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.

LOSING THE ANESTHESIA

Rev. Dr. Kate A. Winters, May 29, 2023

Last week durng a follow-up visit to my surgeon, I asked the physician’s assistant if she knew how long it would be before my concentration would return. My richest reading and writing period, a few hours before dawn, had become no different than any other time – I would simply stare at a page, at a candle, at the light as it rose behind the trees. I could see, but could feel and comprehend nothing. She said that one thing heart patients don’t realize is how long anesthesia remains in their system. It enters every cell and it takes a while to become fully aware and operational again.

At the time, I heard her words, but did not fully digest them. But then this morning I was staring at the leaves on a birch tree shimmering with the breeze in our yard. They were dancing to some inaudible melody. I was transfixed as the movement of the birch spread to a nearby maple, and then a bird, far too away for me to surely identify, flew to the top of the cedar and sang with all her might. My heart began to sing as all this unfolded before me.

The anesthesia is wearing off. These miracle drugs that keep us from experiencing the pain of our bodies’ wounds, also keep us from being fully aware of the life dancing around us, limiting us to our stare, but not allowing us an encounter. It is encounter in life that brings us alive and fosters meaning. An encounter, a meeting with something more, something beyond ourselves, brings the colors back into life and makes us hungry for more. It restores us to the relational matrix of all being.

After the bird sang, I think it was actually a robin, I went to search my shelves for a book I remember reading a few years ago, and, miracle of miracles, I found it. It is entitled Presence and Encounter: The Sacramental Possibilities of Everyday Life by David Benner, Ph.D. On the first page of the preface, I found what I was looking for: “Without presence, nothing is meaningful. But in the luminous glow of presene, all of life becomes saturated with significance.” (p.viii) Dr. Benner defines presence a few pages later as “the awakening that calls us into an engagement with some aspect of the present moment. Presence makes us feel alive, or perhaps better, it lets us know that we are alive. It demands that we notice, and in so doing, the distance between whatever we notice and us is suddenly reduced.” (p.2)

I quote Benner at length because it was he who first gave me words to name what I think is our primary calling – to “dwell in presence,” thus the name of my blog. And now he helps me to understand what I have been going through since my heart was stopped an started again. I had literally been cut off from my sense of presence. And now, I am working, or waiting, to get it back. The bird at the top of the cedar made the happy announcement that I am ready to engage again.

As yesterday was Pentecost Sunday, I have only the Spirit who animated the birch, the maple, and the robin, to thank.

Pilgrimage

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, May 27, 2023

Jean, a dear friend, stopped by this week giving me a book of poems by David Whyte. I hadn’t read him before, so I immediately turned to the first one.

For the Road to Santiago

For the road to Santiago,

don’t make new declarations

about what to bring

and what to leave behind.

Bring what you have.

You were always going

that way anyway,

you were always

going there all along.

I was stunned. In nine simple lines, the poet broke through my lost stare and gave me a new way to imagine, a new word to name, this time I am going through. I gasped when I read it, and Jean just smiled at me.

I have understood that I am on a healing journey. But the poem speaks of pilgrimage, the road to Santiago being a well-traveled pilgrimage taken by thousands in Europe each year. In my mind, there is a difference between a journey and a pilgrimage. The purpose of a journey is usually to get somewhere. It may ultimately be life-changing, but its goal is more defined. The pilgrimage is entirely transformational in purpose. It is undertaken with change in mind. What kind of change? That is not up to the pilgrim to determine, but to the ability to give oneself fully over to the vagaries of the pilgrimage. To define it too clearly would be to close oneself off to all the possibilities. So “don’t make new declarations about what to bring and what to leave behind.”

I have surrounded myself these days with items and books that I had hoped would break through my emotional and mental stuckness. Topics and things I have been drawn to. Lot’s of John O’Donahue and other Celtic spirituality, candles and books about meditation, a tome about Elderhood which I have wanted to study, books given me by friends, even bought a new deep forest green journal! The book in front of me was given to me while I was still in the hospital – The 7 Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism by one of my favorite feminist theologians, Carter Heyward. This calls to my activist side, but now, in this current place, I seem unable to break it open. (Though at some point, I will!)

The truth is that I’ve been broken open and I don’t know what is still left in me of me. So, the poet writes, “Bring what you have.” At this point, I know I have this longing to be preset to what is and a desire to write. To connect. To discover what is inside now and how I can contribute to life. This pilgrimage demands only that I stay awake. Allow myself to be led. To be changed. I want to say “to find myself lost in love.” To find myself lost. I am part way there.

Healing Journey

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, May 22, 2023

I shake my head as I check this week’s calendar. On tomorrow’s space, May 23rd, I had written “Breaking Silence.” Never had I made a plan that had run so far off the rails as this one. I was longing for silence and what it would teach me when the universe decided there was another kind of journey I needed to take.

Instead of mystics and hermits, I was led into it by cardiologists and hematologists, the high priests of medicine. No matter how much I wanted to protest, I knew it would be to my own peril. So I had to give myself over – body, mind, and spirit.

The first few days after surgery are kind of lost to a maze of faces and medications. Fortunately, the most constant face was of my beloved Joel who kept telling me that I was alright. Most of the faces were kind, but none could anchor me like his, could remind me that I was still me in this very unfamiliar place, perhaps a bit lost, but still able to be found.

So, tomorrow I was meant to break my three month silence but instead I am going to see my surgeon for our sugical follow-up. Perhaps he will discharge me out of the hallowed halls of Maine Med back to life as I knew it, with some cardiac rehab on the side.

Will I then pursue my initial plan of silence? I think I need to begin with what I am needing now. I did not expect to be on such an intense healing journey. And I kid not when I say this journey is one step forward and two steps back. Well, maybe it is not that precise. There are also steps of side to side and times of simply standing in place. I knew this was true of emotional healing, but now I know that the body’s is not linear as well. And damn, this can be frustrating!

BLANK

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, Monday, May 15, 2023

I locate my journal and pull out a pen. Am I wishful thinking? Is there something in me to share this morning? And if there is, do I have the presence and clarity of mind to coax it out? This is all new to me. I named my blog “Dwelling in Presence” with the desire to simply be attentive to life and its colors, all of its various shades and moments. This is a new shade for me. If I had to name it, I think I would call it “Blank”. I can spend hours just sitting and staring. Cups of coffee sit cooling and undrunk. No inspiration there. I am vaguely aware of the birdsong outside. Mom’s owl hasn’t been back since we came home from the hospital, or perhaps I have just not heard it. Yes. Blank.

The visiting nurse is coming this morning. Maybe I need a visiting poet or a visiting shaman to restore the wonder I seem to have misplaced right now. They could speak an incantation over me, and my broken open heart might start working again.

Joel keeps telling me that I am doing much more than I think I am, that my whole body is involved in healing itself. Some of it is visible on the outside where wounds are starting to scab over. Most of it is happening on the inside where a major bone was broken and wired together, vessels were rearranged, and someone elses blood was poured in to keep me strong. I survived for a while on a heart-lung machine while my heart of flesh was getting important upgrades.

Now I sit here looking and feeling essentially blank. With all that has happened, you would think my mind would be firing on all cylinders. My feelings popping. My cup runnething over. But no. My body’s wisdom has caused a certain numbness while I begin to own what happened to me. Of all things I expected to experince after a successful surgery, grief wasn’t one of them. What is my body trying to make conscious in me? What, indeed, have I lost?

There is nothing else to do. Just be.

Dull Moon

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, Friday, May 12, 2023

The quarter moon is high in the sky this morning, but it is not shining. Its light is muted and dull, appearing as if it has lost some important source of energy. If I had not heard yesterday that wild fire smoke in Canada is casting shadows across Maine skies, I would be convinced that the moon is displaying empathy for me. A dull, heavy light seems to be about all I am capable of right now.

Yes, in the past week I experienced some of the most amazing miracles of modern medicine, and I know my gratitude will surface at some point. But we forget that great suffering often accompanies these miracles. I had a front row seat to that of my own as well as to the deep pain of others. It leaves its mark. Most of all, I am aware that as I am back at home surrounded by the colors of spring, the same drama and trauma is being played out minute by minute down on the cardiac wing of Maine Med. The CNAs and other caregivers are for me right now the surest signs of God’s presence on earth.

I don’t where where it will go from here. But I cannot really force any meaning out of it right now. I am tired. These, I guess, are the days of the dull moon. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I hope I can learn from it.

Gratitude

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, May 3, 2023

I haven’t written in a few days. Well, that’s not quite true, I’ve written two posts that I just couldn’t publish. Why? Is there something called too much honesty? Of course not! But I think I felt too exposed by my words.

The first one was primarily written to thank all of you who have read these words I’m sending out. You have rewoven a kind of community for me when I most needed one after retiring from my ministry calling. Your words have been encouraging and supportive (most of these posted on Facebook, but also a few here). And I have loved reconnecting with people from far away and long ago! I’ve been telling myself I want to establish a writing ministry, but truth be told, I have always needed a circle of beloveds with open hearts. People who always prove to me what my teacher Henri Nowwen used to say – “What is most personal, is most universal.” Which totally argues against what I said above about being too exposed! Forgive me, my anxiety has risen in these days as we head to Portland this morning and I’m not thinking very clearly. But I feel deep gratitude for all of you.

The second was about the connection of body and spirit. I was asking what happens to the spirit when the body is rearranged? Which is what is going to happen during this surgery – veins from my leg and my chest being used to feed the heart more sufficiently, my heart stopped and started again after the breaking of my sternum.

My theology has always been deeply incarnational. I believe that God speaks through our bodies, something I learned from my childhood lessons on Jesus. I don’t expect to die, and I know I am not Jesus, but it’s hard to imagine that the spirit will flow through me and in me in quite the same way as before. What will this teach me? And, as I have written before, one of my biggest challenges in life is letting go – giving myself over to something that I cannot control. This will certainly be a major lesson. So, who will I be when I wake up? What will have changed? I pray I get to write about it on the other side.

Finally, I thank you for all your prayers and good thoughts this week. I feel them. I also feel my mother’s presence as her Christmas cactus is fully blooming this morning as if she is sending me flowers! And, of course, spring is blooming all around us. It is a sure reminder that life keeps being born again in new forms, in beautiful ways, in vibrant color. All is gift.

Next?

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, Wed., April 26, 2023

I told Joel last night over a pizza at the local sports bar that I think I want to go back to school. Instead of crying out and shaking his head in disbelief, he simply said, “I think you should.” No matter that we have just paid off all our school loans a couple of years ago. He has known me long enough to realize that I am happiest and most myself when I am studying.

It has been a long time since I have had one of my “Aha!” moments when something new clicked inside my heart and head and I was so excited that I couldn’t sit still! I remember dancing around the library stacks at Northwestern because some unexpected insight set my heart beating and my mind buzzing. No, I don’t remember exactly what that insight was, but I do remember a nearby church bell ringing and I was in the process of writing. It is probably so much a part of me now that it feels like nothing special. But then, it was life changing.

It’s not that I haven’t learned anything lately. You learn a lot in decades of teaching and ministry. But there is something about focusing your whole self on a field of study that is intriguing and coming up with something of significance that is exhilarating. And then having the opportunity to talk about it with people who are just as interested. A number of my friends have told me that I have a tendency to start every conversation whether by phone or in person with “I have a question.” It’s kind of my nature. Some want to run the other way. One just rolls her eyes. I guess not everyone is always up for mental gymnastics.

But to be clear, my desire is not simply to study for study’s sake, or this time, to get a degree. I have realized that having the structure of a program is good for me. It focuses me. And right now I want to focus on mystical experience and faith development in elderhood. Well, at any age really. I have a sense that the connective experience that accompanies contemplation has been ignored by institutional faih communities and most programs of religious or theological education. This allows us to go on seeing “others” in a damaging way, a way that leads to violence. I certainly believe with others that what is needed is an evolution in human consciousness, and that it is time we begin to nurture this change.

Wake Up Call

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

Saturday, April 22nd

The call of the owl was comforting on Tuesday, a sign of the ongoing presence of my mother during unsettling times. This morning, however, she seems to be sending a wake up call. I literally slept all day yesterday, not rising until 4:30 in the afternoon, a full twelve and a half hours later than usual. When upon waking this morning, I immediately began to think that I was supposed to be in Portland hooked up to all sorts of medical machinery, when the call came through my open window, sounding not soothing but rather impatient. “Listen up,” she seemed to say, “shouldn’t you be feeling gratitude? You are alive, you are free, it’s a beautiful day. Get out of that bed and live!”

The owl channeling my mother is wise. It’s true I’ve been spending too much time in bed lately. Not all of that time can be attributed to my heart condition. I am, after all, newly retired. The medical diagnosis has given me a convenient excuse not to deal with what that really means to me. It has put off my planned period of silence and anything else I had hoped to do in this time. The owl calls once again. (I swear it can read my mind.) “Get out of that bed!”

So, here I am, up and writing. Perhaps these two weeks of delay is not only disappointment, but a gift. I can be dealing with something else I’ve been putting off so that when I get out of the hospital, it won’t all just be sitting here waiting for me. Perhaps I can at least find a way to move forward.

I need to turn my work office at home into what I am calling my “hermitage.” I want a room in the house that calls me to prayer, reflection, silence, and writing. Joel and I used to go yearly to a cabin that did these things for me in Rangeley, Maine (yes, the land of the moose!). I was in a whole different mindspace when I got to that cabin. I attribute a large part of that to the simplicity and sparseness of the space itself – it held nothing more than the essentials for daily living. It had a tiny kitchen, a sofa and chair, a bed and bath, a table to write on, and a screened in porch upon which to take in the sunrise. I felt a deeper contentment there than I had anywhere else on earth. That is what I am hoping for in my hermitage.

The biggest challenge is not in setting up the room, just this week we had one of the small windows replaced with a large screened one. It seems to take the whole backyard including the woods inside. I love it. The hardest part is that the rest of the rooms holds my whole life in boxes! Books that I have loved and have changed me from grad school and seminary. At least three decades of liturgical writing – sermons, services, and hymns. Pictures and other objects from my parents’ home after my mother died. What to save? What to let go?

It is not as simple as getting rid of the “clutter” as all the books say. I think it has more to do with figuring out who I am now and what am I about? What is essential to me at this stage in my life? Having had no children, having let go of my church family, having siblings living in other states all with their own children and grandchildren, it is not an easy question for me to answer. I feel untethered, really. What and who am I to serve? This is the question that is calling me to my hermitage. Now that I have gotten out of bed.

Nighttime Serenade

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

I bolted straight up in bed last night, awakened by the distinct sound of a barred owl just outside the window. Joel asked, “Do you hear something?” My first thought was how could he not hear it? But then I remembered two things – first, his fairly serious hearing loss, and second, I think my hearing is especially tuned in to this particular sound from this particular bird. After all, this is the way my mother has communicated with me since her death in 2016.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that we were serenaded last night. Yesterday was full of disappointment. I was packed and emotionally ready to head toward Portland tomorrow for my pre-op appointment before Friday’s surgery. Yes, I know you must be as tired hearing about this as I am writing about it. Well, I got a call in the late afternoon from Kim, my surgeon’s nurse. She told me that they are postponing my surgery for another two weeks to May 4th because of too many other urgent cases they need to handle. My immediate response was “But, I’m ready! Waiting is hard!” But then I fully took in her words and realzed that I am blessed not to be one of those urgent cases. Now, my cardiologist in Belfast told me not to wait too long, but he isn’t handling the surgical schedule at Maine Med.

Both Joel and I felt quite deflated. It has been over a month now that we have known of the need for this bypass. We haven’t spent these days a lot differently than we otherwise would have, though I do notice him asking how I am doing more frequently. There is a deeper awareness in the day-to-day of what we mean to one another. Another blessing.

Now there is also the owl. Actually, I think there were two or three owls surrounding our house last night. Mom brought some friends. They did sing to us, even loud enough for Joel to hear. For those who haven’t heard my owl story, I will just share that ever since my father had a heart attack, a barred owl took to watching over my mother from the woods that surrounded her home in Conneticut. It showed up whenever there was a need. One time when I visited them from Wisconsin, I went out to the deck and whispered a thanks into the trees, asking the owl if I could see her. Within seconds, she flew down to the branch closest to me (I exaggerate not) and stared at me with her beautiful brown eyes. I was awed. There is much more to this story, but I’ll end with saying that I hadn’t heard a barred owl’s call after moving to Maine until the morning of my mother’s birthday the year that she died. I cried happy tears.

So, of course, we were serenaded last night. My mom sensed a need, and sent her angels to fill it. In this case, her angel is an owl. And now, it is mine as well.

TMI

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters

Spoiler Alert! I am about to write about undergarments, so if this is too intimate a topic to come from someone who may be your former pastor or spiritual guide, skip this post. It is what is on my mind, and as you know by now, I always start where I am.

Yesterday, I broke my first retirement promise to myself. I had vowed that I would never wear a bra again! I have hated them ever since my first purchase in adolescence. The feel of anything tight or restricting on any part of my body has always given me a sinking feeling as if I were being punished for something I did not do. Made to sit in the corner, when I longed to run around. People have often asked me why I always wear loose and flowing clothing. No, it has had nothing to do with wanting to hide my body. I just wanted for this body to feel easy and free!

So, what happened yesterday? I was following instructions. The nurses in cardiac care said that women who have bypass would need to bring a front closure bra with good support to aide in healing after surgery. So I went to “City Drawers,” the trendy little lingerie shop in downtown Belfast. At 67, I had my first real bra fitting! First, I was shocked by the actual size I was (now that really would be too much information), and then by the garment I was brought. It had so many eyes and hooks down the front and the back, it looked like an instrument of torture. (No offense to “City Drawers,” the rest of the merchandise looks just lovely!) It took me forever to put it on. The very sweet saleswoman came to check on me. “Perfect” she said. So I left the store with this beige contraption that looked as if it came from my greatgrandmother’s underwear drawer.

When I got home, I took it 0ut of its cute little bag and wondered if this thing was truly going to help me heal. Even looking at it, I feel old and depressed. Luckily, I did order from Amazon two cute nightshirts that button up the front as we were instructed to have. I will not be able to put anything over my head for a while. I do feel like myself in them with lots of room to breathe.

We head down to Portland the day after tomorrow for surgery prep with the operation on Friday. I have been assured that friends will be looking after Joel, who though he never shows it, is a huge worrier, and that I will be accompanied by a boatload of prayers. I have an excellent surgeon and good insurance. So, I guess it is a blessing that my biggest worry this morning is whether I will really have to wear that bra. I will be fighting it with all the strength I will have…