Out of the Rapids, Into the Depths

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

It is Thursday of Holy Week, in the middle of what I used to call the “rapids” or the “whitewater” of the river of time that is the Christian liturgical year. It has always been a bumpy ride from the ecstatic jubilation of Palm Sunday, to the astounding power of sharing a simple table with one’s community on this day, to the utter desolation and grief on Friday, to gathering to prepare the setting for an open grave on Saturday, to the flowers and trumpets of Easter Sunday. For over thirty years, my job was to guide the craft through the thrilling and dangerous waters.

Here now I sit with my candle, coffee, and journal, a different kind of Holy Week. More reflective than roiling, thinking of Maundy Thursdays past. It was this day’s celebration that called me to be ordained in the church at all. My desire was not really to preach or to lead a congregation, but I longed to have the privilege and the joy of gathering the beloveds around the common table to experience the presence of God – in the bread and the wine, the elements of earth, and in one another. I wanted to be able to look the gathered straight into the eyes and reflect back their goodness as Jesus willed to do in his life. I desired to do my part in weaving together the tender and beautiful body of Christ as we celebrated in true communion. It is this whole body that is the sacrament – the miraculous life of God in the ordinary.

Even in retirement, I retain this calling. This blog, Dwelling in Presence, is my attempt at finding and naming the sacred in all aspects of our lives. In our joys, disapppointments, in our pain, fears, even in our physicality. As at the table on Maundy Thursday, brokenness is blessed. Feet are washed. Wounds are healed. The goodness of God is tasted. Life and death, joy and grief, loom together in one dance. In it all, Christ is present.

And, of course, the mandate (the origin of the word “Maundy”) is received. “Love one another as I have loved you.” What better sign of the sacred in the world, how clear a sacrament, is a community rooted and growing in love. The love that can’t help itself from reaching out, spreading, as it dwells and moves as God’s presence in the world. I may not be taken up by the whitewater today, but I am feeling pulled down into the depths of what this week, this faith, is all about.

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Author: Dwelling in Presence

Striving to live in the present where Spirit is found, I get (t)here most often by writing. It keeps me grounded in both the silence and in my senses. So, welcome to my journal. With a home on mid coast Maine, I have recently retired from 18 years as copastor of The First Church in Belfast, United Church of Christ, with my spouse, Joel Krueger. My spiritual formation has been nurtured by the sensual and sacramental faith of the Roman Catholic church, the heady intellectualism of Yale Divinity School and doctoral studies at Northwestern University, and the justice activism of the United Church of Christ in which I am ordained. Yale Divinity gave me the opportunity to study with pastoral theologian Henri Nouwen who I continue to think of as spiritual mentor these many years later. I have begun this blog to be certain to reach out in a time of great transition and chaos. We are suffering a worldwide pandemic, a global climate crisis, a war-damaged world and great upheaval in the church. With these reflections, I want to share what gives me joy and that which gives me pause. I look forward to hearing yours comments.

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