ARRIVAL OF A NEW SEASON

Kate Winters, “Dwelling in Presence,” September 22, 2023

On the cusp of a new season, I open a new journal and begin to write. Why is it so hard to lay ink down on this page? It feels like having a chance for a new beginning and not wanting to mess it up. A new journal, a new season, a new stage of my life. Fall begins tomorrow. I have no doubt that it is ushering me into the autumn of my life.

Perhaps I have been here for a while now, but something has changed. I feel a new sense of acceptance. Certainly, I am no longer young, no hint of the eager star performer I was as a child. I have left behind the promising youthful scholar I was in graduate school. I only have fond memories of the gently radical Catholic minister and preacher I was in my late thirties and early forties called the “Woman Chaplain” at the University of Wisconsin Catholic Center. But I no longer have her stamina or the need to reform the entire Roman Catholic Church.

I continue to embrace my ordination in the United Church of Christ, but after twenty-three more years of pastoring local churches, I have retired from that role. I don’t think it is everything that I am any more. My gaze has simulteously become more inward and more cosmic in scope.

I am definitely moving into a new phase, with new priorities and more subtle energies. What I do know is that I will take all that I love into this new season. My incredible partner Joel, who continues to make every step of our journey together more joyous. A continuing desire to teach and to learn. A yearning for God which has always been the deepest thing about me, and the most honest. As I look up, a spectacular half moon surrounded by a soft mist is shining down on me. The journey into autumn is nothing without the holy mystery of it all. I am blessed.

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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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