorta was one. That is to say, he certainly did not believe in every jot and tittle of the Bible. He was never wrapped in any kind of literalism. He was interested in beauty, effect, resonance, and to a certain degree, history. It was only when his mother died that I ever saw him concerned about someone’s immortal soul, worried about all the ways he may have failed her, about the nature of God with respect to someone who was dying. He even clutched a rather pointy cross pendant in his hand as he sat by her bedside.

But he was clear when he knew he himself was dying that it was the end for him. That his consciousness would be snuffed out like a candle. Poof. That his life would be reflected in his deeds, and he never believed that those were enough. Never enough. But he had a certain peace, if not quiet, about him, with respect to his coming death.

But I digress. I have his copy of the King James Version on my desk. It is sturdily bound in a lovely box it slides out of – what are those called? It’s not a dust jacket, because it’s made of cardboard, but it keeps the book safe. (Shout out to Cris Livecchi, the best book-healer ever. Let me know if you need his direction.)

Because I have the book from which he taught, I can see what he thought was important. The aforementioned Fourth Gospel is marked up in pencil, highlighter, and pen. The shock! But there were apparently notes too important to wait for getting back to a pencil. The highlighter and pen were rare, but still notable. Other marked-up books include Genesis, Judges, Ruth, Isaiah, some Psalms, the Song of Songs, Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes, Revelation…But Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, even Daniel, hardly at all.

He loved the Bible. He loved it passionately as a collection of strange and mysterious books about a whole range of subjects. He loved it and he recognized it as a library of texts. Not something coherent or something designed to go together, except here and there, quite loosely. He recognized the violence particularly against women and the way that the “Asherahs” were evidence of the sometimes struggle sometimes harmony with goddess worship.

He recognized it as a quilt one might pull over oneself against the cold of life. But nevertheless, a quilt made of many things, some velvet, some wool, definitely not washable, and worn thin by generations. To illustrate, toward the end of his life, he took a label from one of his pill bottles and put it on the spine of the book where the old and venerable text was held together with duct tape.

The sticky label said, simply, in large, block letters, “MAY CAUSE DIZZINESS.”

The sticker is now on the title page. May Cause Dizziness.

Certainly the Bible may cause dizziness. Certainly. If you try to treat it as a single document and you have any understanding of how it is stitched together, it will cause dizziness. If you cease trying to jam it into the strictures of fundamentalism, it will cause dizziness.

But it is not only the Bible that causes dizziness, but the whole of the spiritual life.

Dizziness is built into the spiritual life. Now, the etymology of “dizzy” reveals that it meant “weak, foolish, or giddy,” in Old English. And that before that, “giddy” or “insane” comes to the forefront out of Old German. I am going to make some flights of etymological fancy here. The form for “giddy” was “god” + “y.” that is to say possessed. The meaning usually meant possessed by some kind of spirit…but look back at my father’s sticker and the realities of the spiritual life.

May cause dizziness. May cause giddiness. Giddiness as we use it now, as well as from Middle English where it means a combination of “insane”; and “possessed by a god.”

The giddiness/dizziness my father believed the Bible could cause can certainly come off as foolish. The spiritual life, the doubt, the struggle, the deep dives and surfacing, the spinning around as we look for a north star to guide our search…It’s all quite disorienting, unbalancing, and can make us look ridiculous. Foolish, with or without a Bible.

It is baked into the spiritual bread. It WILL cause dizziness if we allow it to. It will have us writing things we never knew we thought. It will give us the power to make art we never knew was in us. It will transform our capacity for compassion if it’s doing its job.

Today I’m, as Dar Williams says, “resolved to being born / and so resigned to bravery.” I resolve to being immersed in the spiritual life, and so I am resigned to the possibilities of possession, giddiness, foolishness, and most of all, to a bit of dizziness, now and then.

Blessings on your dizzy ways, friends-

~Catharine~

Dear ones –

“In the middle of life’s way, I found myself in a dark wood…” These are the opening words to Dante’s Inferno, the first book of the Divine Comedy. They are about how one can feel lost and in need of a companion to find the truth. In his case, he finds himself with the famous (and dead) Roman poet, Virgil. And they go on Dante’s famous journey through Hell, and then eventually in the two books no one seems to like as well, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, through Purgatory and Heaven. The birthday of the Commedia was this past month, and so I’m thinking about Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

And Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven (as Dante sees them, especially), make me think of the moon and stars. The celestial lights that Genesis says were put in the sky to mark the time for festivals. (Isn’t that a lovely conception?)

Last week I wrote about how people need to hear/read your story. I said, “Be daring,” at least three times. But what does that look like? And what do celestial bodies have to do with it?

The poet David Whyte says that we have the inclination, only to “come out when the moon is full.” By that, he means only to show our shiny parts. Only to show our successes, our accomplishments, and those other parts of ourselves that feel acceptable for others to see. Whyte reminds us, that like the moon, our lives, our identities, our wisdom… it all comes in phases. While, for example, our wisdom is always with us, living in our bodies, just as the moon is always there, it may not be shining brightly out at any given time.

Living in our bodies, and yet not shining brightly for others to see. Certainly this is the case for our moon, for all our lunar selves. We must not choose only to come out when the “moon” of our lives is “full,” for only those three days, otherwise hiding in shame for the rest of the month.

Similarly, in the Wiccan Wheel of the Year, we have an invitation to experience the range of human emotion, not just to be shiny all the time. This year is solar, not lunar, but it, too acknowledges that there are many ways to feel, many ways to need, many ways to be brilliant or dim—and all of them are part of the human experience.

We go from the winter solstice, the darkest moment immediately giving over to the tiniest sliver of hope. Christina Rosetti’s “bleak midwinter.” We come together in light and song and warmth. We do that because in the Northern Hemisphere, in the coldest December, we desperately need to remember that life is good, that we will have enough, and it is by sharing and being together that we can have enough.

Then comes Imbolc. This celebration is the fire festival that reminds us through its matron goddess, Brigid, that we have agency. We can make things happen. She is the particular goddess of (among other things and people) smithcraft, poetry and song, and healing. She reminds us that we have the power—just as the tiniest shoots of spring are coming up, just as the snowdrops bloom where She passes—that we can make change in our lives.

Then we’re at high Spring, the celebration of the Equinox that has so much in common with the Jewish and Christian holidays near the same time. Our seed starts are doing well. Beneath the earth, our seeds, with sun and tending, have unfurled themselves and are standing not quite steadily, but they are striving sunward. And they are strengthened by the breeze, by air moving around them.

Beltanetide – where we find ourselves now — is the thready beginning of summer for us, and it is the holiday of Delights on the Green. We weave the Maypole, we give, receive, offer, and take pleasure in one another and enjoy the fragrance of buds and blossom, both those blooming now, and those who will burst out in Midsummer. Beltane and Midsummer are the “full moon” solar times. They are the powered-up, joyful, delighted, sex-in-the-fields and lying-on-the-forest-floor times. And some practitioners celebrate only Beltane, as though they want to remain in a state of only joy and floral delights forever. But the Wheel turns to Midsummer.

Midsummer is the height of power, the joy of feeling our strengths – and the acknowledgement that all must prepare to pass the Wand at some point. We dance and sing, the fires are lit, and the sliver of the solar year’s decline passes as we dance. We begin to learn the very beginning of lesson that will come through most powerfully at Lammas, the lesson of self-sacrifice.

And Lammas, the bread harvest, comes six weeks later. It is at Lammas that we celebrate sacrifices made for the good of the community. Some of us mythologically – at least some years – enact a sort of passion play, a way of looking at giving over for the greater good. We note that the grain falls to make way for not just to be milled for our bread, but also for the gleaners who come behind. Lammas, of all the spokes of the Wheel, joins those of us with much to be in connection with those of us who have little.

Midautumn is what I think of as Michaelmas or St. Francis’ time, from my Catholic upbringing. Wiccans and other Pagans also call it Mabon. It is the fruit festival—apples, grapes, the fall fruit, not the stone fruits of summer, but the later ones, the ones that will make cider and wine.

And then finally we come to the time of the Ancestors and Descendants, Samhaintide, when the dark is clearly rising and embracing us. When our children dress as ancestors and our ancestors voices ring in our ears. We offer them both solemn offering and parties for their joy beyond the Veil. The dark is coming fast and thick, and we bring together what and who we can to celebrate.

We come out into the world with the range of human emotion. We mustn’t try only to come out when the sun is high, only during the joy of Beltane or the strength leading up to Midsummer. We need ALL of ourselves. And furthermore, we need all of us to need all of us to survive.

In Christian parlance, Madeleine L’Engle, storyteller, poet, mystic, and Episcopalian said in her book A Stone for A Pillow, “I cannot come to the Heavenly Banquet until I want all of us to be there.”

We are all in this Big Picture together, eh?

We need to trust the phases of our interior moons, the shifting of the light, the different times and different moods in which we find ourselves. Both the bright moon and dark moon have stories to tell, feelings to teach, realities to unveil. And among the lights and shadows of those stories is are shapes of of strangeness, a brokenness, and of madness. That last shadow too, needs love, compassion, and truthtelling.

What I mean by all this is a continuation of last week’s Reflections – there is someone, somewhere, who needs to hear your story. Someone out there needs you. Not just the shiny you, but the parts that the culture says are bad or ugly or broken. There is someone who needs your dark moon story.

And yes, I’ve written about a lot of “taboo” things – bipolar disorder, sexual assault, neurodivergence (ADHD variety), hearing voices…but there are stories yet to tell that are feeling hard. I’ll get there, I suspect, and you’ll help me along.

You always do.

Love,

~Catharine~

PS — If a group experience feels overwhelming, you have reservations, or you think you might like to work with me in some other way–like one-to-one spiritual accompaniment–let’s schedule a call.

Dear hearts –

For my birthday, I received some things I’ve wanted for a very long time: The supplies to make wax seals on envelopes. Now, with my fountain pens, my spiffy paper, and envelopes, I can write letters the way I’ve always wanted to. I’ve been very excitedly practicing.

One of the brass presses I received brought me up short. It’s a sprig of rosemary, the herb of remembrance, often used on condolence cards, or simply in honor of anniversaries.

I’d been intending to write this week’s Reflections on the topic of anniversaries and how so many of us are feeling the keen edge of one-year anniversaries over the last couple of months. And there’ll be more, going forward. So what you see, that strange green blot, is my first attempt, a mark of rosemary reminding us (as though we could forget, just now) that this is a time of remembrance. I am sealing my loveletter to you.

Last year on Leap Day, what would be this past Monday, was the last time either my wife or I left the house just to do something fun, Just fun. Julie went to the coast to have a day by herself, a day to recharge and let her little introverted heart be restored by the water, the wind, and the rocks.

She went to the coast—specifically the archly named Cape Disappointment—and got to see the beautiful Columbia River Gorge, the waves break themselves against the cliff faces, and that holy place, the site where the river meets the sea. She went there, just to be with herself for a day, just to have some time with the natural world that gives so much, of which we are a part and never separate, but which we cordon off in our experience.

Soon enough after that, people in the coastal towns asked folks not to come and visit. While it would mean a loss of income for most of the landlords and retailer establishments in the towns, they simply don’t have hospitals nearby. They don’t have the infrastructure to handle a bunch of people who are gravely ill. And we didn’t know, just yet, what the pandemic was going to look like.

Oregon has been lucky. I was sure that between the hammer of Washington and the anvil of California, our numbers would be much higher than they have been. Nonetheless, we remain fourth-lowest in almost every measure, from COVID transmission through deaths. But every life is a life. Every person has a story. From the first infant we lost – just last week – to all the elders in congregate living who have died, there are stories. Memories of one kind or another. If not their own, then those of their parents, children, friends, communities, families, or caregivers.

I consider all the strangenesses of the past year. Masks. So much hand washing. Staying apart from people or figuring out ways that feel safe enough to see them. But especially masks.

Masks, above all other things about this time, are the strangest, those bits of fabric and fiber that keep us from seeing one another’s whole faces. Masks that remind me to make sure that my genuine smiles reach my eyes so that folks really know that I mean it. I know my cheeks show my smile, but one can never be sure if a smile is genuine if it doesn’t reach the eyes, you know?

And it is masks and social distancing and hand washing and the flu vaccine – remember, we got those! – that mean that we’ve seen cases of the flu plummet this year. By wearing masks, we have protected ourselves and one another. From now on, when we’re sick, more of us will wear masks when we go out into the world, that’s for sure.

And I still have to ask, what are the costs?

My father, when he sat on English Department committees, was forever asking, “At the expense of what?” He was keenly aware that when we say yes to something, we’re almost always saying no to something else. Many of us – most of us where I am – have traded certain kinds of closeness for physical health. We stay home. We get things delivered and (I hope!) tip the drivers well. We make calculated decisions about what time to pick up the groceries and whether to let our partners cut our hair, go to a salon, or just do it ourselves.

We know that isolation is bad for humans, especially for kids. We know that too much screen time isn’t great. We know all over our bodies, the prickle and coolness of skin hunger, even those of us who do not live alone. We know that our kids are losing their minds. We know that our kids are losing our minds.

I remember when one of our comrades was training as a social worker, and he was learning about pandemics. A stalwart fellow, even he seemed scared by the possibilities, of what could be, should the world be devastated by pandemic. Too little commitment to public health. Too little infrastructure. Too many varied approaches. Too much possibility for variation and mutation in viruses. Too much. Too many.

Not enough coordination among states. Not enough clear guidelines for where the federal government has jurisdiction and where things are left up to the states. People who believe all kinds of… well, nonsense… that could leave them (and thus, the rest of us) at great risk of infection, illness, and death. The picture he painted was not pretty. And he only painted part of the picture. He spared us.

But where are you now with all of this? I know several of you who receive this love letter who have been sick. And let me say how grateful I am that you remain among us. Some of you, though, months after your first diagnosis, have mysterious, persistent symptoms that remain. And I’m sure there are many others among this group who have had it, many more.

I know a handful of folks who’ve had people in their families and friend networks die this year. One who was unable to be with her father when he died. Others who are delaying memorial services and celebrations of life and funerals until…when?

How are you in these times of anniversary? These moments of remembrance? These times when I wish I could give you a sprig of rosemary for remembrance?

For those of us who have elected to be SUPER careful, how are we? I miss hugs from my friends like I cannot say. Oh, I miss them. But I am also oddly grateful that my main means of connecting with friends – Zoom – has become normal. I’m grateful that I am transcontinentally connected with people I love and work for and with. But yes. Hugs. Oh yes, hugs.

So the green blobby bit with the little impression of leaves on it is rosemary for remembrance, the very first of my wax seals, offered for you as a seal of love on this missive.

Know that I am thinking of all of you, and I wonder how you are, how we all are, in this season of anniversaries. Drop me a line?

Blessings,

~Catharine~

Dear One –

I know I wrote to you about some of this recently, but I am feeling really drawn, really actively allured and invited into the idea of “Forgive yourself for everything every day.” To go a little deeper and explore it some more in light of some experiences I’ve had the past week.

You see, I’m on a discernment retreat this week, and so I’m finding myself in deep, quiet spaces of reflection and friendly curiosity. And today, I’m curious about forgiveness. Again.

Forgiveness is, according to Martha Beck, giving up the hope of having had a different past. There’s something there about acceptance. It happened. It was. It can’t not be. Letting go of the wish that the “here” I’m in would just—damn it!—be somewhere more like an imagined “there.”

Forgiveness has also been described as no longer letting a given person or event rent out space in your mind. It’s considered to be a fruit of the Holy Spirit, a mark of Love, and one of the last and most important things uttered by Jesus of Nazareth prior to his resurrection: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

But there’s this piece about condoning. Does it make you uneasy? It does me.

I can get into not letting Rob Thornton become more and more a footnote, and less and less a chapter in my sense of the Book of my Life. I’ve gotten to the place, these many years later, where I can decide when and how I think about him and what he did to me. I think of everything I have learned about grooming and culling the socially vulnerable from the herd. It’s useful information to have and to watch out for.

But I will never condone what he did to all the girls he left in his wake, up to and including the mother of his son. And for all I know, his wife.

And with all sympathy, I say yes, you may have read me on this topic before, and maybe I’m a little sorry for it. But forgiveness is such a thorny thing, I expect to keep coming back again and again to it, so you know, seatbelts and all.

Similarly, there is no condoning the actions of the people and the SYSTEM and the PANIC around repressed memories that came up in the ‘80s and lingered into the aughts. That system, that panic, the people at the psych hospital who coerced me, threatened me, and insisted that I was not manic-depressive, but rather, had “all the symptoms of sexual abuse happening at a very young age.” Their approach to this “diagnosis,” their pushing, their coercion, all of it wedged ruptures in my family that lasted for nearly two decades.

So what is forgiveness without condoning? And where might acceptance come into it?

When I read my little post-it, “Forgive yourself for everything every day,” what am I really leaning into?

I am NOT, let me be clear, I am NOT telling any of us, me included, that I get off scot-free from responsibility or consequences.

There is an assumption built into the post-its message: empathy for others. The post-it assumes that you/I need a little help being gentle with ourselves. The message assumes that you are someone likely to hang onto guilt or shame, turning in on yourself, rather than owning up to your actions and not becoming mired in guilt.

Cause see, here’s another little thing about guilt. Guilt can be a way not to take responsibility. “Oh, I’m such a bad person!” “Oh, I never do anything right!” “Oh, I’m just terrible!” These expressions of shame—that the speaker is essentially broken—come from guilt, but they turn that guilt inward, twist it into a pretzel, and make it so that behavioral change becomes MORE difficult, rather than less.

What the post-it is advising, then, is self-compassion. Just compassion. Ha. Just compassion, as though it’s a simple thing.

And it’s not really just compassion, anyway; it’s also a clear-eyed sense of a thing done, perhaps some curious-and-tender investigation into what motivated my screw-up. Then I can see where I need to take responsibility and own the consequences of my actions. Then I can accept that the thing happened at all, and I can also accept that I did it and its consequences are mine. Acceptance, too, is not the same thing as condoning.

At each of these moves, self-compassion, self-compassion, self-compassion.

There is no step, no occasion, no movement that does not require compassion. Especially because compassion – the capacity to suffer with another (whether than be another being or one’s own limitations) – is not about letting off the hook. Sometimes compassion raises the hand that says, no. And when the hand of compassion says no, we can stop, repent (as in, turn back toward our values), make amends, and move on.

So I forgive myself for every day at the same time that I commit to being responsible for myself, a grown-ass adult who is not responsible for what was done to me when I was young, but who must take responsibility and acknowledge the consequences of my choices or inattentions.

So compassion, compassion, compassion. Not “let yourself off the hook for everything every day.” Not “your actions are all perfect every day.” But “Forgive yourself for everything every day.”

Yes.. That. Forgive yourself, with buckets of compassion, for everything every day.

Blessings of forgiveness, of acceptance, of compassion to you—

~Catharine~

Oh and PS – All this compassion applies doubly during Lent. Ash Wednesday is this coming, and remembering you are both of Earth and Stars bears reflection.

PPS – Oh, and about acceptance. Just remember, as I believe Byron Katie says, “Reality only wins 100% of the time.” It happened. It was done to you or by you. Acknowledging its existence in your history, well, that’s telling the truth of your life, your history, and it’s where one must begin.

Beloved –

Welcome to the most recent edition of Reflections, my little musings of the week. This week, I am considering two words that don’t often go together in people’s minds.

The first word is “Sovereignty.”

The second is “Humility.”

Both of these qualities are essential for doing good work, whether that be ministry, education, what we think of as traditional “business,” study, or just being in our own space “and knowing we are there,” as the saying goes.

Sovereignty is the quality of strength and clarity about your own power. It is a quality of being able to set good boundaries and be crystal clear about what you can and cannot, will and will not do in pursuit of your goals.

Sovereignty has the word “reign” in it, and yes, it’s usually associated with reigning over a realm of some kind. For all of us, though, the most important “realm” is the one within us. This realm is the one of feelings, beliefs, values, perceptions, speech, and action.

Sovereignty is also one of the qualities pertaining to self-image. What do you believe you have a right to? Why? What are the boundaries around yourself and your values that you hold sacred? How do you respond to this James Baldwin quotation? – “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”

Where do you live with “identities of privilege” as adrienne mareer brown says? (And so, as she goes on, Where do you need to work to dismantle all myths of supremacy.) Where do you live with “identities of struggle,” as she writes? (And so, then, Where are you called to claim your own dignity, joy, and liberation?)

How do you claim your identity, be with the power of it, own it, don’t shy away from it, don’t scuff your feet in the dust about it, but just be with it?

That’s sovereignty. And trust sovereignty is just the truth of who you are.

So what does that have to do with humility?

Humility, being close to Earth is also just the truth. It is the quality of knowing what you are and are not. The most fertile layer of soil in the forest is called “humus” and that’s what “humility” conjures for me.

As a teacher of mine said to me recently, the most supported position one can be in is lying prone. Close to Earth. Entirely held by gravity. Humbled, or at least humble.

Humility, as I’m sure you’ve read many times and place, is not the same thing as humiliation. It is also a quality of knowing your own strength and power, and the weaknesses that come with it. It is not something done to you by another person, but a virtue to be cultivated – just as sovereignty is a virtue to be cultivated.

Both these words, “humility” and “sovereignty” are about self-knowledge. Considering, knowing, and being with yourself is the beginning of being with all of Life and so transcending the small self that gets trapped in stories of humiliation or inflated self-image. Knowing yourself, observing and noticing yourself with compassion and without judgment or agenda, is the beginning of joining with all other Life.

Today, I leave with this shorter-than-usual edition of Reflections to consider where are you the master of your own realm? Where do you know yourself, not too big nor too small? I encourage you to observe yourself and notice where you’re living out of stories, perceptions, interpretations, and failing to engage past illusion and enter into reality. And I am encouraging myself to do the same.

Let’s let one another know how we’re doing.

Love,

~Catharine~

New around here? Welcome to Reflections, my weekly love letter and missive to all the comrades at The Way of the River. Put your feet up, grab some warm beverage, and have a read!

Beloved—

Sometimes we take on what it not ours. At least, I do.

In my case, what I take on are my perceived, imagined, or assumed judgments of other people. I start to believe that my friends aren’t really my friends, that they don’t respect or really like me. Or that I’m unlovable, and people only hang around me out of pity. Or perhaps they only hang around because I am useful to them in some way.

The thing is, my perception or assumption of what strangers think or believe is not my business. Unless they make it my business by creating some kind of asshattery or saying something awful. Which happens. “Maybe if you walked the whole way to the corner, you wouldn’t be so goddam fat,” a woman yelled at me. To be fair, I was crossing in the middle of the street in stopped traffic, and she was startled. Nevertheless, what did that have to do with my fatness. Nothing. Not a thing.

As soon as she made her position clear, then it became my business. As James Baldwin said, “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” And getting all up in my face about being fat is one way of denying my full humanity in its worth, dignity, and being just one variation of human shapes and sizes. And getting all up in my face about being fat was certainly rooted in oppression. Bah.

So she made it my business. I told her that it sounded like she was having a really bad day and I hoped it improved, after which I turned my back and walked the rest of the way across the street.

There are other instances of fatmisia (Fatmisia is like “fat phobia,” but not implying any kind of mental illness; straight-up hating fat. It’s certainly also related to being terrified of becoming fat, but not a diagnosable phobia.) I could tell you all kinds of stories that some of you have heard before. The six year-old boy in the elevator with his mom and younger sibling in the stroller: “You are SO FAT.” Or the fellow college students just behind me in line: “Beached whales like that don’t deserve to live.” And the endless conversations with people who are worried about me (see Running from Death and the Mystery of Health on my blog) and my dying young. I may indeed die younger than many of my peers, but as the hymn says, “Tell them I said yes to life.” I say yes to life, love, and hope as much as I can.

Digression, really.

The point is that strangers’ opinions are not my business until they make them my business. My friends and family’s opinions, same. But speculation, wondering, rehearsing, feeling as though I always need the other shoe of rejection to drop—that is none of my business.

What do I mean, none of my business?

I mean that people think all kinds of things all the time. I think terrible things, not just about myself, but about other people. All the time, things flash through my mind, you know, just fleeting, awful thoughts or even my favorite sin, gossip.

When something is said aloud, or acted upon, or legislated, then it might be my business.

But there’s my business, your/their business, and the business only the Divine can take care of, if anyone can. I want to keep my side of the street tidy. (Something about me needs to be tidy!) And tidiness, in this context, means paying attention to what is mine to control, consequences that are mine to experience and notice and learn from, reparations I may need to make. Those ARE my business.

So when I’m worried about my friends and whether or not I’m lovable, I screw up my courage, and ask someone, usually my lovely wife, who points out that the data is demonstrably NOT in favor of the hypothesis that I am unlovable and cannot have real friends. Friends have thrown us a wedding. A friend, upon hearing I was in deep depression, worked his social worker powers, and found me a therapist I saw for nine years. A friend who drove 4 hours one way for the second time in a week, just to visit me in the hospital. The lovers who have shared their time, thoughts, interior landscapes, and bodies with me. Friendly acquaintances. And dear, dear friends. Our relationships make their opinions more my business, but it’s on me to check in to find out what they are.

And some things, some bigger things—politics, legislation, national and international affairs—those things I cannot control, but I can participate in. I can learn how to call the offices of officials I have helped elect. Hell, I can vote at all. If the run-offs in Georgia teach us anything, it’s that every vote counts (and that Black women keep pulling our collective asses out of the fire, thank you Stacy Abrams), even if we see that vote as damage control, more than anything else.

And finally, there are the things that I cannot control or handle at all. Things around which I have been clenching my hands into fists until the points of the sharp, evil thing I want to be different have cut into my skin and I am bleeding and yet refusing to let go.

These things are the things I put on the altar of Surrender. I do a “trust fall” with the Divine, and I just try to believe that the Universe has more in it that may be dreamt in my philosophy. I pray. I imagine climbing onto the lap of the Goddess, staining her robe with my blood and knowing She doesn’t mind. And I try to lay the pointy thing—my ability to eradicate racist violence (or racism altogether, shall we?) all in one blow; for people to stop hating on me just because I’m a different shape, size, and physical condition than they are; for other people’s judgmental thoughts at all, my desire to punish the people who vandalized my hometown congregation’s building. These things I lay in the lap of the Goddess, I feel Her radiance, Her healing touch, and I can return to the rest of my life, having thanked Her for taking care of what I cannot.

I have a post-it next to my computer monitor. It’s a quotation from a Dragontree planner (I didn’t find the planner helpful, though many of you might, now I think on it…) and it says, “Forgive yourself / for everything / every day.”

Whoa. What?! Yes. Forgive yourself for everything every day. It doesn’t mean forget. It doesn’t mean don’t make amends. It doesn’t mean to abandon working on your shit, feeling consequences or taking responsibility.

It means don’t carry what Emerson called the “absurdities” of the day from one morning to the next. Can you do that? I’m trying to. Let’s do it together.

Love you always—

~Catharine~

PS – I have spots available in my “Spirit Groups,” or as I originally called them, my spiritual deepening groups. Think you’d like an inexpensive way to experience spiritual companionship? Think being with other, like-hearted folks might be good for you. Just a place to lay your burdens down? Email me by replying to this note, and we’ll make a time to talk. Otherwise, go to this page and schedule your free half-hour chat: https://thewayoftheriver.com/schedule-appointments. I’d love to hear from you!

Dearest –

I write to you from the past.

I am always writing to you from the past.

But this week, it feels especially poignant, especially painful, and especially to the point, this writing from the past.

My friends and colleagues who are congregational ministers are having a terrible time: How does one say anything, write anything ahead of the day of an event, ahead of the day of publication, knowing that our political system may turn on a dime. That the insurrection that birthed the attack on the Capitol was coordinated, and well.

We have learned of Capitol Police who did their best to make themselves targets of the insurrectionist mob by luring the mob away from unsecured doorways. And we have learned that one of the Representatives from Massachusetts, and a member of “the Squad,” Ayanna Pressley (“the Squad” being Representatives Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman and Con Bush) had a particularly harrowing realization. All the panic buttons in her office suite were disabled and removed.

So I am writing to you from the past. By the time I write, the House of Representatives is moving, yet again, to impeach Donald Trump. By the time you receive this letter, he may already have resigned (though I confess I doubt it). He may already have been removed from office by some means as yet unknown to me.

What all of this reminds me of is this:

There is no “there.” Wishing I were not here is futile. Because I will always be “here.” Yes, yes, “Wherever you go, there you are,” is cliché. Of course, also cliché, is that such messages are repeated over and over because they are true.

We cannot take ourselves away from the realities of our times. We are here, friends. I do not know, today, writing from the past, where your “here” is right now. I do know, however, that you are no longer, “there,” as you seem to be for me.

I was hesitant to write Reflections at all this week. I was hesitant because I feel so utterly unqualified to write anything that comes across as prognostication. But then I realized that I cannot live in the future. I can only control what I can control – part of which is being in touch with my elected officials, a task that is on my to-do list for today, for sure. (You may check up on me to see whether I’ve accomplished it.)

Shakespeare wrote, “Our little lives are rounded with a sleep,” and I must say, I hope that is not true for you or for me. Even though I thoroughly believe that curating one’s intake of media is essential for mental wellness, I also understand that once we know some of what has come to light, we cannot unknow it. And once we know, we must act, in whatever small ways we can.

Last week, I encouraged everyone to use whatever platform, whatever relationships we have to work for the health and common good in this flawed Republic, the United States. And we also need to care for ourselves, our families, and the small communities-within-communities to which we belong. (Thanks to Paula Cole Jones for that expression.)

I will say this, then, from the very center of my wheelhouse:

Spiritual practice is one of the most reliable ways I keep myself grounded—responding to whatever emerges in the world from a proactive, responsible place—and centered—acting from a non-anxious, self-differentiated place. In fact, “Grounding and Centering” is the beginning of many, many Wiccan rituals. It is the way we clear our minds and bodies from unnecessary crap that we may be carrying around, so that we can be present to the task at hand.

One way both to do and to encourage spiritual practice as individuals is to find spiritual companions. Many of you know that I provide individual spiritual accompaniment. And one-with-one spiritual companioning is a good and beautiful thing—a part of my ministry I value tremendously. It is also a kind of ministry of which I take part myself.

But there is another kind of spiritual accompaniment that I find at least as helpful for myself, and that is spiritual accompaniment in a small group. With a crew of other people, they listen and are listened to. They pay attention and are attended to. We spend time deeply focusing on one another’s spiritual journeys, responding, inquiring, and waiting to perceive the movements of Spirit, within us, among us, and beyond us.

The practice takes between 90 minutes to two hours. We focus on different people’s spiritual journeys each meeting, and we hold one another in prayer between times. The meetings themselves are very structured, contemplative, and attentive, in a strong, sacred container I maintain with care.

I am currently offering two Spirit Groups—one is in the evening Eastern time, while the other meets twice a month around lunchtime, Eastern. I would be delighted to explain further details.

If you think a Spirit Group might be a helpful, grounding experience for you, or even if I’ve just piqued your interest, please schedule a free consultation call with me at https://thewayoftheriver.com/schedule-appointments.

May our lives be exemplars of compassion, the compassion of saying yes, and the compassion of saying no—

~Catharine~

My words are small and insignificant. They certainly are not enough. They hold afloat a mote of hope in my heart, despite the wave of growing rot at the core of my country.

Wednesday, the United States saw an escalation of what has been on the way for a long time. Political science experts on Nazism and Fascism have been saying for years that the Trump administration would incite violence against the American people for some time. Yesterday, though, protestors, waving American flags and chanting, “USA! USA!” mobbed the United States Capitol Building, the legislative home of the Republic they claim to defend.

There is a statement, often erroneously attributed to Sinclair Lewis, “When Fascism comes to the United States, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.” While it is a pithy comment on today’s state of affairs and worth paying attention to, no matter who said it, it is probably not Lewis’s.

Then take statements attributed to Eugene Debs, famous labor organizer: “Every robber or oppressor in history has wrapped himself in a cloak of patriotism or religion, or both.”

He also said, “…[I]n every age it has been the tyrant, who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both.”

We know, we who have been watching these last years – and not just the Trump years, but really since the rise of the Religious Right and the Reagan administration – we have known that something like this was inevitable… or, rather, that SOMETHING like this, I should emphasize, was inevitable.

We knew there would be violence. We knew there would be police shenanigans and Trumpist shenanigans. I did not expect the Mayor of DC to be denied the right to defend her city. I did not expect Metro Police and Capitol security to essentially open the doors and welcome the mob in.

As one of my colleagues pointed out, ‘I was once kicked out of a Senate office building for attempting to deliver letters from a coalition of very boring, mainstream organizations, directly to Senate offices instead of through the mail. Just in case you were wondering about what this shit is usually like. EDIT: “usually like” EVEN for Nice Cute Blonde White Ladies In Suits Working For Religious Organizations.”’

These are the observations, the realities we must face in the United States now. We are being confronted, yet again, by the fascism that has been growing at the heart of the US for a long time.

We must resist it. We must uncover a national identity of generosity, nobility, compassion, and integrity.

And in order to do that, friends, we must use whatever is at our disposal. We must use whatever platforms we have, take whatever social risks we need to, to move those who otherwise would not get involved to watch, see-sense-hear-perceive what is happening, and to act, themselves. I am not saying that violence in response is what is needful. I am not saying that everyone should put their bodies on the line.

But what can you do?
With whom can you speak?
Do you work with youth? Ask them what they think. Ask them what they think about what has happened and about what should be done.
Know people who work in front-facing jobs at greater personal risk of COVID? Get energized to help make sure they are safe, better paid, and treated well until this mess of governmental vaccine programs can help.
Parent? Speak in age-appropriate ways to your children about what happened yesterday.

Use what you have to talk about what happened yesterday.

What happened Wednesday were acts of sedition – threats to the safety of the duly elected officials of the United States, and on the certification process of a reasonably free election. (I say “reasonably” because one must know that, in some places, the votes of people of color and immigrants were still suppressed.) I am grateful that in the small hours of the night the Presidential and Vice-Presidential votes were certified.

Nevertheless, remember that what we just saw was the white supremacy at the heart of United States culture making itself unmistakably heard. Remember that this is a country the wealth of which comes directly from chattel slavery of thousands of Black African-descended people. Remember that this is a place where millions of people look at Donald Trump, the “self-made man,” “the good businessman,” “the wealthy man,” and see something that they themselves can attain. Leaving aside that he is none of these things, the chances of any of those followers becoming like him, or Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg are vanishingly, infinitesimally small.

I am not relaxing my guard, friends. And you must not either.

Yes, think, pray, consider – and allow the deities of justice and struggle, the Wellsprings of Living Water, the hands of the Divine, the Love and Compassion that say “NO, this must not stand,” to move you toward courage, discernment, clarity, and more courage. We need courage. We need it to speak the truth.
We need the courage to say no.
We need courage to call treachery, treachery and sedition, sedition.

Let us not let these armed insurrectionists, domestic terrorists, and all those who support them, take our country further away from what good is available in it.
Please, let us not.

Dear Ones –

For those of you who are new here, this missive is my weekly love letter, Reflections, that I send out to let folks know what I’m up to, what I’m thinking, what I think is important at the moment, the state of my rose garden, and various and sundry other things.

Second, please don’t forget, dear ones, that “Relinquish and Reclaim,” my sixth annual Going into the Dark retreat, is THIS Saturday. If you want to come, please register, or if you have ANY questions or concerns, please let me know, simply by replying to this email. These questions may concern content, price, behavioral expectations, the structure of calls…really anything at all.

Today is a day to be reminded of a nuance of (imagine me singing) one of my favorite things!

The other day, as I was praying and reflecting with one of our comrades from the book, Celtic Spirit, by Celtic scholar and mystic, Caitlin Matthews, I came across a reflection on what she called, “Perseverance.” The title immediately caught my attention, as perseverance has things in common with persistence. And those of who you’ve been around the block with me know that I BEAT THE DRUM of persistent gentleness and gentle persistence all the time.

What caught my eye and captured my attention was Matthews’s point about when perseverance can fail, or when you need to take another tactic other than the one you’re currently using. She says, “When is perseverance not enough? When we have tried to the limits of our ability, when we have tried all avenues of pursuit, when there is no more help to be sought, it is reasonable to consider whether this project is the right one or being approached in the right way.” (the Celtic Spirit, p. 41)

Here is a whole new angle on the gentle in “gentle persistence.”

Sometimes, loves, gentle persistence has taken you as far as even it can go. Sometimes wisdom and compassion dictate a new perspective altogether.

Sometimes, sometimes it’s just not the right time to do what you’re trying to do. Sometimes it’s just not the right diagnosis. Sometimes it’s just not the right approach.

Sometimes you just cannot do it, no matter how much you want to.

Sometimes, what you’ve learned through your persistence, your perseverance, are the invaluable lessons of what hasn’t worked, or even what can feel like failure. But learning what isn’t working can help you choose a new path, one that is more likely to get your arrow to the target.

The other thing that is super helpful in getting that arrow going in the right direction to begin with – and this one is part of both gentleness and persistence – is spiritual practice. Dailiness. The structure that is such a struggle for so many of us to put into place, but which nourishes our souls and makes our lives easier ever when we “aren’t looking.” A daily examination of consciousness – what have you done today? How do you feel about it? What needs forgiveness (toward yourself or others)? What deserves celebration? A set of daily prayers like the Rosary, Sufi chanting, or other repeated, trance-inducing prayers, depending on your tradition. Meeting with a friend to share spiritual companionship or seeing a spiritual director once a month to talk about what is happening beneath the surface of your life.

All these things can help make your persistence gentler – and more effective. Both! My favorite answer! Both!

So persevere. Persist. Remember the t-shirts about Elizabeth Warren, quoting the Republican leadership: Nevertheless, she persisted. Yes. But when the time comes, as Mary Oliver says, let it go. Whether it’s the whole project. The relationship. The methods that you’re using to work through something.

Sometimes – often, even – the answer is not to work harder, but to work differently. That is common wisdom by now, but something I still thing bears mentioning.

Be gentle.

Be persistent.

Give yourself the benefit of the doubt in these strange and stressful times.

And forgive yourself for everything every day. Even if it needs to change. Even if you need to make amends. Let self-compassion be the foundation of all you do.

This is my last Reflections for the year! Oh my! (I just realized it.)

If I don’t see you at Going into the Dark, know that you have my blessings, and that those of us in attendance will bless you and whatever observances you make this year as the northern hemisphere slants away from the sun and we move into the close and holy darkness.

I love you.

Catharine

I cannot help myself, I just can’t-

This isn’t an email promoting Going into the Dark, but it is an email about the metaphors often associated with the dark that I do not use, and my beliefs about the importance of darkness in the metaphorical, spiritual, and physical lives of human beings.

Someone I know was asked about their theology of “darkness,” and this has me thinking about my theology of darkness.

Darkness has been used as a catch-all for maleficia – “black magic.” It’s been used to refer to all of Africa – the Dark Continent – as in the Busch Gardens amusement park. When we’re feeling bleak or without faith, some say we’re in a “dark night of the soul.” And let’s face it, if something feels bad, scary, oogy, unpleasant, or depressing, someone might call it “dark.”

First, I want to note that the “Dark Night of the Soul,” by John of the Cross does not refer to a loss of faith, but is rather a place along the path of self-losing, self-empty, even you might say, “self-obliterating,” that happens in the mystic life. It is about one moment along the path to union with God, not the contrary.

“The Dark Continent,” well, just save me from that one. The overt, even obvious racism inherent in that one is rough even to write about. Entire continent, an entire continent, full of millions of people, described, even named, from the perspective of Christian, white colonists who thought of themselves as “bringers of light,” even as they enslaved generations of West Africans.

And not only that, but an amusement park in Tampa Bay, Florida, was called “The Dark Continent,” with no irony, no self-reflection on the part of those involved, who I can only assume were white. The name of the park plays on the draw of the occult (meaning “hidden”), the secret, the creepy, the funhouse-scary, all wrapped up in one shockingly racist package.

And finally, and nearly most important, the concept of “black magic.” Maleficia – “evil doing” – is the correct term for harmful or malicious magic. “Black magic,” is usually used to mean “evil” or occasionally, “left-handed” magic. People ask me, “Are you a white witch?” by which they mean “Do you use magic to hurt people?” and “Should I be afraid of you?”

But at its root, using “black magic” in this way contributes to the idea that anything dark – people of dark skin (however that is being defined in a given moment), the night, the deep, the dark parts of our bodies, and Earth Herself – is to be feared as potentially evil.

This whole idea is decidedly racist. Body-hating. Earth-hating. Shameful.

If I refer to “black magick” I mean magic of the night, magic that allows us to confront and integrate our Shadow, magic that protects us with the mantle of close and holy darkness, magic that tells us we are braving the unknown, and magic that acknowledges we are not full-solar people.

What do I mean by full-solar people?

This idea was brought to my attention both by our comrade, Jack Mandeville, as well as by the Welsh poet, David Whyte. It refers to the idea that we are, or ought to be people of the “full sun,” never acknowledging the hiddenness, the gentle or nonexistent moonlight and starlight, the unknown in our own souls.

We have, like the Jewish and other calendars, an interior calendar that is metaphorically both solar and lunar. We have solar seasons. We need not be sunshine all the time. In fact, if we claim to be, we’re flat-out lying. Even the sun itself is not “sunny” all the time, and in fact, in some parts of the world, disappears for weeks at a time in the winter.

We have stretches of power and intensity. We have stretches of contemplation and introspection. These longer stretches follow our sun, as it were. Sometimes lighter, sometimes darker, neither better than the other, each having its place.

Our lunar side moves more quickly, in shorter periods, and encompasses both the light and the dark, moving steadily, changing daily, and just as necessary for understanding the passage of time as our solar side. We must not insist on, as David Whyte says, “going outside only when the moon is full,” meaning that we only allow our lighter, clearer sides to show.

And lest I stray into the territory of Going into the Dark, I’ll end here, with a prayer from Jan Richardson, as those of us in the Northern Hemisphere travel more and more deeply into the gathering darkness. I pray for you,

That in the darkness

there be a blessing.

That in the shadows

there be a welcome.

That in the night

you be encompassed

by the Love that knows your name.

From Jan Richardson’s “A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark”

As ever, yours –

~Catharine~

First off, don’t forget! Going into the Dark is just about a month away, and there’s still time for you to arrange calendar, relationships, obligations to give yourself the gift of a day of love, a day of peace, a day of depth. Go to Going into the Dark at The Way of the River to learn more!

Dear hearts –

The expression amor fati was first taught to me by a friend of mine, a young man about to turn 24, who was spending time with me in the Center for Women Students at Penn States. We would hang out there and discuss this and that and the other thing.

It was September of 1991, and I was 19. I was in the grip of the up-and-down of bipolar disorder. As in most autumns, I was rarely depressed. And besides, around Anthony, I regularly found my mood elevated. Who needed sleep when you could have poetry? Or time at dawn to learn to count in Russian by marching across campus, saying the numbers in time to our steps? Or play chess in the little, then-all-night diner on Pugh Street, the one that kept changing hands?

I wrote and wrote. I wrote about Queen Elizabeth the First, the Turning Year, burning down the cities of my relationships, the necessity for subtleness. (By the way, in case you’re new around here, and welcome to you, that subtleness I thought was so necessary is a concept, a way of being I have never achieved, not even a little.)

And it was from Anthony that I learned the concept of amor fati, the love of fate, as it were. In other contexts in which I’ve written, you might hear me refer to it as the embrace of one’s Wyrd, one’s destiny, the mission one was built for.

It is in these times that I find myself thinking a lot about Wyrd. What is my destiny—not my unchangeable, inexorable fate, not what is written permanently anywhere in any book—but what is it for which I am built?

My friend who has worked in places with disaster preparedness, hurricane and earthquake recovery and unaccompanied minor refugees is someone who is truly realizing his Wyrd. He is built to run toward the burning building; not for him to stand on the curb and watch.

One’s Wyrd is seldom easy. We wonder about free will – do we have it, or must we just act as though we have it? If things were different, as I like to say, things would be different.

I am the product of millions of years of life and longer on this planet. While I am unique in all of history and time (and of course, so are you), what is most important about me is that there is nothing, nothing about me from which I am separate, like it or not. There is no one, there is no thing—living, dead, sentient, “inanimate,” from which I can be divided. In Stone Circle Wicca, we call this reality, “sacredness-connectedness.” Perhaps not the most felicitous of language, but it gets to the heart of the matter.

Battles and bloodbaths. Buttercups and butterflies. The girl and the pirate who rapes her, as Thich Nhat Hah writes so compellingly in his poem “Call Me by My True Names.” I am part of all of these, and so are you. You cannot escape it. Reality only wins 100% of the time. And as Byron Katie says, it is better to fall in love with life, with reality, than to come to it with our hands wrapped for boxing.

I do not believe there is any “escape” from this Wheel, and I do not desire it. Instead, I remember that connection is an empirically observable reality, and that reverence is how I approach that reality, naming it sacred. And so sacredness-connectedness.

I say aaaaaalllll of that to say what Parker Palmer says: Let Your Life Speak. What are you built for? What can you do? In these times of unquiet desperation, how can you be one of the helpers Mister Rogers always advised us to look for? What is your platform, as it were, no matter how small? Even if you have limitations—and hello, Blanche, who doesn’t?—even limitations the world calls debilitating, you can be a way, you can do a thing, you can “get and spend” with wisdom and with care. You can be one of the helpers.

This Thursday night – 5:30 Pacific/8:30 Eastern – we will fete our ancestors! Come join the fun, arriving in pj’s, work clothes (at least on top!), or holiday costumes! Come make a Toast to the Ancestors!

Dear ones –

So, I have this phrase. Some people might call it a mantra, given how often I repeat it, but it’s not in any East Asian language and I’m not Hindu. It’s a phrase that has helped many of my Ministerial Fellowship Committee clients get through their panels.

It’s a phrase I have on a blue post-it on my desk with purple lettering and a glittering red heart. I can look at it every day, if I so choose, and I often do. I share it with you here:

Yes. “Just because I’m anxious doesn’t mean that anything is wrong.”

Now, just as in the famous statement about paranoia, just because I’m anxious doesn’t meant that NOTHING is wrong, either. There’s been plenty and plenty and plenty all this year to be anxious about, and reasonably so. And there still is. Good GRAVY, there still is!

My spouse is so anxious about national-level elections that she can’t really talk about them.​

I am fretting over pregnant orcas in the Salish Sea and the fact that most of their babies don’t live to adulthood.​

Not only that, but I was so anxious over the time I took off (thank you for understanding), that it was only once the time was over that I felt able to truly relax and unwind. Just in time to come back to all kinds of things waiting for me, some of which I love and renew my spirit, and some of which, well, when will I use that database properly?

I tell myself this all the time. One of my clients from this past Ministerial Fellowship Committee cohort told me that by the way, he had begun telling himself, “Just because I’m anxious doesn’t meant that anything is wrong.​

My work is done here, I thought. Well, not entirely, but pretty darn close.

Nevertheless, there are real reasons, reasonable, thoughtful reasons to be anxious.

And nevertheless, the underlying principle of the maxim holds true:

Address the anxiety before you try to address the content of the anxiety.​

We are all suffering under a weight of anxiety. Anxiety; straight-up fear for our lives, homes, and loved ones; anger in any number of directions; and grief, so much grief, as I’ve written here before.

But we can all address the anxiety we’re feeling. All of us. First. Before we try to save the whole world all at once. Before we charge headlong into an argument we’ve been invited to fight. Before the sense of powerlessness really sinks in.

The anxiety itself lives in our bodies. Like all emotions, it has physiological effects and symptoms. And we can work on letting them go.

For some of us, letting go of anxiety in the moment involves the techniques called Grounding and Centering. For others, it is going for a run. For others, it is engaging with our creative faculties. And for almost all of us, it involves remembering to breathe.

Just remembering.

Remembering that we are always breathing. As Thich Nhat Hahn wrote, “Breathe—you are alive!”

We are always breathing, but we can choose the tempo, the depth, the attention and mindfulness we bring to that breath. Physical activity can do this, as can seated meditation.

If I’m in a chair and I start to feel anxious, I know I need to plant my feet and curl my toes down, as though I’m holding the Earth, just as She holds me.

After a while, I don’t feel the anxiety tightening me up so much. After a while, even if something is wrong – and remember, there might not be! – I can think about what made me anxious and decide, can I do anything about this issue in this moment.​

If I can, then I try to do it.

If not, then for the moment, the practice needs to be relinquishing the false sense of power that anxiety has carried. I cannot do everything. I cannot save everyone. I cannot even save most of the people any portion of the time. I cannot.

And reality only wins 100% of the time.

Again, reality only wins 100% of the time. (Thank you, Byron Katie.)

And so what cannot be done must be left undone. Undone and let go, at least for now. I can be anxious about it again later if I feel like it.

So darlings, I encourage you, encourage you so strongly to consider, the next time you’re all over anxiety, to remember that it’s entirely possible nothing (at least nothing you’re worrying about at the moment) is wrong. And then to give the anxiety the attention it’s asking for.

And then look again at what reality is telling you. And let reality win as graciously as you can. It’s going to anyway, so we may as well give way with compassion for our great hearts that want to do so much, save so much, savor soo much.

I love you. I worry about you. And I’m doing what I can in this moment to try to care for you.

Blessings upon blessings – and I hope to see you Thursday night!

~Catharine~

The post A Way to Graciously Let Reality Win appeared first on The Way of the River.

An edition of Reflections from the archives!

(We’ve been at this a while, you and I, it seems…I hope you enjoy it)

***Don’t forget to look at the PS below for October 29th, 2020***

Dear ones~

Wow.

What a week. I’ve been talking about authenticity, vulnerability, truth-telling, and bravery of late. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve taken some huge steps to deepen my relationships with those qualities.

For example, this past week, on Tuesday and Friday, I published two blog posts, called “Hearing Voices” (parts one and two). The title was not euphemistic.

In case you’re not someone who reads my blogs, let me tell you just a bit about these posts. They tell the story of my learning I have bipolar disorder. They tell the story of my learning that what I had always thought of as “inner critics” actually qualify as auditory hallucinations. Needless to say, it was a scary realization, something harrowing to my sense of myself.

We all have stories we tell about ourselves, who we are, what we can and cannot do. We all have stories to make sense of our experiences, and we build those stories into identities. Over time, the limitations we build into those stories become fixed parts of our senses of ourselves.

“I’m too afraid to see a psychiatrist.” “I don’t have the attention span to do that.” “I’m too ashamed to talk to a doctor.”

These are all stories I have told myself. And they are also all stories I am working to change.

I read a quotation today, attributed to Helen Keller: “Although there is great suffering in the world, there is also great overcoming of it.” It’s true. We all suffer. We all have stories. And we have the opportunity to alleviate our suffering. We have the chance to change our stories.

In my case, it takes a combination of things, often gentleness, love, encouragement, faith, and persistence from the outside, as well as gentleness, persistence, love, faith, and courage from the inside.

Courage.

Bravery.

You have it, my friend. Even if you feel stuck; even if you are stuck in a pattern you wish you could get out of, you have the courage to find the other qualities you need to change—change the story, change the identity, change the suffering.

I am a shockingly big person, my friends. I am terrified of doctors. I have been hurt, physically and emotionally, by doctors since I was young. But I have started seeing a new health care provider, despite my fears.

I have terrible pain in my knees. See fear of doctors above. But I started physical therapy this week.

My brain doctor is closing her practice. She and I have worked together for the last 8 ½ years. I am meeting with a new practitioner tomorrow. I’m terrified.

I don’t mean to say, “If I can do it, you can do it.” We’re all different. My trans* friends have different reasons to be afraid of medical practitioners than I do. My friends and loved ones with undiagnosed chronic illness have yet different reasons. My friends who are sex workers are misunderstood, vilified, and dismissed as having “false consciousness.”

We all have reasons for not doing the things we’d like to and doing the things we don’t want to. (Thank you, Paul of Tarsus.)

Nonetheless, you do have the courage to take one turtle step toward what you want.

You can dare to do the living room dance party instead of being paralyzed by believing you “should” go to the gym. You can dare to open a channel of communication when you’ve been afraid to have a conversation. You can dare to bare your arms or legs in public when it’s warm, even though you’ve been afraid of what people might think.

You can dare to advocate for yourself when it’s called for—or to ask a trusted someone to come to the scary place with you.

This is my list, of course. What is your list? What are you afraid to do, to say, to be?

You have the courage. You are brave. You can do what you are most afraid to do. You can.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” I don’t know about “must,” but I do know that “where there’s fear there’s power.” (Starhawk). I do know that the more I confront my fears of vulnerability and authenticity, the stronger I become.

I wish that same strength for you, beloveds. Blessings to you.

~Catharine~

PS – Don’t forget to register for the party! What party? Why, A Toast for the Ancestors! Check it out, and come prepared to listen and share on Octgober 29th at 5:30 Pacific!

The post You Have the Courage You Need appeared first on The Way of the River.

​Next week in this space: SUPER exciting news – an invitation from The Way of the River.

The post appeared first on The Way of the River.

Do you need more emotional and spiritual support in these days? Please contact me at magic@thewayoftheriver.com to see whether working together seems like it might help. I want to be there for you. 

My dears –  

I had an edition of Reflections half-written – and promised to those of you on the Facebook Community Group – about the deadly allure of productivity. And maybe I’ll write about that next week. After all, the refrain I keep hearing after I ask how people are, “Well, I’m not being very productive, but…” is disturbing me. 

But that is not what is with me today. Today I am watching my garden wake up, as I have been for the last few weeks, perhaps even more attentive than I would have been a year ago, because today, like every day this month, I will be staying home. Today I am writing about what is settling over the planet, and certainly over the United States residents I know: grief.  

I first recognized it when I realized a set of familiar feelings and sensations. I was moving through molasses. The fog in my head made thinking hard. Everything felt overwhelming. I wasn’t able to get work done in the ways I wanted to.  

And honestly, not much of that has gone away. I’m feeling much better than I was before the active mental health crisis I was in passed, but I’m still noticing those other feelings. And I’ve remembered the last time I felt them, which was when my father died.  

I was blessed to spend the day my father died with my family, gathered around his body, spending time in tears and conversation, doing a fair amount of drinking, and going through the motions of a day. I remember so clearly when Julie’s and my nephew, Sacha, started crying and squirming on my brother’s lap because he’d never, in all his wise three years, seen his father burst into tears.  

We went to lunch. We picked at the food we ordered. Julie, the grounded, clear-headed, helpful daughter- and sister-in-law, took Sacha outside when he got antsy. And the rest of us continued to sink into what we new was a deep grief.  

The grief would stay with us. It’s still with us sometimes in little moments, here and there, but it was its most powerful that day. At his memorial service, I read “In Blackwater Woods,” with its wrenching last lines, “To live in this world, / you must be to do three things. / To love what is mortal, / to hold it against your bones knowing / your own life depends on it, / and when the time comes to let it go, / to let it go.” But even the grief of that day—even reading those lines with a voice broken by tears, surrounded by colleagues, friends, and relatives—didn’t hold a candle to that first day, that day of his death. 

Some of us have already felt the most pointed talons of COVID-19 grasp our hearts; some of us have already had someone die from it. The mother-in-law of a dear friend of mine has died. Her family cannot have a funeral. They cannot gather in the comfort of the arms of the outward rings of friends and family. 

Three friends of mine have had it and recovered.  

And we, our whole culture—I suspect, the whole world—are moving through grief. And nothing is going to stop it or its phases of denial, “This can’t be happening,” bargaining, “If I just do these things I won’t have to feel this terrible feeling,” anger, “God DAMN it, why is this happening,” and acceptance, “This is happening and will be happening for some time to come.” We will pass through these times in variations of these conditions for some time, spinning through them in chaotic order, with seemingly no reason for being in one place once and another place later on. We don’t stop at acceptance. After all, I still have my, “If only I had…” about the loss of my father, ten years after his own deaths. They come and go. But they come.  

So we move through the molasses. We do our best to think clearly. We feel the paralysis. We are rational and make plans, stay home, spray surfaces, wash our hands, wash our hands some more. And some of us cry and find ourselves crying again. Crying with fear. Crying with anger. Crying with loss. 

These are the conditions of grief, my friends. And there is, as my friends and comrades, Revs. Tracy Springberry and Matthew Cockrum remind us, “The price of a good life is to feel it.” 

There’s nothing for it, friends. We just have to feel it. Feel it and try to make what we can of it. There doesn’t have to be a silver lining to this mess we find ourselves in. We don’t have to make meaning of it, not now, and maybe not ever. 

I love you, and I am grieving with you. 

~Catharine~ 

The post This Feeling We’re Feeling Is Grief appeared first on The Way of the River.

Dear friends –

I invite you to watch this video of the Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley…my favorite autumnal poem, hands down (and yes, I mean even including “In Blackwater Woods,” by Mary Oliver).

It is the poem of the dying year, of the cooling air and lengthening nights, all brought on the West Wind to where Shelley lived in 19th-century England.

There is also a special invitation to The Way of the River’s annual Going Into the Dark Retreat at the end of the video…something very special is afoot!

Blessings and love… I hope you enjoy the poem!

~Catharine~

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Lammas (from “Loaf Mass”) is here, and I’ve made a little video for us to share!

Lammas, as the first of the harvest festivals, the grain holiday, is all about the “fruit of Earth and work of human hands.” It is the holiday of bread and sacrifice, the body of the grain cut down, threshed, milled, worked, kneaded, baked, and given.

In Stone Circle Wicca, we teach about Thirteen Tools of Ceremony. This year, our nearest-to-Lammas class falls on The Cauldron. The healers, dyers, hearth-keepers…. the Tool of all of Them, all those we encounter as the Divine: One and Many, Male, Female, Both, and Neither (All and None). The Cauldron is the container of the Force of Love that gives life to the Universe.

Where do you find the Divine? Where are you working on the soup, the dye, the healing poultice that can help save the world? How can you be a conspirator with Divine Love, working to help us love one another better?

As ever, if you want to talk more about any of this, find me at magic@thewayoftheriver.com. I’d love to hear from you, truly.

Love and blessings of Lammas sacrifice made, given, and received –
~Catharine~

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My dears –

One of the things I haven’t written to you about much is the time just before I was lucky enough to find my way – be given a way – back home to myself when my way was obscured. A time when it was very easy to find me, given any particular day of the week…

Mondays, you see, Mondays we went to the Dark Horse. Excellent wings there (I mean, they were excellent. A cross between a garlic sauce and something really spicy. Oh, so good.), a rockabilly band my group of friends loved, and $5 drinks—tall, unwatered, crazy-ass drinks.

Tuesdays were next, of course, at a bar called (who knows why? Not I!) the Phyrst. It’s the kind of incredibly divey place with really sticky floors, long, trestle-style tables, and another band we danced and danced and danced to.

Thank goddess for the dancing.

Wednesdays, to round out our healthful living, oh yes, back to the Horse and the wings, and that drink called “Pazzo’s Revenge.” I don’t remember what was in it. Only that it was $5 and I only drank two (maybe three?) in a night. At a time when all our paychecks burned holes in our pockets the second we hit the bars, that was a bargain!

Thursday was another dive (but one I still love in my heart of hearts), also underground (why do all these places need stairs to get into the front door?!), and a return to our rockabilly friends.

Friday, we played pool. I was never great at pool, but I played and went home early.

Saturday we were “off” because there might be parties to attend. And if there weren’t parties to go out to, we certainly knew how to make our own. One famous quotation, from one of those long-ago times: “You know what this party has too much of? PANTS!”

Which brings us to Sunday, the slowest night of the week for the bars in town. And so naturally, it was queer night at a club, and that night I danced more than I drank, and maybe I hit up the Thursday night bar before I went home for the night.

Oh look! It’s Monday.

Over and over and over.

I cannot IMAGINE how much money we spent as a group during that time—or even how much I spent on my own. There is a comrade in The Way of the River who could probably figure it out, but don’t worry, I won’t ask you.

There are people from that time who are among my dear friends. And maybe that time in our lives was just part of growing up. Just part of a phase of late adolescence, or something.

But I was lost.

Lost with no sense of what I was going to do besides spin on this rat-wheel of bars and parties with no end in sight.

I had a decent job. I had somehow managed to keep friendly with the people with whom I had been roommates—largely through their own largesse of heart. I finally was learning how to pay my bills. I was paying off my student loan from my first and second attempts at college, after having defaulted on them.

I had good friends. Real friends. I was lucky/blessed enough to have a spiritual community that, I believe, held me as together as I was at that time.

But I was drinking and dancing or recovering from drinking half my waking hours.

I was simply spinning my wheels with no sense of future, only regret for my past, and no pride in the present.

Enter Paula. Paula was a Sister of St. Joseph, a member of the order of Roman Catholic religious sisters with whom I was in relationship while I was studying to become a Wiccan priestess. (Yup. I’ve always been this way: Why do one thing when you can choose seemingly opposing things?)

It was Paula who taught me the word discernment.

It was Paula who taught me about the Jesuits’ focus on prayer and contemplation, action and leaving this world better than you found it, and (color you shocked?) discernment.

Not just discernment in the sense of being able to tell one thing from another. Not just the sense of having a discriminating palate or being smart. Those things—a fussy taste in cheese and high SAT’s—I had always had. I didn’t need any more of that.

What I needed was to come to know who I might hope to be.

I needed discernment, and how.

Discernment about finding my values.

Discernment about finding my hopes.

Discernment ultimately about finding my own deepest desires.

It was Sister Paula, bless her, and Sisters Mary (and Mary and Mary—I am not making that up), and Carolyn who taught me about formal discernment.

Obviously, I never became a Roman Catholic sister, but it was in part because the sisters’ lessons themselves stuck with me. I learned about my own values and what I needed. And eventually I knew the lessons of discernment weren’t even Catholic at all. They were lessons anyone could use; even me.

And I needed them. I needed them and I used them to find that the spiritual nourishment I received was the spiritual nourishment I wanted to provide. I needed Spirit at the center of my life, and until I had that, the days of my life would be dust in my mouth.

I started looking hard at how discernment played with the values of my Wiccan tradition, how discernment was used in secular contexts, and how I could put it all together. Because, no matter how messed up my life looked, I was always someone who wanted to Bring It All Together. And I still am.

And as I have done and continue to do the work of Bringing It All Together (though now my theology would say, “Catharine, how can you bring together what has never been separate?” but that’s another letter.), I have come back to discernment again and again.

So this August, I will once more offer Making Hard Choices: The Art of Discernment. I will share some of what I learned from those sisters. I will share some of what I have learned in the arts of priestessing. And I will share some tried-and-true, totally secular methods of discerning how to build a life, how to make good decisions, how to make hard choices.

Discernment isn’t about choosing between bad and good. That’s the easy version. Discernment is about choosing among choices seeming equally problematic or equally beautiful. And Making Hard Choices is indeed about how to feel, intuit, and come to know deeply in what direction your North Star lies.

Discernment says, “Do I want to keep doing what I’m doing, or do I dare to ask the questions I know are deep inside of me?”

Discernment is great when you know you need it now. But its practices can become beautiful, helpful, common—or even daily—parts of your life.

Making Hard Choices: The Art of Discernment may be for you right now because you are at one of those branching, life-defining moments.

Or Making Hard Choices may be for you just to have discernment as a friend always there for you when you need them. Because you never know when you’re going to need them most.

My days no longer begin and end with the question of what bar I will go to. Instead, Spirit is at the origin and circumference of what I do. Authenticity, integrity, compassion, wisdom, and most of all, love, determine my courses of action. And it is because of discernment that I learned those values were mine. It is because of discernment that I learned those values are what I want to live up to. It is because of discernment that I have come to know so many of you, so many marginalized in other religious environments (even when you lead them!), so many wandering in a desert of uncertainty.

Now be careful, mind – I am NOT saying I will give you certainty – I can only provide a set of tools you can use to help find your own compass.

Will you consider joining me this summer on the journey of finding (or indeed building) your compass?

I hope to see you!

~Catharine~

PS – If you’d like the nuts and bolts, or even just find your curiosity piqued, go HERE to find out more information about August’s Making Hard Choices and join us on this summer’s journey of discernment.

PPS – And hey you! Yes you, the one with the packs of cards you haven’t touched in months… click the link above to find out even more information—information about Tarot for Discernment, my September class!

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