Beloveds ~

The following was in response to a query from a colleague who’s been asked to sit on a committee designed to address medical responses to fatness in elders. I answered way more than “The brief,” as they say on GBBO (and probably in British schools, though I don’t know). Thanks to Revs. Kate and Molly for the query and the typing up and cleaning up!

What do I wish medical professionals knew about being fat in a medical environment?

“1. Medical professionals WAY before you have treated us poorly, guaranteed. Dismissively. As though we’re lost causes unworthy of help with our overall health. One fat woman I know with a cyst on her breast has had three surgeons see her and walk out. One mumbled, “sorry.” None gave his name.

2. Stay in your lane. No, it is NOT the job of every medical professional of every rank and kind to either a. Ask us to lose weight, b. Ask whether we’ve ever dieted, c. Ask “Have you considered weight-loss surgery?” Consider before your speak how it is possible that we could not only live in this culture, but also be in a big body and NOT consider those things.

3. The most conservative numbers show that, at five years out, 85% of dieters have gained all their weight back. Of those, (raised hand) 40% will gain more than we lost.

4. We know that weight cycling, or “yo-yo” dieting, is significantly more damaging to health than being “overweight.”

5. In The Obesity Myth [transcriber’s insert: Paul Campos, 2004], the author looks at the numbers and discovers that those deemed “overweight” in fact have the longest life expectancy. (Though see BMI note below.)

6. Fat people can be orthorectic, anorexic, have binge eating disorder, or be intuitive and attentive to their bodies and therefore, healthful eaters.

7. Speaking of knees… a. YES, many more heavy people have BETTER outcomes than smaller people. b. Not only that, but why do you get to decide that our pain is immaterial, when you’d happily treat the pain of a thin runner? At what point does our pain matter to you? And furthermore, c. Risks are just that, risk. There are may reasons people do things. Many. And not one of them… not ONE (I am using the microphone for those who didn’t hear)… is because of laziness. Lazy should be excised from all our vocabularies.

8. Damn, I have many things to say on this topic. BMI was never intended to be an individual instrument of measurement, but rather a sociological statistical tool. It also correlates with (other) racist health care practices. Read Fear of the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia by Sabrina Strings for more on this topic.

9. Paramedics, CNAs, nurses, transfer and transportation staff, interns, residents, and ATTENDING doctors need to have regular familiarity with or at least training in the pain management, wound care, movements, pitfalls (like areas for pressure sores), and the use of bariatric equipment all pertaining to fat people’s experience/needs.

10. Well over 85% of us have dieted at LEAST once in our lives. And yet the rate of success is so low… how would your reckon those as surgical odds?

11. I remember first being told, “You don’t need that,” by one of my aunts when I reached for a cookie at three or four years old. I was on my first diet in second grade. I now weigh 600 pounds, after well over twenty (at least) rounds at intentional weight loss and several prescriptions of psych meds. You do the math.

12. Some of us—like me—are like previously kicked and abused animals. We ASSUME we’re going to be hurt. So at the first sign of aggression we exhibit trauma responses BECAUSE WE HAVE LIVED THROUGH TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES. Ahem.

13. Gowns. Waiting rooms. Beds. Stretchers. Why do we have to call ahead, check in, be our own fat case managers? Gowns are too small — if they may be too small, tell us in advance to bring our own. If we even HAVE our own, given who has hospital gowns lying around? Waiting rooms MUST, that’s MUST have large chairs, love seats, and/or (ideally and) chairs without arms. Thin people who are occupying one of these should know to get up and switch seats when we enter the room. We shouldn’t have to ask.

14. Patisserie’s dozen. Interrogate the fact that the people who know best how to use surgical tools appropriate for the very fat among us are those who practice “bariatric”—that is, “weight loss”—surgery. They are those trained in the use of the longer instruments needed to address our bodies’ surgical concerns.

All surgeons—and other health care providers—need to stop blaming our bodies and start blaming your training and enculturation. (Wow, that last line sums up a lot!)

Good authors are Lindo/Linda Bacon, Lucy Aphramor, Ellyn Satter (especially for parents!),Sabrina Strings, and the founders of Be Nourished.

Last—the best way to keep your kids from hating their bodies is not to pour shame upon your own, Let us be kind. Even and especially to ourselves, no matter our size.

Nope, not last… this is last: being fat can be so hard, Why would you make it harder? People have already tried blame and shame and it hasn’t worked. We cannot hate our way to health on any axis. First, do no harm.”

Beloveds, hear me, ALL of us–we cannot hate ourselves or our bodies into anything good. When did hate make flowers grow? Tender, gentle, persistent compassion makes things grow and flourish. May we all shower ourselves with compassion, and so, then, make it our mission to learn about those different from ourselves, and thereby create a better world for our Descendants of Blood, Choice, or Spirit.

Blessings on you, my dears. Blessed be your bellies. Blessed be –

~Catharine~

Dear ones –

So here I am in my bed, thinking of all the things that people have done for me —

Doctors have been paid to get me the referrals, medicines, therapies, and consultations I need.

Friends have made donations so that we can order food.

Another friend brought a casserole. (I think Jack Mandeville is leaning into his South Carolina roots, what do you think?)

My mom (hi, Joyce Buck!) has come to help Julie and me with cooking, cleaning, and all the things that will ease Julie’s burden a bit. And Morgan came a while ago and will be here again.

The Council of Third Degree Initiates of Stone Circle Wicca (USA) made a ceremony for me, honoring the work, musical and otherwise, that I have done with them over the years, as well as offering healing and strength from the four Elements.

(In that same ceremony, our comrade Jonathan White was also standing at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, a place from which he had watched the blood-red moon rise the night before. As he said, “The Daughter giving birth to the Mother.”

I have written here about how empowering it is to be asked to help. People like it. They like, in their strength and abundance, to be able to show love in substantive, concrete ways. I know I do. I enjoy loving on others. Buying Julie a dress that fits and is one of her good shades of green has made me happy for days and days. I am so proud. I know I did something that helped her, made her happy, and let her know I was paying attention and had her in mind.

Furthermore, and what THIS missive is about is that, even when asking for help is hard, even when the ask seems too big, I am finding that it is generally worth it. The hardest one of these asks has been speaking to my friends in Stone Circle Wicca. We have another dear friend and Initiate who is in dire health straits — more dire than mine — and I am very aware of that.

But I was and remain so aware of how important connection is. I was and remained so aware of how much I needed it and how little I was getting it. I felt alone in my pain and in my healing, and I knew where I needed to turn.I knew what I wanted, what I hoped for, and what was out there. So Julie, bless her, pushed me to ask for what I wanted. Though I desperately feared a no — that indication that now is not the right time — I knew in my heart that if I heard a no, it would be an invitation to practice.

But I did not get a no. I got welcoming inquiries about what I needed and that it was okay to have asked. In Stone Circle Wicca, our ceremonies respond to a range of human needs. Sometimes those needs are to celebrate the turning solar year, to over devotion under the full moon or in the dark of the new moon. Sometimes the need is driven by faerie whim — the sense that we need to lighten our spirits and bring levity to a situation.

But my set of needs was different. My set of needs was very clear. I needed to feel blessed, held, loved by those I love. And I longed for their prayers for healing.

And they did it, friends, they did it.

There’s a little aphorism that Julie and I often quote: “Some kind of help’s the kind of help that helping’s all about. And some kind of help’s the kind of help we all could do without.” You know that second kind, I’m sure. When someone butts in and decides what you need without asking. Ugh. I hate it. It makes me vaguely anxious, just typing about it. I’ve experienced it recently, and it’s just not fun. And I know that I need to be careful about being pushy in that way, myself. It’s true that nurturing is in my character, but nurturing is not always the way to go.

So I am so grateful to my friends and co-religionists for their inquiry. For that gentle asking about what I really needed and wanted — so they could give it to me if it was in their power.

And, as I’ve said above, they did.

So this is the blinding flash of the obvious, friends: Not only is helping good for the ones who are doing it, but — hello?! — it CAN work out for the one who dares to ask. Yes, it’s lovely to have folks volunteer out of the kindness of their hearts, or even because they’re getting paid. That can be really lovely, both of those, each in their own way.

But dare to ask, beloveds. Consider what you need, and dare to ask. Because asking to have our needs fulfilled by means we think are possible, even if improbable, can lead to beautiful gifts, and a lovely exchange for all.

I don’t look self-sufficient at all, I don’t think. But still, it was hard to ask for that ceremony. We often are so afraid of seeming weak, of being vulnerable, that we forget what love means. That we forget we are worthy of love.

Dearest, you are worthy of love. And because you’re worthy of love, you’re also worthy of help. The kind of help that helping’s all about.

This can be a hard teaching, eh? So I encourage you, wherever you are in this equation, to PILE on, to DRENCH yourself in compassion. No matter what we do, we’re doing the best we have with the tools we can reach at the time. Be gentle, gentle, gentle. Let us together be persistently gentle, and so be willing to ask for the help we need and long for.

Blessings, my loves, blessings –

~Catharine~

Beloved comrades-

What a strange, strange time. In my tradition, Lammas (August 1 to 2) begins a season of three harvest festivals followed by the Great Silence, the Close and Holy Darkness. But Lammas begins the season, still in the heat of summer, of sacrifice.

That said, Lammas also begins the season of giving oneself mindfully, clearly, wisely, and with discernment, in the service of greater goods perhaps than those we have been following. And following the greater good, the bigger institution, the more compelling spiritual idea, the more trustworthy teacher–well, these have been central to my development of my sense of self over the last twenty-five years.

Mid-June: I have a pulmonary embolism, pulmonary edema, and atrial fibrillation. When I get to the hospital and then run my labs and take chest x-rays, my heart appears to be fine, all things considered, but my lungs, not so much. It seems they have never fully recovered from the four emboli I had in 2014.

Now, though, I am being surrendered. I have prayed to know how to–to learn how to–surrender. And that can be a good thing. Offering oneself as the stalk of wheat, the neck of the sacrificial bird, the wilting flower–these are beautiful gifts.

In Sufism, though, is an incredible concept that has captured my imagination all year. It is the idea of the corpse. This is in some ways, yes, a variation on a theme in many monastic and mystical traditions. “Keep your death ever before your eyes,” sure. But that’s not the primary image or teaching that I get from it.

The Sufis say that one should pray to be in the hand of Allah, as the corpse is in the hands of those who prepare it for burial. The corpse moves because its arms or legs, trunk or head are moved. Similarly, one’s choices and actions should be ultimately and completely in accordance with Divine Love, the fullness of Divinity. You should only choose as the Divine moves you to choose. You should only touch where the Divine moves you to touch. And you cannot do this through your own will. You can only do it by making an offering of yourself, a polished soul…and I lose words and knowledge here. I don’t know how one goes from surrendering to being surrendered, from humility to abased awe before the Divine impossibility.

The edge of a bariatric bed is a hinge I must go over every time I go in and out of bed. I am on powerful blood thinners. I bruise from head to toe, especially where the bed hinge digs into my leg. My right leg has a five-inch wide, 18-inch-long bruise wrapping around my thigh.

So I’ve thought of that image of Divinity, with respect to my current conditions.

I’ve also thought of another image of Divinity, that of Brigid, the great Gaelic goddess and saint, whose image decorates not just my domicile, but that of a few of our comrades. If you’ve been around Reflections for a while, you know that Brigid is important to me, and that various of her tools, symbols, and stories inform my life. In this case, the pertinent image of Brigid is the one I first learned, the triple-faced deity, the Three Brigids. These are the faces of that goddess: the Bard, the Healer, and the Blacksmith, or the patroness of blacksmithing, depending on when and how we’re looking at Her. Specifically, it is the goddess in her guise as the Smith that captures my attention–captures, holds, binds, and won’t let go.

End of June through the beginning of July, and the first Heat Dome in Portland: bloodwork finds anemia, confirmation of my diagnosis of a recurrence of cellulitis, the big bruise goes deeply into my body and becomes an internal hematoma — a sac of fluid roughly a 7-cm sphere just beneath the surface of my skin.

I know two people who prayed to Brigid for transformation of one kind or another. One of them prayed to have a new relationship with her body. Both of them got appendicitis. Both of them had surgery, one in an emergency setting. Meanwhile, I have been dreaming of Her. A wrought-iron fence. A hammer. An anvil. A tempering pool. The bellows for the Great Forge. The Star Forge itself. And the arm that swings the hammer to send sparks off the top of the anvil…the broad and callused hand, the powerful forearm made burly by time at the Work of creation, destruction, and transformation.

So yeah, you can imagine. The image of lying on the anvil is just too easy, but there it is. Being shaped. Being shifted. Being hammered and pulled, malleable and ductile. Being heated, red-hot and then splashed into the water. Shaped and shifted, melted and stilled, birthed out of the forge into a shape I could never have dreamt up on my own.

Tuesday, late July: The wound where my hematoma was has begun to bleed regularly, but not alarmingly… until there appears to be a red water feature emerging from my leg. When my nurse comes, she says we’re doing all the right things. Beyond that, we tell her about the 7 cm, so she decides to measure the inside of the wound — 11 cm. When I call my PCP and share a photo, she directs me to go to the hospital. This wound is beyond her, and she knows it.

Then, very much NOT in dreamland, I listen to my primary care provider saying just this morning: “You know, I have seen women in their late forties or early fifties, over and over and over again. Each one has some kind of health crisis right around this time. I think it is an initiation. That it is a doorway to the beginning of Croning.” (Do you see why I love her? She’s amazing. Not taking new patients, but amazing.)

And I think of Charlie Murphy, author of the compelling-but-historically-totally-wrong song, “The Burning Times.” He wrote a line regarding the development of the military-industrial complex and ecological destruction: The Eye of the Crone is upon you.

The Eye of the Crone is upon you.

This can mean, look out because death is coming for you. It can also mean the ancient keeper of wisdom is with you.

Late July, over Lammas into August: 15 hours after arrival, surgery to drain and clear out the hematoma. More IV antibiotics and painkillers. Two rolls of gauze packed into my wound and then removed as I watched. Told I could not leave the hospital until I could–without IV painkillers–have my wound packed with spongy, absorbent material, wrapped in “drape,” attached by tubing to a little machine that applies suction and pressure to my wounds–the original one, as well as the new one the surgeons made.

The Eye of the Crone is upon you.

What do They… What does She mean? Does She watch? Does She carry the Scissors of Atropos? Or is she calling out the Descendants from Their place behind the veil of Birth? What does her transforming power mean for me? For The Way of the River?

We shall never be the same, my comrades, my friends, my beloveds. We shall never be the same. The Eye of the Crone, the Doorway of the Initiation, the Hole in the Stone…these are open to us. What shall we be when we go through?

I am well enough to say at this point that the community of The Way of the River is not ending. I am well enough to say at this point that portions of my ministry of The Way of the River will remain. I intend to be in touch with all my clients, one way or another, and we’ll talk about what will happen next!

Love a thousand times, my dears —

~Catharine~

Dear hearts!

Just the tiniest note because I’m still very tired, but I wanted you all to know that as of last Thursday, I was writing to you from my own bed!!!! I was in the hospital for a total of something like a little less than a month, and I’ve been having all kinds of medical difficulties before that. And you’ve been with me all the way.

Thanks to Julica, Ruth, Sara, Oscar, Karen, Jack, Molly, Peter, Joyce, Alice, and of course Julie. And thanks, too, for REAL, to everyone my mooshy brain is not remembering at the moment. I truly appreciate all your beautiful support. And those who have texted me, sent Messenger notes, or even “snail mail” notes, thank you so very much. Keep that line open, because I have a long road ahead of me!

And a super-special thank you to my team, Elika, Alexis, Katy, and Jillian!!! They are simply amazing, and I can’t imagine–for real can’t imagine–working with a more supportive, helpful, accommodating, and talented group of women. Thank you so much.

I expect to be in recovery for around the next six months. During this time, the Way of the River will of necessity look different from the way it has the past six years. But we can still support one another, still ride the waves — the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” — that life throws at us. And we can still look for the lessons, gifts, and joys that come to us even in times of great pain.

Persistently yours,
Catharine

PS — If you are so moved to contact me, feel free to do so here.

Rev. Karen Scrivo is one of my colleagues in Unitarian Universalist ministry, a friend, and a former client. She and I have shared many of the ups and downs of community ministry, including what it means to be an entrepreneurial minister in a system built around bricks-and-mortar congregations. She remains devoted to social justice and the particular needs of her area — Prince Georges County, Maryland (just outside DC). Her connection with other religious leaders outside Unitarian Universalism is notable and necessary. Several years ago, I had the privilege of coaching Karen through her Ministerial Fellowship Committee preparation, as well as delivering the Charge to the Minister at her ordination. I so appreciate not only her work, but her ways of being in the world. I give you the last of the July guest series, written by Rev. Karen Scrivo!

Catharine calls Reflections, her weekly “love letter” to those of us who have found the inclusive and affirming community she created here at The Way of the River. This week’s Reflections is a love letter to my dear friend and spiritual companion Catharine, who is taking some much-needed time off to tend to her health and prioritize her own healing.

I’m honored to fill this space today as we wrap up a month of moving Reflections by members of the WOTR Community. Oscar Lewis Sinclair shared about his own “being laid low” and the importance of presence. Sara Goodman reminded us of “the interdependent web of community” and how critical it is for our wellbeing. And Jack Mandeville invited us to walk with him “along the ledge of the roofline” and allow “something new to grow…”

Each of these authors capture a part of what is at the heart and soul of Catharine’s spiritual presence and her work: being fully present, supporting the spiritual growth of others and creating a nurturing and inclusive community. She does this through Reflections, Beloved Selfies, her annual Going into the Dark virtual retreat, spiritual accompaniment for individuals and groups, shepherding aspiring Unitarian Universalist ministers through our complicated credentialing process, creating and leading rituals, and so many other ways.

Like many here, I have been blessed by Catharine’s spiritual ministry. I met Catharine in 2010 at a year-long Healthy Congregations training for lay leaders. She had just been accepted to Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC and I had just started as a low-residency part-time student at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley (California) and working as an interim religious educator at a Maryland congregation.

I’m now an ordained UU community minister focusing on justice and education in the DMV (District, Maryland, Virginia) area. Before that, I was a journalist, Montessori elementary teacher, a religious educator and a manager for a State Department study program bringing international journalists to the United States.

Soon after our paths crossed, Catharine and I began meeting for breakfast at a local café. We shared our hopes and dreams, successes and disappointments and wonderings along the way. After she moved to Portland (Oregon) for her ministerial internship and decided to stay, we continued connecting through online chats and Zoom conversations.

We’ve supported each other through seminary, internships, the UU credentialing process and our own entrepreneurial ministries as well as the ups and downs of our lives and relationships – including our own.

Neither of us have congregations in the traditional sense but we’re both pastors in the communities we serve and spiritual companions to those we journey with and whose paths we cross. I’ve witnessed and cheered on many of Catharine’s ministerial dreams. And I’ve even been a beta tester for some of them.

When Catharine began formal training to become a spiritual director and needed clients, I signed up and stayed on long after she received her certification. Catharine often gently reminded me to be truly being present to the moment I’m in. Not easy for someone with a monkey mind who’s often jumping several steps ahead. She also encouraged me to accept myself as I am – imperfections and all. I’ve also become more faithful to my daily spiritual practices, as a result of our time together.

It was during one of our sessions that I wondered out loud if she’d help me prepare for my final interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, the UU credentialing body. This involved writing volumes about meeting their requirements and preparing for the interview that included an opening reading and preaching a short homily. Catharine said ”Yes!” and read through my many-paged application, listened to my homily, offered clear, actionable feedback and cheered me on throughout the process including the day of the interview. I was welcomed into the fellowship of UU ministers and this was the beginning of her successful MFC Coaching practice.

In 2015, Catharine launched her The Way of the River blog that grew into Reflections, a website and the creation of this caring community. Her Reflections have reminded me of the rich contemplative practices of my Catholic upbringing, my love of liturgy and ritual and my need for daily doses of music, beauty, poetry and art. Her deep sharing of her personal journey has helped me become more aware and inclusive of those whose lives are different than my own. It’s a weekly spiritual repast that replenishes and renews my spirt.

I also look forward to Beloved Selfies, Catharine’s Monday morning call to “notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature.” I so enjoy seeing everyone each week. I feel more connected to this incredible on-line spiritual and caring community. As someone who’s more comfortable behind the camera, it’s been harder to post my own picture each week no matter how I feel or look. But it’s been a gift that helps me accept my whole and imperfect self.

At the end of the year, I try to participate in Catharine’s Going into the Dark virtual retreat. It is such a welcome pause during this hectic time of year. It gives me the space and time to reflect on the passing year and plant seeds for the new one. I’m also learning to embrace the dark rather than running from it. For this is where unseen and often silent beginnings occur.

Throughout the years, I’ve also enjoyed participating in Pagan celebrations Catharine has created for Samhain (Oct 31-Nov 1), when the veil between the world of the living and the dead is the thinnest; Imbolc (Feb 1-2), that pays homage to Brigid and celebrates increasing daylight, and others. I know I have been changed for the good for having known Catharine and being part of The Way of the River Community. It’s hard to imagine where I’d be had our paths not crossed. I give thanks often for the day they did those many years ago. And I am so saddened by the health challenges she’s currently facing. While I can’t be there physically, I’m sending her the words to “Sending You Light,” by Melanie DeMore.

“I am sending you light, to heal you, to hold you
I am sending you light, to hold you in love
I am sending you light, to heal you, to hold you
I am sending you light, to hold you in love.

No matter where you go
No matter where you’ve been
You’ll never walk alone
I feel you deep within

I am sending you light, to heal you, to hold you
I am sending you light, to hold you in love
I am sending you light, to heal you, to hold you
I am sending you light, to hold you in love …”

I hope you’ll join me in sending Catharine light. And if you get a chance, send her a love letter too!

Jack Mandeville is a faithful comrade at The Way of the River and can be found during nearly every week’s Beloved Selfies in one of his many dapper blue shirts! He, like some other members of our crew, identifies as Christo-Pagan. This multireligious identity is enthusiastically welcome at The Way of the River, especially because Jack brings an open heart and searching mind to our community. Thank you, Jack!

Stay tuned for next week’s Reflections—including the words of Rev Karen Scrivo—the last of our July guest writers. She’ll be tying our series up with a bow!

An excerpt from “The Night House” by Billy Collins

This is about my journey : The unseen child that grew up to be a man who still loves the unseen light – the light that no one pays attention to. This is me, on top of the roof at night, in shadows soaking up the magic of the night sky, free and loved by the earth, free from judgement, free from worry, free from my small town world. Well, I mean, not really, only in my imagination, actually I grew up in a VERY orderly household, where I was watched very carefully – probably because I was a dreamer, and a baby mystic. I got invited to Boy Scout gatherings that I promptly ignored or pretended to forget about, football camps, fishing tournaments, card games, the list goes one, I was totally NOT interested in these. My parents, however, were on a MISSION to successfully insert me into the life they wanted me to live – and they were GREAT parents, and they only wanted what was best for me.

AND….

By age 10, I was hanging out in graveyards (straddling the ridge), when the moon was full, I thought they were places of safety and quiet. I would sit there and imagine all the lives of the people long buried there. Who did they love? Did they live a happy life? What did they believe? I wanted to know ALL THE THINGS. I am from the east coast so there are still many many graves from the 18th century still intact – and I loved those the most! I did grave rubbings as a teenager – and my parents would just shake their heads. Why wasn’t this boy playing ball with all the other little boys – but that wasn’t me.

As odd as that seemed to the usual observer, I was actually very much in love with church, I was there whenever I could be. I don’t think I missed a Sunday for many years, IN FACT, I would go to church when my parents did not! I can remember wondering in amazement when my Methodist minister would say the words of institution over the elements of bread and wine (during communion) and me wondering in amazement how this was any different than a spell? After all, “this is my body” is translated as “hocus pocus.” Right? Google it. I later learned as an adult how much Christianity had sought to compete with pagan holidays by inserting their own elements, by inserting Christmas and Easter alongside them, by mimicking the characteristics of pre-Christian gods and goddesses and turning them into “saints.” Honestly, this is really where I got started, in earnest investigating my multi-faith journey as both Pagan and Christian.

What I am saying is that I can’t remember a moment when I wasn’t being asked to “remember.” Remember your manners, remember your relatives, remember your ancestors, remember your friends, remember your family, remember to brush your teeth, remember to write a thank you note, remember to make the right kind of friends, remember to be “straight,” remember to go to church, remember to respect everyone (almost everyone), remember, remember, remember. Remembering the past and my connection to it was a kind of sacrament that was required to move on to the next reality that was created for me. And yet, remembering is a key component of Christianity, we are asked to consume bread and wine in “remembrance” that Christ died for us. The church calls this anamnesis; in which Christians recall the faithful sacrifice for humankind.

So why is memory and context important for me when living out my spiritual practice? BECAUSE It’s important to sift through those occasionally to remind myself where I came from, what got grafted to my current journey, what stuck to me and/or what I left behind. And it’s not a static practice, I still sift and keep and toss – even today. My journey is an active one, I haven’t just stopped “listening” to the new ideas and ways that God is offering up to me. The United Church of Christ (UCC) a cousin to the UUA had a famous tagline many years ago that said “God is still speaking” and I really love that – it resonates with me.

As I said earlier, we can thank early Christianity for silencing and co-opting many of those stories because they didn’t fit the narrative that was desperately wanting to be written. I mean, I was attending church in the morning and playing with my cauldron that had belonged to my great grand mother-casting “spells.” Of course those are memories of a young naive child – but I still believe they are indicative of my early love for paganism. It’s important to point out that this was instinctual, I was not influenced, I was drawn to magic naturally. And so I held that tension of my Christian upbringing and this shadow side of an unnamed belief.

I could go on and on about my journey but what I want you to walk away with is that remembering is a good thing, walking the ledge of the roofline (metaphorically speaking of course) and allowing something new to grow in is OK! Even WITH the traditional, privileged upbringing that is my story, I am a thankful, magical creation of the Universe – and I would have it no other way. My charge to you is that if you are feeling cozy for moonlight and need to stretch your legs, maybe it’s time to take a walk in the dark, if you are feeling sad and want to listen to the trees, maybe it’s time to take a walk in the dark, and finally, if you want to feel your life, your humanity, dirt underneath your feet to know that you are alive, it might be time to take a walk in the dark. Blessed Be and may you find your own unseen light. And remember, at The Way of the River Community, there is room for all people and spiritual expressions or none. We have drawn the circle wide!

― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

Rev. Sara Goodman is an Associate Minister at White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church in Mahtomedi, Minnesota. Rev. Sara finds the presence of the most Holy where people gather in community for celebration witnessing, and support. What follows is an excerpt of one of her sermons on the importance of an interdependent web of community, especially in these times. Welcome, Rev. Sara! Please enjoy her contribution to this week’s Reflections.

Some of my earliest memories are of presence, of place. My very first memory is of the inside of the YWCA swimming pool – all classic brickwork and echoes.

Some of my earliest memories are of the sounds of a place that was mine: listening to new age music from my fort under the massage table in my dad’s office, the thhwang the wires holding it together made when I plucked them like guitar strings. And in retrospect, not the most relaxing sound while my dad gave massages to clients.

A memory of a place that was mine: Listening to the waves crash at the beach for hours, running my fingers through the warm sand; and then suddenly the waves were TOO LOUD and it wouldn’t feel like mine anymore. Hearing my mom cry in another room in our house, going to her, hugging her as she wept.

I listened a lot. When I was a kid, growing up an only child with divorced parents, I spent a lot of time with adults and a lot of time alone. I got very familiar with doing my own thing while the adults around me were talking or working. Folks now call it parallel play. Two people in the same space, doing their own thing, but together. I got really good at it, and still enjoy it to this day.

I would sit, lonely, in my dorm room sometimes – until my friend down the hall would invite me to her room to do our homework together. She would be painting and I would be reading. We just enjoyed being in each other’s presence.

One of the things I learned over my early life, is that presence – the physical or emotional presence of someone I trust makes all the difference to my wellbeing. If I could hear the sound of my mom’s voice on the phone, I’d be OK. If I could sit and watch a movie with my friends, or write our sermons in a coffee shop with a classmate, or watch our children play from the same bench at the playground. I would be OK.

Let me just say, this pandemic is so lonely. I am so fortunate to have my best friend, my co-parent: my husband by my side through this time. We support and care for each other every day. But I am acutely aware of the isolation and loss so many people are experiencing. The presence of others is so important to our wellbeing. Loving physical touch is vital to human wellbeing. And too many of us are not able to get those needs met.

We need to be reminded of our interconnectedness, our inter-dependence within the web of existence.

We are a community, a community of care and compassion. We are connected, interconnected, and sometimes all we need to remember that is presence. The presence of another’s face on a screen. The presence of another’s voice on the phone line. The presence of letters arriving in mailboxes. We can and must be present to each other, this year more than ever before.

We are, some of us, struggling. Some of us struggling with loneliness, some of us struggling with working while parenting and educating our children, some of us are struggling in relationships that aren’t built to be in such close quarters for so long. Some of us are struggling with job loss, some with too much to handle. Some of us, many of us, are struggling with the election, and what the outcome could mean for our country.

Some of us are struggling with the death of loved ones, the ending of relationships. With grief that is so heavy on our hearts, like swallowing the weight of a teaspoon of neutron star on earth, as Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer wrote in her poem:

Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking

In times of distress and struggle, it is easy to get caught up in the stress and strain of our lives. It is easy to drive too fast, or react too angrily when met with a new struggle. It is easy to break down crying in the middle of the grocery store. It is easy to think that we are alone.

We need to treat each other with great tenderness. We don’t know what anyone else has swallowed.

We are a people who need one another’s presence. We are a people who need to be held when grief overwhelms us. We are a people who need to sit by someone’s bedside as they’re dying, who need to gather in grief and joy, we are a people who need to be together. And when we can’t be physically together, we need to find other ways.

In my training for pastoral care, I have again and again learned the lesson that presence makes all the difference. Presence in this case means deep listening, deep caring, deeply seeing the other person. Treating them as whole and holy. This presence is just as important on the phone or over zoom as it is being in person. Bringing someone a book of poetry they love, or singing some of their favorite songs with them can be some of the more meaningful experiences with someone who is suffering.

I know that many of you are from a culture where you are told to suck it up and do the thing yourself. But now more than ever we have to examine that belief. Now more than ever we need to be able to reach out to someone and ask for help.

Dear friends,

I’m writing this column as a guest of my dear friend Catharine, who is currently having a well-managed health crisis. However well-managed such things are, they can be a surprise, and this one was, so the community of The Way of the River is coming around to help. One of the ways I can help, as a congregational minister, is to write contemplative words. So I have the pleasure of offering the following piece. The prompt I received for this piece was to ‘write about being laid low.’ And Catharine knew this would be a piece I know something about…

This is fertile soil for me. While I live in the world as a straight, white, cis-gender man, happily married, employed, with a picket fence, a toddler, and a black lab in Lincoln Nebraska (how my younger self might have shuddered at that description), the most important moments of my life have not been successes caught up in privilege. Rather, they have been the moment when, despite every expectation to the contrary, I was laid low by life. Times that had me quoting from Star Trek “Commander [Data] “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life.”

I applied to seminary from a hospital bed in Baltimore. Three years earlier as an idealistic college graduate, I joined the Peace Corps, thinking that I would do some good in the world and decide whether to be a minister or not. I served in Southern Africa at the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, in a not-fully developed position, in an isolated part of the country. In the last months of my service, a friend of mine was shot and killed in an attempted mugging. I arrived in Baltimore laid low by life- heartbroken at what I felt as the loss of idealism, and angrier than I had ever been. Seminary was out of the question. “If God’s up there he’s in a cold dark room” as the songwriter Josh Ritter put it “…bent down and made the world in seven days/And ever since he’s been a’walking away.” I was also, though I did not know it at the time, very sick.

Seven months after I closed my Peace Corps service, I was diagnosed with Nodular Lymphocyte Predominant Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I spent half a year in chemo, and much longer than that recovering. For as many times as I have told this story, I don’t know that I have ever been able to capture the feeling of the thing- the terror, but also profound weariness. I had passed my breaking point a year earlier, and it just felt like more was stacked on every day.

Around the same time, I had started attending the Unitarian Universalist church in downtown Baltimore. And on a Sunday in the midst of all of this, I found myself weeping almost uncontrollably on the portico in front of the church. We had just sang a hymn, and while there are problematic images in it, Carolyn McDade’s recasting of words from Amos and Isaiah rocked me to my core:

We’ll build a land where we bind up the broken.

We’ll build a land where the captives go free,

where the oil of gladness dissolves all mourning.

Oh, we’ll build a promised land that can be.

Hello, my dears –

What follows is a version of the piece I did in 2019, slightly updated. It was such fun to write, and it got such good conversation started, that I thought I’d bring up the topics again:

Happy LGBTQ* Pride month! I should say, happy LGBTQQIPA Pride! That’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Queer, Intersex, Pansexual, Asexual Pride! Happy month for us! For all of us, especially those of us whose queer identities may not be apparent, those of us whose identities are around the edges, just out of sight, happy, happy, happy month. May we remember the ostentatious, flamboyant, unassimilated ones who’ve helped to create a world in which we can come to understand our own complex, sometimes hidden stories. While this piece is largely about dancing in the streets, literally and figuratively, it is also very much for those of us who don’t or can’t.

I’m a Gen-Xer priestess and minister who came out when I was 17, during the AIDS Crisis. Please consider my words in light of that part of my identity.

The movement once described as “Gay Liberation,” has grown to include people who use words like non-binary/Enby; demisexual; gender nonconforming; cisgender; and aromantic. To some of us, all this new language can feel overflowing, overwhelming, even frustrating and flooding.

But queer culture has always been about finding out who we are and how to tell its stories, even if we can’t explain them. It’s always been about multiplicity in unity. There have always been people of Male, Female, Both, All, and No gender. There have always been people who were asexual (not just celibate), polyamorous, same-sex/same-gender-loving.

There has always been queerness.

For example, in ancient Greece, the priestxes of Cybele were ecstatic drag singers and dancers, the Galli. The Galli are, in many ways, the forebears of some of queer culture’s most daring, reviled, marginalized, and magical, sacred, people—transwomen and drag queens. These holy forebears, the Galli, danced through the streets generally making a ruckus, with painted faces and flowing gowns, jingling their sacred tambourines.

The Galli are the ones whose magical, sexy worship we invoke in Pride parades.

Pride parades are an opportunity for contemporary queer people to dance in the streets as our worship. To walk, roll, dance, chant, and watch as ecstatic celebration. As rejection of the toxic prison of the closet—a place so many of our queer kin still live.

While the parades are not for all of us—some of us prefer other kinds of events, or don’t really celebrate this month at all, and that is our prerogative—the Pride parade is still one of the quintessential expressions in the constellation of queerness.

Pride parades are chances to pull out all the stops and make room to be just as countercultural as some of us are, just as flamboyant, just as glittered, just as sexy, just as threatening to heteronormative hegemony as we are.

Queer people have been recognized for millennia as magical beings. Cultures with three to seven genders acknowledge that gender expression is complex, mysterious, and even touched by the Divine. We have been acknowledged as travelers between the upperworld and underworld. For example, in the Sumerian myth of Inanna, Queen of Heaven, it is two “genderless beings” who bring her the Water of Life and the Food of Life to save her after her invasion of the Underworld realm of Her sister-self, Ereshkigal.

And in 1978, queer, world-traveling magic would find a new expression: Gilbert Baker designed the first rainbow flag. Baker included eight stripes, each one a different color. He assigned a meaning to each stripe, an expression or aspiration for the “gay” community. Bright pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, dark blue for serenity, and violet for spirit.

The flags were an overnight sensation, and eventually groups like the 32 volunteers who dyed and sewed the first flag couldn’t keep up with demand.

Enter mass production.

Mass production that of course changed something that had been the work of a few, dedicated, invested human hands.

The first big change was that large lots of hot pink fabric were unavailable; the stripe signifying sex was lost.

The second change, made to accommodate hanging the flags in municipal areas, was to eliminate the turquoise; the stripe signifying magic was lost.

So now we have the six-colored flag we see all the time. And six qualities, no longer including sex or magic.

What I mean to get at, though, is that the loss of sex and magic—sexmagick—may have been the work of mass production, may seem benign, may look like happenstance…but as a priestess, I look at the symbol of those losses and know that losing the celebration of sexmagick as essential to queer identity contributes to marginalizing our own kin and impoverishing our own liberation.

I think of the dozens of transwomen murdered in the US each year, mostly women of color, often sex workers, usually killed by someone they know. These vulnerable women are shapeshifting, magical, sexual people whose talismans have been lost in the rainbow flag. The fuchsia stripe celebrating sex and the turquoise stripe recognizing magick told a story of queer power that Pride celebrations have been losing for years.

These days, our extravagant Pride celebrations are most often supported by corporate sponsorships. And corporate sponsorship, like mass production, transforms something created by the work of devoted volunteers into something overseen by bigger and bigger money and more and more assimilation and respectability.

People fuss over whether the Dykes on Bikes (often the leaders of Pride parades) are too threatening, too dangerous, too obviously sexual to be the heralds of the parade. Queer leatherpeople are looked at askance, and their more assimilated queer kin ask each other, “Why do they have to be so out there?” A drag queen of my acquaintance was discouraged from wearing anything so revealing.

As if.

The whole point of Pride parades is to be revealing. They are our time to reveal being just as we are in our hearts of hearts. They are our time to celebrate, to dance in the streets with Galli ancestors.

Pride parades are our time to reveal that queerness can indeed be a threat to so-called “traditional family values,” by showing that it is the freaks among us who are family to one another. However we engage our sexuality, from asexual to polyamorous pansexual, how we are sexual is part of Pride, and part of queer family.

It is no coincidence that “family” has been a word used by queer people to identify one another. We have been family to one another when no one else has.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a nice, white married lady with two cats. I live in the suburbs with my wife, who looks like the Girl Next Door. Two kids would make us the ultimate lesbian-appearing family. (PS – kids love Pride parades. What’s not to love about a bunch of grown-ups in costumes?!)

But my household and my families by birth and marriage are not my only family. I’m family to the boi walking on a leash in the parade with their Dom. I’m family to my asexual kin whose relationship with sexuality may be utterly different from that boi and his leash. I’m family to my kin who have visible and invisible disabilities that keep us from parades but who are nonetheless part of my Pride.

All part of my sex magickal family.

And it is that sex magick, the stripes taken from our original rainbow flag, that terrify those who would eradicate us from Earth’s face.

No matter how much or how many of us assimilate to a straight-looking image, there are still people disgusted by what they imagine we do sexually behind closed doors and therefore (?!) disgusted by our very existence. For example, just this week, an Alabama mayor wrote openly on social media about killing queer people. And queer women have been called out for being witches for-fucking-ever.

Sex magick, I’m telling you.

Pride is our time to be magically sexy and to reclaim what was lost from that first eight-striped flag.

It is time to fly—all together—the flags of the Radical Faerie families, of the pansexual leather families, of the nonbinary families, of the families of Girls Next Door, and most certainly, of the families of drag queens and transwomen of color who have been at the front of the fight for our inclusion from the beginning.

Remember that during the Stonewall Riots, the 50th anniversary of which we commemorate this year, it was people like Silvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, two transwomen of color, who legend says took off their high heels and threw them at the police who raided the Stonewall Inn. This cisgender white woman owes my liberty and perhaps my life to trans women of color.

I am proud to call the queens and dykes of the Stonewall Inn, and of all the other raided bars across the decades, my queer ancestors. And if you are queer, you can too. Let us give thanks and praise to our Ancestors who have fought the good fight, the fight for pride and inclusion. And let us give thanks and praise to our Descendants, may they live in liberation.

Blessed be your Pride month, my dears. Blessed be.

~Catharine~

Dear hearts –

In the middle of last week, I was in a small group, and we were talking about the concept of spiritual emptiness, or poverty.

Many of you may have heard the fable, often attributed to a Buddhist tradition, of the student who comes to the teacher. And the student is full of all the things they want to learn about, all the things they are curious about, all the things they want to know after speaking with the teacher. While the student is speaking, the teacher is simply pouring a cup of tea. Eventually, the student notices that the cup has gotten full and there is tea all over the tray. Not only that, but the teacher is just continuing to pour, until tea has spilled over onto the floor, meanwhile saying nothing.

The moral of the story is clear, eh? If you come to learn and your cup is already full, how is there room for anything else? If you come believing that you already know the right questions to ask, much less their answers, then why bring yourself to the table of learning?

Over the course of our small group, I kept thinking about emptiness, and it was clear that my comrades were too. Here are some of the nuggets that came out of our conversation:

And then finally, one of our dear comrades said, “I don’t have to manufacture anything.”

For some reason, that last statement, “I don’t have to manufacture anything,” especially in the context of the previous statements, slid right into home plate for me. If I am doing all the manufacturing, all the judging, all the quality control in my work — trying to control EVERYTHING, which is what I tend to lean toward — then I am leaving no room for the tea of learning.

But leaving my teacup empty is uncomfortable. Saying, I don’t think there is anything that can fill my cup, I feel as though I must fill my cup alone, and clearly something must be manufactured to put into my cup…Well when we get down to brass tacks, what I am saying is that I feel alone and afraid. After all,

WHAT IF THERE’S NEVER ANY MORE TEA?????

At times like this, when I become afraid and feel as though I should push, should tough it out, should muscle through, almost always, the answer is the opposite of that approach.

I need to rest. Resting gives me integration. I need to wait. When I can’t see a way forward, most of that time that’s a clue that I should stay put. When I’ve got a lot on my mind and am feeling stuck, just allowing myself to do some freewriting — just writing whatever comes to mind without regard for its quality or even its content. Just let it come out and live on the page for a while. I may even use free dancing, either a contact improv class or rock out in my chair in the living room. I use my body, whether through dancing or singing, to let go of my blocks when I can. Singing, especially, I find helpful because when I do it it is devotional. It is a kind of prayer. And prayer + rest tends to = integration and inspiration for me.

Essentially, I can ask, “Is there love even here? Is there inspiration, even here? Can tea be poured into my empty, dry, bone china cup even here?”

All these exercises, these practices, are ways of putting ourselves near the Divine Source of Love and Life. They are all ways of expressing trust that it is not we ourselves who produce anything — and our worth is certainly not based on what we produce — but that it is the Divine, working through us, Who gives us gifts in order to share, inspiration in order to create, love in order to give.

“I don’t have to manufacture anything.”

That doesn’t mean I don’t show up. It doesn’t mean I just blow off all my responsibilities. It means, I show up, I do the work, I do my best, and I let it go.

As Julia Cameron says to the Divine, speaking of writing and the other arts, “I’ll take care of the quantity. You take care of the quality.” That is to say, I’ll keep showing up. I’ll keep coming to the page. I’ll keep stretching. I’ll keep practicing.

Remember, too, that practicing is not just about art or athletics or science.

It’s about our spiritual practice. “Forgive yourself for everything every day.” Start anew. Don’t let the absurdities, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said of the previous day, come in and wreck the practice you’re trying to build today. “Every breath is a new beginning,” Belleruth Naperstek reminds us. Every single breath. I find myself taking an extra breath with each typo. (I think it might be making me have more typos, just because my body wants more breath!)

Finally — wow, I’m quoting a lot of wise people today — never forget Martha Graham’s words:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Note especially that last bit — “to keep the channel open.” If the channel is already full, then it cannot be open. It will be, if you will, stopped up. The channel, the reed, the way must be open in order for the awen, the Divine inspiration of the Celtic bards, to be given, used, and brought to other people.

So today, let us avoid judging what we bring into the world. Today let us just be that reed that sings when the wind of the Spirit blows over us. Let us be the empty cup. Let our hearts be empty and filled and emptied and filled again.

Blessings on all the lessons of the day –

~Catharine~

My dears –

As many of you who participate on The Way of the River Facebook page or who read this missive with some regularity know, I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Inattentive Type. Some folks with this version of ADHD say that they have “ADD without the H,” a decision I understand and respect. However, as our comrade Megan Potter said, it is our minds that are unusually active, even if our bodies aren’t.

And it’s true, when I am head down in hyperfocus, I am ON. IT. I can plan, create, and execute with skill. I can organize a calendar, for heaven’s sake! And when combined with the hypomania that can come with my bipolar disorder, I might even… even… (the crowd gasps in anticipation!) tidy something.

Lately, I have been head down in something you, my dear comrades, will be hearing about very soon, quite a bit ahead of its public reveal. For now, though, we’ll all have to wait as I get it all together.

So my question for you today, given that I’m NOT yet giving away my secrets, is how do you know what day it is?

I’m not talking about looking at my calendar. I do that a lot. Like, a lot. My calendar keeps my work and religious community lives running well at all. Nevertheless, I can look at the calendar, and then ten minutes later, Vyvanse or no Vyvanse (it’s a drug to improve focus in people with ADHD, like Aderall), I turn to Julie. “Remind me what day it is?” And really what I’m asking, I think, in my heart is, “What month is it?

I somehow feel as though March was just yesterday, April just happened, and how it is not June yet. What is with that? We have said in my house that during the pandemic, in a household with no one who is sick, days are like weeks, weeks are like years, years are like decades, and months are completely random. Oh, that’s just when we’re experiencing them. Looking back, thank you, ADHD, I have no idea when anything happened.

Two weeks ago? A month ago?

Thank the Mother of all the gods, I have a Google calendar and it and I are friends. Otherwise, I would not have a clue where I was in my life.

Do you feel this? Do you feel this strange disorientation?

I mean, I realize that having ADHD makes me a special case, one in which my executive functioning gets together with the pandemic and does the tango. But how about you? I ask because even one of the most organized, clear, and routine-loving people I know, my own dear spouse, is affected by this.

Early on in Year One of the Pandemic, I wrote two editions of Reflections on grief, one of which was called, “That Feeling You’re Feeling Is Grief.” But now? Now I don’t know. Now I am pleased to be fully vaccinated. Now I am delighted to be able to see people I love live and in person. TO GET HUGS! YES!

Hugs, and.

And 30% of the population isn’t vaccinated, and some number like 15% aren’t intending to get vaccinated. Some of those people have good reasons not to be vaccinated, but not most of them. Most of them are feeling fine about putting immunocompromised people like my twin nephews at risk for full-on COVID.

So do I think masks are going away? Hell, no. Turns out — shocker — they protect us against the flu, the common cold, and some other diseases, as well. There are ways in which the US population is healthier than ever… well, not really, but we haven’t been seeing the flu in anything like the numbers we usually do, and the same with the cold. So that’s… something?

But we’re still just exhausted, no? Exhausted by lack of human contact, especially, but not exclusively, us “high-test extroverts.” We’re exhausted by our work, even when it’s work we love, are passionate about, work that makes us better versions of the selves we might otherwise be.

But worry and grief have taken their toll, and now a kind of insidious numbness seems to be sinking in, at least for me. It’s not depression–I know you, you pest–but it has things in common with it. Just not finding joy in things that I have loved. ‘Cause they’re nice, but there’s only so many times I can watch Bridgerton before I really don’t care at ALL what happens to the characters. (Or is there?)

So I am trying to find joy every day. And I often find joy in beauty. Friends, you think I’ve been obsessive about flowers before, but the discovery of a big ol’ sage plant I didn’t know was lurking (and blooming!) in the corner of the garden by my office window has my heart doing cartwheels. The rhododendron is actually blooming — thank you, friend gardeners for pruning the lilac so the rhodo could have some sun. And roses, roses, roses. Or should I say, “Grinch heads, Grinch heads, Grinch heads!” By which I mean, I have counted over 40 rose buds, working on blossoming, and only one has bloomed yet. It’s gonna be EPIC around here, friends.

And I do watch, listen, and read. I do make sure to keep up the banter with my wife. I play with makeup, ‘cause that’s how I roll.

What do you do to keep the numbness at bay? Can you call someone, or text them, just to let them know you’re thinking of them? Or better yet, send someone actual MAIL! On both ends, the contact is nice, and you’ll have done a mitzvah, in any case.

Today, look at Pandemic Year Two in the face and say, “Okay, you. You’re not going to take me and my mood down. You’re not.”

I’m going to finish my work today and write a letter to the first people who popped into my head. They have no idea it’s coming, and it will be super-fun to surprise them. I recommend sharing the love, as well. Because love not only casts out fear, as the biblically minded will know, but it wakes us up, makes us feel more alive, gives us a sense of agency or hope, and makes us and those around us happy. And happiness is in short supply these days, friends. So let’s make some!

Love you!

~Catharine~

My heart is with your heart today, and there is something tender I wish to share with you…

In the Tradition of Stone Circle Wicca (USA), we often write imaginative stories, guided meditations for grounding and centering, or imagery to help a group create the “artichoke” of the ritual. (Previously called the “meat” of the ritual, but we had vegetarians among us, so it came to be called “the artichoke,” or the “working” of the ceremony.)

What follows is one is idea of how metaphor may be used to describe the beginning of the Universe’s Household, Earth and all She Is and Holds. This particular story is one I wrote last week.

The Dance of Life, the Drum of Existence

In the beginning, there was no-thingness. There was not nothingness.

No time, no space, but over all of what would be space and time, but there was no space, no time. Void.

In the beginning, there was infinitesimal no-thing-ness. So small the mind cannot comprehend it. A smallness so small our minds cannot compress to understand the multitude of universes our minds would be around it..

And then—Great Silence.

Vast Silence that was the tiny, compressed No-thing-ness and the unknowable expanse of Void. The Silence was all there was, though there was no being, so even the Great Silence was not.

And then, one pulse, one explosive, ringing sound like the sound of a great, dark bell, as a great, dark bell hammered with a great wooden hammer rang into the Silence. One atom. One eternal, atomic Mystery began. Being began to be.

Soon the one toll, the one ringing of the Great Bell became a pulse, a call. A call from beyond our knowing or our names, beyond our apprehension. And in response to that first Sound, the Cosmic Drum began to play. A cacophony of Being exploded into darkness with the beat of the Drum, for with Being came Dark and Light, the first separation of No-Thing, along with Time, Space, and eventually the Dance. But before the Dance was the Drum and before the Drum was the Pulse. The Pulse of the Bell that expanded into what became the universe, and the Pulse that called the Drum into being.

The Pulse of Existence called out an unknowable Be-ing. And Be-ing, the Dance, began. And soon the Cosmic Drummer and the Universe’s Dancer began to play with one another. One in sound, two in silence. One in sound, two in silence. The Drum and Dance began. And in their playing between attraction and repulsion, the in and out, began. And more and more things came into the Being-that-was.

As the Dance and the Drum began, so did particles and waves and stars begin to pulse and shine and dance a dance of attraction and Love. Love that is not the simple complexity of human love. Love that is the begetting of All Things. Love that emerged in the All-one, the Manyness-in-One who is All Genders, the great One who spun into the Dance and brought forth Being and Being and Being, all spilling forth like seeds on strings from the All-one, electric, fiery giving flying out into the Space-that-was.

Urge and urge and urge begat all Existence in the Ear of the Great One behind and beyond all Ones. The One beyond shape, or gender, or beingness. The One who both is and is not. Who saw Void and longed for Being. The One whose longing called out the Pulse, the ringing out of the Drum that brought the Dance into being.

And the Dance continued and grew faster and faster, until the Great Beat of the One became a heartbeat of existence, and the Dance of Being spun out the galaxies and the black holes and solar systems and planets and all the Being that is known and unknown.

Eventually in one great CRACK at the edge of the Drum, came lightning in the sky of one impossibly tiny ball of existence. And the Dance began to take shape through the thunder over the watery chaos that was existence in that place. CRACK the edge of the Drum played, over and over, lightning over the seas. Step and spin and turn and leap, the thunder over the deeps. CRACK, the edge of the Drum calling those eternal atoms into something new, the Storm of Life.

Life at last.

Life and division and union, attraction and repulsion, and the joining of the smaller drums of heartbeats and polyrhythms into the dance. And the Dance was joined by all the beings, all the ways life is, in its complexities that reflect the One Who is Many, Male, Female, All Genders, and that which is Beyond Gender, which needs no Gender to yet have longing, yearning, wanting, desire.

And in a moment, a moment that would seem immeasurably long to the beings who came but was not even long enough to be a beat in the Great Dance upheld by the Drum, perceived by the Great Witnesses of Creation–in that moment, all the beasts in the great seas were made, the rivers carved, the continents divided, and the polyrhythm of the Drums continued. Always and always with the Pulse, that which is the Heartbeat of Existence, of Life.

The heartbeat that pulses in your very own breast, strong and true and built of the Love that called and longed and yearned for Being. The heartbeat that fuels the knowledge of Beingness and Nothingness and No-thingness, that intuits the Universe, the Dance and the Drum.

The Pulse, repeating and repeating, always found on the One, the first beat of the first Drum call, the first call to the Great Community of Existence. The Pulse of Life.

***

What is a creation story that is meaningful to you? What activities, what images, what movements, what webs or looms, or seeds or saplings…what brings you closer to your place in the Dance?

We are blessed, and may we all be blessings –

~Catharine~

I still have room in my small groups – two of them – for folks who think they might be interested in getting some clarity with “more hearts in the room.” If your curiosity is piqued, feel free to reply to this email, send me a contact page note, or email magic@thewayoftheriver.com!

Dearest –

I have an 8 ½ by 11 piece of paper on the side of my desk that says some important things about why I do the work I do. Some reminders that I read when I’m scared to do what I’m doing. Some things that keep me going when I’m not sure that anything I do has any value or anything helpful for anyone else.

There are, of course, also the three post-its on my shelf:

Just because I’m anxious doesn’t mean anything is wrong.

Forgive yourself for everything every day.

Ten mistakes a day, and

Your heart is trustworthy. (That last, given to me by Rev. DeAnna Vandiver.)

But the page I’m talking about is a list of why I do my work, and how I can bring myself to the work, to the page, to the truth. And one of the most important things it says is this: Someone, somewhere, needs to hear your story. You may not know how, and you may not know why, but they need to hear it.

The fact of the matter is that most of the time, I don’t know why or how or who I am helping. Someone reads something and maybe they even pass it on to someone else. I learn this very rarely, but I know it’s out there happening. Some of you write to me and tell me what has helped, what you disagree with, or what has landed.

This is not only truly for me. It’s true for you too.

Everyone has a story. An important story. It’s just that some of us aren’t sure how to tell it.

I have tattoos, and they are part of my story. They are a narrative of where I have been, what I have thought and believed at different times in my life.

I have paintings that are similar to my tattoos. They are visual reminders of where and who I have been and what has been important to me. And then there’s that one that was so beautiful and so important that I painted over in a fit of pique. Ugh. Such regret.

I have sermons. And sermons, like other kinds of liturgical languages (workings, we call them in Stone Circle Wicca), require really thinking about what I perceive the community needs. But they, too, are signposts.

I have these Reflections and the blog on The Way of the River (https://thewayoftheriver.com/blog) which, like sermons, are often affected by the conversations I have with you—those of you I see in individual spiritual accompaniment and those I see in small groups.

Finally, there are the letters I send and the poems that emerge from them. Words that may end up being letters for the recipient and poems for me, or poems for both of us, or even poems for you, me, and the who-knows-who out in the world.

Oh, and I almost forgot. There’s my journal. The book into which I put the daily thoughts and ruminations. The things that may lead to other things or might not. The things that will be a record. “How did I ever think that?” I’ll wonder sometimes. Or “I’d forgotten about that thing.”

Or the magic times when journals remind you of something essential. Like the time one fell out of a bookshelf—it was a journal/planner I had in 2001—and I had written about how in love with Julie I was and how I didn’t think she felt the same about me. She went back into her journals of that same year, and they said the same thing. Funny, no?

So what is your story? Be daring. At least write to yourself. Be daring. Ask the Divine what you have to say. Be daring. Write something and show it to five other people. Be daring. Make a poem. Be daring. Paint something. Sculpt something. Be daring. Dance something in your living room. Be daring. Sign up for that improv class that your friend keeps going on about.

Tell your story however you can. I guarantee it will change you, and I guarantee it will help someone else.

As my dear friend Rev. E. Eldritch wrote in his song, “Blessed Crossroads,”

Blessed Crossroad (Revised 2018)

Where I’ve been is…Where I’ve been is…

Where I’ve been is information for the places I will go

Blessed Crossroads, Blessed Crossroads

Who I’ve met is…Who I’ve met is…

Who I’ve met is inspiration for the people I will know

Blessed Crossroads, Blessed Crossroads

What I’ve learned is…What I’ve learned is…

What I’ve learned is education for the knowledge I bestow

Blessed Crossroads, Blessed Crossroads

How I feel is…How I feel is…

How I feel is preparation for the power I will show

Blessed Crossroads, Blessed Crossroads

May you find the daring that will let you show your power in the story so many need to hear.

Blessings of love—

~Catharine~

Hello, Beloved –

April is Autism Acceptance month, and as I have many autistic friends (one of whom reminded me of the significance of the month, thank you!), it seems the perfect time to write about autism.

As I was writing in my journal this morning, I was thinking of various stereotypes I grew up with about autistic people (or autistics, as some folks like to be called):

• They are less intelligent than others and are developmentally delayed;
• They are non-verbal;
• Being non-verbal is a sign of low intelligence;
• There is nothing beneficial about being autistic;
• Being autistic is a mental illness (or, as I said above, deficiency);
• Autistic people don’t experience feelings – they have a flat affect that shows that they’re not feeling anything.

It’s almost embarrassing to write this list now. Laughable, even. Let’s take them one at a time.

Four of the autistic people I know are autistic (that is to say, they have come out to me about it) have advanced degrees and are or are becoming religious professionals.

All these people are excellent communicators, especially in writing, but also in speaking, especially when they’re not being put on the spot;

As for being non-verbal being wrong or bad or showing low intelligence, I would like to point out that there are many ways to communicate. If an autistic child wants an apple, and holds her hand out for the apple, but one pushes and pushes for the child to ask for it verbally, violence is being done to that child’s feelings. The intensity with which autistic people, and particularly autistic children feel, can make looking someone in the eye or speaking out loud to ask for something extremely stressful – it’s not about low intelligence, as far as I can tell. As far as I can tell, it’s about stress and strain on their emotional system;

We’ll come back to this. Autistic people deserve fucking CAPES for all the superpowers they have;

Autism is not a mental illness. It is, like attention deficient hyperactivity “disorder,” a neurodivergence. Neurodivergence is a word coined by autistic people to describe mental difference that is not an illness. There is a whole constellation of ways of being in the world. There is a fairly narrow band we have, as a culture, defined as “normal,” or neurotypical. Identifying some ways as neurodivergent just describes them without ascribing value or some kind of score to that person’s experience or way of moving through the world;

This last point is one that when I learned it, I learned it HARD. It’s not that autistic people have no feelings, nor even that they have a less developed range of emotional motion than neurotypical people do. On the contrary, autistic people are highly sensitive, and especially sensitive to the fact that the rules that govern interactions among neurotypical people are opaque to them.

Now for other important things for neurotypical people to know about autistic people.

Don’t take anything for granted. Don’t assume that you know what a particular facial expression does or doesn’t mean. Don’t assume that an autistic person is ignoring you because they’re knitting, drawing, flapping their hands, or rubbing fabric. These behaviors are called stimming, and many of us who are (more or less) neurotypical do them too; we just don’t do them as often or as obviously. For example, I rub velvet and like to feel other textured things. Petting my cat helps me calm down if I am upset. That action, that petting of Maddie’s soft fur, is a kind of stimming.

Autistic people just need to know what the rules are. Most of them have spent a lifetime trying to figure out what the rules of interaction are, not knowing, and just knowing that they’re probably “doing them wrong.” They don’t know why or how, just that it’s wrong. (Compare this to people with ADHD. We understand the rules, but we just know that we fuck them up all the time. Ahem.)

Being clear and direct with an autistic person is something that 90% of the time, they will really appreciate. “Midwestern Nice” is not something that will help your autistic friend. Just tell them, “Hey, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation, but I have to go do this other thing.” I’ve been in situations where I was trying to get off a chat interaction, gently but clearly, and it wasn’t until I said, “Darlin’, I just have to go. I’m hanging on by a thread here, I’m so tired. Take care, and we’ll talk tomorrow.” My friend was glad that I had told faer, and I was glad to get off the phone.

Similarly, letting autistic people know what to expect in given circumstances is SUPER DUPER EXTRA DOABLE PLUS HELPFUL. And in as much detail as you can give them. No, more detail than that. One of my friends got this piece of advice: When you’re on a Zoom call job interview, it’s especially important to look at the camera when you are talking and look “around the room” when other people are talking. The neurotypical people in the room will interpret that as engagement. My friend who received this advice was SO grateful, and fae wanted to know how neurotypical people just know this stuff.

Autistic people have had, and generally still have to do what is called “masking” most of the time. It is basically trying to figure out the rules and live them out without actually understanding what they are. It is SUPER draining and tiring, and feels fake. Faking is something that autistic people hate often more than anything else. Why? Because for them it is lying. It is being someone they’re not, acting in ways that aren’t natural to them. The more you can make it safe for autistic people not to mask, the closer your relationship can be.

You may have noticed that rather than saying, “people with autism,” I have said, “autistic people.” Why? This word choice has been suggested by autistic people because they don’t experience autism as separate from them; it’s not a disability, it’s not something they have outside themselves. It is literally who and how they are and how they move through the world. And so out of respect for that description, I describe people as I have heard them ask to be described, just as I try to use the pronouns that are appropriate to them.

Autistic people have superpowers directly related to autism. They are great at seeing patterns (something I can’t do in a million years). They are phenomenal, not only at noticing problems, but having potential solutions at hand. One thing, in fact, that I have found difficult about my autistic friends, and something I’ve sometimes had to put boundaries around, is that there is a certain insistence that can come along with thinking that you have the answer, the answer is the best, and that other people should just get out of the way and let you work to fix the problem. So brainstorming, for example, can be really difficult for autistic people. Just generating ideas can feel frustrating and counterproductive if they believe they have this answer.

But this, too, is a superpower. What do I mean? I give you, Greta Thunberg, the environmental activist. One of my dearest autistic friends has called Ms. Thunberg, a “tiny autistic prophet.” And that is the greatest superpower of all – being able to see what can happen if things don’t go well, how to fix them, and not being afraid to say so.

So I give you some of what I know, my friends. And please, autistic friends, feel free to write back, tell me what I’ve missed and what you wish I’d said. I’m here for you. I’m here for all of us, but autistic lives matter. Autistic experience matters. Autistic children matter.

All the love.

~Catharine~

PS – By the way, the organization known as Autism Speaks has no single autistic person on their board, and they are NOT supported by any autistic person I know. In fact, the name is often written, “Auti$m $peaks.” Autistic people, kids or adults, are not missing a puzzle piece. They are whole people.

PPS – If you, neurotypical or neurodivergent, are interested in one-on-one spiritual accompaniment, or working within the confines of a safe and tender small group, please do let me know. Just reply to this email.

Dear hearts –

You have read and read and read – if you read Reflections with any regularity – me write about perfectionism. That insidious, pernicious, persistent characteristic that stops so many of us in our tracks. Okun and Smith identify perfectionism as a quality of white supremacy culture. I don’t know whether I agree or not; I’m steeped in white culture that has given me countless unearned benefits, as well as things that suck. It reminds me of how cissexism is bad for cisgender men, not just for everyone else.

Okun and Smith identify perfectionism in white supremacy culture as having some of the following characteristics:

• little appreciation expressed among people for the work that others are doing; appreciation that is expressed usually directed to those who get most of the credit anyway
• mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them as opposed to being seen for what they are – mistakes
• making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being wrong
• little time, energy, or money put into reflection or identifying lessons learned that can improve practice, in other words little or no learning from mistakes
• tendency to identify what’s wrong; little ability to identify, name, and appreciate what’s right
• often internally felt, in other words the perfectionist fails to appreciate her own good work, more often pointing out his faults or ‘failures,’ focusing on rather than learning from them; the person works with a harsh and constant inner critic.

These are only some points of their list, but these are some of the ones I really identify with. Which ones in particular?

Well, there are a couple that I hadn’t identified with perfectionism before, but which are essential to the experience. Those items about reflection, learning, treating mistakes as mistakes from which we can glean knowledge. I remember having a supervisor – whom I loved – who had a sign on her door that said, “Never make the same mistake twice.” This sign – every time I saw it – worried me. I knew that I have habits that led to making similar mistakes over and over. What did she think of me? What did it mean about me as an employee? Why was I not learning?

The more familiar ones, for me at least, are the ones about being a mistake, instead of having made a mistake. Feeling as though I am a bad person, a screw-up, essentially wrong because I have made a mistake. The idea of learning from my mistakes was alien to me. I thought it was just something people said to make you feel better when you messed up.

So I’ve been working with perfectionism, even just last week in “The Joy of Inefficient Ministry.” Today, though, I share with you one of the greatest therapeutic tools ever given to me, particularly as an antidote to perfectionism. Yes, there is gentle, gentle, gentle persistence. And yes, there is persistent gentleness. Yes. Self-compassion is essential.

How does one develop self-compassion, where mistakes are concerned?

Well. My fabulous therapist of many years, Miriam, gave me an exercise that has transformed my relationship to mistakes when I remember it. It is simply called, “Ten Mistakes A Day.”

What?

Yeah, you get ten mistakes a day, free and clear, no judgment, maybe some learning, but nothing punitive, nothing mean, nothing but compassion for your human self.

And I’m not talking about accidentally knocking a cup off the counter. I’m talking about genuine mistakes. Not treating someone with the care they deserve. Doing an experiment that doesn’t work out as the result of a mistake you made along the way. Eating more than makes your body feel comfortable. Giving yourself a terrible pandemic haircut. (Oh, if you could only see me.)

You get ten before you even start questioning them or interrogating them, at least at the time.

What I learned from this exercise are a couple of things:

1. My life is not one big mistake. I am not a mistake. I am not a failure. I may not accomplish everything I’d like to, but I am not a mistake. I could offer myself compassion and just let the mistakes go. Not that I wasn’t accountable for their consequences, but I could let the punitive, angry, critical voices go.
2. I never got to ten. I don’t know that I ever got to 5. I just didn’t. I never got to ten. I never got to the place where I was “allowed” to feel bad about myself. When Miriam told me about this practice, I thought, “Oh only ten?! This is NOT going to go well.” In fact, it was a practice of offering myself grace and recognizing my humanity.

So give it a shot. Ten Mistakes A Day. Let me know how it works out, and I’ll keep it up too.

Blessings, and joy in our erring!

~Catharine~

Small groups still have just a couple of slots. Reply to this email if your interest is piqued by the idea of a circle of care, tenderness, seeking, and witnessing.

Oh, my friends, you are so wise!

First, for those of you who celebrate the day, blessing of Easter to you. Pesach and Ramadan are both upon us or nearly so. Ostara is past. Spring is here, and the spring holidays of remembrance bring us closer, one hopes, to what we most value, what is our sense of deepest good, however we conceive of the Holy.

In Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones’s great work on what the hell white supremacy culture values are (and much of late-stage capitalism’s, as well, by the way), they identify several values. The values are perfectionism, false sense of urgency, defensiveness, quantity over quality, worship of the written word, only one right way, paternalism, individualism and the belief that “I need to go it alone, either/or thinking, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, individualism, progress meaning bigger/more, objectivity, and right to comfort.

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not sure what I think about all these. I’m not sure what “white supremacy culture” means in terms of other cultural ways of moving and thinking. I’m not sure what is my own defensiveness, and what is critical thinking and experience-checking. I’m just not sure. I put the list above as the work of one pair of scholars as a list of things to explore, not as gospel or as something to rest unquestioned.

I do have the sense that one of the pieces that goes along with a sense of urgency and possibly individualism (not individuality, mind you, but individualism) is efficiency.

I wrote last week about saying no, both for oneself, and also for the benefit of others. About how giving a no and receiving a no can both be blessings. Both ends of “no” can identify divine timing, energy, inclination, joy, guidance, and love. No is GREAT! (Someone please teach me this, would you? Ahem. Nothing to see here, nothing to see. Moving on.)

I began this missive with an exclamation about your wisdom. And wow, have I seen it over the past week! Just wow.

Let me say before I go on, that when I say the word “ministry,” yes, I mean the actions of religious professionals and people who are involved in congregational life in whatever denomination or religion. But that’s not all. I also mean the gifts all of us bring to others in kindness, care, gentleness, and most of all, generosity.

Last week, one of you identified a kind of ministry that is radical, rascally, and roguish. Radical – changed at the root. Rascally – wily and creative as that trickster icon, Bugs Bunny. Roguish – something wrapped in allure, seduction, even. You spoke about your ministry, what your hopes are, what you believe you bring, and what you hope to bring.

After listening to you for a bit, the phrase, “inefficient ministry” surfaced between us.

Nap ministry, slow ministry, inefficient ministry. What does it mean when we allow ourselves these things? What might it mean for us to abandon perfectionism, individualism, a constant sense of urgency? For most of us, there is no blood on the floor. The color of the carpet in the Sanctuary is not a decision that needs to be made quickly, though it may be a decision that requires conflict, given people’s strong feelings about what a sanctuary should evoke.

When I say, “no blood on the floor,” I mean that those of us who spend our days, as I do, thinking and writing and reading and responding and listening and trying to bring beauty into the world, are not dealing with life-and-death situations. Some of us are. Some of us, as I mentioned in my last love letter, ARE dealing with clear life-and-death circumstances. Blessed chaplains, especially hospice chaplains and musical therapy chaplains, I am looking at you. You may have a sense of urgency, or at least a sense of the shortness of time we have on Earth, and the importance of relationship in our last moments; you may have a kind of urgency sometimes that others of us don’t. Still, Mark Silver reminds me of an EMT maxim: There’s always time to take your own pulse.

There’s always time to take your own pulse. What pulse do you need to take?

What if we prayed each day to be faithful, not rushed? What if we prayed each day to do our best, and not put ourselves “on the hook” for everything? What if there were no hooks? I mean, what would we do without hooks?! What if we insisted, from the very beginning, those of us who are in congregational ministry, that this is how we intend to work, to model, to be an example? What might happen, both frustrating and beautiful?

Martin Luther said, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” Wait, what? He had so much to do that he knew he had to add to his spiritual practice, not take away from it. It is our practice that makes our ministry deep and rich and responsive. But be persistently gentle, eh? If your practice is not speedy or consistent or persevering, remember Belleruth Naperstek’s admonition that each breath is a new beginning, as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s reminder that into each day a little absurdity creeps.

Let yesterday go. Let today be the day in which you live. Be here now. Be here now. Be here now. I cannot say it enough times. Be here now. There is no other time. There is no other place. There is no “there” that is not “here.” The desire for “there,” in any condition, is a recipe for grasping, wishing, demanding, and ultimately, suffering. I am sitting in my chair with my feet on the floor thinking of you. I am here, now, with you.

I have many things to do, it’s true. But what would happen if I practiced them inefficiently, without rush, without perfectionism, and maybe without worry? What might happen? Might I disappoint people? Almost certainly, and then I have the opportunity to turn to the Nap Ministry quotation I wrote to you last week. Might I feel strange in my own skin? Almost certainly, and then I have the chance to integrate new ways of being.

But might I also be more authentic? Might I also be honest with my people, and say what I am and am not willing, not only not able, to do? Often, and I bow to my congregational minister friends, we push and push because we are pushed, both by our own patterns and by other people.

Then, feeling pushed, we do everything we can to avoid failure in front of other people, disappointing those people, and ultimately, shame because we have not lived up to their or our expectations. But what if we risked those things, sure, but also knew that we were watering our own garden so that we could bring new flowers to our people? Flowers they’d never seen before.

I’m just wondering, what does “inefficient ministry” bring up for you? Inefficient ministry that cares more for people than for clocks. Inefficient ministry that spends time staring out the window and knowing that window time is essential to writing, thinking, bringing what people need. Bring us a Word, pastor, people say sometimes in the Black church. Bring us a Word.

Let us spend time being still, no matter what our responsibilities may be, attending, resting in order to find the Word to bring, the responsiveness to share.

Can you help me? Can I help you be more inefficient?

Many thanks to the client who brought this together today. You are a wise, wise one, as are each of you who are reading this correspondence. Let us seek our wisdom, compassion, integrity, and authenticity in stillness and silence and time. And then, only then, bring ourselves to the work.

With love always,

~Catharine~

PS – One way to slow down is to bring yourself into communion with others who are also on the spiritual journey. One way to embed practice into your day is to schedule it, to make time in your schedule that says, “practice,” and ideally to do that practice with another or others. I still have a couple of spots available in my morning/lunchtime (depending what time zone you’re in), and I’d love to talk to you about them. Just reply to this email, and let’s see whether there is a way we might help one another breathe, one another slow down, one another be inefficient.

Might you want to connect with some other people on their spiritual journey, receive some coaching on your own path, and have the opportunity to witness and learn from others? I am offering two small groups at two different times, one that meets twice a month, and the other once a month. There is room for two people in one group and three in the other. Please just hit reply to this email if you’re curious, want to talk about the possibilities, consider whether such a thing might be for you, or just to check in!

Beloveds –

I have a dear mentor who I haven’t seen in years, but who has given me many gems of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom that have stayed with me. She knows a lot about being really sick. Having breast cancer, a life-threatening case of E. coli, and another potentially fatal infection that led to a hysterectomy, all within ten years, she learned a lot. Like, a lot about how to get through being really sick and being a minister at a large Unitarian Universalist congregation.

One of the things she realized was that she had to disappoint people. She just had to. She couldn’t live into the life that she’d had before she’d gotten sick. She couldn’t do All the Things. She couldn’t go to All the Places. And she couldn’t see All the People, as much as she loved them. I remember hearing the senior minister say that she welcomed receiving cards, but that phone calls and visits were not welcome at that time.

“What good boundaries,” I thought. “How clear that is!” I don’t know why it struck me as so revolutionary at the time, but it did.

Later, she told me that she had to make a spiritual practice of risking disappointing someone every day. Of dealing with the emotional fallout that could come from someone who didn’t want to hear her “no,” who came by the house with food. (This was long before dropping things off with no notice, and just letting someone know afterward was a practice as it is now. Ah, COVID, how you have changed us.)

She knew that she had a finite pool of energy, and that it was small. She knew all she could really do in a day was maybe shower and take herself back to bed and talk to her partner when she came home from work. That was it.

It reminds me of the No Ministry I’ve written about here before. Let me see whether I can find the wonderful quotation I’ve loved so much. <<rummage, rummage>> Ah, found it!

The writer speaks about the joy she gets from saying, “no,” and how liberating it is, but she goes further: “I also love when folks tell me no. It’s a blessing to get a NO. It means the divine timing is not there….Start saying no and praising when you get a rejection, and watch stuff shift for you.” From The Nap Ministry.

Saying “no” risks disappointing someone. But it also opens a door for both the giver and the receiver. It makes space. It makes room for love and Divine timing to enter into the equation between the two interlocutors. It can be a loving action between the two of you. It can even be a way to express deep love and care for another person – I love you, and I can’t do this thing you’re asking of me because I think it would make me resentful and damage our relationship as a result. Or I love you and I know you love me, and you will respect that I am not saying no willy-nilly. I am saying no because I need to.

The thing is, you/one/I don’t have to express that justification. We don’t have to justify why we’re disappointing someone. How’s about them apples?! Just typing the words, I feel a little anxious inside. But, but, but what if someone gets angry with me? It’s important to ask yourself, first of all, whose wrath are you risking incurring. It’s also important to remember that if someone needs more information and if you are in a close enough relationship that such a conversation will be helpful, they can ask and you can answer. And finally, remember that, as Rabbi Hillel is said to have said, “If you don’t take care of yourself, who will?”

Saying no, as well as risking the disappointment of others, are a spiritual practices for many of us, especially for those of us—and I mean no dog whistling here—who were socialized as girls. Or in any way socialized to believe that “nice” was the highest good. Nice, modest, humble, accommodating…you can do the math.

Now the Nap Ministry writer says that she says “no” 90% of the time. I need to be honest here: I cannot imagine getting to that place. 90% of the time, wow. I think for now, my practice is going to be noticing when I can say no. When the opportunity for “no” presents itself. When I have had the chance, whether I’ve taken it up or not. Whether I’ve risked disappointing someone or not.

And when I do, when someone pushes back and says, “I’m really disappointed,” I can practice attending to how that feels. Do I feel pushed to change my answer, or do I attend to the wisdom of the Nap Ministry? Do I actually change my answer? When I am accommodating other people’s needs at the expense of my own?

How can you say no today? How can you make room for your own self by allowing the yes that opens up when you say no? Because of course, that is what happens. Every time I say yes when it’s pressured out of me, one way or another, I am saying no to myself in some other regard.

So let’s practice saying no, shall we? Let me know how it goes, and we’ll see what happens!

Blessings, as ever,

~Catharine~

PS – Don’t forget about the small Spirit Groups! I’d love to have a conversation with you about them. Just hit reply, and we’ll make a time to chat about whether one might be right for you!

My cherished siblings –

I’ve spoken to some very wise comrades this week. People who are near to or part of the Way of the River and have been with me for some time. I feel privileged to work with them, whether 1:1 or in small groups—or both! These folks – you folks – have reminded me of some very important pieces of work that I haven’t thought of in a long time or haven’t thought of in the ways you’ve brought out.

And now that I think about it, much of what I’ve learned about the growth of The Way of the River since 2016 has come from you. My spiritual accompaniment practice grew love letters because you suggested that I might have more to share than only with one person at a time. And my accompaniment practice grew again when you asked whether I would coach and mentor you through the MFC preparation process. And then you asked for season classes and workshops. And then you thought it would be great if I offered a class on discernment, since it’s a topic so close to my heart and something I come back to again and again.

You, dear comrade, are the human manifestations of the wellsprings of love that nourish and feed this particular river. Thank you.

I have had conversations this week about “inefficient ministry” and how luscious and important it is. How subversive and roguish and rascally it feels to say no, I want a ministry of smallness and slowness and peace and time to find clarity. We have spoken about the glory of the discipline of “ten mistakes a day” and the practice of disappointment. So there’s plenty for me to be thinking about, and I hope to bring some more thought-out words to you on those subjects soon.

So that’s the (wo)man behind the curtain, pulling levels and ringing bells and blowing smoke, all the while realizing that the whole thing only exists because you exist. We all need all the rest of us to survive, which is a paraphrase (I always get it wrong) of an important manifestino of our comrade Rev. Theresa Soto.

Today, though, I am thinking of those of you who have been or are in search for a congregational ministry, as well as the rest of us who are trying to live our lives faithfully in response to the movements of the Spirit of the Universe Who is male, female, both and beyond gender. Who is One and Many. Who is known and unknowable. Who concerns Themselves in human affairs and would never concern Itself in human affairs, but who in any case is the miraculous system/process/be-ing that allows love to come into the world. The Love, as the Sufis call Allah, the Real, the One, the only perfection.

One of my clients and I this week were talking about search and all its difficulties and brutalities. All the ways one can be subjected to microagressions (and macroagressions) for being a person of color, whether you are indigenous, Black, or inhabit another racial identity. For being fat, in whatever way the eyes of the beholder are beholding your size and shape. For being Appalachian in a tradition that is hung up on the Boston roots of some of our tradition. (As much as we love to deny that we have anything to do with Calvinism, good Mother of all the gods, we surely are puritanical.) For having a gender…I almost want to stop there, at “for having a gender,” but it’s more appropriate to say, for having a gender other than the one the people selecting a candidate are looking for. For being working class. For having disabilities that show and are known. So much.

And is it our job to fight all our own battles? Of course not. As I’ve already said, we all need all the rest of us to survive. What do we do? How do we make it through these slings and arrows of outrageous, late-stage capitalism and white supremacy and cissexist, heteropatriarchal bullshit? How do we do it?

Many, many people have explained it, the most famous of whom in English is probably Shakespeare, in Polonius’s speech to Laertes:

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man (sic).

What our comrade called it in our talk, though, was “faithful risk.” The risks one takes out of a commitment to fidelity.

Many of us, simply by virtue of being who we are in the world, who we are seen to be, at whose mercy we are, cannot help taking risks. For all the reasons I said above, many of us are at risk.

So what is faithful risk?

Faithful risk is a decision borne out of a sense of connection to that “self” that old Will mentions above. The one who takes the faithful risk moves out into the unknown, following the headlights of the self into the dark, fifteen feet at a time across a continent.

Taking faithful risks demands that we ask ourselves to whom or what are we accountable. With whom and with what do we keep faith, and so risk breaking faith? Surely one of those needs to be ourselves. Another might be Love itself. Another might be a given congregation. Another might be the Spirit that inspires us, moves us forward, to Which we pray when we sing, “Sing in my heart / all the stirrings of compassion.”

And the risk part, well, some of it isn’t optional, if we’re going to be in deep relationship with anyone. It’s risk that makes us vulnerable. But some of us don’t have a choice about being vulnerable. We just are. Our bodies, the way we look. Our voices, the way we talk. The ways we are on the outside bring physical danger or oppression, even though they may also connect us to communities of support.

But choosing to risk even more is another matter.

Choosing to tell the truth when the truth is not comfortable or what you think the person with the power wants to hear can be faithful risk. Knowing that if you don’t tell the search committee, don’t tell the prospective candidate for your congregation, the truth about some ugly background, everyone will suffer.

That truth telling is faithful risk.

Admitting our own fallibility, ffs, can be faithful risk. I don’t think it should have to be risky. I wish we were tender with one another, listened closely to one another, treated one another well and with challenge and support. But we aren’t. A lot of the time, we just aren’t. And so any truth telling that opens up our humanness to be sliced and diced and judged can be faithful risk.

This risk is not just the one we take because we’re thrill-seeking goofballs. It’s because we’re working to be true to ourselves. And the One/s for Whom we give our lives. Faithful.

So let this rumble around in your hearts and minds today. What faithful risks are you being invited to take? How can you keep faith with “any man” by being true to your own deepest, wisest self? How can you show up to that today?

Blessings as you consider your risks, my loves, blessings –

~Catharine~

PS – Still considering the possibility of joining one of my small groups? There is still room for you! Just go to https://thewayoftheriver.com/schedule-appointments and set up a free half hour for us to discuss whether one of the groups might be a fit for you. I look forward to hearing from you!